Category: FWIW

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English. Learn Some.

Building an AR-15 Under 5 Pounds

Nice article, and reads like a nice build. I do lack a bit of confidence in their math, though, given that the build they were comparing to was 5lb5oz and ~$3,500 while the 4lb13oz build was “slightly more than $1,800, nearly half the price of the carbine in the article that spawned this exercise.”

“[N]early half the price”? No, slightly MORE than half the price. “Nearly” implies “almost” or “not quite,” and $1,800 is more than half of $3,500.

Numbers. Language. Not strong suits for this writer.

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Understanding “Gender”

To properly understand the many different fantasy “genders” that have come about in recent years, a trip down etymology lane might be helpful:

“gender (n.)
c. 1300, “kind, sort, class, a class or kind of persons or things sharing certain traits,” from Old French gendre, genre “kind, species; character; gender” (12c., Modern French genre), from stem of Latin genus (genitive generis) “race, stock, family; kind, rank, order; species,” also “(male or female) sex,” from PIE root *gene- “give birth, beget,” with derivatives referring to procreation and familial and tribal groups. ”

When speaking of _mankind_**, then, one can speak now of three specific “genders”:

male
female
batsh*t crazy.

The last class is the catch-all for all the delusional folks who are in denial of reality and claim to be some weird fantasy “gender.”
___________________________

**”mankind” here is a poke in the eye to snowflake “batsh*t crazies”

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The Reasons I Do Not Carry a Handgun

Sure, I have the right to carry openly or concealed (and I have), but there are several reasons why I do not normally, habitually, carry a handgun on my person.

I’m gettin’ old, folks. Arthritis and difficulty quickly transitioning between near and far make sighting/aiming and firing a handgun an exercise in “maybe accuracy,” and that’s just not good enough to assure NOT hitting what I do not want to.

I also live in one of the safest places in the world, safer from physical attacks on my person than almost anywhere else in America that has people in it. *heh* That means that others around me are also pretty darned unlikely to experience physical aggression initiated against them (by anyone other than law enFARCEment ossifers, that is).

Sidebar: perhaps one of the reasons it’s so safe here in America’s Third World County™ is that firearms of all kinds outnumber inhabitants by quite a healthy margin, and many folks do carry a handgun both openly and concealed. Gives me warm fuzzies. 🙂

The only reason I might carry a handgun, given my circumstances, would be if I were to go out walking in “snake country” or “feral pig country,” and in that case, I’d probably need to carry a S&W Governor loaded in alternate chambers with .410 gauge shotshells and .45 long colt (each for a different contingency). The .410 (loaded with birdshot, for snake use) would pretty much obviate concerns about really fine aiming, though I’d just have to hope for decent enough luck if a feral pig got his mad on.

Still, even in such cases, I’d probably prefer to keep my head on a swivel and note issues well enough in advance to back away from a venomous snake or take to a tree in case of a feral pig.

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Gibberish, Gobbledegook, and Glop

Economics. *sigh* Just another field that HAS to use words in idiosyncratic ways in order to attempt to make its jargon less acceptable to the hoi polloi. Example: in common speech “rival” and “competitor” are synonyms. In Economics, however, a good (yeh, another one, but with strong etymological roots) is rival if its use or consumption by one party denies another party its use or consumption.

Fugetaboutit.

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Something Different

I own a little revolver that is. . . different in several ways from the norm.

It’s a lil .32 ACP revolver that uses a round designed for .32 semi-automatics.

It is from a defunct maker of second-tier-quality knock-offs of other maker’s guns.

It’s a top-break revolver (semi-unusual nowadays).

It is one of very few the manufacturer made in this caliber with a six-round cylinder. By far, most of the .32 caliber revolvers made by this maker were 5-round.

Before it came to be in my possession, it had been fired only once, in 1929, by a man who committed suicide after the stock market crash. In the 84 years that intervened between that event and me coming into possession of the gun, no one else put a single round through it, and aside from two small spots of surface corrosion, the gun was in pristine condition, the bluing–apart from those two small spots–still perfect.

It’s a pretty good lil plinker, and ammo for the thing abounds, but I mostly just leave it cleaned, oiled, and in its case. I don’t really have a use for it aside from plinking, though I also have a nice lil IWB holster (that I picked up for ~$29 less than retail–$1–at my local “fell off the back of a truck” store) so I could, if I wanted, carry it concealed. . . if I wanted to, which–.32 ACP?–I do not.

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The Essential Key to a Long, Healthy Life

Choose your grandparents wisely. *heh*

I am very fortunate to have only one prescription med. (At my age, that’s more than a bit atypical, I know; I’m very, very fortunate.) The thing is, my Wonder Woman is prescribed the same med, same dosage, as a part of her _wide array_ of prescription meds.

She gets all hers from a local pharmacy using her employer-provided health insurance prescription drug benefit. I make a trip ~15 miles out of town once a year to pick up a year’s supply (Yeh, I brow-beat my doctor into writing it for 360 tabs, which–given my roughly 80% compliance–means I have about eight months’ backup supply, after all these years on the same med) at a discount pharmacy, using no insurance.

My cost is 1/6 her cost, after her co-pay.

(The point isn’t where she likes to buy her prescription meds. It’s still pretty cheap, so I don’t really care where she buys her meds. Wherever she’s comfortable doing so is just fine by me. It’s her decision, after all, anyway.)

As I said up front, I consider myself VERY fortunate to only “require” one prescription med for a condition I could take care of myself, and used to, with about 20 minutes of slow, controlled breathing twice a day, but I told my doctor that was just boring and requested a chemical solution.

I took GREAT care selecting my grandparents. . .

All I really have to deal with concerning health issues are creeping arthritis and this damnable tinitus. Oh, well, for the one I can lie to myself and say that pain is just weakness leaving the body. It doesn’t work, but it makes me laugh at myself. For the other, well, I just call my tinitus “the voices in my head” (Oh! those dulcet, belltoned ‘voices’! #gagamaggot), and blame it for my various insanities.

*heh*

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Benefits of Sloppy Yardwork

No, really! There are benefits to lazy, sloppy yardwork. Here’s one:

For some years now, I have ignored some volunteer elms and maples that have grown up along our back fence line. This year, I have started taking them out. Now, while it would have been easy-peasy to have simply mow or weed-whacked ’em down when they first came up as seedlings, I had several reasons (in addition to laziness) for not doing so, but I’ll not go into those right now.

Anywho. . . The elms are slated for

  • chopping (into nice-sized chunks for burning) and
  • chipping

and the maples are slated for

  • milling for handrails and other projects
  • scrap and pieces larger than 1/2” in diameter reserved to make charcoal
  • all smaller scrap and pieces for burning

All pieces slated for burning to be used FIRST in making charcoal out of the maple reserved for that purpose.

Now, THAT is a benefit of “sloppy yardwork” I’m sure that few consider: a nice load of real charcoal. 🙂

Since I also let a “privacy fence” of possum grape vines grow pretty much at will, I have a lot of extra vine I have been trimming and drying. Some, I have already made into charcoal, and all of it I trim (including this year’s batch) is slated to eventually become charcoal, because it’s some of the best charcoal for making black powder. Yeh, small amounts, because it takes a LOT of grape vine to make much charcoal, and I’ve just been trimming here and there.

I suppose I ought to eventually get that tire-based retaining wall built on the South side of the yard, as well. . . maybe not this summer though.

BIG PROJECT (that may now be beyond my capabilities–oh, well): take down two stands of sycamores that need to come out. If felled to fall South, they would cross from the far North boundary of our property and take out our overhead electric service line. Must come down in pieces, a bit at a time. Six sycamores. . . each well over 60′ tall. Oh, well. Might be able to “poll” one and save it, though.

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Inigo Montoya Has a Better Vocabulary

As I was scanning an article that was arguing that Me$$y$oft’s unscrupulous Win10 “upgrade” shennanigans led to (actually the shennanigans contributed to, but why let clear distinctions get in the way of “journalism” *gagamaggot*) the WannaCry Ransomeware debacle, I read,

“violates the trust people hold in the sanctity of Windows Update”

Really? Windows update is a sacrament of some religion or some such? Prior to our post-literate society, “sanctity” was the quality of being sacred or holy. Now, I guess it means whatever the hell (and you can take it I’m speaking theologically here) some subliterate moron wants it to mean.

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I Like Speedify for Other Reasons, Too

This may either be a side effect of using Speedify VPN or it could be for other, unknown reasons, but as soon as we started using Speedify VPN, FINALLY my ISP has stopped reporting fake usage and threatening to bill us for overages on our “data allowances.” In fact, since we began using Speedify, we’ve yet to approach 30% usage of our ridiculously low data allowance.

Co-inky-dink? Maybe. I seriously doubt the data compression Speeify does is enough to account for the HUGE drop in reported usage, but it could be. . .