Tuesday Links - 20 September

Professor David Yamane at Gun Curious starts things off with Student Gun Range Field Trip Reflection Essays for Fall 2022 Forthcoming. I will have at least one post on those reviews up by the time you read this. You should be reading Professor Yamane's work, and watching his videos.

The field trip is historically a highlight of the course for students and the reflection essays are among the most popular items I post to my blogs every year (previous student reflections can be found on my Sociology of Guns collected posts page).

Ace at Ace of Spades HQ with the most insane thing of the week: Biden Announces He Would Commit US Troops to Defend Taiwan Against China;

White House Rushes Out Statement That The "President" Does Not Speak for the U.S. Government

Pixy Misa is up next with Daily Tech News 18 September 2022, in which he brings us the quote of the week from a post on AI.

To those who know nothing, everything is magic.

The Other McCain - A Simple Idea: ‘Four or More’

The salt has “lost its savour” would be the best description of what’s happened, in terms of Christian family practice in recent decades. One might imagine that self-identified Catholics would still have substantially higher fertility rates than the average American, but they don’t — they have been “conformed to this world,” and the same is true of evangelical Christians. The commandment to “be ye separate” — to have no fellowship with unrighteousness — seems to have been forgotten, so that many Christians are now just following the crowd, and making the same lifestyle choices as the unchurched.

CBD at Ace of Spades HQ - Smart Phones: They Are Damaging To Social Growth, But Mostly They Are Rude!

Smart phones are ubiquitous, especially among our enlightened youth. They are in their hands during every waking moment, and more often then not these poorly socialized drones have their heads buried in the screens...frantically looking for the next text, the next TikTok, the next "swipe right," (or is it left?), but curiously they almost never actually talk on those phones, preferring the less intimate communication of the text over actually speaking to another human being.

Again from The Other McCain - The Mayor of CrazyTown, U.S.A.

South Fulton is like many other places (e.g., Chicago) that have elected mayors who are not quite so blatantly crazy as Mayor Lower-Case Letters, but still crazy enough to utterly wreck everything. When people elect a lunatic like khalid kamau, they are rendering a verdict on themselves, because what kind of people would choose to be governed by such a kook?

Bleeping Computer - CISA orders agencies to patch vulnerability used in Stuxnet attacks. It is hard to believe that the federal .gov is using software that is 12 years out-of-date. Or maybe not so hard.

The oldest bug that CISA ordered federal agencies to patch is from 2010 and was used to spread the Stuxnet worm that damaged the centrifuges at the Natanz uranium enrichment plant to slow the country’s advancements towards developing nuclear weapons.

The Other McCain again - The Myth of ‘Good’ Public Schools

What upscale suburban parents seems to care about most is the relative prestige of their child’s school — is this the fashionable district? do a high percentage of students go onto college? are the SAT scores high? — and never mind what is actually being taught.

OutKick - Demand For Racism Outstrips Supply, Increasing Supply Of Imaginary Racism

Richardson’s story was only the latest installment in an expanding real-life anthology series of racial hoaxes. There’s too much riding on the narrative that racism plagues American society to ever not give ample time to any alleged example that could reaffirm this claim, no matter the evidence. There’s too much excitement to denounce society as racist anew.

Babalú Blog - Blue cities collapsing

Once upon a time, we had vibrant and dynamic cities like Chicago and San Francisco. I remember visiting Chicago with my parents and admiring how clean and orderly it was. Then there was the beauty and charm of San Francisco.

That was then and this is now.

OldAFSarge at Chant du Départ - Sanity Enhancing Techniques *. That would be woodworking.

In any case, the new shop is 16' x 24' with a 10' ceiling and two 16' x 8' lofts (7' above the floor) for storage, and seems infinitely larger than the old one.