Professor Yamane is tracking an interesting change in American Gun Culture. Handgunization
For chapter 3 of my book-in-progress on Gun Culture 2.0, I’ve been exploring the guns and gear central to defensive gun culture in general and concealed carry in particular. This work led me to examine a striking 50-year transformation, what I call the “handgunization” of American firearms.
Imagine walking into a typical gun-owning American household in 1973. If you opened the gun cabinet, you’d likely find a wood-stocked hunting rifle or shotgun. Handguns were less common. Since then, there has been what I call a “handgunization” of American firearms.
Charts and graphs, surveys and data, and all the stuff that I love. Click thru.
Click thru for a list of media stories. These don't usually rise to the level of national media interest. I am convinced it is because they don't want to upset their narrative, but I am known to be cynical.
Why do they, or why do I, collect these stories? Because the Left loves to say that armed self-defense is something that never happens. Well, when someone says that, I can send them my link to the Self-defense label. I don't have a story per day, but it is close to one story every day, all year. More than 300 stories per year I would say. That is the point at which they usually start on the ad hominem insults. I consider that to be a victory.
People are confused about the fact that women where very much in computing in the early days. That is because at one time "computer" was a job description, akin to bookkeeper, and women where involved, as it wasn't considered manly work.
Margaret Hamilton, who led the 100-person team that wrote the onboard software for the Apollo missions, guiding Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin to a safe landing on the moon, died on Sept. 30 in Cambridge, Mass. She was 90.
The picture to the right, is from NASA. It shows Hamilton standing next to the printed code in 1969.
She was the first female programmer hired to work on the Apollo project, housed at M.I.T.’s Instrumentation Laboratory, in 1965. Her skills led to her promotion to director of software engineering on the project, which developed the two 70-pound onboard computers for the Apollo flights: one in the command module, which carried the astronauts from Earth, and the second in the lunar module, which set down on the moon’s surface.
By 1968 Hamilton was "assistant director in charge" of the Command and Service module software. She thought it would be a good addition to incorporate a failsafe into the system software’s “priority display” interface routines, should the onboard guidance computer become overloaded with more tasks than it could handle in real time.
It isn't just Marvel movies that have gone Woke, Marvel Games, in this case Marvel's Wolverine, has also gone Woke, and looks to be going broke.
Whether or not you care about gaming, this is part and parcel of the destruction of our culture in favor of woke BS. Women can't be attractive in media or gaming. Men can't be masculine, unless they are gay. (And there is some of that in this.)
But the worst is the pandering to the lowest common denominator. The game is simplified to the point that it is hardly a game, because is someone complains on X/Twitter that it is too hard, and they got their feelings hurt, well that would be the end.
And according to Asmongold (who get's todays hat tip with his review of the video below), Sweet Baby, Inc. did work on this game. IYKYK. If you don't know, look it up. There are websites devoted to the destruction done by Sweet Baby, Inc. and similar organizations.
Well, well, well. How the fallen have fallen. I would say I'm surprised, but I'm not. This is what happens when your boss can't call you a stupid fuckin' dummy. You end up spending $300 million on a remake of Ben 10 for the DS.
The video is just under 9 minutes.
The Nintendo DS was a handheld gaming console released between 2004 and 2005.
A man was “aggressive and out of control.” He was causing a disturbance, and police were called. He fled that scene and entered a home, apparently at random, and cornered the homeowner.
After the man entered the home and cornered the homeowner, police said the homeowner used a firearm to protect himself and his family. The man was pronounced dead at the scene.
At the site of the initial disturbance, the release states that a female juvenile was found with knife wounds and was taken to a hospital. Her condition was not immediately available.
Is that enough to qualify as a crime spree? Whatever it was, it was ended by an armed homeowner defending himself.
Lytle, Texas is about 20 mile drive southwest of San Antonio.
Police across Davidson County, Tennessee, "stepped away" from patrol on Tuesday, to participate in National Night Out. It is focused on getting cops connected with the people they (are supposed to) serve.
I went to see if there was a news item where response times were mentioned, but I found something a bit better: Police Data Dashboard: Police Response Time
That is a website that shows average 911 response times (for police) across the entire Nashville area, or Davidson County, anyway.
Still, the point to be made in general is the same we have been making for decades: When seconds count, Metro Nashville Police Department is only 14.5 minutes away (on average.)
A lot of bad things can happen in 14 minutes, and some people will wait longer than that. You should probably have a plan B thought out in advance. And the police are only going to arrive to save you, if you manage to call 911 before the bad things happen.
Georgia Power says a cyberattack exposed limited customer account information belonging to hundreds of thousands of customers after an unauthorized third party gained access to its online customer portal.
"Limited."
The company said that the hack exposed customers’ names, addresses, phone numbers, emails, and last four digits of their Social Security numbers.
That isn't quite everything you need to steal someone's identity, so I guess limited can apply, but probably only if you are professional PR bullsh*ter.
They have apparently not said what they will do for customers, or at least I could not find a statement. Companies have stopped even providing a year of credit monitoring service. There is a a list of "what people should do," and not a list of what companies should do.
And this the regular media, not the tech media, so there is no information on how the "unauthorized access" was obtained.
The Democratic Party’s America: A social media manager. Democrat judges.
Conman Carney’s Canada: Elbows Up Chinese steel (CBC). Carney’s Toronto Star. No time for vets. Tunnel.
Cathy Salgado at PJM elaborates FlyDubai Hijacker Wanted to Crash Into Tel Aviv Airport to Maximize Casualties. I didn't think of the airport, but I figured it was somehow intended to be more than just the plane full of passengers.
Shark Tank: Everglades Trust Endorses Byron Donalds For Governor
The Political Hat: The Totalitarianism Of The Friend-Enemy Distinction, also, “Bleeding Heart Postliberals” — Making Welfare Great Again?
School Board Candidate Excuses Students’ Math Failures
California’s leading candidate for state superintendent opposes reinstating standardized testing for UC admissions despite math professors’ concerns about students’ basic skills.
1. Sky News Australia may be the last man standing when it comes to actual information under the news rubric on main stream broadcast media. Some people are taking this clip and putting it out there saying it’s proof of how corrupt the media is that they didn’t let him speak more.
ITEM 2: Barack Obama told a crowd of morons, “I don’t understand how we got so toxic and just so divided and so bitter.”
He shouldn’t be so modest about his accomplishments.
Currently, the Trump government is doing great work cracking down on fraud, but the sad fact is that it’s everywhere, in ways not just big, but quite small.
The costly immigrant fraud that no one sees
Report on CA's Response to Devastating LA Fires Is In, and It's Even Worse Than You Thought - Bob Hoge
The Fed Created Zohran Mamdani - Quoth the Raven
Now they have listed the guy who got shot as a minor, so they aren't releasing any details, except 1. But do we think this guy is 7 years old, or 17 years old?
Lafayette police said officers first got a call about someone causing a disturbance on 1500 Sibon Circle around 10 p.m. Thursday. In a press release, police said a man was alarmed by someone who was allegedly trying to enter his home, so he grabbed his gun and fired.
Lafayette, Colorado, is about 5 miles east of downtown Boulder. It is about a 20 mile drive north of downtown Denver.
As for the minor who got shot, he was taken to a local hospital. His injuries were not considered life threatening.
No one had been arrested as of the writing of the article linked above.
Self-defense is a human right, and even in a Blue State, it might be your legal right. That will be up to the DA, and I have absolutely no idea how the Boulder County prosecutor handles things like this.
The tl;dr recommendation: After seawater flooding (or any flooding), get all lithium-ion batteries that have been flooded out of and away from your home until you can dispose of them properly. That can be tough to do.
I'm not sure how I first ran across Lindsey Stirling. I know she was on America's Got Talent, and I've seen some of that, but only by way of YouTube. I wasn't really watching television in 2010, because I had moved aboard my boat, and I didn't have a television. But I really like her approach to the violin.
This song is "Untamed" by Lindsey Stirling. It is on her 2024 album Duality. She released an "official video" on Thursday, 25 June, which brought it to my attention again, and I haven't featured Stirling's music in a while.
And yes, I mentioned that there is an official video. This is not that. I find official videos distract from the music. Mostly. It is easy enough to find.
Hey, FBI. This company right here. OpenAI has alerted more than a hundred companies and other groups that it may had inadvertently hacked their systems. (Reuters)
AI safety isn't about AI being too smart. It's about humans not being sent to prison.
Brandon Herrera is a viral GunTuber who is running for Congress in Texas.
And while the moniker "GunTuber" may be used as slander by some, here it is clearly a badge of honor, because Herrera is obviously far more intelligent (and well read!) than his Democratic opponent, Katy.
Another bad week to be a Senators fan. The week started off well enough with a 2-1 series against the Tribe, but then we came home to RFK and got swept by the Red Sox.
Sometimes, a simple I-told-you-so just won't do. Some failures are so massive and utterly predictable that they call for an I-told-you-so dance, or better yet, an entire I-told-you-so song-and-dance number from a 1950s Hollywood Technicolor musical, complete with a chorus line, water skiers, and possibly an elephant in a tutu.
That is when New Orleans PD was called to home in the Gentilly neighborhood. They found a man with a gunshot wound. He was declared dead at the scene.
On Friday afternoon, NOPD officials confirmed that the man who opened fire did so because the person was trying to break into his house. Officers believe he was defending himself and others during the incident.
A federal judge in Oklahoma ruled Thursday that a police officer violated the Fourth Amendment rights of a woman accused of meth trafficking when he searched her license plate in Flock’s automated license plate reader system simply because her license plate was from California, then used her travel history as part of the reason to search her car. The judge’s opinion is one of the first times a federal judge has decided Flock searches can be unconstitutional, and suggested that Flock’s network is “a type of indiscriminate mass surveillance.”
Gee... Flock, indiscriminate? You don't say?
I don't expect this to stand. Flock has too many fans and too much money.
In this case, Judge Sara Hill said the deputy should have obtained a warrant before searching the Flock database for the woman’s license plate, as he had “no apparent reason” for the search “other than the fact that [the woman’s vehicle] had a California license plate.”
Yale awarded more than 80 percent of its undergraduate grades in the A range in 2024-25, while Harvard reported an even higher share and Princeton approached two-thirds.
If everyone in a class gets an "A," and professors who remain committed to minimum standards are fired, what does that grade even mean?
At Yale University, an A officially means “excellent.” But in the 2024-25 academic year, more than four out of every five undergraduate grades fell in the A range.
There is a chart about Yale. The increase in grades over COVID is astonishing. Not that inflation wasn't underway before that. Click thru for more on the COVID-era insanity.
When the overwhelming majority of students at America’s most historically selective universities receive grades intended to signify exceptional performance, the distinction those grades are supposed to convey becomes increasingly difficult to preserve.
A recent song out of Japan reminded me that I had not featured Wagakki Band in a very long time. A lot of their work reminds me of the music that you would find in Anime. I hear their music in playlists from various music streaming platforms, but I don't usually go looking for it. (I did go looking for the purposes of this post.)
Wagakki Band (和楽器バンド) is a Japanese Rock/Metal band that uses a lot of traditional Japanese instruments in their music. Wagakki means "traditional insturments" or something similar in Japanese, at least as far as I can tell.
This song is "Sasameyuki" (細雪) by Wagakki Band from their 2018 album Otonoe. The song title translates to "Light Snowfall." I wasn't going to put this on Monday, for Metal for Mondays, but it has too much energy for first thing on a Wednesday morning.
One of those residents was 74-year-old Ms. Brown, who said she was awakened around 11:30 p.m. Wednesday by loud banging on her door.
“A mad man had a machete,” Brown said.
Mrs. Brown was the one who had displayed the cross. She was forced to push her sofa in front of the door in an effort to keep him out.
Residents say the man moved through the building, kicking several doors and attempting to force his way inside apartments.
Eventually he did break into an apartment, where he encountered an armed resident.
The wounded suspect was transported to a hospital with injuries that investigators described as non-life-threatening.
DeKalb County, Georgia, is part of the Atlanta metropolitan area, with the county line being about 3 miles east of downtown Atlanta.
Mrs. Brown, who is obviously a charitable, Christian woman, thinks the guy is insane. I believe he was completely sane, and was just mad that someone followed a religion different from his own. But I'm cynical as hell.
Still, it is mostly a happy ending. Good Guys 1, Bad Guys 0.
The job market is booming for young people – but not those with college degrees. Are employers finally coming to realize that colleges these days mainly produce coddled, know-nothing, whiny, entitled brats?
A recent analysis from Burning Glass Institute found that unemployment among those 22-34 years old without a college degree is lower than it’s been in decades, but those with college diplomas are having a much harder time finding work than before.
Between the indoctrination of the hard Left, the dumbing down of classes that are "too hard," even though the material hasn't changed in decades, and the complete lack of work ethic. (Why study if everyone will get an A?)
Some of this article is based on something from the Wall Street Journal, which has been behind a paywall, since forever.
The Journal says that AI is contributing to this unprecedented education divergence in job prospects, because companies are replacing entry-level white-collar jobs with AI just as colleges churn out more graduates than ever. At the same time, the shortage of skilled workers is making it hard to replace the many who are now retiring.
The skills gap has been coming for decades. They mention the work of John Ratzenberger, but not Mike Rowe, in raising awareness. I guess they think Rowe doesn't have the correct politics.
And they get extra points for mentioning this insanity.
A Columbia University professor recently won a national book award for a volume arguing that white paint is racist. We kid you not.
Hat tip to Glenn Reynolds (author of The Higher Education Bubble) at Instapundit.
So kids today go to college, and end up with 10's of thousands (sometimes many 10s of thousands) of dollars in student loan debt, and then they cannot find a job based on that "education." In the meantime, employers are struggling to fill good jobs requiring actual skills, not a degree in ... What are the kids getting degrees in, these days?
I haven't had an Infrastructure post since July. I thought it was time for another.
This bridge in question collapsed on 22 December 2024. The start of the collapse was caught on video, though slightly grainy video.
The Juscelino Kubitschek de Oliveira Bridge crossed the Tocantins River. It connected the cities of Estreito, Maranhão, and Aguiarnópolis, Tocantins, Brazil. The Tocantins River is one of the largest rivers in South America. The clear span at the center of the bridge, the section that collapsed, was 140 meters or 460 feet. It was an important route for cargo transportation in Brazil. 140 meters was record-setting long, at least for a post-stressed, poured in place, concrete bridge.
The bridge opened in January 1961, and was named for the outgoing president of Brazil. Like many bridges built in the 1960s, the load it ended up carrying was significantly higher than that envisioned by the engineering team.
Maintenance was also an issue, and in May of 2024, the Brazilian National Department of Transport Infrastructure started a bidding process to have contractors correct some issues with the bridge.
Ten vehicles fell into the river, on 22 December 2024, killing 13 people. A vehicle carrying 76 metric tons of sulfuric acid and 22,000 to 25,000 liters of pesticide also fell into the river, causing concerns about contamination, but the truck's cargo was found and recovered intact by divers after the disaster.
Humans do a pretty good job with Infrastructure when it is new, and we often rebuild after disasters even better than new. The problem is that every piece of infrastructure has an expiration date, and no one wants to save for replacement. Maintenance of existing bridges, dams, whatever, also doesn't offer any politician a chance to put his name on something. That is, unfortunately, why we tend to clean up after disasters.
This story put me in mind of the The Morandi Bridge Collapse, in Genoa Italy. That was also a bridge, designed and built in the 1960s, that was carrying more load than it did when it was new, and it was known to need repair.
