Tab Clearing...

• The easiest way to be a rich and famous author is to be a rich and famous person who gets offered a book deal.


• "Fully Self Driving" has been a scam. Perhaps in the legal sense, even.


• Stop pointing guns at people you shouldn't be pointing guns at.

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Heavy Metal Range Trip

At the range yesterday morning with the Daniel H9 Compact reboot of the Hudson, as well as a Walther PDP Compact Steel Frame, both of which will be in reviews in upcoming issues of Shooting Illustrated.

There was a time, not all that long ago, where metal-framed guns were largely a dead letter, because the difference in manufacturing costs were so great that there just was no point in even trying to compete on price.

With the advances in CNC manufacturing over the last decades, costs have come down enough that some metal-framed pistols, like the alloy-framed Smith & Wesson M&P variants, are barely more expensive than their polymer-framed kin.

There's also this idea that a metal gun, being heavier, will shoot much flatter and faster, although the difference is usually minimal for the vast majority of shooters (and raw split times are among the most meaningless measurements in shooting.) Still, though, think of how many jillions of dollars people have spend on esoterica like tungsten guide rods in the hope of adding another ounce or two out toward the muzzle.

I, personally, just dig the fact that there are more choices out there.

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Automotif CDXCVII...

These GMC motorhomes, made from the '73 to '78 model years, are notable for two things.

For one, they were made in-house at GMC, whereas most motorhomes and RVs are made by coachbuilders who buy bare chassis from a truck manufacturer and ad their own body.

The other is that they're front-wheel drive, using the basic driveline from the GM E-body Toronado. There's a longitudinal V-8 up front, either a 455 or 403 Olds Rocket, sitting atop a transmission driven by a roller chain off the crank, with half-shafts transmitting power to the front wheels.

It's so very cool and aero-looking. Those lines have aged well.

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Scam Spam

The latest form of scam emails to clog my spam folder are ones that purport to be from various services claiming that a payment was declined and my account will be suspended or deleted or terminated or some other ominous-sounding word.

This is most amusing when it's coming from someone claiming to be from Sirius XM or some other place where I don't actually have an account.

I can see a less net-savvy person falling for one of these, as some look very official. I avoid even looking at these on a touchscreen device.

One giveaway is the return email address...

Horking Cat

I was awakened this morning, about an hour before the alarm clock was due to go off, by the plaintive cries that Huck makes just before he horks something up.

He was in some unknown location in the house, and it took me a second to pinpoint where.

Understand that every square inch of floor in Roseholme Cottage is hardwood, tile, or linoleum... except for a smallish, maybe six foot by four foot, oriental-type rug on the floor next to Bobbi's bed.

I went stumbling in that direction, half-asleep still, muttering "No, Huck! No! Not on the rug!"

He must have heard me galumphing his way, because he skedaddled down the hall to the office and proceeded to hork out a blob of hairball and other ick nearly the size of a golf ball.

It's really hard to get back into dreamland after that, and I'd been having a neato one about living on a cool space yacht like the Millennium Falcon.

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Meme Dump...

The Titanic kills an average of 13.4 people per year.

People in My Neighborhood

Some shots of the crew at Fat Dan's Chicago-Style Deli at 54th & College, using the Fujifilm X-E1 and the lovely little Zeiss Touit 32mm f/1.8 lens.

Being a roughly 50mm equivalent focal length, it's about as short of a lens as I'll ever use for portraiture, and its fast maximum aperture is good for making the subject stand out against a softly-blurred background. At the same time, f/1.8 and an APS-C size sensor is less likely to wind you up in those "Oops, I only had enough depth of field to get one eye in focus" situations than, say, f/1.4 on a full-frame.

Bug

So the germ that had me feeling a little ookie for a couple days last week has pretty much knocked Bobbi flat.

She's definitely improved over yesterday, but I imagine it's going to be tomorrow before she's feeling up to going anywhere.

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Automotif CDXCVI...

In the '70s, Alfa Romeo started selling a fastback coupe version of its compact Alfetta sedan as the Alfetta GT. Its Giugiaro-penned lines were very swoopy, very disco.

For the '78 model year the North American version was renamed the Sprint Veloce. This China White 1979 Sprint Veloce would have had a 2.0L DOHC inline four up front driving the rear wheels through a 5-speed rear mounted transaxle. The EPA-compliant version was down a bit more than a dozen ponies from the Euro mill, being rated at 111 SAE net horsepower.

Between the rear-mounted transaxle, DeDion tube rear suspension, and inboard rear brakes, these Alfas had plenty of exotica to make sporty car fans of the era salivate.

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Red Gold

Apparently one of the things that has kept gold's price at record highs the last couple years is consumer demand in one of the largest economies on the planet:

"Often considered a safe investment during times of geopolitical and economic turmoil, gold has soared in price in response to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and the war in Gaza. But gold’s climb to highs above $2,400 per ounce has proved more resilient, and lasted longer, because of China.

Chinese consumers have flocked to gold as their confidence in traditional investments like real estate or stocks has faltered. At the same time, the country’s central bank has steadily added to its gold reserves, while whittling away at its holdings of U.S. debt. And throwing fuel on the fire are Chinese speculators betting that there is still room for appreciation."

It's a paywall-vaulting gift link if you want to read it.

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Automotif CDXCV...

Of all the days to leave a camera at home while running an errand to Indy Arms Co., I had to pick one where this '71-'72 Mustang convertible was parked out in front of the local car stereo installer.

Fortunately the longer lens on the iPhone 13 Pro Max is a ~77mm focal length equivalent and will take a pretty undistorted pic if you have room to back up, unlike the regular ~28mm camera, which always gives funhouse proportions.

'71-'72 was the beginning of the end for the original Muscle Car-era Mustangs. Mustangs are, properly, pony cars, not muscle cars, but that's another post.

The body was widened to accommodate the Lima-series 429 big block V-8s, after squeezing the Lima-derived Boss 429 hemi motor into the eponymous '69-'70 Boss 429 cars required engine bay surgery at Kar Kraft of Dearborn to shoehorn the motors in.

For '71 you could get your Mustang with anything from a 145bhp (SAE gross) Thriftpower 250 cid I-6 to a snarling 375hp 429 Super Cobra Jet big block.

In just three years, the Mustang would be a Pinto.

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The Zombie Internet

There's a great article up at 404 Media about the tidal wave of bot-generated AI glurge that's swamping social media:

All of this, taken together, is why I think we should not view Facebook’s AI spam through the lens of the “Dead Internet.” The platform has become something worse than bots talking to bots. It is bots talking to bots, bots talking to bots at the direction of humans, humans talking to humans, humans talking to bots, humans arguing about a fake thing made by a bot, humans talking to no one without knowing it, hijacked human accounts turned into bots, humans worried that the other humans they’re talking to are bots, hybrid human/bot accounts, the end of a shared reality, and, at the center of all of this: One of the most valuable companies on the planet enabling this shitshow because its human executives and shareholders have too much money riding on the mass adoption of a reality-breaking technology to do anything about it.

You should click through and read the whole thing.

Negligent Discharge

So one of the NYPD cops, an ESU* officer at that, cranked off a round in the Columbia building that was temporarily occupied by student protestors. He was using the weapon-mounted light to find a way to navigate barriers in the dark. Fortunately the bullet didn't hit anyone.

There was absolutely no reason to have an unholstered firearm in the middle of that Punch & Judy Show. That was a job for a handheld light, not the SureFire U-Boat screwed to your Glock. 

People act like just having a light on a pistol turns it into some sort of dual-purpose tool and next thing you know they're using it to direct traffic or look for stuff they dropped under their squad car in the dark. I swear to gawd, it's only a matter of time before we hear about some Officer Fife using it to check for horizontal gaze nystagmus.

*NYPD Emergency Services Unit contains their equivalent of SWAT, but not all ESU officers are SWAT dudes.

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