Ford Woody found on hangar deck of U.S.S Yorktown

Wow:

A remotely operated vehicle exploration of the wreck of the USS Yorktown, a U.S. Navy aircraft carrier sunk in the Battle of Midway, has found a 1940-41 Ford automobile on the aft hangar deck. This is remarkable for several reasons, first and foremost that it wasn’t thrown overboard in the crew’s attempts to save the ship after it was disabled by a torpedo attack on the battle’s first day, June 4th 1942. Also, motor vehicles were not typically kept aboard ships at sea, especially ones headed into battle. Furthermore, this was a full-featured Ford Super Deluxe Woody civilian model, not the pared-down military model of this Ford wagon, dubbed the C11, that you’d expect to see in active military use.

That engine will take a bit of work before it turns over ...

If you're a military history buff, click through to read the whole post which is pretty long and detailed. It makes the case that this car belonged to Rear Admiral Fletcher.  There's also what seems to be the only photo ever taken of the hand painted mural created by the sailors of a world map showing the voyages of the U.S.S. Yorktown.

Blue Shield sent a boatload of member's health data to Google

This is pretty big:

US health insurance giant Blue Shield of California handed sensitive health information belonging to as many as 4.7 million members to Google's advertising empire, likely without these individuals' knowledge or consent.

The data shared may have included medical claim dates and providers used, which raises the specter of Google targeting ads based on the fact that you booked an appointment with a certain type of doctor - say, a cancer specialist, fertility clinic, or psychiatrist.

Other info potentially shared with Google ranged from patient names, insurance plan details, city of residence and zip code, gender, family size, and Blue Shield-assigned account identifiers, to financial responsibility info, and search queries and results for the "Find a Doctor" tool — including location, plan type, and provider details.

Other than that, Mrs. Lincoln - how did you like the play?

Blue Shield declined to answer The Register's questions, including how it discovered this years-long data leak, and what other third-party trackers (if any) are on its websites.

...

"This isn't just a technical misstep. It's a HIPAA compliance failure," Ensar Seker, CISO at threat intel firm SOCRadar, told The Register, referring to America's Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act that safeguards medical data.

Bingo is his name-o.  Just to emphasize that: this wasn't just a "data breach", it was a criminal violation of US law.

 

We used to call this HERF

High Energy Radio Frequency.  Now it seems to be some sort of cigar thing.  But the old HERF gun concept is back, to shoot down drones:

British soldiers have successfully taken down drones with a radio-wave weapon.

The demonstrator weapon, a type of Radiofrequency Directed Energy Weapon (RF DEW), uses high-frequency radio waves to disrupt the electronic components inside drones, resulting in the devices malfunctioning.

"RF DEW systems can defeat airborne targets at ranges of up to 1 km and are effective against threats which cannot be jammed using electronic warfare," the Ministry of Defence (MOD) said.

However, the nature of the technology means that a wide beam is used, which is effective at disabling multiple drones simultaneously, but lacks target discrimination. Hence, Sgt Mayers, the first British soldier to bring down drones using a radiofrequency weapon, described it as "a great asset to Layered Air Defence."

The MOD believes the system, which it estimates costs 10p per shot fired, "could provide a cost-effective complement to traditional missile-based air defence systems."

This is what you need - as long as drones cost more than 10p, you will win that exchange all day.

Georg Frederick Handel - Worthy Is The Lamb and Amen from The Messiah

Yes, we usually hear this at Christmas.  Remember, though, that Handel wrote this for an Easter performance.  I can think of no greater - more emotionally stirring - music for the Lord's rising than this.  The kettle drum at the end of the Amen never fails to thrill.  As a matter of fact, the opening bars of Worthy Is The Lamb never fail to thrill, either.  If you can read music, you have my permission to do a bit of a singalong to the score shown here.

The Lord is risen, alleluia, alleluia.

 

 

Good Friday

This is a great reflection from the Franciscan Foundation for the Holy Land. I hadn't known that today is the only day that the Catholic church does not celebrate the Mass.

There's quite a lot of food for (spiritual) thought and reflection at the link.

Troparion of Saint Kassia

Today is Palm Sunday, and what is unique (well, for a bit) about this year's Holy Week is that the Latin Easter, the Orthodox Easter, and Jewish Passover all line up.  Usually they don't.  So it's kind of a theological alignment of the planets.  I hope that the Lord gives us all some extra grace points for this, but have my doubts about whether the Almighty is impressed with our silly calendrical games ...

But this means that the holiday we are celebrating is ancient indeed.  In respect to this is an ancient hymn, from the 9th century.

The Greek Orthodox liturgy is ancient, dating back to Roman times.  While many things have been lost from this over the centuries, we have music for Holy Week preserved from the ninth century.  This hymn will be sung this week, as it has for the last 1200 years.

Kassia was a Roman noblewoman living in Constantinople in the first half of the 800s.  Both beautiful and intelligent, she was included in what we can call a Medieval beauty pageant.   The imperial court would sometimes have "Bride Shows" where noble families could present their daughters as potential brides for Imperial princes.  Kassia was included in the bride show for prince Theophilos in 830AD, but the chronicles say that her sharp, sarcastic reply to the prince soured him on her beauty.

But she was the daughter of one of the leading families in the Empire, and so had avenues open to her that were not to most women of the day.  She founded a convent in 843AD and became its abbess.  Her education allowed her to write first poetry and then music - all of a spiritual bent, as you would imagine.

She wrote many, many hymns of which 50 survive to this day.  Unusually, both the text and the musical score have survived.  Twenty three of her hymns are included in today's Orthodox liturgy which is astonishing for any figure from the ninth century, let alone a woman.  Remember, this is a properly Roman hymn.

This Holy Week you might want to ponder just how ancient our faith is, and the efforts that people have taken to preserve it over the centuries.

Trump's executive order on shipbuilding

This dropped 2 days ago.  Highlights:

• The Order establishes a Maritime Security Trust Fund to provide consistent funding for maritime programs in addition to a shipbuilding financial incentives program to boost private investment in U.S. shipbuilding.
• It develops Maritime Prosperity Zones to incentivize investment in waterfront communities and is to be modeled on President Trump’s highly successful Opportunity Zone concept.
• It expands Mariner training and education through an investment in the U.S. Merchant Marine Academy and a plan for expanding training opportunities.
• To ensure national economic security, the U.S. government will increase the fleet of commercial vessels trading internationally under U.S. flag as well as domestically between our ports.
• The MAP will develop a strategy to ensure security and leadership of arctic waterways to address the growing presence of foreign nations in the region and the need for the United States to reestablish itself in the area.

There's a lot more, particularly about reestablishing a shipbuilding (and container building) industry.

Here's a good overview on Youtube:

 

Choosing a home WiFi router

Walter emails with a question that probably will have broad interest:

BP -

Long time reader question here:

I need to replace my long-in-tooth NetGear WiFi router and could use a suggestion on what are the best routers to consider; I need both 2.4 and 5 Ghz to support existing equipment. Square footage = ~1.8K, rough footprint 56X32 on one level; the existing (centrally located) NetGear covers all of it well without repeaters or mesh, meets all speed requirements, is currently supported by 100 meg coaxial cable but 1 gig fiber is a month or so away, house is pre-wired to each room with coax in the next couple of weeks, and since the router also supports the security system high security is a strong consideration.

Expert suggestions?

Well, I am not really an expert, but I play one on TV so here goes.  I will start with some high level recommendations and then get more specific with some actual device suggestions (note: I do not have any commercial interest with any of these vendors).  Lastly, I will end with some generic WiFi security suggestions and pointers to old posts here.

Recommendation #1: Do NOT select any device from TP-Link (which are generally the least expensive options).  These are Chinese and there is a nasty habit of Chinese companies putting back doors in their commercial hardware.  The US Government is considering banning these because they don't trust them any more than I do. 

Recommendation #2: Use open source software on your device.  There is a long history of WiFi routers having security bugs that never get fixed because they are end of life (I posted about this ten years back so this is a persistent problem in the industry).  Profit margins are razor thin and so you will end up with an orphaned device.  I recommend OpenWrt which has been around since forever and has great hardware support.  Yes, this means putting new software on your brand new device. You will only go through this pain once and you never have to worry about unpatched security bugs.

Recommendation #3: Look for commercial WiFi routers that come with OpenWRT pre-installed. This will save you a step.  Turris Omnia is one option (and they have a pretty interesting Distributed Adaptive Firewall security feature).  OpenWrt One is another.  There is one from TakTikal but it seems to be out of stock.

Recommendation #4: If you want to go with a more commercial device and flash your own software, I'd recommend Linksys and Netgear because they have great OpenWrt support.  Here are some recommended devices.  At this point you will be selecting on feature/function.  Walter had some specific needs that you might not, so there's something for everyone here.

Recommendation #5: Once you are set up, make sure you have secured the configuration.  WiFi encryption is almost certain to be on by default, but change your dang password (duh!).   One thing I recommended in that post (and still recommend today) is to write the router password on a piece of paper and tape it to the bottom of the device (note: don't tape it over ventilation holes).  Yes, writing down passwords is usually double plus ungood security but face it - anyone who gets physical access to your device can do a factory reset and take it over anyway.  Your front door lock now becomes an excellent WiFi security feature and you never have to worry about forgetting the password.

Lastly, read this post from sixteen (!!!) years ago.  Secure your damn WiFi router.

I know that a bunch of you are in the tech biz, so if you have anything to add, drop it in the comments.

This. 1000x this.

When did the EU.gov get so, well, stupid?

The EU has issued its plans to keep the continent's denizens secure and among the pages of bureaucratese are a few worrying sections that indicate the political union wants to backdoor encryption by 2026, or even sooner.

While the superstate has made noises about backdooring encryption before the ProtectEU plan [PDF], launched on Monday at the European Parliament, says the European Commission wants to develop a roadmap to allow "lawful and effective access to data for law enforcement in 2025" and a technology roadmap to do so by the following year.

...

According to the document, the EC will set up a Security Research & Innovation Campus at its Joint Research Centre in 2026 to work out the technical details. Since it's impossible to backdoor encryption in a way that can't be exploited by others, it seems a very odd move to make if security's your goal.

China, Russia, and the US certainly would spend a huge amount of time and money to find the backdoor. Even American law enforcement has given up on the cause of backdooring, although the UK still seems to be wedded to the idea. [boldface by me - Borepatch]

Well, duh.

Now the cynical view of things is that the EU.gov is not being stupid at all, but just think that their adversary is not China and Russia and the USofA but rather their own populations.  

 

Heat, TopGun, Tombstone, TopGun Maverick

 Heat, TopGun, TopGun II and Tombstone. My favorite Val Kilmer movies. He's not the leading star in any of them. But all of them would not be the great movies they are without him and Tombstone would be a largely forgotten modern western without his interpretation of Doc Holiday. 

In recent years he suffered from cancer, and his small role in TopGun Maverick is compelling even without his voice. 

Now he is gone at 65. Here he is in his prime.

Well played, CederQ

Well played indeed.

Blogroll addition

I just realized that I don't have a blogroll link to Flares Into Darkness which is really strange since I've been linking to him since forever because he finds all sorts of really interesting (and eclectic) stuff.  He has literally been a daily read for me for years and years, and I must have had a massive brain fart in not blogrolling him.  

Well, fixed now.  Sorry about that, Ambisinistral.

Recommended to everyone.  You know what to do.

UPDATE 28 MARCH 2025 15:24: Huh - I see that I did have him on the blogroll. 

George Foreman and boxing

The passing of George Foreman got me thinking about how boxing has changed from back in the day (1960s/1970s).  Back then we used to watch Friday Night Fights pretty regularly - that tailed off in the 1980s as we all lost interest.  It just didn't seem as exciting as it had.

There is a great podcast episode on Dan Carlin's Hardcore History about this: Boxing with Ghosts (free download and highly recommended if you ever watch Friday Night Fights). In it Dan interviews longtime sportswriter for Ring magazine Mike Silver about how boxing is really just a shadow of its former self (and why).

But in this episode Dan tells a George Foreman story that illustrates why boxing was so great in those days.  The story is from when Foreman was going for his comeback world championship in a bout against a much younger Michael Moorer.  Foreman lost each of the first 9 rounds (unanimously).  Entering the 10th round it was like a football game with a minute left when he was down 99 to nothing.  A friend of Dan's left and went to the bathroom because the "fight was over".  Then two quick punches finished Moorer off in a KO and Foreman was champ again.

There is a lot to admire in Foreman's life, but we remember just what a superb fighter he was.  Rest in peace.

Security Cats and Dogs living together

The Surveillance State is bringing people together.  In this case Apple (iOS) and Google (Android).  You will now be able to send end-to-end encrypted messages from iPhones to Android devices and vice versa.  It's kind of like what Signal and Telegram do.

You already have that capability with Apple devices sending to other Apple devices, and Android to Android.  This new capability now makes it a big, happy, (more) secure world.

You will need to go into your device settings and enable Rich Communication Services (RCS) protocol.  But yay for cross vendor cooperation and interoperability.

The Few are now the None

The last of the Battle of Britain RAF pilots reports to the final muster.

Update your Firefox browser

If you are at version lower than 128, you need to update Firefox immediately or all sorts of things will break.  The crypto certificate it uses to authenticate basically everything is about to expire so pretty much everything will fail authentication.

Bad things will result.

You can find out what version you are running by going into Settings and scrolling down to the Updates section.  The current Firefox version looks to be 136, but if you are 128 or higher then you're fine.  If your version is lower than this then click on the "Check for Updates" box.

Come, the Ides of March are

Aye, but not gone.

Today is the Ides of March, the 15th of this month (each month has Ides on various dates).  While we look at the Romans as the greatest engineers and organizers until the 18th century, we then jump to the conclusion that they were rational in an Enlightenment kind of way.  They weren't.  Rather, they were kind of like a combination of Nuclear-Reactor-Brainiac and Management-By-Ouija-Board*.

The Ides themselves are a great example of this second thing.  Their months didn't really start at day 1 and count up the same way that our months do.  Well, they kind of did, but you need to break out your Ouija Board to really understand things.  The Romans didn't count forwards, they counted backwards from three fixed points in the month: the Nones (usually but not always the 5th of the month), the Ides (usually the 13th but was the 15th in March, May, July, and October), and the Kalends (the 1st of the following month).

The Ides were sacred to Jupiter, Greatest and Best, and so this was a solemn day.  Thus in Shakespeare we hear Julius Caesar warned to beware the Ides of March.  Plutarch wrote that on his last ill-fated journey to the Senate house, Caesar saw the soothsayer who had warned about the day.  Caesar joked, "The Ides of March are come;" the soothsayer is said to have replied "Aye, but not gone."  Shakespeare cribbed a lot from the ancient authors.

But not everything.  The famous quote from Shakespeare's play from the scene where the Senators are stabbing him is when he sees the young Marcus Brutus - of whom Caesar was very fond - among the attackers.  Shakespeare has Caesar speak the words Et tu, Brute?  Even you, Brutus?

Except that's not what the ancients said about that event.  Suetonius says that Caesar spoke in Greek - Kai su, teknon?  This was a very common expression among educated Romans, and was often used in various plays but Kai su is generally translated as "You too". That was the formal translation but it was commonly used as "Screw you".  "Teknon" is generally translated as "child" but also was understood as "punk".

So Julius Caesar basically was telling Brutus to get bent.  At least if you believe Suetonius.

* This is one of the things that make the ancient Romans endlessly fascinating.

Hope

 I've been thinking this for the last few weeks, but The Smallest Minority has put it to words. I couldn't say it as well, so here's a quote and a link to his recent post. 

"We’re now on Week 5 of the second Trump term and things are not slowing down. Outsiders are in charge of the DoJ, FBI, DoD, ICE…. Change is actually happening. Fraud and waste are being exposed. Spending will be curtailed, at least somewhat. The Ruling Class is no longer in control. They remain a serious threat. The Deep State still has hands on some of the levers of power, but that’s being eaten away by the Trump Administration and alternative media exposing it.

And I finally have some small measure of hope. I give a damn."

 

Caveat lacuna

Roman roads in Britannia as an underground map.

 

Dad Joke CCCL

Why did the lion eat the tight-rope walker?

He wanted a well-balanced meal.

Can we just go back to Standard Time all the time?

People seem to dislike the time changes, and so this is maybe another issue where Trump can side with the People against inertia.

Starship

So SpaceX Starship test flight 8 had the same kind of Rapid Unscheduled Disassembly as flight 7.  This is disappointing, but as The Silicon Graybeard says, space is hard. 

What I find interesting is that SpaceX sends up so many Falcon rockets that it's become normal, if not exactly boring.  But Starship is exciting, and misunderstood.  If you're a SpaceX fan, I encourage you to read that last link.

 

Tulsi Gabbard investigating UK.Gov's Apple crypto backdoor demand

Last week I posted about the Congressional request that DNI Gabbard look into the UK government's demand that Apple put an encryption backdoor into their products.   She has done so:

In a written response to members of Congress, Gabbard said this week that such a demand would violate Americans’ rights and raise concerns about a foreign government pressuring a U.S.-based technology company.

“This would be a clear and egregious violation of Americans’ privacy and civil liberties,” Gabbard told Sen. Ron Wyden, D-Ore., and Rep. Andy Biggs, R-Ariz., who had written to express their worries.

...

Gabbard has asked the heads of the CIA and other U.S. intelligence agencies to study the U.K. demand and said she will discuss it with her British counterparts. She noted that existing agreements between the two nations prohibit either country from demanding cloud data about citizens or residents of the other.

This seems unprecedented to me - the relationship between the US and UK intelligence communities has been very close for literally decades - I have personal experience of this in the 1990s and it predates that by a lot.

Europe seems really intent on making all sorts of relationships worse.

 

The (Security) lamps are going out all across Europe

We shall not see them relit in our lifetimes:

Signal CEO Meredith Whittaker says her company will withdraw from countries that force messaging providers to allow law enforcement officials to access encrypted user data, as Sweden continues to mull such plans.

Whittaker said Signal intends to exit Sweden should its government amend existing legislation essentially mandating the end of end-to-end encryption (E2EE), an identical position it took as the UK considered its Online Safety Bill, which ultimately did pass with a controversial encryption-breaking clause, although it can only be invoked where technically feasible.

Basically the Sweden.Gov is asking Signal to get pregnant, but only a little bit pregnant.  But vulnerabilities (and that's exactly what a government mandated encryption backdoor is) don't work that way.

And from the Department of Irony, the Swedish military oppose this:

The Swedish Armed Forces routinely use Signal and are opposing the bill, saying that a backdoor could introduce vulnerabilities that could be exploited by bad actors. 

I guess this is just Exhibit 14,543,928 that Europe is fundamentally unserious about their own defense.

This follows hard on the heels of Apple turning off encryption in the UK. 

Looking at what's going on over there, it makes me think that maybe we should just cut the whole of them loose, to sink or swim on their own.  Unwilling to defend themselves, increasingly despotic to their subjects at home, maybe JD Vance is right after all that we no longer have shared values.

 

 

R.I.P. Buster Poindexter

A.k.a. David Johansen.  He hated this video but I've posted it here a ton of times just because I enjoy it so much.

He was also great as the cabbie in the film Schrooged.

Thanks for all the great stuff, David. I hope you're having a ball driving your cab.

The S.S. United States reaches Florida

There are some great video shots of the ship under tow in this video.

Congress pushes back on UK snooping

Maybe there's something in the water in Washington D.C. these days, but this is clearly A Very Good Thing Indeed:

A bipartisan, bicameral pair of lawmakers urged newly confirmed Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard to reevaluate U.S. cybersecurity and intelligence-sharing relations with the United Kingdom in response to a report revealing that the UK secretly ordered Apple to build a backdoor into encrypted iCloud backups.

The Feb. 7 report from the Washington Post says that the order issued last month demands UK law enforcement and intelligence operatives be granted worldwide, unfettered access to users’ protected cloud data. Apple customers residing in the United States would be cast into that dragnet.

Sen. Ron Wyden, D-Ore., and Rep. Andy Biggs, R-Ariz., asked Gabbard in the Thursday missive if the Trump administration was made aware of the order by stakeholders and whether the White House has understanding of the CLOUD Act, which lets U.S. law enforcement get data stored by American tech companies, even if that data is on servers outside the U.S., by using warrants or subpoenas.

“If Apple is forced to build a backdoor in its products, that backdoor will end up in Americans’ phones, tablets, and computers, undermining the security of Americans’ data, as well as of the countless federal, state and local government agencies that entrust sensitive data to Apple products,” they wrote in their letter to Gabbard.

Remember, Encryption Backdoors are a Very Bad Idea.  It's not just me saying this, it's the former Director of the UK's GCHQ (their NSA equivalent).

And well done to Congresscritters from both parties in both the House and Senate for putting some pressure on the idiots in Blimey.

What Real Diversity Is

Representative Brian Mast from Florida has five minutes to make a point and he puts it to use. The best best explanation of how diversity should work I've heard from a politician.

The DOGE website is now posting the money saved by their efforts

It still looks like a work in progress, but this likely will be pretty interesting.

Presiden't day - Best and Worst Presidents

I've posted this each President's Day for ten years but have found no reason to adjust the rankings.

It's not a real President's birthday (Lincoln's was the 12th, Washington's is the 22nd), but everyone wants a day off, so sorry Abe and George, but we're taking it today.  But in the spirit intended for the holiday, let me offer up Borepatch's bestest and worstest lists for Presidents.

Top Five:

#5: Calvin Coolidge

Nothing To Report is a fine epitaph for a President, in this day of unbridled expansion of Leviathan.

#4. Thomas Jefferson.

Jefferson is perhaps the last (and first) President who exercised extra-Constitutional power in a manner that was unambiguously beneficial for the Republic (the Louisiana Purchase).  He repealed Adam's noxious Alien and Sedition Acts and pardoned those convicted under them.

#3. Grover Cleveland*. 

He didn't like the pomp and circumstance of the office, and he hated the payoffs so common then and now.  He continually vetoed pork spending (including for veterans of the War Between the States), so much so that he was defeated for re-election, but unusually won a second term later.  This quote is priceless (would that Latter Day Presidents rise so high), on vetoing a farm relief bill: "Federal aid in such cases encourages the expectation of paternal care on the part of the Government and weakens the sturdiness of our national character." 

#2. Ronald Reagan

He at least tried to slow down the growth of Leviathan, the first President to do so in over half a century (see entry #5, above).  He would have reduced it further, except that his opposition to the Soviet fascist state and determination to end it cost boatloads of cash.  It also caused outrage among the home grown fascists in the Media and Universities, but was wildly popular among the general population which was (and hopefully still remains) sane.

#1. George Washington

Could have been King.  Wasn't.  Q.E.D. 

Bottom Five:

#5. John Adams.

There's no way to read the Alien and Sedition Acts as anything other than a blatant violation of the First Amendment.  It's a sad statement that the first violation of a Presidential Oath of Office was with President #2. 

#4. Woodrow Wilson.

Not only did he revive the spirit of Adams' Sedition Acts, he caused a Presidential opponent to be imprisoned under the terms of his grotesque Sedition Act of 1918.  He was Progressivism incarnate: he lied us into war, he jailed the anti-war opposition, he instituted a draft, reinstituted segregation in the Civil Service, and he was entirely soft-headed when it came to foreign policy.  The fact that Progressives love him (and hate Donald Trump) says all you need to know about them.

#3 Lyndon Johnson.

An able legislator who was able to get bills passed without having any real idea what they would do once enacted, he is responsible for more Americans living in poverty and despair than any occupant of the White House, and that says a lot.

#2. Franklin Roosevelt.

America's Mussolini - ruling extra-Constitutionally fixing wages and prices, packing the Supreme Court, and transforming the country into a bunch of takers who would sell their votes for a trifle.  He also rounded up a bunch of Americans and sent them to Concentration Camps.  But they were nice Concentration Camps - at least we're told that by his admirers.  At least Mussolini met an honorable end.

#1. Abraham Lincoln.

There's no doubt that the Constitution never would have been ratified if the States hadn't thought they could leave if they needed to.  Lincoln saw to it that 10% of the military-age male population was killed or wounded preventing that in an extra-Constitutional debacle unequaled in the Republic's history.  Along the way, he suspended Habeas Corpus, instituted the first ever draft on these shores, and jailed political opponents as he saw fit.  Needless to say, Progressives adore him.

So happy President's Day.  

* I am currently reading A Man of Iron: The Turbulent Life and Improbable Presidency of Grover Cleveland (recommended).  I had not known that the very first First Lady to have Jackie Kennedy style glamor was his wife Frances, whom he wed in the White House itself.  Here she is in her salad days (courtesy of Wikipedia):

 

 

 

The reason that your iPhone updated its code last night

Apple patched a Zero Day bug that was being actively exploited in the wild.  I'm not a big fan of unannounced updates where I don't get a choice to approve it or not, but in this case Apple did exactly the right thing.

CMP Sales Update: 1911 pistols

The CMP is selling surplus 1911 pistols, starting at $1100.

Crisis by (Government) Design vs. DOGE

Peter brings up a point I've been making for quite a while that is being highlighted by Elon's DOGE:

It doesn't give enough attention, IMHO, to the "poverty industry" of NGO's, consultants, therapists and others who make a good living out of "managing" or "addressing" the causes, effects and reality of poverty, without ever doing anything to resolve the issues they identify - because that would cut off their income, and nobody (at least, from their perspective) wants that.

It's Rich People's Leftism:

Rich People's Leftism is one of the clearest explanations I've ever seen for the utter failure of government in Blue States:

With this new approach in mind, let me contrast Rich People’s Leftism (RPL) with Poor People’s Leftism (PPL).

RPL thinks that its goal is to help poor people, while PPL thinks that RPL’s primary goal is to ensure that wealthy leftists dominate and get great jobs.

You really should click through to read about Rich People's Leftism, which dates to 2010.  We've known about this for a long, long time.  A different view is "red pill/blue pill": 

... an old post from Isegoria (you do read him every day, don't you?) gives the best introduction to the topic, phrased in explicitly "Blue Pill"/"Red Pill" terminology:

The nature of the state

• The state is established by citizens to serve their needs. Its actions are generally righteous.
• The state is just another giant corporation. Its actions generally advance its own interests. Sometimes these interests coincide with ours, sometimes they don’t.

You should read Isegoria's post as well.  Then think about the proposed $3.5T spending bill that is before congress.  Who will it help?  Who are we told that is is going to help, but won't?  To ask the questions is to answer them.

What is interesting about the opening moves of DOGE is that we are now getting names to put next to all the Rich People's Leftism projects.

Anatomy of an online crime takedown

LOLOL:

"Bro we are in big trouble," said Callum Picari, 23, from Hornchurch, in East London, after infosec reporter Brian Krebs mentioned OTP Agency in a February 2021 investigation related to a separate phishing kit operation.

"U will get me bagged [sic]," Picari went on to say. "Bro delete the chat."

The perps in question look pretty much like you would expect them to look.

 

How humans make mistakes vs. how AI makes mistakes

This is pretty interesting reading.

So Trump pardoned Ross Ulbricht

Ulbricht was the guy who set up the "Dark Web" site The Silk Road.  I am a little conflicted about this.

On the one hand, he made money on each drug deal that went through his site.  There's no question that this was dirty money.

On the other hand, his 2 life sentences without the possibility of parole was hideously excessive.  People have pointed out (rightly) that drug dealers convicted of using the site to sell their wares got much less time.

And on the gripping hand, a place where people can spend their money without the 24/7 government surveillance of everything sure seemed like it was a good thing.

I wonder if Trump would have issued the pardon if he hadn't been railroaded through the legal system himself.  All in all, the "Justice system" here has taken a huge credibility hit.

California Secession

 Secession is the talk in California these days. Newsweek Magazine reports that California is California is collecting signatures to put the issue on the ballot. They are calling it Calexit.

I doubt it goes anywhere, but it's an interesting thought exercise. California is a huge place, certainly large enough to be a country. It has an enormous economy. It could continue to trade with the United States and has the harbors and ports to trade with the world.

My first response would be to let them go peacefully. Establish borders. Wish them the best. 

The last time some States left the U.S. sent in troops and it was devastating. The casualties accounted for 2.5% of the population. The economic effects in the South are still being felt. Why subject the country to an internal war?

Losing California's reliably Democratic Senators and Congressmen, along California's 54 votes in the Electoral College would be benefit enough. It would ensure Republican victories in the White House and Congress for decades.

And here's why it won't happen. 

There is a pipeline that draws water from the Colorado River and diverts it to California. From Parker Dam water is pumped up over four mountain ranges before it flows into California. This pipeline, built as a public works project in the 1930s provides most of the water to Southern California for agricultural and home use.

How much water? Up to 4.4 million acre-feet according to the agreements between the western States and Mexico. An acre-foot of water is 325,851 gallons. 4.4 million acre-feet is on the high side of 97 billion gallons. Most years California doesn't get all of it's allotment, the available water is apportioned by percentages. But even in drought conditions, California's share is 29% of the available water in the Colorado River.

If California seceded, how long would it be before the United States turned off the pumps?

WWII After WWII

 Tacticus took up the offer to suggest new blogroll additions. The first one is a site I already visit and just hadn't thought to add. It's called WWII after WWII. The posts are themed around WWII weapons and equipment that continued to be used after the war ended.

It's now in the blogroll under Other Blogs I Read.

I went back to a recent post to use as an example. The topic is the post war use of P-51 Mustangs by the U.S. Army. Yes, the Army. RTWT.

New Year's Housekeeping

 It's a small thing, but when I look at some blogrolls, they are full of dead links and blogs that haven't been updated for years. So, once or twice I year, I prune our blogroll. We only lost two this year. There were three more that had moved to new sites and I updated our links. One got moved to Sadly Missed.

I also removed the Presidential walker from the sidebar, as Pr. Biden has left office. I like the idea of the having something in the sidebar, but unless I decide to commit to keeping it current, it's better off gone.

If anyone has suggestions for blogs we should visit and consider adding to our blogroll, drop them in the comments.

R.I.P. Bob Uecker

I was going to post the great Miller Lite commercial with him, but Dwight beat me to it. 

I can heartily endorse his book about his baseball career, Catcher In The Wry.

Rest in peace, Uke.

Security wasn't an afterthought, it wasn't thought of at all

This keeps coming up over and over.  The latest example is GoDaddy:

GoDaddy has failed to protect its web-hosting platform with even basic infosec tools and practices since 2018, according to the FTC, but the internet giant won’t face any immediate consequences for its many alleged acts of omission.

As one of the world's largest web-hosting companies, and a registry and registrar with about 82 million domain names in its care, one would assume GoDaddy would be adept at applying software updates and monitoring security-related events in its hosting environment to protect its millions of customers and the visitors to their websites from online threats.

But according to a Wednesday statement from the FTC, “GoDaddy has failed to implement reasonable and appropriate security measures to protect and monitor its website-hosting environments for security threats, and misled customers about the extent of its data security protections on its website hosting services.”

So what triple-propellorhead security tech did they miss?  Basics like security log analysis tools, multi-factor authentication on login, missing security patches, and not maintaining an inventory of their systems.  This is all Security 101.  Actually, it may be Security Pre-K.

If you use GoDaddy's hosting you might want to consider an alternative.

 

CMP Update

The Civilian Marksmanship Program has a limited number of M1 Garand rifles chambered in 7.62 NATO.  They have both the Mod-0 version for $900 and the Mod-1 version for $1200.  

You probably don't want the Mod-0 because it doesn't do well with standard ammo, and in fact the CMP categorizes them as unservicable.  The value is all historical.

The Mod-1 versions are safe to use with 7.62 NATO.

Tim Conway as the Fashion Police

And then the *real* police show up.  Pure gold.

UK-US "Special Relationship" in jeopardy

So says the BBC:

Musk has been vocal on X over the past week concerning the grooming gang scandal, which was covered up by the Labour government from the 90’s onwards for a period of over a decade.

Yesterday, Prime Minister Keir Starmer accused Musk and British politicians who support his call for justice for victims of grooming gangs of jumping on a “far-right bandwagon.”

According to BBC Newsnight, there is “absolute horror at the highest levels of government at the incendiary language we have seen from Elon Musk.”

Huh. So Elon's statement of facts - that hundreds of thousands of british girls were systematically gang raped by Pakistani immigrants over the span of decades - imperils our special relationship?  Weird.

What actually seems to be imperiling the special relationship is the UK Labour government selling out our base at Diego Garcia:

Last ditch negotiations are underway in London as Starmer attempts to ram through his Chagos sellout before Trump’s inauguration. Earlier today Guido revealed how the deal would see UK nuclear options sold out as part of the giveaway…

...

Trump advisers now say the President is beginning to see Chagos as one of the same issues. “If Starmer sells out UK sovereignty disabling the US base and nukes, it’s going to make Trump as furious as over Panama” says one well-placed Trump team member.

Huh.  My guess is that Trump refusing to shut Elon up about the UK.Gov mass rape scandal is the least of His Magesty's Government's problems.

Gun control leads straight to this

Germany is revoking firearms permits for AfD party members.  AfD is likely to be the biggest party in the coming March elections.

Dad Joke CCCXLVIIII

My dog's not fat.  He's just a little husky.

Why to Democrats hate the poor, elderly, and the environment?

Biden quietly bans gas-powered tankless water heaters.

These are the most efficient design, so Democrats obviously hate the environment.  People will use less efficient models and burn more fuel.

And these are the least expensive models.  Manufacturers expect the ban to add $450 to the price of new water heaters.  The poor and elderly hardest hit.

Holy cow, the Democratic party really sucks.

George Strait and Chris Stapleton - Honky Tonk Hall Of Fame

It's a new year, and the surprise here is that everything new is old again.  Well, some things in country music are new but sound old.  With Byonce trying to break into the country charts, this song is a breath of fresh air.

Thanks 15 Million!

So 2024 closed out with almost 1.6M views, and yesterday the odometer here turned over 15 Million.

Happy 2025 to all, and many thanks for stopping by.  This place wouldn't be the same without you.