From "The First Thing We Do, Let’s Kill All the Leaf Blowers" (NYT).
And there's this: "hydrocarbon emissions from a half-hour of yard work with the two-stroke leaf blower are about the same as a 3,900-mile drive from Texas to Alaska in a Raptor."
Raptor = Tricked out F-150.
And this isn't just "the media" - This is the NEW YORK TIMES. It's supposed to be the Gold Standard of journalism, and they come out with this Bravo Sierra. And it's not even good Bravo Sierra.
Dumbasses.
Friend of the Blog Tacitus wrote about his experiences last year as a newbie deer hunter. He has some thoughts to share with us on getting ready for his second hunting year, as well as some questions for experienced hunters.
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Deer Hunting – Sophomore Season
The Queen of The World suggested today's classical music piece from one of her favorite films, the 1992 Francis Ford Coppola production Bram Stoker's Dracula. She says that it's an excellent Date Night movie, which I can confirm. Keanu Reeves and Winona Ryder are adequate, but Gary Oldman is spectacular as Dracula and Anthony Hopkins is, well, Anthony Hopkins. The theatricality is a bit over the top in a "300" sense, but it works.
And TQoTW is right that this is a very romantic film. It's just the ticket for a drizzly October evening coming up on Halloween.
The musical score - I should more properly say the award winning musical score - is perfect. It doesn't overwhelm the scenes, but very effectively sets the emotional base. This song is a great example of how the music starts out happy (the scene is a party early in the film) but goes very interestingly and creepily off as it progresses.
Wojciech Kilar was a very successful classical composer in post-war Poland. He is perhaps their most famous film score composer, and was recognized as such in the West. Coppola produced this film only a couple years after the Berlin Wall came down, and made a bee line for Kilar to write the score. It won the 1992 ASCAP (American Society of Composers, Authors, and Producer's) award.
In college I had a summer job in construction. We paved a cul-de-sac. It was a dead-end job.
Peter highlights how the "homeless crisis" is manufactured, and intended to be a permanent gravy train for the government officials tasked to "solve" the problem. Well, yeah. 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.
If you are not entirely cynical about everything that the government does, you're really not paying attention. Take the Red Pill. Or swallow the Blue one; the circus is entertaining, and the bread is free.
When I was a kid, we learned what we could say in polite society, what we couldn't say in polite society, and what skirts the line between those two. Especially what's on the line between those two. Well, it looks like kids today are the same as when we were young.
TL;DR: TV Talking Head gets kids at a NASCOR race to say "Gentlemen, start your engines!" One wiseacre pipes in after, adding "Let's Go, Brandon!"
Midwest Chick has the vid. It's worth the 30 seconds. Heh.
Anonymous kid, a Grateful Internet thanks you!
What is a chef's top priority after finishing culinary school?
Finding an entree level position.
Steve emails:
Good morning. Your post today about SPAM in your comments section made me think you (and your readers) might be interested in what I can only assume is a scam that is all over the internet. In a time when various gunpowders are unobtanium, there are a number of websites out there who seem to have whatever you need in stock and at reasonable prices. However, if you go to order it you find out that they have a ~$250 minimum order size and they only accept forms of payment with little or no recourse when the powder you order doesn’t show up. I’m assuming it’s a scam, and not some miracle…but honestly almost fell for it. A few examples below, but there are many more.
https://tactical-world.net/product/hodgdon-h4831/
https://primers12.com/product/hodgdon-h4831sc-smokeless-gun-powder/
https://firstcrownfirearms.com/product/h4831sc-8lbs-hodgdon-powder/
I haven't been to these web sites, but Steve's suggestion to be very wary of payment where you could be stuck holding the bad is excellent advice. One of the biggest advantages of regular credit card transactions is that you can dispute the purchase if you get shipped something else (or nothing at all).
Let's be safe out there.
An email came in over the transom, because it was a comment left on a ten year old (!) post, Range Report - Lee Enfield No. 4 Mk. 1. I reproduce the email in full (other than the links) along with my commentary to promote mockery of the company that has employed comment spammers to, err, drum up business.
Thank you for sharing the knowledgeable blog with us
You are most welcome.
I hope that you will post many more blog with us:-
Well, that's the plan.
The AK-47 is a versatile firearm.
You hear what they did after the funeral of Mikhail Kalashnikov? After a week they dug him up, washed him off, and put him back to work.
It deserves just as versatile ammunition. And behold – here are 840 rounds of 7.62×39 by Prvi Partizan that you’ll be as happy to have at the range as you would during an altercation. This round features a 123 grain FMJ bullet.
I like Privi Partizan, and must rush to point out that this lovely spam was not from them, but rather from a place called "tactical ammo shop dot com". If you hate Internet spam as much as I do, I encourage you to never buy anything from them.
I actually like Spam, but think that spammers can die in a crotch fire.
The weather is cooling off here in Southwest Florida, which means it's time to start thinking about the next blogshoot. One idea that got tossed out today at the shooting range is the week between Christmas and New Year's Day. The advantage is that some folks take that time off work; the disadvantage is that some do not.
The double disadvantage is that both Christmas Day and New Year's Day are on Saturday. That don't work at all. December 26 (Boxing Day) is a Sunday, and so is probably the only time that week likely to plausibly work.
So leave a comment about the desirability of Boxing Day, or a different day in December, or next month (November) as dates you would find attractive to come turn money into noise.
Today The Queen Of The World and I are going shooting with Big Country, Mrs. Big Country, and Sapper. It looks to be more fun than a barrel of monkeys.
Back later.
UPDATE 17 OCTOBER 2021 16:17: Well, that was fun. I shot better than I expected, The Queen Of The World shot better than she had the last time, Sapper gave her some outstanding shooting advice, and Big Country had some crazy good glass on his M1A. Then we retired to Charlotte's Webb pub, which is best visited on a motorcycle but is OK with a trunk full of guns. Definitely have to do this again!
Big Country, thanks for suggesting this!
Many happy returns of the day to Friend-of-the-blog and friend in real life Libertyman. An occasion like this calls for a classical music rendition of Happy Birthday. Nicole Pesce does not disappoint.
The Queen Of The World has a more modern musical suggestion:
Happy Birthday, buddy!
Man, I love this version of Hank, Sr.'s classic. You might say that it's not country, but did I mention the bit about Hank, Sr.? And the country comes out, even with Vicentico's latin accompaniment. It's still country in a different language, and you can sing along in whichever language you like. This wasa huge hit for Bennett in 1951, and helped launch his career. You can see why.
Normally I have the songwriter and lyrics here but c'mon - it's Hank, Sr. and you know the words anyway.
I sure do love this version.
27" of snow in South Dakota. It closed I-90.
Damn Global Warming! CAN'T IT WAIT UNTIL NOVEMBER?
The dissident right is made up of fringe dwellers, non-conformists, conspiracy theorists and just plain weirdos. We’re used to copping flack from the enemy; we have thick skins. But those being labeled today as domestic terrorists are normies. Mums and dads, regular people who go to the game and like a beer or three, hell, even Boomers, (God help us). They’re copping the domestic terrorist rap and they’re confused. They think that in the eyes of the law that they’re good people. They’re not like those fringe dwelling crackpots on the far right. They’re regular people who are just concerned at the way their country is going.
And they are the ones being accused of being domestic terrorists; not us. Nobody has accused me of being a domestic terrorist and I’ve been poking the bear for years now. But stand up and accuse your school board of being Marxist thugs and the government swoops in faster than pigeons on newly arrived tourists exiting a coach. It’s a bit humbling; they’re not really worried about us, they know who and what we are. It’s the normies waking up that really has them worried. Cause there are a lot more normies out there than us fringe dwellers.
Canadian town bans marriage between non-vacinated couples.
And a quick note for you hosers from the Great White North: before yammering on about how awful our (private) healthcare system is, please explain the following:
Ashya KingThis quote (and the post it is from) makes no mention of the pilots, and was written from the point of view of the working man. But it explains clearly what is going on (you'll have to read the whole thing to see how this applies to pilots as well):
I think that in retrospect, the decision to lock down entire societies to stop the coronavirus will end up in the history books as one of the most spectacular blunders ever committed by a ruling class. Partly, of course, the lockdowns didn’t work—look at graphs of case numbers over time from places that locked down vs. places that didn’t, and you’ll find that locking down societies and putting millions of people out of work didn’t do a thing to change the size and duration of the outbreak. Partly, the economic damage inflicted by the lockdowns would have taken years to heal even if the global industrial economy wasn’t already choking on excessive debt and running short of a galaxy of crucial raw materials. But there’s more to it than that.
If you want people to put up patiently with long hours of drudgery at miserably low wages, subject to wretched conditions and humiliating policies, so that their self-proclaimed betters can enjoy lifestyles they will never be able to share, it’s a really bad idea to make them stop work and give them a good long period of solitude, in which they can think about what they want out of life and how little of it they’re getting from the role you want them to play. It’s an especially bad idea to do it so that they have no way of knowing when, or if, they will ever be allowed to return to their former lives, thus forcing them to look for other options in order to stay fed, clothed, housed, and the like.
Why do scuba divers roll backwards off the boat?
Because if they rolled forwards, they'd still be in the boat.
Seen last night:
1964 GTO. What caught me was the three carbs on the 389 V8. The owner basically took it down to bare metal and built it back up again, and he did a nice job.
This is the car that started the Muscle craze. Basically, John DeLorean took their second gen Tempest chassis and dropped a big block Bonneville engine into it. Pontiac initially planned a production run of 5000; they actually sold 32000.
Politeness is a sign of dignity, not of subservience.
- Theodore Roosevelt
Divemedic posted his stance on the vaccine: get it if you think it's right for you, don't get it if you don't think it's right for you. A more sensible position is hard to imagine.
And then The Internet appeared in his comments section, with SumD00d telling him he was wrong (well, I think that's what he said because the comment was fairly incomprehensible; hey, it's The Internet, amirite?).
And while the comment was moderately incoherent, the attitude of the commenter was anything but. Commenter "Hedge" is an asshole. He may (or may not) be a dog with a keyboard but he is unmistakably an asshole with one.
Sigh.
I am very grateful indeed that the commenters here are almost always respectful and intelligent - and the commenters on the Dad Jokes are funny as hell. I almost never need to step in to tell folks to settle down and mind their manners - maybe only 2 or 3 times in the 13 years I've been here.
People think wrong when they think that the Internet gives them anonymity. It doesn't. It gives pseudonymity, which is not at all the same thing. If you post under a pseudonym (like Hedge and I both do), you still develop a reputation. Quite frankly, you can't comment anonymously here, so anything you say in the comments here will add to (or in rare cases detract from) your reputation.
Divemedic certainly doesn't need me to fight his fights, that's not the point of this post. I love comments and the two way (or multiple way) discussions we have here. But I'm not going to tolerate Internet Assholes like Hedge here. Cathedra mea, regula meae - my place, my rules.. If you don't like it, don't stop by. This really isn't very hard.
It is a wise thing to be polite; consequently, it is a stupid thing to be rude. To make enemies by unnecessary and willful incivility, is just as insane a proceeding as to set your house on fire. For politeness is like a counter--an avowedly false coin, with which it is foolish to be stingy.
- Arthur Schopenhauer, The Wisdom Of Life
Google report: Government Geofence warrants up ten times in the last year:
POLICE AROUND THE country have drastically increased their use of geofence warrants, a widely criticized investigative technique that collects data from any user's device that was in a specified area within a certain time range, according to new figures shared by Google. Law enforcement has served geofence warrants to Google since 2016, but the company has detailed for the first time exactly how many it receives.
The report shows that requests have spiked dramatically in the past three years, rising as much as tenfold in some states. In California, law enforcement made 1,909 requests in 2020, compared to 209 in 2018. Similarly, geofence warrants in Florida leaped from 81 requests in 2018 to more than 800 last year. In Ohio, requests rose from seven to 400 in that same time.
Across all 50 states, geofence requests to Google increased from 941 in 2018 to 11,033 in 2020 and now make up more than 25 percent of all data requests the company receives from law enforcement.
This is bad juju from a privacy perspective. Here's advice on how to avoid getting caught up in this.
New report on cyber security recommendations for K-12 systems. This all seems pretty sensitive. If you have kids in school, you might want to bring this to the School Board's attention.
IPv6 will give us better security! IPv6 seems to be something - like fusion power - that's always "5 years away" ...
Google introduces auto-reset of permissions granted to unused apps. This is an excellent idea, and one that Google seems to have implemented in a very user-friendly manner. If you have apps that you never use, then it makes sense not to allow them to poke around on your device. Well done, Google. I'd like to see Apple do this for iOS as well.
The Queen Of The World and I went shooting last weekend because we had this little beauty to break in:
Maybe this was why it was the best selling handgun in America a couple years back.
So to the basics: Polymer? Check. Striker fired? Check. Double stack 10 round magazine? Check. Tritium sights? Check. All standard.
We did a couple of upgrades. The grip is really short, and so I ordered some 15 round magazines which add about another inch to the length of the grip. They didn't arrive in time for this review, so the shorter grip doesn't hurt shootability.
We also bought the SIG laser for this pistol. You see that at the bottom of the picture here, right in front of the trigger guard. It's pretty slick - it snapped right in and there's an activation button right where your hands go around the grip. Grab the pistol and the laser comes on; put it down and it goes off. Got to love SIG engineering.
This picture is a little off-center so you can see the laser dot. The laser comes with an Allen Wrench that lets you adjust elevation and windage. I got it mostly dialed in but need to take it back to the range to get it dead on at 7 yards.
Accuracy is fine - this is more accurate than I am. There are some flyers from other targets on the page; all of the SIG's were on the color. Heck, they'd better be with a laser and all. The trigger is great, crisp break.
So what didn't I like? Well, the magazines have really stiff springs - like I-could-only-load-5-rounds stiff. This will work itself out over time.
The grip is really short. The extended 15-round magazines should fix that.
And I'd like a manual safety. That's personal preference, SIG actually makes a variant with one to comply with Massachusetts regulations (spit) - the P365-MS.
Lastly, I do not look forward to the arguments with The Queen Of The World about whose gun this will be. Alas, I think I know how that will play out ...
All in all, I can see why this is such a popular pistol. The component systems are all mature: the striker system from P320, the recoil locking system dates to 1975 (!), and the Fire Control Unit is an updated version of the one from the P320. These components have all been combined by engineers who kept an eye on the overall system, and blend together beautifully.
I'm not any kind of gun or shooting expert. I like shooting, and shoot a fair number of different guns, but I'm really a dilettante. Your mileage may vary, void where prohibited, do not remove tag under penalty of law.
I don't do scientific, repeatable tests. There's no checklist, although that's not a bad idea. I write about what I like and don't like, but it's pretty much stream of consciousness. Opinion, we got opinion here. Step right up.
I'm not a shooting teacher, although I do like to introduce people to shooting.Maybe some day I'll take the NRA teaching class, but until then, you get a dilettante's view. You'll get opinion here, but if you get serious about shooting, you'll want to get someone who knows what he's doing to give you some pointers. It can help.
And oh yeah, shooting things is fun.
I guess I really am a gun guy. The Queen Of The World got a sweet Sig P365. Alas, we had no 9mm ammo, and the case I ordered hadn't arrived yet.
But in getting things sorted out for tomorrow's range day involved reorganizing things. Lo and behold, I had 3 (!) 50 round boxes of 9mm. No idea where that came from - maybe Ammoman brought it to the Southwest Florida blogshoot.
But I guess that you're officially a "gun guy" when you have ammo in calibers that you think you don't have any of. And while my ammo hoard isn't quite up to this, it's big enough that I probably should do an inventory.
Oh, and the SIG laser for the 365 is about the coolest thing ever. Took all of 2 minutes to install, and the laser comes on when you grip the gun. I'll do a range report on this one.
Having grown up in Maine, potted plants were never much trouble. Things grew slowly up there, so while it wasn't "plant it and forget it" it wasn't far off it. Of course, now we're in the Gunshine State, and plants outgrow their pots in about a week. I'm convinced that if you watch my Bird Of Paradise closely, you can see it grow.
Yeah, yeah - I hear you say that I should get The Queen Of The World to stop dosing them with Miracle Grow. You try stopping her. I'll be the guy watching. And eating popcorn.
And so today will involve plants, and pots, and potting soil (and Miracle Grow). I wasn't made for all that. There's a Country song about that.
Pretty Good Drinking Beer (Songwriter: Troy Jones):
I wasn't born for digging deep holes
I'm not made for paving long roads
I ain't cut out to climb high line poles
But I'm pretty good at drinking beer
I'm not the type to work in a bank
I'm no good at slapping on paint
Don't have a knack for making motors crank, no
But I'm pretty good at drinking beer
So hand me one more
That's what I'm here for
I'm built for having a ball
I love the nightlife
I love my Bud Light
I like 'em cold and tall
I ain't much for mowing thick grass
I'm too slow for workin' too fast
I don't do windows so honey don't ask
But I'm pretty good at drinking beer
A go getter maybe I'm not
I'm not known for doin' a lot
But I do my best work when the weather's hot
I'm pretty good at drinking beer
So hand me one more
That's what I'm here for
I'm built for having a ball
I love the nightlife
I love my Bud Light
I like 'em cold and tall
I wasn't born for digging deep holes
I'm not made for paving long roads
I ain't cut out to climb high line poles
But I'm pretty good at drinking beer
I'm pretty good at drinking beer
I have to say, though - having grown up in Maine I do love me some Bird Of Paradise flower.
UPDATE 2 October 13:54: Note to self: do not buy any more pots with lips that overhang on the inside. Had to cut one apart to get the plant out. And I'm not sure what I'll do in 6 months - I got the biggest pots I could find at Lowe's and while they're not too small, I expect they might be in 6 months.
So what's driving all the insanity behind the Virus From Hell*?
I mean, "Two Weeks to Flatten The Curve and Save Our Health Care System" has turned into doctors and nurses being fired because they haven't been vaccinated. This, when Covid deaths are down something like 75% from a year ago when NO health care workers were vaccinated (because there was no vaccine).
So what gives? How can The Powers That Be be so, well, incompetent?
They're not. None of this is by accident. Let me expand on a comment I left over at OldNFO's place:
Doctors and nurses are being fired, leading to an unknown (more accurately: unreported) staffing shortage. The New York National Guard is being called out to fill in. Interestingly, you have two chances if a NatGuard doc kills your loved one: slim, and none. You can't sue the NatGuard. You might have a better lawsuit against a hospital who just fired 30% of their workers right before your Loved One died of neglect. Call Morgan and Morgan**, who no doubt will be happy to take your case.
So you sue the hospital, and the hospital is run into bankruptcy. After all, you are only one of many grieving families who lost loved ones to this reckless management decision, amirite?
So riddle me this, Healthcare Man: what happens when 40% of the hospitals in this Republic shut down? I mean, it will be a crisis, amirite? Someone with have to do something, amirite? And who is ready to do something in a crisis?
Yup. The Fed.Gov.
They'll take over all these "failed Hospitals", and the Fed.Gov will finally have the socialized healthcare that they've always wanted. And all it will take is thousands (tens of thousands? hundreds of thousand? millions?) of dead Americans.
The ancient Romans were said to make a land into a desert, and then call it peace. I mean, there were no more folks opposing their rule after they had killed most of the folks, amirite?
* It's not The Virus From Hell. You want to see a disease from Hell? Here you go.
** They are an ambulance chasing Law Firm who carpet bomb the Florida airwaves with their commercials.
It was Billy Gibbons':
What's weird is that I can't find a video of him playing with Clapton - and Clapton played with everybody. To try to make it up to you, here he is playing with Joe Bonamassa, Dusty Hill, and Derek Trucks.
Academy Sports has it in stock for the best price I've seen in a while. Online only.
The Queen Of The World went out shopping and one of these followed her home:
So here's the question: any thoughts on a magazine extender? The pinky finger just barely fits, and the palm is half hanging loose on the other side. Having something that would drop down a bit would make it easier to grep.
A perennial question is which record is more unbreakable: Williams' .406 average or DiMagio's 56 game hitting streak. Both are subject to Umpires expanding or contracting the strike zone; a hitting streak can be kept alive pretty easily via this. Not so much the batting average.
There's an old story about this. A young pitcher was facing Williams. His first pitch was called a ball, even though he thought he had found the strike zone. The second pitch fared no better. Frustrated, the pitcher complained to the Umpire. The Umpire replied, "Son when it's a strike, Mr. Williams will let you know."
Teach 'em cryptography. Coolest. Teacher. Ever.
For an encore, get some CNC machines and build an Enigma machine.
Long time friend Libertyman emailed this:
Yargb has a bunch of paintings of battles. I expect a bunch of all y'all will appreciate them. I'd add the famous mosaic of Alexander the Great at Pompeii to it.
Robert Graham on how not to get caught in the Fed's Geofence requests to the courts. This is good info on how to reduce your susceptibility to cell phone tracking by the Fed.Gov.
It seems that the FBI had the decryption key to some pretty nasty ransomeware that hit a lot of companies, but kept it secret because they had some sort of "operation" going on. Thanks a million, guys.
Interesting things are afoot down under. The Oz.Gov is revealing itself to be even more incompetent than the US Fed.Gov. Adam Piggott writes of the doings over the weekend:
Melbourne now holds the dubious distinction of being the most locked down city in the world. A condition that rests entirely with its rabid Marxist leader, known locally as Dictator Dan or Chairman Dan. But finally one group has stood up to the takeover. Construction industry workers, colloquially known as tradies in Australia, have today finally shown the backbone that has been missing down under for so long.
At 1159pm this Wednesday evening, all construction workers in Victoria need to be jabbed or they will be banned from traveling for their work. The largest of the construction unions in Victoria is the CFMEU. It is also the most powerful and militant union in the entire country. Today on the streets of Melbourne outside its large office, its members gathered to demand that the union boss, John Setka, stand up to the Victorian government on their behalf.
The Union management are, as you'd expect, as corrupt and incompetent as Dictator Dan, and blew them off. When that happened, the tradies stormed their union HQ and trashed the place. Well done, Mates!
Well, that was the cue for the Gov to dial the "Incompetent" meter up to 11. They shut down all building construction for 14 days, "for public health" of course. Now riddle me this, Big Gov Man: you have tens of thousands of really pissed off construction workers that you've just basically told to go sit quietly in the corner for a couple weeks. What happens next?
What happens next is, well, what anyone with two brain cells to rub together would have seen coming from a mile away. So yeah, the Oz.Gov was taken completely by surprise:
On Tuesday in Melbourne, authorities were forced to confront this blazing public anger as protesters executed an "extremely dangerous maneuver" by marching onto a busy freeway and blocking traffic in a tactic that some Americans might remember from last summer's BLM protests inspired by the killing of George Floyd.
Thousands converged on the city for a second consecutive day on Tuesday, with shocking footage capturing dozens moving onto the West Gate Freeway into the path of cars. Traffic on the freeway, which is the busiest stretch of highway in Australia, was forced to a standstill in both directions as police tried to disperse the crowd.
Footage circulating on social media showed protesters tossing glass bottles and flares toward police, while some approached officers with their hands up, chanting "you serve us".
Other chants that were reported included "Every day!" Enjoy your lockdown, Dan.
One last thing: these are big, strong construction workers, not 70 year old grandmothers or 12 year old kids. I expect that any of the Melbourne PoPo that try the same thing on them can expect a righteous beat down.
I look forward to an interesting fortnight down under.
A travel agent told me he could get me a free trip to Egypt if I could get five other people to sign up, too. It sounded like a pyramid scheme.
Insty has been banging the drum lately on how young men are increasingly avoiding College. You can't really blame them as it's a pretty hostile environment for men, and saddles most graduates with ruinous amounts of student debt.
But if you're bright, motivated, and hard working, there's a path to a six figure salary that will literally cost you only a few thousand dollars - plus a lot of self study time spent. First, let's talk about the target and the opportunity. The Bureau of Labor Statistics just published a study that highlights the fastest growing job fields through 2030:
That highlighted line? Internet Security. The good news? Nobody cares where you went to school for your security degree, or even that you have a security degree. What they care about are industry certifications. You get the cert, you're in like flint.
Now there's a lot involved with getting the cert, 'natch. I posted about this repeatedly over the years. This is a good starting point, and from there you can click through to here which has a fairly detailed set of things to do, and here which is similar but different to the Borepatch Method.
In a nutshell, you can get a Cisco CCNA Exam Prep book for small money, read on your own in your evenings and spare time, take mock tests to make sure that you understand the material, and then take the real cert class for something like $1500. This will qualify you for an entry level IT job, probably around $50k/year. You continue with the next level higher certification, doing exactly the same as above. When you get that you'll qualify for a higher paying job.
You'll get to the point where you're getting certified on ASA Firewall or the like, and then you're an Information Security Analysts. With the cert, you apply for one of those BLS jobs.
They key, you have to spend a lot of your own time on this in self-study. That's a pain, but you save all that dough you'd be spending on the Dirty Commies at the University. Plus you don't have to put up with all the "Be less White and Male" nonsense that they'd make you take (and pay for).
I got an email recently from a reader who had read some of those old posts of mine (thanks, C.H.!). He had found himself in a frustrating job and took this path. How he's working in a Security Operations Center and pretty happy at where he got himself.
It's been a while since I'd posted this sort of thing, but this seems like a good time to remind our younger Gentlemen Readers (or our Old Fart readers who have sons or nephews) that there is an alternative to the College Mill.
Biden orders HHS to cut of shipments of covid medicine to southern states. But it's all good with socialized medicine, amirite?
This may seem like an innocuous statement, but this all actually encapsulates the Climate Bullshit perfectly. First, the government's statement:
The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) confirmed in a new report that the average temperature during this summer for the contiguous U.S. was hotter than the Dust Bowl in the 1930s.
The meteorological summer between June 1 to Sept. 1 averaged 74F for the U.S., or 2.6 degrees warmer than the long-term average. NOAA said, "this technically exceeds the record heat of the 1936 Dust Bowl Summer, but the difference is extremely small (less than 0.01 of a degree F)."
Remember the Dust Bowl? John Steinbeck and Henry Fonda sort of made it memorable:
1936 is the year of record heat in the United States. There's a reason that the midwest dried up and blew away that summer:
You want to see a real heat wave? Look at July 1936. Eleven States set high temperature records that stand to this day. That Wikipedia page is a little shifty on this, trying to hide the decline in record temperatures. You'll see an asterisk next to South Dakota, which the Wiki page says means Also on earlier date or dates in that state. So what was that earlier date for South Dakota? July 1936.
Oh, and three more States set high temperature records the next month, August 1936. That makes 14 out of the 50 States suffered record high temperatures in the summer of 1936. That's almost 30% of the States.
NOAA (the Fed.Gov's weather bureau) said that this summer was hotter than that. Oooooh kaaaaay. So riddle me this, WeatherMan: how many States set temperature records this summer? One. Washington State set a record high on June 29.
Not fourteen.
So how does NOAA get off saying that 2021 was hotter than 1936? Data adjustments:
The data have two components: the raw measurements themselves, and a set of adjustments.
Adjustments are made for a bunch of reasons: time of observation adjustments (you didn't take a reading at exactly the same time each day), environmental changes, weather station site relocations, urbanization, etc.
An interesting question is how much of the 20th century's temperature change is due to adjustments? As it turns out, the answer is all of it.
This chart shows the before-adjustment and after-adjustment temperatures for the 20th century, super imposed. All of the warming is due to adjustments, rather than raw data. Almost all of the adjustments are for readings after 1970.
A group of five vulnerabilities in the B. Braun Infusomat Space Large Volume Pump could allow an attacker to modify system configurations in standby mode and deliver an unexpected dose of medication to patients without any need for authentication, according to a new report from McAfee Enterprise Advanced Threat Research.
I've been posting about the security problems in medical devices for going on a decade now. It's interesting to see major security research players start to issue advisories about these. Hopefully the FDA expedites these sort of security updates.
DEFCON: Internet of Things random number generators stink
In a DEF CON talk officially released on Saturday (many of this year's talks were pre-recorded and available to stream before their scheduled time) Dan Petro and Allan Cecil, both of Bishop Fox, outline systemic problems with hardware random number generators. That creates systemic problems for the devices that obtain random numbers directly from hardware random number generators.
"One of our top-line takeaways is that this process of talking to hardware RNG [random number generators] directly is just untenable. It's far too complicated on so many levels, to the point where it should really be considered like writing cryptographic code, where it is just too unsafe to do on your own," Petro told SC Media.
You might wonder what the heck a random number generator is and why you need a good one. Basically, all of the encryption in use today depends on cypher computations starting with as close to truly random numbers as possible. If the "random number" used are not really random - or worse, if they are predictable - than a Bad Guy could decrypt your communications, masquerade as you (well, as your TV), and do all the bad things to you that encryption is supposed to prevent. Home computers (and cell phones) don't have this problem because they invest in good random number generation circuitry. IoT devices are so inexpensive that this isn't done. Probably having unpatched high risk security vulnerabilities in these devices is worse, but this is just another reason why there isn't much security at all in these pieces of junk.
Firefox 91 has new privacy features
Firefox is still around? Who knew? They blew any credibility on user privacy when they ditched Brendan Eich to include RIAA tracking features.
The most secure browser is ... Microsoft?
Microsoft has announced that the Edge Vulnerability Research team is experimenting with a new feature dubbed "Super Duper Secure Mode" and designed to bring security improvements without significant performance losses.
When enabled, the new Microsoft Edge Super Duper Secure Mode will remove Just-In-Time Compilation (JIT) from the V8 processing pipeline, reducing the attack surface threat actors can use to hack into Edge users' systems.
...
Based on CVE (Common Vulnerabilities and Exposures) data collected since 2019, around 45% of vulnerabilities found in the V8 JavaScript and WebAssembly engine were related to the JIT engine, more than half of all 'in the wild' Chrome exploits abusing JIT bugs.
"This reduction of attack surface has potential to significantly improve user security; it would remove roughly half of the V8 bugs that must be fixed," explained Johnathan Norman, Microsoft Edge Vulnerability Research Lead.
That's a neat piece of security work. And I love "Super Duper Secure Mode". It reminds me of Tesla's "Ludicrous Mode" which is shamelessly stolen from Spaceballs.
Google has started emailing users of very old Android devices to tell them it's time to say goodbye.
Starting September 27, devices running Android 2.3.7 and lower will no longer be able to log in to Google services, effectively killing a big portion of the on-rails Android experience. As Google puts it in an official community post, "If you sign in to your device after September 27, you may get username or password errors when you try to use Google products and services like Gmail, YouTube, and Maps."
Android is one of the most cloud-based operating systems ever. Especially in older versions, many included apps and services were tied to your Google login, and if that stops working, a large chunk of your phone is bricked. While Android can update many core components without shipping a full system update today, Android 2.3.7 Gingerbread, released around 10 years ago, was not so modular.
This is actually a Good Thing. Android has a lot of security holes and there are no updates coming for these 10 year old systems. If you got 10 years out of your phone, it's really in your best (security) interest to update.
US Government Agencies score low on cyber security
In the "Federal Cybersecurity: America's Data Still At Risk" report, the US Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs graded the departments of State, Transportation, Education, and the Social Security Administration a "D" for cybersecurity. The departments of Housing and Urban Development, Agriculture, and Health and Human Services each received a "C." The highest grade for cybersecurity, a "B," went to the Department of Homeland Security (DHS). Among the major issues, several agencies, including the State Department, did not deactivate former employees' accounts, allowing access for extended periods of time after the workers left government service.
Maybe the Cloud will help. These Agencies can't buy cloud services that are not security approved (FedRAMP). Most of these issues are covered under that certification.
When I was a kid my neighbors hired me to clean up the leaves in their yard. I was really raking it in.
OldNFO posted a great video showing just how easy it is for someone to get your info. The video is a live demo from Defcon, so you know it's good.
Yeah, he posted this a while back - I've been pretty busy. And the video itself is from a few years ago, so it's not like you're any later.
And yes, I need to post more security stuff.
All the cool kids are posting uplifting things today, and so I'll jump in.
I've posted repeatedly about America as Fall-Of-The-Roman-Empire/Republic before. It's looked pretty bleak for a while, not being able to figure out how the Next Big American Thing will come into being. It's looked like that process will be really blood soaked.
But maybe not. I've also posted before about Curtis Yarvin, who blogged under the nom de blog Mencious Moldbug. It was ten years ago that I wrote about him in an uberpost titled The Fifth American Republic. It has perhaps the best opening paragraph I've ever written:
Barack Obama is a communist. That's a low schoolyard insult, even though it's true, but it doesn't matter. You see, Mitt Romney is also a commie. No, this isn't yet another Mitt Romney rant. All of our political establishment are commies, and have been for a long time.
Glen Filthie found a Tucker Carlson interview with Yarvin. It's quite something - Tucker is a much better interviewer than I had known (I don't watch much - or any - political TV) and Tucker allows Yarvin great big huge uninterrupted blocks of time to explain his philosophy of how America is ruled by an oligarchy, why the oligarchy is decentralized, how the US Government has evolved over time (with a shout out to his original post that I blogged about ten years back), how the periodic evolutions come to be needed as the system slowly degrades, and how this explains why we lost in Afghanistan.
He ends with a discussion of the end of the Roman Republic and how that could plausibly happen here without the rivers of blood. This is a very long and very thoughtful interview that left me feeling much better about this Republic's chances than I have in a long, long time.
Go watch this. I cannot recommend this too highly. You might want to read my old uberpost as an introduction first, because it will set the stage for much of what Yarvin describes. Yarvin is a first rate intellect and you will end up smarter when you're done.
This post by Adam Piggott is simply unimprovable. RTWT, but this is a taste:
And really, they’re just profiting off modern man’s shallow desire to live just one more day no matter what the cost. That’s why they’re trying to jab 12 year olds with this toxic crap so the old fucks can live just one more day, it’s all I’ve got, hey, did you see my boat and my Porsche and the ski lodge?
Everything they have told you is a lie. Don’t take their pills, don’t take their jabs, don’t follow their dietary recommendations, don’t do their exercise routines, don’t take 0.7 glasses of wine per day while you have your 1.2 kids, don’t listen to their music recommendations, or their reading material, or watch their evil films, don’t do any of it. Don’t be a boring shitless bastard that does just what he’s told and then has the sheer stupidity to try and lecture those of us who haven’t fallen for the crap and are trying with some very small success to wake you all the fuck up.
Awesome.
Has it really been almost a month since I've posted one of these?
What's the most dangerous variety of cheese? Sharp cheddar.
Good thing it's not fresh fruit ...
Big Country has a must-read post up. Go read it now, then come back for my thoughts. In it he lays out evidence that there is a three way power struggle going on between the Intelligence Community, the Pentagon, and the White House. Peter adds some thoughts as well.
It reminds me of the last few years of Tsarist Russia: a war that was going poorly, indecisive leadership at the top that had no real idea what the citizens of the realm actually thought, and a fabulously corrupt and incompetent set of ministers who were more interested in looting the treasury than, you know, running their ministry.
And as to that last item, take a look at Joe Biden's cabinet (courtesy of J.Kb at Miguel's place). It's deja vu all over again. The last thing on any of these folk's mind is good governance.
And so, to BCE's post at the top. The Biden Administration sure as shootin' ain't where the smart money is going to bet. And so, on to the second of the three he calls out, the Dot Mil. There are huge problems in our military, the biggest I've seen since the Vietnam days. In a very disturbing way, the pathology is very similar: the senior officers give commands to a sullen and hostile enlisted force. Back in the dark days of the '70s we had flag officers like Zumwalt (Navy) and Creech (TAC) who were able to reinstil discipline. It sure doesn't look like the Perfumed Princes of the Pentagon are up to Zumwalt's (or Creech's) level.
And so I don't think that the smart money will bet on the Dot Mil, either.
So the Last Org Standing likely will be the Intel Community. Heck, they already successfully overthrew a previous President, and guaranteed they have dirt on most of the players in Washington (Generals Petraeus and Flynn could not be reached for comment).
There really are only two questions. First, how long will this take to play out? The longer it goes on, the more damage the Republic takes (both externally and internally). I can't say I'm optimistic that this will get sorted out soon.
Second, the Intel Community will want to rule from the shadows. They are not Front Men - the acronym of one of the Three Letter Agencies was said to be "Never Say Anything". Quite frankly, Joe Biden and Kamala Harris are the perfect empty suits for the Intel Community to stand up as "leaders" of the Republic - as they did last November. The folks at Langley must be steaming mad that Biden isn't staying in his lane. How this will play out is unknown, but unlikely to be pleasant for Joe, "Doctor" Jill, or Kamala.
Czar Nicholas came to a bad end in a basement in Yekaterinburg, along with his entire family. Will our Checkists go this route to let the rest of Washington know they need to stay in their lanes, or will there still be more subtlety? The nation wonders.
