Gun Thread: Numbero Uno of el 2024 Edition!

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Howdy, Y'all! Welcome to the wondrously fabulous Gun Thread! As always, I want to thank all of our regulars for being here week in and week out, and also offer a bigly Gun Thread welcome to any newcomers who may be joining us tonight. Howdy and thank you for stopping by! I hope you find our wacky conversation on the subject of guns 'n shooting both enjoyable and informative. You are always welcome to lurk in the shadows of shame, but I'd like to invite you to jump into the conversation, say howdy, and tell us what kind of shooting you like to do!

Holy Shitballs! How in the ever-loving hell fire did it get to be January of 2024? Why, it seems like 2023 was practically just seven days ago!

With that, step into the dojo and let's get to the gun stuff below, shall we?

Posted by: Weasel at 07:00 PM | Comments (388) | Trackbacks (Suck)

Food Thread: One Side Dildo, One Side Only Please

It's rare that cooks of a certain age discover a new technique. That's not bragging, but if one is 29, then one has cooked a lot of meals and read a lot of recipes! But the French cooking term 'unilateral' is a new one for me, and I am damned glad I found it and tried it!

Here's a recipe for one variation of the technique, but it is so simple and obvious that you should try it posthaste!

I used the basic technique of cooking on one side only, but added the additional step of covering the pan so the fish poached gently. I used cod tenderloin, which can be a challenge to poach because it becomes ridiculously delicate very quickly. But this worked! I got a modest amount of color on the presentation side (the pan side), and the fish turned out perfectly cooked.

Of course people like Thomas Keller make it more complicated, but it's a great way to cook fish with relatively gentle heat.

I am writing the recipe I used, which by the way I will modify slightly the next time I make it, but damn, it was delicious and easy and took away most of the complexity of cooking fish...the protein is delicate and it overcooks and dries out quickly, in particular salmon, which is the most popular fish in America, and one that suffers when overcooked.

Well, I guess all food suffers when overcooked, but salmon is particularly unpleasant; dry AND flaky...an unpleasant combination. Anyway, for those of you who cook fish, try this out. It is easy and quick.

Posted by: CBD at 04:00 PM | Comments (254) | Trackbacks (Suck)

First-World Problems...

Why do suburban drivers move over to the right side of the street and angle their cars to the right when making a left turn? Is this some sort of glitch in the matrix? Are they really convinced that the six inches of extra visibility to the left is going to make a difference?

Because as they do that they also block anyone from making a right turn from behind them. But they don't care about anyone else on the planet, so I guess that makes sense.

I was taught to make left turns from as close as possible to the lane marker. And not cut the corner...but that's a different rant.

Get off my lawn...and my street!

Posted by: CBD at 02:00 PM | Comments (339) | Trackbacks (Suck)

Three Years After The Fact, And NOW Bill Barr Speaks Up?

And not even in a forceful manner. It is his usual lawyerly, smarmy, Deep-State-C*cksucking manner that is designed to keep him in the good graces of the people whose entire political philosophy is antithetical to what Barr claims to be...a conservative.

His comments, which come about two years and eleven months too late, are a mealy-mouthed attempt to remain in the good graces of the uninformed on the right, who are distinctly uncomfortable with the insanity of the prosecutions (persecutions?) of the protestors, but don't really have the facts. So here is Bill Barr to make them feel better about the whole thing.

Biden DOJ Went Too Far With Prosecuting Jan. 6 Suspects: Bill Barr

Former Attorney General Bill Barr said on Saturday—the third anniversary of the Jan. 6, 2021, Capitol incident—that the Justice Department under President Joe Biden went too far when it comes to prosecuting individuals involved in the events of that fateful day and targeted people who merely “walked into open doors and hung around.”

Mr. Barr made the remarks in an interview on Fox News, where he said he has no intention of downplaying the seriousness of the events of Jan. 6, 2021, which he called a “shameful episode” for which some people should face prosecution.

“I don’t think it was an insurrection,” Mr. Barr said, rejecting a label that has been pushed in particular by opponents of former President Donald Trump, who faces over a dozen lawsuits seeking to bar him from the 2024 presidential ballot under the claim that he engaged in an “insurrection.”

A bit of overreach! Nothing to see...move along! Barr is the establishment Republican that everyone on the left just loves! He will never buck the Deep State^TM, and he will never criticize the process. You know, the process that has sold America's legal system to the highest bidder. Notice that he has no legal remedies in mind...no desire for a political solution to a profound miscarriage of justice...no honorable fight against this existential insult to our Constitution and the principles upon which our country was founded? Yeah...he wants to be on record that he has reservations about it, but he certainly doesn't want to do anything about it!

And remember, this is the same Bill Barr who found no evidence of voter fraud in the election of 2020. I wonder where he stands on that now? Actually...I don't. I know exactly where he stands, and that is on the side with the most money and influence in Washington. He is an acolyte of the process, that disgusting refuge into which all power-hungry government apparatchiks scurry to defend their destruction of the rule of law and the United States Constitution. In his squalid little mind, 18 U.S. Code § 1512 is more important than the First Amendment of the United States Constitution.

He has no honor, and his only loyalty is to power. He is the tyrant that Jefferson warned us about.

And what country can preserve it's liberties if their rulers are not warned from time to time that their people preserve the spirit of resistance? Let them take arms. The remedy is to set them right as to facts, pardon and pacify them. What signify a few lives lost in a century or two? The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants.

Posted by: CBD at 12:00 PM | Comments (266) | Trackbacks (Suck)

Sunday Morning Book Thread - 01-07-2024 ["Perfessor" Squirrel]

Welcome to the prestigious, internationally acclaimed, stately, and illustrious Sunday Morning Book Thread! This is the first Sunday Morning Book Thread of 2024! The place where all readers are welcome, regardless of whatever guilty pleasure we feel like reading (They came to kick ass and eat Scooby Snacks...and they're all out of Scooby Snacks!). Here is where we can discuss, argue, bicker, quibble, consider, debate, confabulate, converse, and jaw about our latest fancy in reading material. As always, pants are required, unless you are wearing these pants...(rock polishing kit not included!)

So relax, find yourself a warm kitty (or warm puppy--I won't judge) to curl up in your lap, and dive into a new book. What are YOU reading this fine morning?

Posted by: Open Blogger at 09:00 AM | Comments (363) | Trackbacks (Suck)

EMT 2024

Welcome to the show. Strap in I suspect it going to be bumpy.

Happy Sunday.

Posted by: krakatoa at 06:01 AM | Comments (232) | Trackbacks (Suck)

Daily Tech News 7 Medior 2023

Top Story

• Computing, you have blood on your hands. (CACM)
  
  How dare you (checks notes) not act as the global thought police?
  
  
  

Posted by: Pixy Misa at 04:02 AM | Comments (94) | Trackbacks (Suck)

Saturday Overnight Open Thread (1/6/24)

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The Saturday Night Joke

Posted by: Misanthropic Humanitarian at 09:46 PM | Comments (318) | Trackbacks (Suck)

Music Thread: Do Crocs Have Soul?

[Garrett's formal wear][And the mystery click?]

Well...Sh*t. Spotify continues to annoy me with their AI DJs. And why does the voice have to have a bit of a ghetto twang? And...why does the AI DJ have no taste in music?

Eh. I give it three songs, then move on to one of my lists. In the grand scheme of things it is not an affront, but I wish they had a better sense of their customers. Aren't all of their customers middle-aged conservatives who despise most modern music?

One of the frustrating things about these music portals (aggregators?) is their abysmal taste in classical music. Their choices are skewed to the popular stuff from movies and commercials. It's as if they are terrified of introducing anything difficult or new to their audience. Or for that matter...classic!

Try this: Beethoven's 7th Symphony.Herbert van Karajan knew what he was doing.

***

Posted by: CBD at 07:30 PM | Comments (269) | Trackbacks (Suck)

Weekend Hobby, Crafts and Bodging

Greetings, gang. Hope the first weekend of the new year finds you well. Time once again to head for the basement, garage, shop, studio or wherever it is you can escape to get lost in something creative.

Note: This is NOT an open thread so kindly keep all comments on point.

What projects are you working on?

Posted by: J.J. Sefton at 04:40 PM | Comments (150) | Trackbacks (Suck)

Ace of Spades Pet Thread, January 6

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Good afternoon and welcome to the almost world famous Ace of Spades Pet Thread. Thanks for stopping by. Kick back and enjoy the world of animals.

Would you like a treat?

Let's relax a little with the animals and leave the world of politics and current events outside today.

Posted by: K.T. at 03:23 PM | Comments (81) | Trackbacks (Suck)

Gardening, Puttering and Adventure Thread, Jan. 6

Early primrose in a friend's yard
Washington State

Happy New Year, everybody! Doing anything outdoors, or are you cuddled up with your seed catalogs? Doing any indoor gardening?

We have been having cold fog and some rain, a little frost. Not the best gardening weather. Probably miserable for folks picking citrus.

Is weather hindering your outdoor activity?

Posted by: K.T. at 01:21 PM | Comments (54) | Trackbacks (Suck)

DEI heretics pay a price even when they are financing DEI

Happy New Year!

I really felt like skipping news this weekend, but the story about charges of plagiarism against Bill Ackman's wife, Neri Oxman, is developing. Its details are tedious, but demonstrate some interesting things about the fury of the fight over the resignation of the President of Harvard -- part of a small, oppressed class of black women who grew up in a privileged family in a third world country, who went to a prestigious prep school before attending prestigious universities, and who still make about $900,000 a year.

There are other things to think about this weekend, too.

Setting the stage - The Week in Pictures, Gay Times Edition

Steven Hayward:

Well, this new year is starting off much better than expected. It's not often that a schadenfreudey moment like the self-immolation of Harvard's Claudine Gay lasts an entire month, so by all means let's revel in it for another week. Let it roll over us like hot chocolate syrup on a vanilla ice-cream sundae. (I'm sure some ninny somewhere will think this imagery racist, unless they stop and think about it for a moment, which they won't.) It's been so much fun we almost ignored the new Jeffrey Epstein documents, which didn't hang themselves. Now on to MIT!

* * * * *

The DEI Juggernaut targets Bill Ackman's Wife

It started like this:

Posted by: K.T. at 11:17 AM | Comments (363) | Trackbacks (Suck)

Classical Saturday Morning Coffee Break & Prayer Revival

(Opening Photo H/T Hadrian)

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Good morning and Happy 2024 the first Coffee Break Thread of the new year. A different kind of music this morning.

Resolutions for 2024? Simple Rulz.....

1) Lurk, opine and/or bloviate away.
2) Be nice.
3) Running with sharp objects is frowned upon.
4) Have a nice weekend.

Posted by: Misanthropic Humanitarian at 08:30 AM | Comments (461) | Trackbacks (Suck)

Daily Tech News 6 Gemini 2023

Top Story

• What to expect at CES 2024. (The Verge)
  
  1. Overpriced crap.
  2. Overpriced AI-infested crap.
  
  That seems to cover it.

Posted by: Pixy Misa at 04:00 AM | Comments (280) | Trackbacks (Suck)

Sometimes A Great Notion: An ONT

Hello, and welcome to Friday night! So what does everyone think 2024 has in store for us?

Personally I'm doing a bit better, although I spend as much of the day as possible lying down. I don't cough when I'm lying down, and I do when I sit up. Is it possible to cough yourself into a hernia? Because my left abdomen feels like I have.

Computer question: The weak part of my system now is the SSA drive. It's only 250GB and it's almost full. Is it possible to clone it to another SSA drive? You can get a 1Tb drive for 50 bucks, I'd like to copy my existing drive onto a new one and then replace it, the idea being that the computer would boot up and run exactly the same. Can this be done?

Posted by: WeirdDave at 10:00 PM | Comments (301) | Trackbacks (Suck)

Baby Kaiju Cafe

Needles District of Canyonland National Park, Utah
by @mbloom990

Big ol' walrus.

A giraffe named Betty White gives birth to... a six-foot tall baby.

An orphaned baby hippo raised by rhinos meets another hippo. Because he's been raised by rhinos, he doesn't know that hippos are supposed to live most of their lives in water. The new hippo teaches him.

A very cuddly baby elephant. This video is eight year old so that elephant is now the size of a cement truck.

A rescued squirrel comes back to visit his rescuer every day. It's about love, and peanuts, but mostly peanuts.

Every unmarried person who gets a dog does so with the half-expectation that the dog will introduce him to a future wife. Here's one case where a couple of dogs parent-trapped their owners.

Baby megabats.

Wheee!

This little baby elephant has beef with you and it's On Sight!

Baby elephant swingin' his trunk around.

Posted by: Disinformation Expert Ace at 07:18 PM | Comments (294) | Trackbacks (Suck)

Crimes of the Libs of TikTok

The UN women's charity has chosen the perfect "Champion:" a dude.

Trans activist Munroe Bergdorf has sparked outrage after she was named by the UN women's charity as their 'UK Champion'.

Organisations including Fair Play for Women, Sex Matters, Transgender Trend and the Women's Rights Network shared their "dismay and disappointment" over the former LO'real model being selected.

He's not just a misogynist. He's also a racist.

Bergdorf sparked outrage and was dismissed by L'Oréal after she post a series of tweets one of which said that the suffragettes were 'white supremacists.'

Another said: "Honestly, I don't have energy to talk about the racial violence of white people any more. Yes, all white people.

"Because most of y'all don't even realise or refuse to acknowledge that your existence, privilege and success as a race is built on the backs, blood and death of people of colour.

"Your entire existence is drenched in racism."

Speaking on GBNews discrimination and employment lawyer Robin Moira White explained that the appointment has "done what it was supposed to and has got people talking."

She said: "The UN is very used to appointing ambassadors who challenge normal thinking, which is a good thing. "

"Normal thinking" is so 2014, Racists.

Oh, and from David Strom, he's one more thing also.

There really is nothing to like about this particular "champion" of women. He has derided women's bodies, attacked all White people as racists, and apparently was chatting inappropriately with minors on Twitter, losing him a relationship with a child protection group to which he had attached himself.

He is, in other words, a creep.

But he is a transgender creep, and that makes him a perfect representative of UN Women, which is why they chose him.

The lavishly-funded blackmail-and-defamation criminal enterprise Southern "Poverty" "Law" Center declares that anyone who thinks a biological man is a biological man is a, you guessed it, racist Enemy of the State.

The Montgomery, Alabama-based Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) was founded in 1971 with a mission to fight poverty and racial discrimination. Its early litigation campaigns, which targeted the Ku Klux Klan and other overtly racist organizations, met with success, and the group soon came to be seen as an authoritative source in regard to right-wing extremism more generally.

Another form of expertise the organization developed was in the area of marketing--especially when the market in question consisted of deep-pocketed urban liberals. As former SPLC staffer Bob Moser reported in a 2019 New Yorker article, the group has consistently taken on attention-grabbing urgent-seeming causes that its leaders knew could be leveraged as a means to gain publicity and--more importantly--donations. It's no coincidence that the SPLC's co-founder and long-time fundraising guru, Morris Dees, had previously operated a direct-mail business that sold cookbooks and tchotchkes. "Whether you're selling cakes or causes, it's all the same," Dees told a journalist in 1988.

...

In describing his tenure at the SPLC during the early 2000s, Moser argued that the very structure of the organization betrayed its hypocrisy: Here was an entity dedicated to social justice (as we would now call it), yet which was run by an extremely well-paid, almost exclusively white, corps of lawyers, administrators, and fund-raisers who ruled over a mixed-race corps of junior staff. As far back as the 1980s, Dees was openly admitting that he saw the fight against poverty as passé, and admitted that the "P" in SPLC was an anachronism. Jaded staff began ruefully referring to their own flashy headquarters as the "Poverty Palace."

Dees and Cohen may have left the Poverty Palace, but the SPLC's tendency to betray its founding principles clearly remains a problem, as illustrated by a new SPLC report released under the auspices of what the group dubs "Combating Anti-LGBTQ+ Pseudoscience Through Accessible Informative Narratives." (This verbal clunker seems to have been reverse-engineered in order to yield the acronym, "CAPTAIN.")

The report purports to demonstrate "the perils of anti-LGBTQ+ pseudoscience" and "anti-trans narratives and extremism." Much like the dramatically worded hard-sell direct-mail campaigns that the SPLC started up under Dees, it's marketed as a matter of life and death: According to the deputy director of research for the SPLC's "Intelligence Project," the "anti-LGBTQ+ pseudoscience" uncovered by the SPLC has "real-life, often life-threatening consequences for trans and non-binary people."

...

The real point of the project, it seems, was to catalogue and denounce public figures who've expressed dissent from the most extreme demands of trans-rights activists--specifically, (1) the demand that children and adolescents who present as transgender must instantly be "affirmed" in their dysphoric beliefs, even if such affirmation leads to a life of sterility, surgical disfigurement, drug dependence, and medical complications; and (2) the demand that biological men who self-identify as women must be permitted unfettered access to protected women's spaces and sports leagues.

Every con artist is perpetually on the lookout for the new scam and the new marks.

A Boston City Councilor refused to raise her hand and repeat the oath of office at her swearing ceremony. She was caught on video refusing the oath and now has been ordered to come back and repeat the oath as required.

She has refused... even though her refusal, twice, to take the oath of office might disqualify her:

Oh by the way she's a radical activist and an immigrant.

Doing the subversion Americans just won't do.

Posted by: Disinformation Expert Ace at 06:00 PM | Comments (281) | Trackbacks (Suck)

Amusing: Someone Wrote an Unauthorized Fanfic "Sequel" to The Lord of the Rings, and Then Sued Amazon for Copying It in Their own Fanfic "Rings of Power" Prequel

To be honest, I bet the plagiarized book is better than Rings of Power, which itself is just copying Tolkein plus a Diversity Hustle.

But they did pay a huge sum of money to make this piece of crap, so they're legally in the right.

Amazon and the Tolkien estate have emerged victorious in a multi-pronged legal battle over "The Lord of the Rings" franchise.

In April author Demetrious Polychron published a book called "The Fellowship of the King" which he claimed was a sequel to "The Lord of the Rings." He planned for the book to be the first in a seven-part series.

The Fellowship of the King, LOL.

The author then filed suit against both Amazon and the Tolkien estate, claiming the streaming series "The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power" had borrowed from his sequel and infringed his copyright.

It can now be reported for the first time that a California judge summarily dismissed Polychron's lawsuit with prejudice in August.

The Tolkien estate then countersued the author for infringing on their copyright. A U.S. district judge found in the estate's favor this fall, granting them a permanent injunction to prevent Polychron from "copying distributing, selling, performing, displaying or otherwise exploiting" his book or its sequel, titled "The Two Trees." The author was also ordered to destroy all physical and electronic copies of the works.

The Two Trees, LOL. He's barely even trying. (The Two Trees are in fact an important part of the ancient history of Middle Earth -- I think they shed the equivalent of sunlight and starlight when the earth was flat and there was no sun.)

Closing the chapter on this saga, a California judge has now handed down a costs order, instructing Polychron to pay $134,637 in attorney's fees to both Amazon and Tolkien. In making the order, Judge Steven V. Wilson noted the "fantasticality" of the Polychron's claim for copyright protection given his book is entirely based on characters in "The Lord of the Rings," calling it "unreasonable" and "frivolous from the beginning."

Wait, what was the last book called? I hope it was "The Return of the Ring."

In Disney Dystopia news, the new Marvel woke content featuring a diverse disabled female shero looks so good you guys.

Posted by: Disinformation Expert Ace at 04:50 PM | Comments (283) | Trackbacks (Suck)

Biden's Open Borders Are Spreading New Plagues in the US

Get your boosters for covid, everyone! Biden's letting in illegals who are completely unscreened for leprosy, polio, malaria, and tuberculosis!

James Varney:

Successful public health campaigns and medical advances have enabled the United States to conquer a range of disfiguring and damaging diseases. Polio, which paralyzed thousands of Americans annually, was wiped out by widespread vaccinations. In 1999 the nation's last hospital for lepers closed its doors in Louisiana. A global campaign eradicated smallpox, while lethal tuberculosis, the "consumption" that stalked characters in decades of literature, seemed beaten by antibiotics. Measles outbreaks still occur from time to time, but they are small, local, and easily contained.

Recently, however, some of these forgotten but still formidable infectious diseases have begun to reappear in the U.S. For two years running, polio has been detected in some New York water samples, and this fall, leprosy re-emerged in Florida, where cases of malaria have also been recorded.

Health officials say they are not sure why these and other infectious diseases are resurfacing. One distinct possibility, which officials are loath to discuss, is that the millions of migrants who have crossed into the country in recent years could be bringing the scourges with them, since many are from countries where such rare diseases persist and vaccination programs are not robust.

I'm going to go ahead and call it: That is the correct explanation.

"The recent polio and leprosy cases are almost certainly imports to the U.S.," said Dr. Jay Bhattacharya, a physician and scientist at Stanford University, one of the most outspoken critics of official COVID-19 narratives in the last pandemic that later proved flawed.

And the Biden administration, an aggressive promoter of often mandatory vaccination last time, now is offering little public comment on the connection between disease and the porous borders with which its immigration policy has become widely identified.

Neither the Centers for Disease Control nor the Department of Homeland Security would discuss the issue with RealClearInvestigations. Legal immigrants are required to receive vaccinations for a host of diseases, but the Department of Homeland Security acknowledged it does not have vaccination records for the millions who have entered the U.S. since the Biden administration relaxed border controls upon taking office in January 2021.

Read the whole thing.

They're not screening the nameless hordes swarming our borders for lethal diseases.

And they're also not bothering too hard to scan their DNA for connections to prior violent crimes, either.

The feds are supposed to run illegal immigrants' DNA through the CODIS system, a library of DNA found at the scenes of crimes.

The FBI has a 15 month backlog on DNA testing for migrants and is running out of money to sustain the program, according to an internal Department of Homeland Security (DHS) email chain reviewed by the Daily Caller News Foundation.

Customs and Border Protection (CBP) uses tests from the FBI, which then analyzes and stores them for federal border authorities, to test migrants 14 years old and older, according to the emails. FBI Director Christopher Wray previously raised concerns about the FBI's ability to handle the "dramatic increase" in DNA samples given the A close-up of a signDescription automatically generatedmigration surges in April, according to Voice of America.

"They [FBI] don't have enough money to run the program which is a statutory requirement. They are still delivering kits and used to turn them around in 2 months, now they are looking at a 15 month backlog," one CBP official said in the internal chain regarding its response to a Washington Post reporter working on a story regarding the DNA testing.

...

The FBI's Combined DNA Index System (CODIS) is used by federal, state and local labs to connect offenders to crimes, according to the bureau.

Posted by: Disinformation Expert Ace at 03:40 PM | Comments (334) | Trackbacks (Suck)