YAAP #6

Posted on March 6, 2014 by Weerd Beard

Well there! Another Nethack ascension! This one done almost exclusivly while my daughter was sleeping, and actually was a fairly quick run given the time constraints. Of course I suck at this game compared to the really good players. I’ve seen guys ascend inside of 24 hours, when this one took me at least 3 weeks. Still my last two ascensions were characters where I took long breaks while playing, this one I never let it sit for more than a day.

Also another interesting thing is as far as I remember (looking at my records there is ONE where I can’t quite make heads-or-tails of the map) this is the first run where I had to enter all three high temples before I found the one to my God and could ascend, still thanks to judicious use of stinking cloud scrolls to wipe out priests, NPCs, and those nasty insect swarms, this astral plane was relatively easy.

I was wearing an amulet of life saving, and had two others in reserve, but I managed not to die once, tho Pestilence nearly wiped me out with his disease attack.

Here’s the file!
Continue reading →

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“Gun Death” Attempted Suicide

Posted on March 6, 2014 by Weerd Beard

Not a death, but damn close!

Entering the tiger enclosure at the Chengdu Zoo in China’s southwest Sichuan province, a man made vigorous, but unsuccessful, attempts to entice the animals to eat him, a Chinese newspaper reported on Tuesday.

“I asked them to bite me and let them eat my meat, and so I did not fight back,” 27-year old Yang Jinhai told the Chengdu Business Daily.

Thankfully the PRC feeds their tigers better than their people. This easily could have gone the other way.

H/T Wallphone

Posted in Gun Death? | 3 Comments

Why Do We Call them “Progressive”?

Posted on March 5, 2014 by Weerd Beard

Do these stories sound like “Progress” to you?

In Massachusetts its not a crime to take “upskirt” shots of strangers!

A man who snapped secret pictures up women’s skirts on a Boston subway train – a practice known as upskirting – did not violate the state’s Peeping Tom law, Massachusetts’ top court said on Wednesday, pointing to a loophole in current legislation.

…The ruling comes in the case of a man who was arrested by transit police in 2010 for using his cell phone to take pictures and video up women’s’ skirts on the subway and who fought to have the charges of voyeurism dismissed.

The law “does not apply to photographing… persons who are fully clothed and, in particular, does not reach the type of upskirting that the defendant is charged with attempting to accomplish on the MBTA,” it said.

The court said that, while women have a “reasonable expectation of privacy in not having a stranger take photographs up her skirt” the law “in its current form does not address it.”

I wonder if this asshole aided his photography by physically pulling the woman’s skirts up he’d still be OK. This is so foolish. Yes the woman are “Fully Clothed” but there is a certain amount of privacy afforded by the hanging skirt, and putting a camera under that skirt strikes me as a blatant violation…but not in Massachusetts!

Of course they’ll try to “fix” the law, and likely make it worse….

Next up from the Golden Boy of “Progressivism”:

The behind-the-scenes turbulence of U.S. Rep. Alan Grayson’s family life continued to spill into public view Wednesday as his attorneys worked to combat his wife’s recently revealed domestic-violence allegations.

The congressman’s lawyers revealed video of the domestic incident that played out at the Grayson home Saturday, which they said proved that Lolita Grayson committed an attack, not her husband.

“He was hoping that this matter would stay in the courts and outside of the press, but since horrendous accusations have been made against him … he believes that the truth must come out,” Grayson’s attorney Mark NeJame told reporters during a news conference in downtown Orlando.

Oh yeah its Republicans who are the ones who are anti-woman!

And last is more funny than anything else:

Grown ass “Progressive” man simply throwing a temper tantrum. Go him!

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Posted in Freedom, Podcast, Safety | 6 Comments

White Collar Blue Collar, Good and Bad

Posted on March 5, 2014 by Weerd Beard

McThag has a great post up on White Collar vs Blue Collar. Go read the whole thing, because I’d just need to quote the whole thing.

Still I start with this one:

When did it get decided that blue collar people were the poor?

I know a lot of blue collar folks and they damn sure aren’t poor.

I’ll turn it around and point out that I know a TON of people who are firmly white-collar who ARE poor. At least in the paycheck-to-paycheck side. They aren’t homeless, but they are fucked economically. Further there are a ton of people serving coffee and waiting tables (blue collar jobs) with bachelors and masters degrees in worthless markets. Are these people White collar or blue collar?

And yes I know a TON of blue collar guys who are VERY well off. My Plumber does VERY well for himself, as does my carpenter, as does my mechanic. There are TONS of jobs where your hands get dirty and your collar is blue where you can make a damn good living.

Also there are TONS of white collar jobs where the pay is TERRIBLE…and to get them you need a four-year degree! This was the basis for the #Occupy riots. People who had gotten under CRUSHING debt and simply will NEVER be able to pay it off unless they do something drastic.

I almost fell into that trap. I loved the ocean and sea life, so I decided to get my degree in Marine Biology. Thankfully I don’t have the aversion to “Blue Collar Work” that seems to be preached in schools these days, and I spent 5 years working on commercial fishing boats collecting research data. It was dirty, smelly, dangerous, and exhausting, and I enjoyed it, and it paid well.

When I got married and decided it wasn’t fitting my lifestyle anymore I started to look for a lab job where I could do something closer to the 9-5 weekends off sort of life. I found that the jobs were TERRIBLE! They had good hours, and weren’t offshore, but the pay was AWFUL! I could have gotten roped into that if I somehow felt my identity was tied to fish.

It wasn’t and I started working in the pharmaceutical industry. Since I was a marine biologist, I needed to start at the bottom. My degree looked good on my resume, but for that job I didn’t NEED it, there are lots of people doing what I did with just an HS diploma and a few certifications.

Again, I was a white-collar guy, but my job made that collar look awful blue.

In the end our current school system is somehow saying that blue collar work is bad, and getting a degree has no drawbacks. It sure does!

More on that here:

If my daughter shows ANY interest in blue collar work, she will get all the encouragement from me, just as if she chose to go to college for her career plans. Of course if she wants to study Russian art, or Polynesian literature, or get any sort of BA degree she will be informed that she will not get any financial help from me! No point on throwing good money away on bad sheepskin!

Posted in Freedom, Politics | 5 Comments

“Gun Death” More Falling TVs

Posted on March 5, 2014 by Weerd Beard

Not an uncommon way for young kids to die:

A boy from Gardner, Massachusetts was killed last Thursday when a television fell on him during an after-school program.

We’ve covered a few of these stories here in the “Gun Death?” Files. But hardly them all!

We reached out to Kate Carr, President and CEO of SafeKids USA. Kate said: “sadly, we know that every 3 weeks a child dies from a television tipping over. Over the past 10 years, a child visited the emergency room every 45 minutes because of a TV tipping over.”

Those are HUGE numbers! Amazing! They even have a well-made video:

I know 3 of our 4 TVs are VERY safe, I’ll need to look into that 4th one once we start child-proofing our house once little LaWeer’da starts going mobile!

H/T Mrs. Weer’d

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Another Side of to “Gun Death”

Posted on March 4, 2014 by Weerd Beard

Tam’s recent post, and comments, got me thinking of the article I covered here.

These professors and their supporters always seem to prattle on about “Spirited Discussion”, and somehow adding a gun into that mix results in lead flying, body bags being needed.

First up, no it doesn’t. People argue, act rude, steal parking spaces, commit moving violations, and generally show their ass to armed people every day all the time. They don’t get shot because that’s illegal and as much of an asshole the person is, they aren’t worth shitting in a stainless steel toilet for the next few decades.

Further, why do these pinnacles of knowledge think it takes a GUN to make things go pear-shaped?

I mean what’s to stop an angered student from jumping over their desk and pounding the living tar out of the prof? If you want to be goofy and live in the imaginary world of La-La where one man can kill another graveyard dead with nothing more than his hands and footwear, then why not add in a pocket knife, a crowbar, or a hammer?

Let’s step back a bit. I think anybody who’s been to college has gotten into a few spirited debates…and very likely a few where tempers flared and the intellectual value of the exchange approached zero.

Still has anybody heard of such an event where it turned violent? I’m sure its happened, but for the frequency of such exchanges in academic environments, they are the definition of rare.

So there enters the sacred cow of “Gun Death”. The reason why people don’t beat and stab each other to death in a classroom is they don’t have a gun, and guns are the ONLY way to make another person dead.

Or something.

We know reality.

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Images of the Antis: Us Vs. Them

Posted on March 4, 2014 by Weerd Beard

Its a common trope of any bigoted group. Dehumanizing the other side. All one needs to do is look at Nazi/Soviet propaganda about Jews, talk to somebody who hates gays, or look at KKK literature.

The other side does all that they can to make sure that their opposition is less than human. That way the total extermination of that side seems justifiable.

Same goes for the zealots. I’m going to grab a full screen cap of this rather than just share the image:

baldr Dehumanizing

Look at the image, then look at Ceasefire Oregon’s own Jason “Baldr” Killgore.

Yep if you’re a hunter you’re a psychopath, if you teach children to hunt, you’re a psychopath and your children should be taken away from you.

Now think of how many people you know learned to hunt, and maybe even bagged their first game animal before they were in their teens. Now think of how many psychopaths you know. If you know ANY of the latter, is there any overlap?

For me there is no overlap, and oddly enough Jason’s statement that hunters don’t respect life is really laughable. I know a lot of people who think meat is created in little cuts at the grocery store, and get grossed out when you start talking about the parts of the departed animal it came off of. Hunters LIKE knowing the animal from field to plate because they know all the steps that happened, and the respect the work of getting a good steak or burger. Non-hunters will often see a steak or a burger no different than an apple somebody picked off a tree.

You can also go into the agony a hunter will go through when they talk about the deer they gut-shot and escaped, or the wounded animal they had to track for a mile, and needed to shoot it a second time, or hear their pleasure of harvesting an animal that dropped in its tracks before it even heard the gunshot.

Hunters take PLEASURE in avoiding the suffering of animals.

Hey, but its easier for them to be so bigoted if they don’t see us as human.

Posted in Freedom, Guns | 10 Comments

In a World of Gun Control

Posted on March 4, 2014 by Weerd Beard

Criminals will do whatever they damn well please.

Two Mexican nationals were indicted on Thursday on charges of running an outlaw weapons-supply shop in northern California that assembled and sold unmarked, illegal firearms and accessories, including machine-guns and silencers.

…”The conduct alleged in this case involves the systematic evasion of federal firearms laws, for profit, in a manner that created a real threat to public safety,” Wagner said.

Additionally, both brothers were charged with being illegal immigrants in possession of firearms.

The men are accused of belonging to a network of criminal arms manufacturers and dealers with operations across central and northern California.

They are suspected of running outlaw supply shops in Sacramento and Fresno where they would assemble firearms for customers who bought gun components from the brothers or from other members of their network, Wagner said.

The brothers are also accused of illegally selling fully functional unmarked firearms that were purchased in cash by customers without required background checks, waiting periods or proper paperwork, officials said.

This is California here, where damn near every anti-gun dream has been pushed, and yet these two illegal aliens were ignoring all laws.

Now the antis talk about “If the criminals ignore the laws, then why have any laws at all”…except they ignore that the behaviors they CLAIM to attack are ALL READY ILLEGAL, and have been for generations in most cases, so why add new laws?

I mean these guys have been convicted, right?

What more do they want? We know what they want, they want ANYBODY owning or making guns LEGALLY to be criminals.

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Posted in Guns, Politics, Safety | 2 Comments

“Gun Death” Falling Rocks

Posted on March 4, 2014 by Weerd Beard

Much like Paul Walker dying in a supercar wreck, some people like dangerous hobbies, and sometimes they die.

Chad Kellogg, an elite climber known for his speed ascents of large mountains, died on Friday after being struck on the head by a falling rock while descending the Patagonian peak Fitz Roy. He was 42.

My heart goes out to his family and loved ones. I certainly hope “Dying doing what he loved” holds as much meaning as we give it. Still not a “Gun Death”, and I will note that my #1 hobby is the CONSIDERABLY safer one of collecting and shooting guns.

H/T Whipped Cream Difficulties

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Guns, Violence, and the National Discussion

Posted on March 3, 2014 by Weerd Beard

So SNSF has a post about the 2013 violent crime data.

It has become almost an article of faith in the firearms industry that even reports from our federal government that show a continuing decline in crime will get little media attention. And so it was again with the release this month of the FBI’s preliminary Uniform Crime Statistics
for the first half of 2013 that showed that murders fell by nearly 7 percent compared with the same period in 2012 while violent crime overall fell by 5.4 percent.

These crime reductions continue a 30-year trend

as the Department of Justice reported last year, even while the public is largely unaware
of this remarkable shift toward a safer society.

And again, gun ownership is at an all-time high. This is really settled. We can argue if lawful gun ownership DECREASES crimes, I would argue that it does, but that is still in the realm of theory, but we CANNOT argue that allowing people the keep and bear arms in the most liberal sense of the terms does NOT increase crime or cause a decrease in public safety.

The anti-freedom people HATE this, because it points that erring on the side of individual liberty and trusting total strangers to own deadly weapons is actually a GOOD thing. They aren’t concerned with safety, they are concerned with FREEDOM, and their concern is more of a puritanical sense, like that religion’s laughable ban on dancing and card playing because it will EVENTUALLY lead to sex, drugs, and debauchery. Of course Puritans banning cards and dance is laughable, as the idea that gun bans and carry bans will result in “Blood in the Streets”.

It doesn’t.

Still I’d like to step into dangerous waters for a second. The antis keep crowing that we need a “National Discussion on Guns”. Well we had that over a decade ago, and people decided that guns were something we should embrace, not shun. The public safety numbers show this was 100% the correct move, even if you don’t believe in a natural right to defensive arms.

Still there is something we need to have a national discussion on:

I don’t mean this in any coy or agenda-based way, I also have no idea about solutions to this. I do believe this shouldn’t be a “Dirty racist discussion”.

Why are blacks such a massively disproportionate representation of violent crime numbers, despite their minority status? Why is it the most dangerous states the ones with the greatest black populations?

I would say there is a cultural problem with violence, but I see no easy way to tackle this problem. But I don’t think it should be the do-not-touch topic it is.

Posted in Freedom, Guns, Politics, Safety, Self Defense | 13 Comments