No, I Won’t Hide You In My Attic

I’ve been seeing people claiming their virtue by saying they would hide their Jewish friends in their attic if the antisemites come for them.

Fuck that. I won’t hide my Jewish friends in the attic. If they feel threatened by antisemites, here’s what I will do.

I will go to their house with every gun in my safe and every round of ammunition I own. I might even bring all my sharp, pointy things.

I will teach them how to load, aim, and fire each of those guns.

I will teach them the laws surrounding self-defense so that they can win the legal battle after the fight.

I will help harden their home.

I will stand there ready to defend their home if the bad guys come.

I will do what is necessary to defend their families with as much force as is necessary. using every nasty trick I’ve picked up over the years of hanging out with military vets, gun bloggers, and writers. Those are some creative folks when it comes to home defense.

If their home is not defensible, I will invite them to mine.

I will do whatever I can to make the antisemites too fucking scared to try and assault someone.

Let them spew their vitriol, but I want them terrified about what might come at them if they raise their hand in violence.

Thanksgiving at Ward Manor

The Wife and SIL trade off who hosts the holidays. This year, Ward Manor hosted Thanksgiving. The TLDR is that we had a nice crowd and lots of food. Too much in my opinion, but I’ve been on a kick to keep leftovers to a minimum. Mostly to avoid waste. Personal opinion, not shared by most of the family.

We did almost lose one of the cats. Freya, our crazy yearling, decided that Thanksgiving meant Ward Manor had to be treated like a rally track. This resulted in her shooting through some gaps in the furniture at breakneck speed. She didn’t always judge the gaps the best – including the one between the couch and sofa end tables. Which had my laptop and fresh cup of Earl Grey tea. The good news is that I didn’t need to shell out a couple grand for a new laptop. The bad news is that I didn’t get a new laptop. Well, that and we had to go through the hassle of pulling up and washing the front room rug.

Just life at Ward Manor – even during the holidays.

Scene From Toastmasters

Our club recently had a former member return. This returning member left prior to my joining the club, so this was the first time I got to interact with him. He was commenting on my Galaxy Rangers t-shirt, and of course, the conversation went on to geek subjects. Meanwhile, his tween daughter was studying me.

Her: Are you a cowboy? Note: I was wearing jeans, t-shirt, cover shirt, and my Stetson.

Me: Why do you think I’m a cowboy?

Her: Well, you have that hat.

Me: I just like the hat.

Her: Then why are you standing that way?

Returning Member: It’s probably more comfortable on his back.

Me (to myself): Do not mention that it’s because of the pistol on my hip.

Me (out loud): Yeah, that’s right.

Her: Well, I still think you’re a cowboy.

Monday Links – Super Sized!

Just as a heads up, I have a bit of a backlog that I’m clearing out today. So, buckle up buttercup.

Of course we’re starting with a mess of Reason links.

Do right-wingers believe conspiracy theories more than left-wingers? Short answer, no. Long answer, it’s complicated.

Some are estimating the US has about 20 years to get it’s financial house in order before a debt default becomes inevitable.

The FTC’s case against Amazon is based on a faulty interpretation of one statistic. You mean Kahn’s disregarding logic in her crusade against Amazon?

Re-examination of the teen vaping panic.

Retrospective of the effectiveness of the Endangered Species Act at 50.

NLRB looks to change rules aimed at how franchises work – particularly fast food franchises.

Supreme Court issues a code of ethics for the justices. One item of note is that they address recusal and the duty for the justices to stay on cases to avoid strategic recusals.

The Fifth Circuit slaps down the ATF’s recent receiver rule.

On to other stuff.

The Reload has an article on the Supreme Court granting cert on the bump stock ban. I see this less of a gun case and more of a restricting administrative agencies from making people felons with a rule change.

From Ground News, we have Sam Altman departing OpenAI. Not clear if he left on his own accord or was forced out.

From 9to5Mac, Apple surprised everyone by announcing they were integrating RCS alongside iMessage.

From NYT comes an article on a company pulling carbon and trapping it in concrete. I always thought engineering would help the planet better than trying to just cut emissions.

War Is Boring reports the Ukranian Army is trying to transition to a more professional and gender-equitable force. Um, okay. I guess improving its professionalism in the middle of a war is a good thing.

Angry Staff Officer has an article discussing the positive leadership traits of Grand Admiral Thrawn. Honestly, this kind of article was why I started reading ASO.

From The Allspark, Peter Cullen to receive lifetime achievement award.

Our last link is from Ars Technica. The old television series “Connections” is being revived! And James Burke is returning as host!

Chronicles at Ward Manor

Last week was unusual because my job sent me to a conference in Orlando. I was presenting on a project I participated in while at my previous position. I was asked to go because the primary developer does not travel, and they needed someone who was familiar with the history of the project to be there to talk to it. Because it was just over in Orlando, The Wife decided to come along for a change of scenery.

Overall, the conference was good. I got the opportunity to meet people in person who I’d only met online. Including my new supervisor. It was also a good chance to catch up with a bunch of people who I’d worked with in the past, but who had gone on to other jobs across our area.

The bad? I missed the last day. Why? Flu shots are a requirement for my work, and the facility was nice enough to offer them at the conference. I took advantage of it because that means I don’t have to make a trip somewhere else, and it makes sure that it gets into my personnel file. Normally, I don’t have much a reaction to the flu shot beyond a sore shoulder. This time? I woke up at oh-dark-early feeling horrible. Not as bad as the 24 hours of hell with the COVID boosters, but pretty bad. Talked it over with The Wife. We could wait until daybreak to see how I feel, but I doubt even if I felt better that I would be up to the conference. So, we made the decision to trek back across the state at oh-dark-early. I shot off an email to the boss, we packed up, and headed home. We ran into more construction, but the lack of traffic evened it out. Particularly since we missed the Disney traffic and the I-4 buildup around Tampa. We did give MIL a scare coming in so early. The rest of Thursday I was kind of out of it. More due to odd hours than anything else.

Saturday was a day trip with The Wife, Mom, and The Brother. We went down to Arcadia. Mainly so The Wife and Mom could go through the various shops. The Brother came along to spend time with the family. Arcadia hasn’t fully recovered from Ian or the other tropicals that blew through there since. We spent a few hours there before heading back and picking up barbeque from a local place. All in all, it was a good day.

Sunday was a frustrating day. Work gave me a new dock that would allow for three monitors plus the laptop. So, I picked up an LG Dual-up monitor. It’s essentially a really big monitor that will mimic two monitors stacked on top of each other. Great. Neat. Except the ports on back of the monitor don’t exactly match up to the ports available on the new dock. There was an emergency run to Wally World to get an HDMI/Displayport cable. After some frustration with cables and settings, I finally got it to work. Mostly. For some reason, it wants to think that my bottom screen is to the right of the upper screen. No matter how I arranged it in settings, that was the only config that would work. Feck it. Let’s do some more testing by logging into work. Except, I couldn’t log into work. After multiple attempts, I call the help desk. Um, yeah, we can’t see you on the remote access list. WTF?

This resulted in me having to travel up to Tampa to log into work from there to request new access from behind the firewall. Which involved trying to find a place to work. That’s difficult because even with people on hybrid schedules, space is kinda scarce. Fortunately, I know folks who owed me favors. By mid-morning my accesses were restored, and my boss agreed to let me take a long lunch to go back home.

Now things are returning to their normal routines. For which I am very happy about.

November Anime Recommendations

I try to keep this to about three series. Which is good, because this month, I only have three to recommend.

This one is cool, but it wasn’t exactly what I was expecting from the trailer.
This is an interesting twist on the traditional anime rom-com
Not completely sold on this one, but it’s been interesting for the first few episodes.