Utopia is not under the slightest obligation to produce results. Its sole function is to allow its devotees to condemn what exists in the name of what does not.
Author: Derek
Derek’s Mildly Useful Reviews – Peaky Blinders and Reacher
The Wife, MIL, and I watch a show while we eat a meal. Mostly dinner, but sometimes over a weekend breakfast. Sometimes, we will end up binging a show we planned to watch more slowly. Two of the more recent shows were Peaky Blinders on Netflix and Reacher on Amazon Prime.
Peaky Blinders starts as a gangster show about a family of gypsy street gangsters and their rise in post-WWI Birmingham England. The first four seasons are solid gangster crime heist type shows. Smart writing, interesting characters, twisty plots. Soundtrack is solid, but not period. The fifth and sixth seasons were good, but the writers were infected with a common need to prove their correctness. All of the sudden, the gangsters are fighting fascists with the communists in late twenties Britain. It felt very much like they were taking modern issues and loosely draping history. And it felt a bit preachy. Which is not what I wanted. The rest of the story was at least interesting. Would I still recommend the show (including the last two seasons)? Hell yes.
Reacher, by contrast, was great popcorn fun television. Amusing characters and dialogue, but heavily driven with action and a kind of tropey plot and atrocious tactics/gun handling/fight physics. I think The Wife got tired of me yelling at the screen. She also learned what it meant to “rat-fuck a body”. You know it was good when what should have been a week’s or so worth of viewing ended up being watched over a weekend.
When Massad Ayoob Talks…
I listen hard. Particularly about how to choose an attorney to keep my ass out of jail after a self-defense incident.
Monday Link Time
First, just in time to celebrate the feds for passing their crony corporatism for the semiconductor sector, comes this article from Bloomberg about a coming bust in that sector. The semiconductor market enjoyed a massive run-up in orders during the pandemic, sending sales and stock prices to new highs and triggering a global scramble to find enough supplies. There was hope in some circles that the boom could be sustained for several more years without a painful pullback, but chipmakers are now facing a familiar problem: growing inventory and shrinking demand. [Snip] But fortunes have turned swiftly for the biggest chipmakers. Companies like Nvidia Corp. are reporting more that 40% annual declines in their core businesses, while Micron Technology Inc. warns that demand is evaporating fast in many areas. Well, this feels familiar. Particularly those of us who have watched the boom and bust cycles in the firearms industry.
The joke was that the lamentations of enlisted soldiers who couldn’t poorly spend their enlistment bonuses or sign up for bad loans on Dodge Chargers and Challengers, because the automaker is discontinuing them. Dodge will be putting an end to its iconic Charger and Challenger lineup real soon as the company teases a new era of mystery cars to come. The electrified future is slowly creeping into Dodge’s ICE-ladened inventory. It sounds like the lamentations will be short-lived as the young men will have electric versions to make bad decisions about.
At least, it will be cheaper in the future to hear better as the FDA approves OTC hearing aids. Come October, instead of being forced to visit an audiologist and shelling out thousands of dollars for the added expense, hearing aid users will be able to purchase FDA-certified hearing aids from any major retailer like Amazon, Walmart or Best Buy without needing a prescription. IMO, we will see some good, generic hearing aids, but the best will still require special testing and fitting. Kind of like electronic ear pro we have now.
In the life-saving category, we have an article from Active Response Training on the best tourniquets. You really need to RTWT. And take a Stop The Bleed course. And don’t cheap out on your tourniquets.
Finally, our light item (courtesy of The Brother) is on the proper method of peeling off Post-It Notes. The article is amusing, but the TLDR is peel side to side, not down to up.
Friday Quote – Tom Givens
Neither your understanding nor your consent are needed for someone to change your life drastically, or end it.
Very Interesting Concept
When I saw this pop up on my YouTube feed, my first thought was “hey, that looks like my Bren.” Then, as Ian explained the concept behind the rifle, I was very intrigued. I’m not going to be in the market for a new rifle for a long while, but I do like when people try out new ideas. Even if it’s how to use existing stuff in new ways.
Downsizing – Vehicle Edition
Since The Wife and I are both teleworkers, we’ve been discussing going down to one vehicle. Mostly, that has been discussing of if we should sell/give my Xterra and just keep her CRV. Part of the issue is that I really didn’t want to give up the Xterra. Yet, we kept asking ourselves the question of why we were still holding on to it.
A couple of weekends ago, just out of curiosity, I looked up the values of both cars. That changed the conversation. Her Honda was worth almost as much as we paid for it. We discussed it more over dinner. Could we just sell both cars and get one we both really wanted?
We looked at a bunch of cars in our new “price range” and tentatively agreed on a Subaru Forester. The Wife started calling around. No one around us had new ones, and used ones were sparse on the ground. We did test drive one just to make sure that the Forester was at least comfortable to drive. The salesperson was clear that if we wanted one in the pipeline, it would be a month – maybe six weeks. Two to three months minimum if we wanted to order one. We looked at the used ones on the lot. The price difference was about two grand between the new ones in the pipeline and the used ones on the lot. And the used ones were 2019’s. Plus, the salesperson was kind of a dick.
We left talking about what should we do. Then we found a dealership with new ones in stock. There was just one small issue. It was about an hour and a half north of us. Still, they had the ones we wanted in stock. After work, we convoyed up.
We really liked the Forester we saw. Test drive confirmed we really liked it. The price was really at the top end of what we were willing to pay. The salesperson showed us a model that had just come in. I liked the green color, the fact that it had almost all of the same features, and was less expensive. We started running the numbers. Then it seemed to take a while. A lot longer than it should have. Finally, the salesperson comes over with a sheepish look on his face. It seems the green one was supposed to be in the loaner program and wasn’t even supposed to be on the floor. So, we were back to original car. Still doable.
After a long wait and some initial paperwork, we’re off to the Financing Lady. She explains that some of the long wait was due to The Wife missing a word on the address on her license (something we get to correct) and they can’t seem to spell my first name correctly. Then, she proceeds to inform us of a couple of items she discovered when going through our files. Since we were buying from the same chain that sold us The Wife’s Honda, the Financing Lady found out we were due money back from a maintenance contract and other items. Did we mind that she put all of that towards the down payment? Um, no. That was very helpful. We start signing. I comment on the picture of her cats on her file cabinet. This led to an ongoing conversation between The Wife and the Financing Lady about how to take care of kitties. As we were nearing completion, the Financing Lady asked if we brought in the Xterra. Yes, we did. How does it run? Pretty good, why? It seems the Financing Lady is looking for something like that. I’m pretty sure that my old Xterra won’t even hit the market.
By the end, it was nearing 11 at night, and we still had better than an hour drive home. We were all smiles as we drove it back home.
Ladies and gentlemen, we are now a single car family. And that car is hereby designated the Ward Wagon!
Links Time!
First, the serious ones.
Salman Rushdie was brutally stabbed before he was about to give a talk on free speech. From the USA Today article: Rushdie’s agent, Andrew Wylie of The Wylie Agency, said the writer was on a ventilator Friday evening, with a damaged liver, severed nerves in an arm and an eye he was likely to lose. The article says a suspect was taken into but authorities did not have any indication of a motive. Hmm…. I mean, it couldn’t have anything to do with the death decree the Iranians put him under decades ago, could it?
Speaking of New York, there are indications of a breakout of polio. There was a chance, a good chance, that polio could have been eliminated – much like smallpox. Instead, the US government co-opted polio workers. Which, of course, became known. Which, of course, meant certain local populaces wouldn’t take the vaccine. Which, of course, is expanded by the anti-vax movement.
Next a some Reason articles that came to my attention:
First, DC Circuit upholds the bump stock ban. From the article: It concluded that the new reading of the law—which contradicts the position that the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives (ATF) consistently took before then-President Donald Trump demanded that the agency ban bump stocks by administrative fiat—is “the best interpretation of the statute.” Even with the NYSRPA ruling, we have years of court cases to see how that decision will filter out among the courts.
In the vein of government knowing better comes an article about how politicians are trying to zone out mobile homes. From the article: From Texas to West Virginia and almost everywhere in between, you’ll find zoning laws that aren’t so subtle in banning mobile homes and mobile home parks altogether. From urban to suburban to rural areas, legislation is being considered and often passed into law that tacks on costs, makes it harder to own a mobile home, and in many cases makes it untenable to ever build a new mobile home park. In my particular opinion, mobile homes are the payday loans of the housing market. They’re flimsy and overpriced and have many hidden costs that hurt the people they’re supposedly aimed at. None of which means I think they should be illegal. I’d much rather have a bunch of mobile home parks than the disaster of people not being able to find any shelter.
FIRE is still doing good work. In this case, taking on a community college whose leadership conspired to censor anti-communist flyers. This is my shocked face.
Now let’s do some lighter items:
There’s a cat café up in Tampa. And if you really like the kitty you’re playing with, you can adopt it. I may have to take The Wife up for this.
Via The Brother comes an ArsTechnica article about a recent Excel esports competition on ESPN. Okay, first, I find it highly amusing that ESPN turns one of its channels into ESPN8: The Ocho once a year with a focus on “seldom seen sports”. Second, I find it amusing that it does feature a dodgeball competition. Third, I fucking adore an Excel competition – and it is just as amazing as I hoped.
Finally, a video that amused me more than it probably should: