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Monday Links – Lots of Links
Sit back, this is going to be a long one this week.
First, let’s start out with a bunch of Reason links.
Here’s an article on the recent Trump federal indictment.
No, Adam Smith was not a progressive.
Critics of lockdowns were muzzled.
Firing professors for the political views is unconstitutional – left-wing views edition.
SPLC is still overcounting hate groups.
Finally, the Biden administration is still refusing Second Amendment rights to cannabis users.
In other gun news, the deadline for pistol brace owners to submit the proper paperwork or be considered felons as passed. According to The Reload, only a quarter-million did so. In the best case, that’s 250,000 out of 3,000,000 – or about 8%. However, using industry numbers, it’s more like 250,000 out of 40,000,000 – or about 0.6%.
Now that the serious stuff is out of the way, let’s go on to our light items.
First, here’s some teasing that there’s a new Macross animation in the works.
Speaking of Macross, here’s an article that AnimEgo is going to crowdfund a release of the old Macross II anime from the nineties.
From The Brother, we have the top 10 finalists for Illusions of the Year.
Also from The Brother, we have an Ars Technica article about Redditors using Stable Diffusion to create working anime QR codes.
Friday Quote – Judge Learned Hand
Over and over again courts have said that there is nothing sinister in so arranging one’s affairs as to keep taxes as low as possible.
Everybody does so, rich or poor, and all do right, for nobody owes any public duty to pay more than the law demands: taxes are enforced exactions, not voluntary contributions.
Corrected the name per reader Kevin.
Looking Better
Although, it seems like they advanced his daughter’s age by about a decade. But that’s me nitpicking.
Forensics Failure – Ballistics Edition
Over the past decade, I’ve been reading more and more about how forensic science isn’t well, scientific. It’s not replicable and rife with false assumptions. Listening to The Reload podcast, I heard the latest salvo – an article from Radley Balko about forensics firearms analysis.
Last February, Chicago circuit court judge William Hooks made some history. He became the first judge in the country to bar the use of ballistics matching testimony in a criminal trial.
Um, what? Why? Because the judge was skeptical about the claim that a specific bullet can be matched to a specific gun.
But as with other forensic specialties collectively known as pattern matching fields, the claim is facing growing scrutiny. Scientists from outside of forensics point out that there’s no scientific basis for much of what firearms analysts say in court. These critics, backed by a growing body of research, make a pretty startling claim — one that could have profound effects on the criminal justice system: We don’t actually know if it’s possible to match a specific bullet to a specific gun. And even if it is, we don’t know if forensic firearms analysts are any good at it.
Considering I am supposed to be reporting for jury duty next month, this is going to be fun to bring up during questioning.
Monday Links – Light Week
Crazy week at the day job, so the only a few items. And I have two of them because they were sent my way by The Brother.
From the Smithsonian comes an article about the history of a failed attempt to import hippos to the US to be low-cost meat. Kind of reminds me when the US Army experimented with camels for working in the Southwest back in the 1840s.
From the Internet Archive comes an old Army fact sheet on fascism.
Lastly, one of the local stations has an article on USF being admitted to the American Association of Universities. Yay, we have a new Ivy League school. Sorry, just can’t get up the requisite enthusiasm for my alma mater.
Friday Quote – Michael Rectenwald
“If we want to foster real diversity in higher education, we had better consider not only diversity of identity but also diversity of thought and perspective. It is this kind of diversity that we are supposed to recognize and foster in the first place.”
Debt Ceiling Deal
Getting close to the wire, Congress and the President have come to an agreement to raise the debt ceiling. There was some concern as the deadline loomed due to me being a government worker, and a default would result in me missing paychecks.
I’ve listened to those who complained that we shouldn’t have to fight to finance spending that was already authorized. In a way, I agree. However, this seems to be the only time that any sense of fiscal responsibility shows up in Washington. It certainly wasn’t when the spending was authorized.
A lot of this has to do with Congress not wanting to do its job. Too many want to peacock for the cameras, raise money, and raise their profile for a later lobbying or punditry job. They are more than happy to let the administrative state and the courts do their job.
More Journaling of Life at Ward Manor
This is more just journaling rather than commentary or prognostication. Let’s go through some sagas.
- The Zillow Incident – The Wife gets various Zillow notifications because she’s been watching some properties down our way for other family members. Last week she gets one and pops it open. Her first thought was it was strange to see houses down our way that have the detached common-wall garages. The only other place she saw that was at my old Tampa house. Then, it hit her. She was looking at my old place – which had just been put on the market. Why didn’t she recognize it? Well, let’s just say a busted pipe in the ceiling and resulting mold mitigation didn’t leave much standing on the inside when we sold it. The folks who bought it did some really nice upgrades and repairs. I’m kinda tempted to swing by if they have an open house.
- The Hotel Saga – Last week, The Nephew graduated from high school. Due to the timing of his graduation, the work commitments The Wife and I had for the day of the graduation, and the notorious traffic between west central Florida going anywhere near Orlando, The Wife and I decided the best option would be to go over the night before, check into a hotel, work the morning, and then go over. As we’re packing and making our final preps, I go to find the reservation email so I can load the address into the GPS. Hmm, can’t find it. This precedes about an hour of The Wife and I trying to retrieve the email, then calling the couple of places we think we have reservations to confirm. Okay, did I just forget to make the reservation? We booked a room we wanted, but due to the short timing and the upcoming holiday weekend, there was some extra to be paid. Guess what? As I woke up the next morning, my calendar helpfully reminded me that I had a reservation – at another hotel we didn’t even think to check. Yeah, some stupid tax was paid.
- The Unknown Shopper – The Wife and I use Instacart with our local Publix for pickup. It keeps us out of the store and those tempting impulse purchases. This week, we went to the store to pickup our groceries and both spots were filled. It would be frustrating if they were filled by folks waiting for pickup. No, it was just assholes who wanted to use the closer spots. We went in and retrieved our groceries. Which resulted in a couple of the store staff saying “Oh, this is what you look like.” Apparently, we have a bit of a reputation.
- Adventures in Garage Reorganization – Memorial Day morning was spent cleaning out and reorganizing the garage. The impetus was The Wife’s acquisition of additional storage for yarn. First thing was to take some of the decoration bins up to storage and bring back the ones for Independence Day. While we were up there, we found additional yarn that was stashed when MIL moved in some 18 months ago. While I was wrangling with shelving, The Wife and MIL set up our six-foot table and a smaller two foot table. When I looked up from moving shelving units and getting some up on risers, they had covered both tables with yarn. My first thought was “Damn, that’s a lot.” Then I remembered the reactions I get from people when I discuss ammo inventories. Um, yeah, that’s probably enough for a while. Particularly since we found an additional black tub full. While they were in the midst of sorting and classifying their yarn, I mounted a Sig Romeo to my FPC. I also mounted a spare Streamlight. Yes, they’re both on the top rail. Yes, it looks goofy. I’m going to try it out and see if it works.