Miggy nailed it, again. This was a church shooting, not a school shooting.
If I recall correctly, many or most Catholic churches are anti-gun and mark their churches as “gun-free zones.”
This may or may not have the force of law.
But if you have a school attached to the church, then you are suddenly covered under the gun-free schools regulations.
Favorite Anti-Gunner Stupid of the Day
The mayor of the city where the shooting took place got on national TV to explain that guns are bad.
In one paragraph he told us, “Don’t paint all trans as evil because of this incident; the problem is all gun owners who refuse…”
It really was one single breath.
Network Stuff
I know you guys are tired of this. Yesterday I got my virtual network put back together. I finally found the magic document that told me what to do where.
The really cool thing is that once I had that magic, it was trivial to copy it to the different nodes to bring them into the “cloud.”
Ironic
This is a component of OpenStack. It is the tool I was expecting to use to get my network functional again. I haven’t figured it out yet.
The issue is that Ironic is too much. It requires a Baseboard Management Controller (BMC). A BMC is an embedded computer and OS in a server. You connect the BMC to a network, generally referred to as the management network, to gain access to the server hardware.
From the BMC, you can change BIOS settings, initiate power down and reset functions, and access the hardware for configuration purposes. Some even include KVM capabilities.
This is such a useful feature that most “real” servers come with them. Ironic has a couple of dozen drivers designed to work with them.
What it doesn’t have is any way to work with a computer without a BMC. There is an SNMP driver, but it is just for UPSs. I might play with it to get new boxes provisioned.
Maybe somebody has a fake IPMI implementation that runs under the actual OS.
Ceph is up?
I have 3 nodes that are not back up, plus the one node that was taken out of service. I’ll work on those two nodes today, but I also have to do honey-do jobs.
Question of the Week
This latest church shooting feels different. I can find the shooter’s name, but his name isn’t being dropped every other breath by news people.
Normally we are so cowed that we just “offer thoughts and prayers.” but this time we are still praying for those that were killed and injured as well as for those emotionally hurt by the shooter. Parents and such. The difference is that when there is that push for gun bans, there has been pushback at higher levels.
It also feels like we are getting more support from the top of the political party.
Does this terroristic act feel the same as the last shootings?
Another deranged asshole killed children at a school. 2 dead, 17 wounded. Nationwide headlines. The blood vultures leap to blame me for a shooting that took place more than a 1000 miles awy.
Over the last month, I’ve been dealing with somebody who has not kept up with the technology he is using. It shows. I like to learn new things.
For the last two years I’ve been working with two major technologies. Ceph and Open Virtual Networks. Ceph I feel I have a working handle on. Right now my Ceph cluster is down because of network issues, which I did to myself. OVN is another issue entirely.
A group of people smarter than I looked at networking and decided that instead of doing table lookups and then making decisions based on tables, they would create a language for manipulating the flow of packets, called “OpenFlow.”
This language could be implemented on hardware, creating very fast network devices. Since OpenFlow is a language, you can write routing functions as well as switching functions into the flows. You can also use it to create virtual devices.
The two types of virtual devices are “bridges” and “ports.” Ports are attached to bridges. OpenFlow processes a packet received on a port, called ingress, to move the packet to the egress port. There is lots going on in the process, but that is the gist.
The process isn’t impossible to do manually, but it isn’t simple, and it isn’t easy to visualize.
OVN adds virtual devices to the mix, allowing for simpler definitions and more familiar operations.
With OVN you create switches, routers, and ports. A port is created on a switch or router, then attached to something else. That something else can be virtual machines, physical machines, or the other side of a switch-router pair.
This is handled in the Northbound (NB) database. You modify the NB DB, which is then translated into a more robust flow language, which is stored in the Southbound (SB) database. This is done with the “ovn-north” process. This process keeps the two databases in sync with each other. Modifications to the NB DB are propagated into the SB DB and vice versa.
All of this does nothing for your actual networking. It is trivial to build all of this and have it “work.”
The thing that has to happen is that the SB database has to connect to the OpenvSwitch (OVS) database. This is accomplished via ovn-controller.
When you introduce changes to the OVS database, they are propagated into the SB database. In the same way, changes to the SB database cause changes to the OVS database.
When the OVS database is modified, new OpenFlow programs are created, changing the processing of packets.
To centralize the process, you can add the address of a remote OVN database server to the OVS database. The OVN processes read this and self-configure. From the configuration, they can talk to the remote database to create the proper OVS changes.
I had this working until one of the OVN control nodes took a dump. It took a dump for reasons, most of which revolved around my stupidity.
Because the cluster is designed to be self-healing and resilient, I had not noticed when two of the three OVN database servers stopped doing their thing. When I took that last node down, my configuration was stopped.
I could bring it back to life, but I’m not sure whether it is worth the time.
Now here’s the thing: everything I just explained comes from two or three very out-of-date web pages that haven’t been updated in many years. They were written to others with some understanding of the OVS/OVN systems. And they make assumptions and simplifications.
The rest of the information comes from digging things out of OpenStack’s networking component, Neutron.
I have a choice: I can continue down the path I am currently using, or I can learn OpenStack.
I choose to learn OpenStack.
First, it is powerful. With great power comes an even greater chance to mess things up. There are configuration files that are hundreds of lines long.
There are four components that I think I understand. The identity manager, Keystone. This is where you create and store user credentials and roles. The next is the storage component, Glance. This is where your disk images and volumes are accessed. Then there is the compute component, named Nova, which handles building and configuring virtual machines. Finally there is the networking component, called neutron.
For the simple things, I actually feel like I have it mostly working.
But the big thing is to get OVN working across my Ceph nodes. That hasn’t happened.
So for today, I’ll dig and dig some more, until I’m good at this.
The reports are that this is a 14 year old girl in Scotland. As you can clearly see, she is brandishing a knife and a hatchet. Both of which she is prohibited from having.
This is just another example of how the youth of the UK are becoming more and more violent. We need to make an example of them.
On August 23, 2025, at around 7:40 p.m., Police Scotland received a report of a female youth with a bladed weapon in St Ann Lane, Lochee, Dundee. Officers responded to the scene, located just off Coupar Angus Road in the west of the city.
A 14-year-old girl was identified and charged in connection with possessing the bladed weapon. Police vehicles were observed at the nearby Balgay Street car park during the investigation.
The girl was reported to the relevant authorities, with no further details on the nature of the weapon or specific charges disclosed. No injuries were reported during the incident.
The event was noted in the context of Scotland’s ongoing concerns about youth violence, as highlighted by the Daily Record’s “Our Kids … Our Future” campaign. The case remains under review, with no court date specified as of August 25, 2025.
Maybe there is more to this story?
Such as the girl in the picture was defending her 12 year old friend who had just been assaulted by a foreign invader. That she was afraid of being assaulted herself. That there were more foreign invaders moving toward her.
BREAKING – Police have arrested and charged a 14-year-old girl after she was forced to brandish a knife to defend herself and her friend against a migrant who attempted to assault her near St Ann’s Lane in Dundee, Scotland. pic.twitter.com/odBjzIZugA
— Right Angle News Network (@Rightanglenews) August 25, 2025
If you have watched the video, you can hear that evil invader taunting her to show the knife. He knows that if he reports her for having the knife, she will be arrested.
Nothing will happen to him.
This video clip might be the start of something good for the UK.
This case is being set up for a bases loaded home run.
Consider the Second Amendment legal landscape of 4 years ago. Heller had set the standard. Is the plain text of the Second Amendment implicated? If so, what is this Nation’s historical tradition of firearm regulation?
This was a joyful time. I remember that D.C. became a constitutional carry location for about 5 minutes before they changed the rules.
The problem we had was that there was a footnote in the Heller opinion that the anti-gunners used to pry open the path to gun control.
California was one of the first states to drive through that gap. Chicago, Maryland, New Jersey, and others quickly followed.
These Heller response laws were challenged. The cases made their way up to the circuit courts, where we learned the wonderful world of interest balancing.
Under interest balancing, the courts would first ask the purpose of the law or regulation. If the proposed purpose was deemed to be “important” enough, then a lower standard of scrutiny would be applied. If the proposed purpose wasn’t important enough, then higher levels of scrutiny would be applied.
What this meant was that the courts looked like they were treating the plaintiffs with respect while putting four or five thumbs on the scales of justice.
The 9th, 7th, 2nd, 3rd, and 4th circuit courts all took up the cry of “interest balancing.” The other circuits weren’t ruling on Second Amendment cases, so it didn’t really matter.
All the circuits that took up Second Amendment challenges all decided in the same way. Against The People.
Bruen put an end to levels of scrutiny. The inferior courts are still playing games. The current game playing focuses on “Is it an arm?” and “Can you prove it is in common use for self-defense?” Their goal is to keep Bruen from being applied.
But we have a problem. All the circuit courts that are ruling on Second Amendment cases are ruling the same way. Against The People. They are still the same rogue, inferior courts, thumbing their noses at the Supreme Court.
But something has changed out there in New Jersey and the Third Circuit Court of Appeals.
Trump and other originalist jurists have become a majority in the Third Circuit.
If we can get just one more confirmation, and there is a nominee going through the process right now, it will be an even larger majority.
Here is where it gets interesting: on the same day that the case was argued, the court ordered the parties to produce a transcript. Which was entered into the record on July 15th.
Why did they need a written record? Likely because they expected other courts or panels were going to want to read it.
Under the Third Circuit’s internal operating procedures, a merits panel must circulate their opinion(s) before they are published. This gives the rest of the judges on the court an opportunity to comment and provide suggestions.
But something else can happen: if a majority of the active judges are in disagreement with the proposed opinion, they can grant an en banc hearing sua sponte. (Without a request from either party). And this is what happened on August 21st.
We are pretty sure that the opinion by this three-judge merits panel was going to go against us. If the majority of the active judges agreed with that opinion, there is no reason to call for an en banc hearing.
En banc hearings in the Third Circuit are a pain. It is all the judges dealing with the one case. It isn’t common.
In Snope we saw the Fourth Circuit do the same thing; gut in that case, we were expecting a positive opinion.
Oral arguments will be held on October 15th at 0930.
The only wrinkle is that Judge Smith is no longer an active judge, but he has elected to participate as a member of the en banc panel. Smith is currently a senior judge, meaning he only hears cases of interest to him.
If the Third Circuit finds for The People and the Constitution, this will create a major circuit split. This makes the case ripe for the Supreme Court. Matching it with Kavanaugh’s dissent in refusing cert on Snope.
Because I am invested in The Fort at No. 4, I see news articles from the area. Yesterday I read a press release from School Administrative Unit 6 (SAU-6) which covers Claremont, NH.
Claremont is just up the road from the Fort so I read it.
The Business Administrator has been put on paid leave; a school board member with lots of accounting (CPA) was appointed to do the job of BA.
From my weak sources, it seems like this BA wasn’t doing a good job. There are no signed Audits since 2021. They have a budget short fall over around $5 million.
Entirely the fault of this administrator and those supervising her.
This, of course, led to the comments.
We could go into the blame game. Which comes down to Trump and “local taxes.” The local taxes are property taxes. The SAUs are funded from the local property taxes. Residents of the towns that belong to the SAU have to vote on the school budget. Occasionally the proposed budgets are not approved.
The budget for my SAU has failed twice in the past 10 years. The first time I showed up at school board meetings was to find out where the money was being spent. What I did manage to get into the record was that while the teachers salaries were not increased because of the vote, the administrator’s pay still went up.
I pushed for, and I believe they passed, a resolution that says, “If the teachers don’t get a raise, the administration doesn’t get a raise.”
The last time, the school system just overextended itself doing too much non-educational stuff.
Our SAU didn’t have anything looking like abuse of the budget; it just wasn’t restraining itself.
Claremont’s issues are entirely self-inflicted. 19 new teachers to the SAU were canned. They had already signed contracts, so those teachers are well and truly screwed.
Money not gone. Money given to rich people so poor people can hold the bag. Republicans and freestaters hate education because it unfairly shrinks their voter base. Everyone was so scared of wealth distribution they completely failed to notice it’s been happening for the last forty years. Upward.
Not sure it’s simplified enough but the history here is that the state consistently shirks it’s federal duty to provide adequate funding for public schooling. Instead it shuffles whatever money it does have into the pockets of greedy businesses like PragerU or sketchy private charter schools.
This leaves public schools to figure out how to fund themselves all over the state. Most municipalities raise their own taxes in a way to avoid the issue because they know the state will not take responsibility.
Claremont seems to have mismanaged the little funding they have as a result of confusion and lack of state support. So now they are in an emergency budgeting event resulting in the return of equipment, cancellation of new teaching contacts and supplies orders to work towards a functional shoe string budget.
All this while the state pays federal stooges from the Heritage Foundation etc. to draw out the multiple court cases NH municipalities have filed against the state for failing at its federal duties.
Republicans care more about tax cuts for the wealthy than they do for us commonfolks to have education. Less education = more republican voters who don’t know any better and get shoved into PragerU bullshit. Democrats have too weak of a spine so they roll over and play dead because our state is full of idiots who think regulation and taxes personally attack them and their entire family tree.
To sum it up – Stupid and greedy republicans. Spineless Dems. Selfish and ignorant voter base.
And this is the straw man. This person has never listened to a Republican; instead, they have built an image of a “Republican” where they put motives and evil.
If the federal tax rate was a flat 10% and you made $35,000/year, you would pay $3,500 per year in taxes. If you make $350,000/year, your taxes would be $35,000 per year. No leftist screams that going from 10% to 11% will cost the person with the larger income $3,500 more per year but it will only cost the lower earner $350 more.
But if the tax rate drops from 10% to 9%, it is a tax cut for the wealthy.
But I’m ignorant, according to Mr. achy_joints. He believes that everything that PragerU puts out is “bullshit.” Why? He can’t tell you why, but he knows it is BS.
It reminds me of the people claiming Glenn Beck was a horrible person for the things he said. This is a man who was on talk radio for multiple hours per day; he was on a national televised show once a day. With 10 years of history, every single “proof” lead back to the same 5 minute collection of things he said out of context.
Mr. achy_joints thinks that everything will benefit from more regulations more taxes. Taxes he is unlikely to be paying.
I just get sick over reading the straw man arguments. These are people that haven’t had an open mind in years.
Today I was waiting for clients to get back to me. While I waited, I started installing OpenStack.
So far it has been going well. A few typos slowed things down. Errors are not always clear, but I am now at the point of installing neutron
This is the scary part. The terrifying part.
Neutron interfaces with Open Virtual Networking (OVN). This could be magical, or it could break everything.
OVN sits on top of Open vSwitch, providing configuration.
The gist is that you install OVS, then you add configuration options to the OVS database. This configuration instructs OVN how to talk to its databases.
Once OVN starts talking to its databases, it performs changes in the OVS database. Those changes affect how OVS routes packets.
The physical network is broken into subnets. This is a requirement for high-availability networking. As links go up and down, the network routes around the failures.
On the other hand, many of the tools I use prefer to be on a single network; subnets increase the complexity greatly. Because of this, I created overlay networks. One for block storage, one for compute nodes, and one for virtual machines.
Neutron could modify the OVN or OVS that brings my overlay networks down.
So I’m well into this terrifying process, and the power goes out. It was only out for a few minutes, but that was enough.
The network came back to life.
All but two servers came back to life. One needs a BIOS change to make it come up after a power failure.
One decided that the new drive must be a boot drive, so it tried to boot from that, failed, and just stopped.
All of that put me behind in research, so nothing interesting in the 2A front to report, even though there are big things happening.
The number of moving parts in a data center is almost overwhelming.
X has been melting down over the federal government using the Constitution to take control of local law enforcement in D.C.
Wolf Blitzer stepped in it by posting a picture of a HUMVEE at Union Station. He implied it was an affront.
He got ratioed badly. There were many personal comments about how people were feeling safe to be outside at night. One woman talked about how this was the first time in years she’d been able to walk through Union Station without being verbally and sometimes physically harassed.
Another reporter visited a homeless encampment, expecting the standard anti-Trump screeching. Instead, they were told how much better it was now that the criminal element, drug users, and those in need of mental help are gone. One homeless person’s statement was to the effect, “It is the first good sleep I’ve had in months.”
Pushing Back
I do remember Ronald Reagan as our President. He was one of the most skillful orators I’ve had the pleasure to listen to. He was quick-witted and used that skill to zing the media. He did it so well that most of the media laughed at themselves for being zinged.
Trump is not as articulate. He speaks at a 6th grade level, if I recall correctly. I don’t like listening to him speak. What he does is connect with The People.
What is a greater strength is his ability to troll the media and Democrats. He trolls, whereas Reagan cast zingers.
What is most noticeable is just how hard he pushes back on the media and narrative.
What is the massive win, in my opinion, is that his administration uses the same method of pushing back. They don’t get upset with the lies and narratives; they just call it out. And many times make fun of those who have idiotic stances.
According to Reddit, I Live in a Racist State
I don’t engage on Reddit. I have more than enough on my plate as it is. Today’s joy was an “ICE” warning. The top comments all misrepresented facts. “Immigrants,” “neighbors,” “friends” were used to describe the criminal aliens that ICE was looking for.
The kicker for me: “My daily reminder of just how racist this state is.” I live in New Hampshire. There are blacks in this state. There are people of color in the state. The blacks seem to gather in the cities, as per normal. But I can’t find racists anywhere except within the black community.
But they have defined “racist” to mean anybody who doesn’t accept every third world alien that comes into our country.
For them, it is racist that people are upset about the Indian who killed a family of three by making an illegal U-turn. The Florida cops administered a simple test: English proficiency and road signs. He got 2 out of 12 right on the English portion and 1 or none of the road signs.
This monster with a CDL from California killed a family of three, and I’m racist for being upset that he entered my country illegally and was given, given, not earned, a CDL.
OpenStack
I like doing things the old-fashioned way. I like knowing what the hell is going on inside my network. Having software magically do things bothers me.
Unfortunately, none of the documentation for Open Virtual Network (OVN) talks about manually configuring OVN. It all uses OpenStack. In addition, I’ve become unhappy with my Docker Swarm solution. Since I’m not hosting anything locally anymore, it is time to “upgrade” to OpenStack.
What the heck will I break? I’ll know next week.
AI Code Generation
I’ve started using Grok for code generation. There are issues, but I’m working through it.
First, Grok is not a programmer. It is a piece of software that does a particular task. You have to spend the time to define the task.
In this particular case, I’m interested in creating network maps in a cleaner way. Grok gave me that starting point.
No matter how smart it appears, it is stupid. My latest example is that there is an input field for interfaces. There is a example prompt, provided by Grok.
That example prompt leaves out an entire part of the syntax using a different set of symbols.
This reminds me of the discussion about secretaries back when word processors became a thing.
The director of the lab and the directors of the lab divisions all had secretaries. The secretaries did most of the writing. They typed out letters to be sent by snail mail, and they often wrote the email sent over their boss’s signature.
When word processors came out, the directors were expected to write their correspondence. The result was substandard grammar and English. Not because these guys were dumb, but because their skillset didn’t include touch typing at 80 WPM and all the rest that a secretary brings to the mix.
Can the average person use AI to write programs? Maybe. In a year, yes.
Will it be good? No.
Just like we went from having electrical engineering to computer science to information technology, I expect to see classes in creating AI prompts showing up in colleges in the next couple of years.
Until AI makes the next leap, it will take real programmers, coders, and systems people to create fully functional software.
On the plus side, Grok has shown me several patterns that I’m copying.
What Happens When You Use 78% of Your 100 TB of storage?
Alarms start going off. I had a Ceph node die on me. I have the parts to replace it. I haven’t had the time nor incentives to do so.
The nice part was that I was able to physically move most of the drives to different nodes. This led to the great rebalancing.
Ceph uses a layout called a “CRUSH tree” or “CRUSH map.” The idea is to define a set of rules for how data blocks should be distributed to different drives (OSDs).
Ceph provides resilience with two methods: one is via redundancy, and the other is by error codes.
Using redundancy, you specify how many copies of each block of data you want. Three is the smallest safe number. This means that every byte written is duplicated twice. When you retrieve the block, it is pulled from the “closest” node.
A redundancy of 3 means three copies. With error codes, the cost is better. Something closer to 1.6 instead of 3 at the expense of more work calculating the error codes.
If you had all 3 copies of the block on the same drive, if that drive (OSD) fails, you’ve lost that block of data. The CRUSH map tells Ceph how to protect duplicate blocks from single points of failure.
In the simplist configuration, you do OSD isolation. No two copies of the same block are ever stored on the same OSD.
You can expand this to the node/host. You can make the same rule that no one host can hold two copies of the same block.
My CRUSH configuration is attempting data closet isolation. No two copies of the same block can exist in the same data closet.
If I had moved the physical drives to a host in the same data closet, then some rebalancing would happen. I moved the drives to hosts in different closets.
Ceph then proceeded to rebalance 70 TB. Which is why networks had to be reworked. I managed to eliminate most of the bottlenecks.
Unfortunately, it also meant that I had OSDs and Placement Groups go “near full,” slowing down the rebalancing. More drives to the rescue.
Question of the week?
For years, if a Democrat or leftist started yapping about this or that, regurgitating CNN talking points, I kept my mouth shut and just moved on.
Except if it was gun-related, then I spoke up.
Today, I’m much more likely to speak up. To attempt to bring facts and logic to the discussion. I no longer sit silently for their lies.
Do you feel it is safer to speak up about your political stance today?
The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.
— U.S. Const. amend. IV.
This is where your right to privacy is protected. This protects you from needing to “show your papers.” There is no place in the United States that I know where you are required to have “your papers.”
If you choose to drive on public roads, if you are stopped for cause, you can be required to identify yourself. Driving on private land? No need for ID.
If you choose to enter a secured, private location, you can be required to show identification. For example, entering a military post/base.
So what happens if the cops show up at your doorstep and “demand” to see ID?
The first thing you need to do is realize that what you hear as a demand might not legally be a demand or order.
Police officers are trained to ask questions in such a way as to give the impression that they are ordering you to do something when they are not authorized to make that demand or give that order. “What’s your name?” is just a question. Under the Fifth Amendment, you are not required to answer that question.
You are not required to answer questions. You can choose to answer questions.
“Hello, we got a report of shots being fired. Were you shooting?” You are not required to answer. It doesn’t matter what they say until they make that magic statement, “You are required to answer.” If they do say you are required to answer, they might end up in a lawsuit.
Here is another magic one: “Do you have ID?” Many people will automatically reach for their ID when they hear this question, even though the cop didn’t even ask to see it. You assumed they took advantage of you.
When I’m presenting to 4th and 5th grade-aged children, I will sometimes ask, “Can I have your name?” or “Will you give me your name?”
When they say their name, I will thank them and then say, “My name is now *the name they gave*. What should we call you?” Many (most) get it. It one of my ways of teaching to listen to the question that is actually asked.
Can A Cop Walk Onto Your Property
The answer is a qualified “yes.” If they have a warrant to search the location, then they absolutely can enter. If they have a warrant to arrest somebody, they can enter under limitations, which I don’t remember. Lacking a warrant, they can only enter as far as the public is allowed.
This means that they can drive into your driveway, park, get out, knock on your door, and ask you questions.
On the other hand, if there is a gate or some other indicator with proper signage to stop the public, then they must stop there as well. They can park in front of your gate and yell at you, but they can’t enter without your permission.
If you are sitting on your doorstep smoking a cigar, they can come up to talk to you. In some areas, Ally says D.C. is one, your doorsteps are considered part of the “public space,” and there are regulations forbidding smoking or drinking in public.
Because you are breaking the law by smoking in a public space, the cops now have a reasonable articulable suspicion of a crime being committed. This broadens their authority to ask questions.
The regulations I found for D.C. indicate that failure to identify yourself is not an arrestable crime. It is a crime, but it cannot be used to justify an arrest nor to escalate the level of suspicion the cop has. I.e. If he suspects you of doing bad things, your refusing to identify yourself cannot be used to justify his suspicion of you doing bad things.
Consentual Contact
If you walk into the police station and ask to talk to a police officer, you are initiating a consensual contact. You are free to end that contact at any time and walk away. Likewise, It is possible that your talking to the police officer has moved this from you having a consensual contact to you being detained.
Consider the situation where a child has gone missing. The police request help from the public. You saw something suspicious, and you called the tip line. A day or so later you get a call from the detectives asking you to come in to speak with them. You do so.
While you are talking to them, you say something that confirms their suspicions that you are the person that done did it. They are not required to tell you when that happens. They are free to let you keep babbling.
You get tired of their stupid questions and accusations, stand, and ask, “Am I free to go?” If the answer is no, you are being detained. If the detention lasts more than a reasonable time, that detention turns into an arrest.
If the cops flashing lights are on behind you when you are pulled over, you are detained. If you are in handcuffs, you are detained. There are times when you should know you are detained even if the cops haven’t told you.
Reasonable articulable suspicion
Reasonable suspicion is a legal standard used to determine if the cops can legally search you.
If an officer stops someone to search them, the courts require that the officer have either a search warrant, probable cause to search, or a reasonable suspicion to search.
Reasonable articulable suspicion is the legal standard that empowers cops to conduct an investigation without a warrant.
This is a balancing act. We are balancing the need of the authorities to perform their police work with the Fourth and Fifth Amendment protections of The People. Without the power to investigate suspicious behavior, cops would not be able to deal with crimes in progress.
Consider the following: the cops are driving by, they hear shots fired, and they see a man wearing a ski mask exit the bank with a gun in his hand and a heavy bag in the other.
If the cops have a reasonable suspicion that this person has just committed a crime. They can articulate that suspicion.
Now consider this version: a call has gone out that the bank two blocks over has just been robbed. The cops see a man running down the road. He’s wearing a ski mask in 90-degree heat. They still have reasonable suspicion.
Or this: The call of a bank robbery has gone out. The cops see a black man walking down the sidewalk. That is not reasonable suspicion.
Once law enforcement has that reasonable suspicion, they can investigate. The articulable requirement means that they have to be able to put that suspicion into words. If they can’t put it into words, it is not good enough.
Police Investigations
If the police are talking to you, they are likely doing an investigation. Anything you say can be held against you in a court of law.
The cops walk up to you as you sit in your front yard; they are investigating something. If they do not have that reasonable suspicion, they can ask questions in an attempt to gain reasonable suspicion.
Consider this scenario: you are driving 60 mph in a 45 mph zone. The flashing blue and whites come on and you pull over. The very polite officer walks up and asks, “Do you know how fast you were going?”
You respond, “I was doing 50 or so.”
You have just admitted to the crime of speeding. The officer now has all the justification needed to continue his investigation.
“Do you know why I pulled you over?” Same thing. You don’t have to answer the question.
They walk up to you in your lawn chair, “How are you doing, sir?” “What’s going on?”
These are questions designed to elicit a response. They hope that the response will lead their investigation someplace. “Did you know smoking in a public space is prohibited?”
Answer that one, and you are answering mens rea questions.
In general, don’t answer questions. Furthermore, don’t be me; don’t be an asshole.
There is a social experiment where an employer goes to his employees and hands them each a bonus. Jim gets $500, Bill gets $500, Jill gets $500, and Karen gets $400.
Everybody is talking about how wonderful the boss is for giving them bonuses. Karen is delighted, and so are Jim, Bill, and Jill.
A few days go by, and Karen finds out that Jill got $500 and she only got $400.
Now, a good person says, “Thank you , boss; I wasn’t expecting a bonus.” A normal person might then sulk about not getting the extra $100.
Unfortunately, the most common response was for Karen to bitch to her boss and the world that she got cheated out of $100. She deserved it just as much as the others.
She loses sight of the extra $400 in her pocket and instead focuses on what she didn’t get.
The bosses are unlikely to give out bonuses in the future. Or everybody is going to get the same amount. That amount will be lower.
The actual experiment used amounts ranging from around $100 to around $10,000.
This experiment was done at a place where I was employed. We were all handed envelopes with cash in them as bonuses at the same time. We were told that the amounts might not be the same. We were told not to share how much we got.
When I had seen the amount, I went to my boss and said, “Thank you very much.” After I did, the rest did the same.
Of all the employees, only one, V, tried to find out what the others got. He is the same guy who demanded a pay raise when he found out how rich our boss was.
He was envious of what others got. He lost sight of what he had received and was more focused on what he had not gotten or might not have gotten.
As I said, my boss was wealthy. I was able to listen as he explained to the person selling him a new airplane that he didn’t give a flying f. If the plane wasn’t finished with its repaint and new interior and at the local airport by the end of the week, he was going to cancel.
Canceling would have cost him around $150,000. But he would rather cancel than put up with more shit.
Did my boss being able to buy million-dollar (or more) planes keep me from buying a plane or getting flying lessons? No. Did his owning multiple cars keep me from owning the car I wanted? No. Did his owning and flying a helicopter keep me from owning and flying a helicopter? Absolutely not.
As a matter of fact, him being wealthy allowed me to buy my machine shop. If he had not been wealthy, then I would not have had a job that allowed me to purchase that shop. My boss didn’t own a Bridgeport, South Bend, and all the rest. Was he jealous of me?
Our economy is not a fixed pie. There isn’t a fixed amount of wealth. You can always add to the wealth of our economy and make something and profit from what you make or provide.
Last weekend, the Indian encamped next to Ally was frying up venison steak on a soapstone griddle. It looked incredible, and according to Ally, smelled even better. I wish I could have eaten some of that venison. I love venison.
I could have been envious; instead, I am looking forward to harvesting a deer or two this season.
Why do people feel envious? Because they feel they are not getting what others are.
When wealthy, spoiled man-children descended on Wall Street demanding that they be raised up to the wealth of the traders of Wall Street, they looked like petulant children.
They were complaining about the “1%.” They were part of the “0.1%.”
Americans are the wealthiest people in the world. There are people that live below the poverty line in America who are wealthier than 99% of the rest of the world.
But those spoiled children were more focused on what they didn’t have rather than what they did have. Tweeting about how downtrodden they were from their $1000 cell phones while sipping $10 coffees from Starbucks.
Somebody was talking about the Ponzi scheme that is Social Security. As it was set up, the goal was to never pay out any money.
Retirement age was set to where the government expected most to be dead. Or to only live for a few more years.
My parents lived decades past retirement age.
So the young of today are paying into social security money that goes right back out the door to pay the people who already paid in.
I’ve been watching the market recently. I invested the money they inherited from my parents into money market funds. Both children have earned nearly $3k this summer from that money.
If the money the government took from me during my youth had gone into an investment, rather than lending it to the government, then that investment would measure in the millions, and the interest would easily support me.
That’s correct. The social security fund is only allowed to invest in “special” government bonds, treasury bonds. The “reason” for this is that treasury bonds are “guaranteed” a fixed rate of return.
The problem is that treasury bonds are how the government borrows money. If the government borrows $100 from SS, it promises to pay back $143 in 10 years. The same $100 invested at 4.31% APR compounded monthly over 10 years returns a total of $153.
SS is a scam at all levels. My money went to pay for my parents and grandparents generations. My parents went to their parents.
You might be unhappy that your money is going to pay for the current generation of SS users. I’m part of you in that.
Regardless, when one of these children looks at me and says, “You own a house, you have wealth, you have passive income, you shouldn’t get Social Security,” they are showing their envy and greed.
I have paid into SS my entire working life. My very first paycheck had SS taken out. As a self-employed person, I pay double what you do because I pay for both my personal portion as well as the employer’s portion.
A couple of years ago, I was visiting a friend, and they were telling me about how hard it was to find a house. They then proceeded to tell me how awful it was that this person they knew had purchased a plot of land to keep it from being developed.
Ok, that’s an opinion. If I could buy land around me, I would, because I love to hunt and I love the forest near my home.
But my friend went on. He started complaining about how this person was talking about how much he spent for this plot of land and why he did it. Specifically to stop development. He then says, “He was so clueless. He knew I was looking for a house. He knew how tight things are for me right now. Damn it, just read the fucking room.”
I waited for him to wind down. It took a while, and there were other conversations.
We were standing in a garage with two cars and multiple heavy duty gun safes. His wife was with her car; his truck and sports car were in the driveway. He had been complaining about only having a little left over after paying rent. Yet, his wife and kids were on their second vacation of the year.
I looked him in the eye and said, “What a way to read the room. I’m driving a 12-year-old truck I bought used. I struggle to pay our heating bill in the winter. Often choosing to buck fallen trees and split them by hand. You spend more on your vacations, while I haven’t had a vacation in 15 years. Yet you didn’t even notice.”
“You didn’t notice because my wealth and income aren’t what define me. What defines me is my family and my passions, not envy.”
