Explainer

Are we living in a bubble?

It is impossible to live in a bubble of conservative ideas and views. The left agenda is everywhere.

If you watch the news, even “conservative” Fox News, you’ll hear sops thrown to the left. If you watch network TV or streaming video, you’ll be exposed to the left’s viewpoint. It is impossible to avoid.

You can see this in bias reports on the net. How many extreme left-wing news outlets are there? They are nearly impossible to find, but extreme right? Those are listed for sites that are not. When the scale is -5 to 5 and there are no 5s listed, there is something wrong.

I know that I can argue from a leftist’s perspective. I’ve been exposed to it so often that it is just part of the social zeitgeist.

You don’t need to be exposed to more of that left-wing babble; I’m positive you can do it yourself. You’re not stupid. You have access to that zeitgeist the same as I.

What I’m not willing to expose myself to is what the left is saying in their spaces. I am unable to understand how they can have the opinions they do. I can see what they are doing, I can analyze it, and I can even duplicate it. I don’t understand them.

Ally has been providing me with a glimpse into their world for years. I still don’t understand them because frequently it makes no sense to me. “How can they believe something so obviously false?” “Don’t they know that it will fail and bad things will happen?” “Why don’t they see the consequences of their actions?”

You can duplicate it, but can you understand it?

So I would ask Ally to explain. Boy, my skull is thick. She will spend hours explaining something to me, and I just don’t get it. Then it will turn out to be some simple message or phrase that had a different meaning to her than to me.

The example we use between us is our abortion arguments. In particular, the phrase “late-term abortion”.

For me, this invokes the images of babies that could survive out of the womb being ripped apart, murdered, for the sake of the woman’s wishes.

Because Ally spent so much time in Canada in her youth, she had a different definition. The definition instilled in her from that culture, one that implied a much earlier date. This led to many arguments until we reached an understanding.

It is important to note that Ally’s impression of the laws does not match my research into those laws but in no way invalidates her feelings about what the law was.

I had to open my ears and listen. And that is difficult.

When I asked Ally to start writing for GunFreeZone.net and later the Vine, I told her that she was writing articles “From Behind Enemy Lines.”

What this meant to me was that I wanted her to tell me what she was hearing on her liberal feeds, what she heard in person from the liberals she interacted with, and what she was feeling as a thinking yet left leaning person.

I missed.

There was something more critical than just reporting the facts on the ground. She was reporting how those facts were influencing the left.

The Felon!

I’ll take a subject that is not controversial for her and me. Trump has 34 felony counts.

This is true. I don’t know anybody on our side of the line that gives a damn about it because it was a kangaroo court where the verdict was predetermined and the facts and laws modified to get that result.

State law was changed and manipulated to charge Trump. This is unconstitutional.
No Bill of Attainder or ex post facto Law shall be passed. — U.S. Const. art. I, § 9, cl. 3 [PDF], No State shall enter into any Treaty, Alliance, or Confederation; grant Letters of Marque and Reprisal; coin Money; emit Bills of Credit; make any Thing but gold and silver Coin a Tender in Payment of Debts; pass any Bill of Attainder, ex post facto Law, or Law impairing the Obligation of Contracts, or grant any Title of Nobility. — U.S. Const. art. I, § 10, cl. 1
[PDF]

What New York State did was to change the law to extend the statute of limitations and then proceed to turn a misdemeanor into a felony. Moreover, each count was for Trump’s signature. Sign a check, make a notation in his checkbook register, and that’s two counts. Paying the bill over multiple months, each month, two more counts.

So it doesn’t mean anything to us. It was a crime invented to charge Trump so that he could be stopped from becoming President a second time.

But how does a leftist view this? They don’t care. They hear, they believe, and they know he is a criminal. More importantly, they know that no criminal should ever be allowed to be the President.

He is called “the felon” by many on the left because this is part of their belief system. And if you don’t see it the way they do, then you are deranged.

Ally is here to provide that link, that grounding, that glimpse into their delusions.

FAFO?

When I first read Trump’s posts regarding the traitorous six, I heard him accuse them of a crime and provide the maximum penalty for that crime.

I heard it as a reaction to those despicable, vile, disgusting worms that were inciting rebellion in the ranks.

He never said, he never implied, and he doesn’t even say he wants them executed. He stated the maximum penalty.

It doesn’t matter how true everything I just wrote is. It doesn’t matter what his actual intentions were or what he actually does.

To the left, the only thing that matters is what they hear. And they heard him threaten to execute those six putrid tapeworms.

That is what Ally heard. Reality doesn’t matter. That is what was heard; that is what they react to.

If you don’t know and understand that reaction, then you can’t interact with those that do.

What they hear is what they remember

A principal once accused me of threatening her with physical violence over the phrase “jump down your throat”. It was never a physical threat; the phrase has always meant verbal arguments, often loud arguments. She heard a threat. She reacted as if it was a threat. It doesn’t matter the reality.

I learned this lesson the hard way many years ago. I was talking to a girl and had set up a date with her. When I arrived at the bar to pick her up for our date, she was hanging out with some friends of ours telling a story. I listened, participated, and waited for her to get done. When she got done, I asked if she was ready to go. She said no; she had decided she didn’t want to go. I told her I was disappointed in her. In her making a promise and then changing her mind at the last minute.

That simple statement, “disappointed in her”, was devastating for her. She had been abused by her mother, and one of the mental abuses her mother would heap on her was about how disappointing she was.

It didn’t matter how gentle I thought the wording was; all that mattered in our communications was what she heard.

Listen to what she says

So when Ally writes something from behind enemy lines, she is showing us what the left is saying but, more importantly, what they feel and believe.

I’m glad for her additions to The Vine of Liberty.

My mentor was one of the fathers of the Internet. He was responsible for one of the most commonly used network test tools ever ping.

He was a subject matter expert in dozens of different areas; networking was just one of them.

After he died in a car accident, I moved into other areas, programming and learning new things. I quickly learned to ask people what terms and acronyms actually meant. The reason? Often I would know the thing they were referring to, but not that particular term.

This made me look like an ass. They would be talking about “jargon,” and I would be lost. They would explain what the jargon term meant, and I would suddenly be an expert. It wasn’t sudden; I just didn’t know what they were referring to to begin with.

The education industry is the worst for this. They change their terminology almost every year. This is very frustrating.

There is an entire set of students that cannot function in English. They don’t speak it, they can’t read or write it, and they don’t understand spoken English.

In other words, they are children of immigrants, both legal and illegal, with no English skills. This requires entire cadres of teachers to deal wtih.

The term I first heard for these students was “They had English deficiencies.” Of course they were functionally illiterate in English.

Then the term changed; they were children with “English as a Second Language”. This rapidly morphed into “ESL” students.

I teach ESL to friends in Brazil via Google Hangouts. There is no shame in not being literate in English if you live in a country where English isn’t the primary langauge.

I recently heard a teacher describe his school as being 1/3rd ESS. Huh?

Translation: ESS is the replacement for ESL. This is the education industry’s politically correct way to say “students who are functionally illiterate in English”. A third of the student population. Ouch.

Over time I’ve watched the term “pupil” morph to “student.” It still felt the same to me. The concept is one of a person learning from a teacher. A teacher is responsible for teaching pupils and students.

They changed the term again. The new term is “learners”.

This is a horrible term. Not all children are learners. Not all children are self motivated to learn. Learning is a skill we teach and we hope our children learn.

If a learner fails, the teacher is no longer the obvious responsible person.

I am so tired of trying to figure out what the term de jure is.

Words and phrases have particular meanings. These meanings are steeped in history and tradition. Over time, those definitions might change, but words have meaning.

The meaning of words morphs either naturally or intentionally. They also mean different things based on different cultures.

In England, a “fag” is a cigarette. In the United States, it is a male homosexual.

When I was a kid, we used a phrase, “I’m so angry I could jump down your throat!” Or, quoting from the Cambridge Dictionary, “I made the mildest of criticisms and he jumped down my throat.”

I was having a very frustrating conversation with my son’s principal. I some point I said, “I’m so frustrated I’m having a hard time not jumping down your throat.” At the end of the conversation, as I was leaving, she asked why I didn’t become a teacher and invited me to become one.

I left feeling good.

The next day I was told I was not allowed on school property because I had threatened to physically harm her.

She didn’t want to hear what the phrase meant. She didn’t care that she had not felt threatened at the time. Instead, after the fact she decided it was a threat.

Opening Our Minds

When we are listening, we need to understand and accept the meaning of the words as the person speaking intends them. To do otherwise is to act in poor faith.

When I am talking about criminal aliens, or illegal aliens, it means exactly what the law says it means. It means a person who is not a citizen of the country and who is here without permission of the government.

It does not mean all immigrants or migrants. It means exactly what the definition says it means.

If you hear somebody say, “We should deport illegal aliens,” it is highly unlikely they are talking about legal immigrants. Yes, there are some people who want legal immigrants gone. That is a different issue.

It is worse when we hear spokespeople conflating these terms intentionally. Normally they begin by claiming to know the motive of the speaker. Having decided on the motive of the speaker, they then tell you how to interpret the phrase, twisting the intended meaning of the word or phrase.

Again, I grew up in an age where proper English used male pronouns to indicate both male and female when speaking of a group. I’ve gotten used to the newfangled method of using “they” and “them” instead, but I slip from time to time.

When I slip, does this mean I’m excluding women? No. It just means I’m using proper English from my childhood.

This includes things like “postman”, “mailman”, “policeman”, “fireman”, and hundreds of other terms of the sort. It is not exclusionary, nor is it denying that there are female letter carriers. These are just the original terms.

Phopic

“Agoraphobic”, “arachnophobic”, “hydrophobic”, and “acrophobic” are all fears. Fear of open spaces, fear of spiders, fear of water, and fear of heights.

My daughter has said I’m “transphobic”. I asked her, “Have I ever exhibited fear of a trans person?”

“No.”

“Then why are you saying I’m afraid of trans people? That is what “phobic” means.”

“Yeah, that’s what ‘phobic’ means, but ‘transphobic’ doesn’t mean fear of trans people.”

The word was intentionally picked to suggest that anybody having a disagreement regarding anything trans related is actual acting out of fear of trans people.

It doesn’t matter what they say the term means; people know that “phobic” means “scared of.”

Unregistered Firearm

Uh, there is no such thing.

While TV shows talk about firearm registrations and people owning registered firearms, the reality is that there is no federal requirement to register your firearms.

An “unregistered firearm” just means a gun that nobody was forced to tell the government about. Some states require firearm registration. Some states require that the firearm that you carry on your person be registered with your permit.

These are the exceptions to the law.

A recent news story about a New Hampshire man sueing his former high school administration for breaking into his vehicle and searching it because he had told a friend he owned a firearm mentions that “He had a registered firearm”.

There is no such thing in New Hampshire. There is no way to register your firearm with the government in New Hampshire.

Mostly Peaceful Protest

Between 2003 and 2012, The March for Life in Washington, D.C. drew crowds exceeding 400,000 people. I’ve heard reports as high as 1.2 million for some of the 2020s.

Between 1987, the first march, and today, there have been zero or nearly zero violent actions by the protesters.

What reports of violence can be found seem to be from counterprotesters doing violent things to the people of the march.

Any protest that erupts into violence or mob-like actions is not peaceful. It isn’t even mostly peaceful.

I’ve strayed; some of these are more akin to lying than misusing words.

Look for the least offensive definition

When you open your mind, you should be able to read or hear the words and decide which definition to use. Don’t leap to the worst possible definition, or to an obscure definition; work to understand what is being said and communicate.

How to listen

Before we can learn, we need to have an open mind. A mind ready to learn new things. To unlearn old things. To ask questions and evaluate answers.

If we are not willing to question what we think we know, or if we are starting from a set stance, we do not have an open mind.

Having an open mind does not mean a willingness to accept garbage, but it does require us to ask if it is garbage.

Holocaust Denial

Years ago I ran into Holocaust denial for the first time. It was shocking to me because I knew what happened to the Jews and other undesirables during WWII by the Nazis.

How could somebody deny that it happened?

So I asked a simple question: How do I know it happened?

The answer was that my elders told me so. These were my teachers and my history books.

Could they all be wrong?

This was in the early days of the Internet, so it was a little more difficult, but I found a couple of sites documenting why the Holocaust was fake and a few others that were debunking the deniers.

I compared these sites, and the first thing I noticed was citations to external, primary sources. The deniers made many claims, but there were not very many links to back those claims up. On the other hand, the debunkers’ site was full of references to primary sources.

When I did look at the primary sources, I found that my personal evaluation of that evidence matched what the debunkers were saying.

The deniers told me that all those sources were lying to me. But I could see the images. I could examine the images for altercations and to see if they were faked. I didn’t find anything in the primary sources or the debunker sites that even suggested altercations or fabrications.

This was not true of the denier’s site. Their primary sources did not support their conclusions.

The other thing that I quickly spotted was a comparison between ethical, reasonable, modern actions vs. wartime evil operations.

For example, they claimed that the trains could not transport that many people. But they based that on human treatment of the people stuffed into the cars. There was no indication of such human treatment. Those being transported to the extermination camps were stuffed into those cars with no room to move.

There are multiple accounts of people standing next to dead people who couldn’t fall to the ground. They were held up by the crush of humanity around them.

Finally, the deniers made a claim that a sample they stole proved that the levels of cyanide in the showers were not high enough to cause death in humans. Except that the sample they stole had been exposed to the elements for over 50 years. The values they used for LD50 were appropriate for insects, not humans.

After my research, I had personally determined that the Holocaust did take place and the deniers were sacks of shit for attempting to deny something so evil.

Before I could make that determination, I had to open my mind to the possibility.

Lies

People lie. You can’t escape it. As thinking humans, we are pretty good at detecting people who are lying to us. But that only works when dealing with average people.

We have all chuckled at the videos of children lying about something when they are covered in the cake frosting of their misdeed. A child will flat out deny they ate the cake while covered in frosting.

They have not learned the guile of how to lie.

This is the simplest type of lie: to simply say something not true. “Did you eat the cake?” “No, Mommy!”

Most people move past this method rather quickly.

The next place that people go is to deny knowledge or to exaggerate. “Did you eat the cake?” “What cake?” or “Just a teeny tiny piece.”

There is an entire science of lying with statistics. If you have heard something like “There as a 50% increase in murders in Small Town, year over year,” you know that something horrible is happening.

What if last year there were 2 murders and this year there are 3? That is a 50% increase. While every murder is bad, the difference between 2 and 3 murders a year is just as likely to be noise in the data.

But we can see where going from 2000 violent crimes to 3000 violent crimes in a year is bad.

Now look at a different version of this: “Over the last year there have only been 10 more murders year over year.” What they might be saying is that Small Town has gone from 2 murders per year to 12 murders per year. That might be alarming.

You have to know what to look at. Per capita? Raw numbers, percentages?

You also need to look at what the definitions are. It is impossible to compare the murder rate in the United States to the murder rate in the United Kingdom. We count different things as murder.

In the U.S., if a person is murdered, it counts as a murder. In the U.K., if a person is convicted of murdering somebody, then it is counted as murder. Until there is a conviction, the wrongful death is not classified as a murder.

There are many other ways to lie. There are two more that are worth touching on.

The first is a lie by omission. This is when a pertinent fact is left out of the fact pattern. “Today the police broke into a local man’s house, arresting him after he had an altercation with his neighbor [where he threatened to kill him while brandishing a firearm].”

The bracketed text changes the entire gist of the story. Both versions are true, but in one case it sounds like the police arrested that local man for something minor, breaking down his door to do so. When the more complete version is there, it sounds like the police are acting reasonably to protect the community.

The final method we’ll touch on is lying by telling the truth. If you can tell the absolute truth in such a way that nobody believes you, then you have succeeded in lying, if that was your intent.

Short Quote

By selectively quoting a person, you can change the meaning of what is said, or at the very least, the conotations.

Consider the following quote: “I did not have sexual relations with that woman.” Now consider the following quote:

I did … sexual relations with that woman.

By omitting two words, “not have”, the entire meaning of the quote has changed. While we did not change any of his words, we have changed the meaning of his statement.

Or this made up newscast:

Again, the quote is correct, but the meaning is twisted.

When you read an article that has short quotes in it, it is best to assume that the meaning of the original statement is being manipulated. Find the original and listen to the statement in context.

Example

The following is a partial transcription of the attached video.

The First Amendment declares:

This is our protection from the state for religion, speech, distributing speech, gathering, and demanding changes from the state when the state harms us.

This is what the First Amendment to our Constitution says. We interpreted it first by looking at the plain text of the amendment, as it was understood in 1791. While the 14th Amendment incorporated the entire Constitution as amended for all states, the meaning of the First Amendment is fixed to 1791.

The language of the 14th Amendment was fixed in the 1860s, when it was ratified.

Once we determine if the plain text of the Constitution is implicated, the state bears the burden of proving that the current regulation, law, or action is supported by this Nation’s historical traditions of regulations.

While an exact match is not required, the regulation must match the what, how, and why of our Nation’s traditional regulations.

The first thing we note is that it is a restriction on Congress, the government, not the people. The 14th Amendment means that it is also a restriction on all local and state governments. It does not apply to people or companies.

This means that your employer can create a rule that says you cannot post anything about the company. They might have a rule that says you are always a representative of the company and that you must show good moral character.

The First Amendment has nothing to do with any rules your employer makes. There might be other laws or regulations that apply, but not your First Amendment protected rights.

While the common vernacular is “Freedom of Speech”, this phrase does not appear in the Constitution. Instead, it commands the government to not create a state religion nor to stop people from practicing their religion.

One of the things that the left yells is, “No right is absolute!” This is true. We have other protected rights; we have the right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. — U.S. Declaration of Independence

When there is a conflict between “life” and “religion,” the courts have found that the right to life supersedes the right to practice your religion as you wish. This is why we have freedom of religion, but human sacrifice is illegal. There are other crimes that are not protected by freedom of religion as well.

In general, the process is called “levels of scrutiny.” This is the process where the court first determines how much a regulation interferes with your protected right; based on that level, the court applies Strict, Intermediate, or Rational scrutiny.

Each level of scrutiny has a corresponding burden that the government must meet to justify that interference.

It is the same when we look at the freedom of speech, …abridging the freedom of speech…. We look at the meaning of “abridged” in 1791 to understand. We look to regulations on people’s speech in 1791 to find what are and are not allowed abridgements of speech.

While the left uses, “You can’t shout fire in a crowded theater.” This is not true. It is a lie.

It was stated as part of dicta by Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr., in Schenck v. United States, 1919. He then spent much of his later career trying to reverse this horrible opinion.

We know it is a lie because you most certainly are allowed to shout “fire” if the theater is on fire. Or if there is a legal need to move people to an exit.

After Charlie was murdered, many people went on social media to express themselves. Some were grieving, and their pain came through. Others celebrated his death. Still others expressed their desire for others to be murdered, as Charlie was.

All of these statements are covered by the plain text of the First Amendment. As were the statements that a man cannot become a woman and that abortion is evil.

These are all examples of speech. They all fall within the plain text of the First Amendment.

We add one more example: people sharing these posts with others, including employers.

First, there are laws regulating speech. In particular, credible threats of violence are illegal. See 18 U.S.C. § 875 for example. §875 covers threats sent through interstate communications, such as X or Facebook.

But, people are being fired for what they said. Their speech is protected; that can’t be legal?

It is legal. You were allowed to speak freely when you said those vile, evil, disgusting things. You still have the freedom to speak as you whine about being fired. Your freedom of speech has not been abridged.

Here is the thing: we have the right to assemble peacefully. There is an ancillary right that has been put into case law, and that is the right to not assemble. In the same way that the state is forbidden from stopping you from associating with others, they can’t force you to associate with people.

Your employer has the right to not associate with you.

In addition, it is highly likely that your employment contract includes phrases that say you can’t harm the company’s reputation.

You might argue that this means that a company can fire somebody for being a “Nazi.”

You would be wrong. In general, you can’t be fired for your political beliefs. The left fought this battle and won.

While you can’t be fired for being a communist, you can be fired for disrupting the workplace. You can’t be fired for organizing; you can be fired for not showing up for work.

You can’t be fired for having conservative beliefs, and you can’t be fired because someone accuses you of being a Nazi or racist or a white supremacist.

So to all those whining leftists out there, upset that they were fired, you don’t have legal grounds to get your job back. Learn to code.

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.

The People got a shitty draw of judges for the merits panel. Not that surprising. We expected another loss. Judges Shwartz, Freeman, and Smith heard oral arguments on July 1st 4-2450-24-2506_Association of NJ Rifle Pistol Clubs v. Attorney General N. Jetal.

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.

When I started to babysit Cray Supercomputers it was just another step. Massive mainframe handling many users, doing many things.

But I quickly learned that there are ways of making “supercomputers” that don’t require massive mainframes. My mentor used to say, “Raytracing is embarrassingly parallel.”

What was meant by that is that every ray fired is completely independent of every other ray fired. His adjunct program rrt was able to distribute work across 1000s of different compute nodes.

We were constantly attempting to improve our ability to throw more compute power at any problem we were encountering. It was always about combining more and more nodes to create more and more powerful compute centers.

Which moved the bottleneck. We went from being CPU starved to being memory starved to being network starved. So we added more network bandwidth until it all balanced out again. Until we bottlenecked on networks again.

After his passing, I did work with a company that supported multiple large corporations.

I was introduced to VMware. A virtualization framework.

Instead of taking “small” computers and joining them together to create larger computers, we were taking “medium” computers and breaking them into small virtual devices.

What is a virtual device

A virtual device is nominally a network interface, a virtual disk drive, or a compute instance.

To create a virtual computer (instance), you tell your vm manager to create a virtual drive, attach it to a virtual computer, attach a virtual DVD drive, allocate a virtual network interface, and boot.

The virtual drive can be a physical drive on the host computer. It can be a partition on a physical drive, it can be a file on the host computer, or it can be a network-attached drive.

If you attach from the host computer, you can only move the drive to other instances on the same computer.

If you attach a network-attached drive, you can only move the drive to other instances with access to the network-attached drive.

I use libvirt for my virtual manager. If I expect the instance to stay on the same host, I use a file on the host computer. That is easy.

If I need to be able to migrate the virtual computer to different machines, I’ll use a Ceph Raw Block Device or a file on a shared filesystem.

What are the cons of using a virtual machine

It can be slower than a physical device. It doesn’t have to be, but sometimes it is.

While you can oversubscribe CPUs, you can’t oversubscribe memory. Memory is always an issue with virtual machines.

When the network isn’t fast enough, network-attached drives will feel slower.

And the big one: if the Network Attached Storage (NAS) fails, all instances depending on the NAS will also fail. Which is why I use Ceph. Ceph can survive multiple drive or node failures.

Another big con: if a host computer fails, it will cause all virtual computers running on that host to also fail.

What are the pros of using a virtual machine

It is trivial to provision virtual machines. There is an entire framework OpenStack that does exactly this. Using OpenStack you can provision an instance with just a few simple commands.

You can migrate an instance from one host computer to another. Even if the disk drive is located on the host computer, it is possible to move the contents of that drive to another host computer.

If you are using a NAS, you can attach a virtual drive to an instance, work on it with that instance, then detach that virtual drive and attach it to a different instance. This means you don’t have to use over the wire data moves.

You can also increase the size of a virtual drive, and the instance can take advantage of more disk space without having to be rebooted or any downtime.

Besides increasing the size, we can attach new drives.

This means that storage management is much easier.

Virtual Networks

The host computer lives on one or more physical networks. The instances can be bridged onto that physical network.

The instance can also be protected behind a Network Address Translation (NAT) service. This gives complete outbound connectivity but requires extra configuration for inbound.

But an instance can be placed within a Virtual Private Cloud (VPC). A VPC provides the complete internet IP space to the instance (or instances).

This means that user A can have their instances on 192.168.100.x and user B can have their instances on 192.168.100.x with out collisions.

None of user A’s traffic appears in user B’s VPC.

VPCs can be connected to share with gateways. When this is done, all the VPCs must use non-overlapping subnets.

In other words, 192.168.100.1 on user A’s VPC cannot communicate with an instance on user B’s VPC at address 192.168.100.55.

But if user A agrees to use 192.169.100.x and user B agrees to use 192.168.99.x then the VPCs can be connected with a (virtual) router.

Using a VPC means that the user must use a gateway to talk to any other VPC or physical network. This places a NAT service in the gateway.

A physical address is assigned to the gateway, which forwards all traffic to one or more VPC IPs.

Conclusion

While every infrastructure manager (network manager) needs to know their VM Manager. They all work in similar ways. If you know the basics, the rest is just a matter of finding the correct button or command.

This stuff is easy once the infrastructure is set up.

In part 1, I showed how the 2011 congressional districts for Maryland were designed to stop Republicans from winning elections. The 2025 congressional districts look better, but I don’t know.

Watch this video to learn how it is nearly impossible for a human to evaluate if a districting is good or bad or how badly biased it might be.

In addition, you have to define what it means to be “biased.” Does it mean that if your general election shows an R 30%, a D 60%, and Other of 10% that you should have a 30/60/10 distribution of representatives?

What happens when you have a large city that is nearly 100% Democrat while the rest of the state is nearly 100% Republican? Does that one city get more representation because of its larger population?

These are all policy decisions. And I’m not in a position to say what the correct answer should be:

First, a huge shoutout to CourtListener.com. These guys are doing an impressive job of exposing the inner workings of the legal system.

They haven’t hit the state-level courts yet, but at the federal level, they really can’t be beat.

They are a part of the Free Law Project. FLP has managed to get contracts and access to many court filings. They have created software to scrub court filings and collect them in one place. They have created a good search engine that just works.

Recently they announced a new feature: voice-to-text transcription of circuit court oral arguments.

In general, it is much faster for me to read a transcript than to listen to it. Plus, knowing who is speaking makes a difference in understanding what is happening.

With this new feature, I expect to be paying more attention to oral arguments at the appellate level.

I am biased towards them; I contributed a small bit of coding a while ago. They have just gotten better since I found them.

Supreme Court Terms

The Supreme Court term runs from July 1st to July 1st. The old term ends on June 30th, and the new term starts on July 1st with the court starting business in October.

In practical terms, this means that the case numbers change on July 1st. We are now seeing cases with a “25-” prefix, indicating the case was filed in the 2025 term. We won’t see anything really happen until October.

During a term, motions are filed on the docket and the emergency docket. These motions request certain actions of the court. The one we are most familiar with is a motion for a writ of certiorari.

Normally these are filed on the main docket. If a stay or injunction is requested, that will normally be done through the emergency docket.

Occasionally a motion for a stay or injunction will turn into a motion for a writ of certiorari.

Over the course of the term, the Court will hear oral arguments on 60 to 70 cases. These cases encompass all areas of law. Constitutional issues, business law, property law, criminal law, and all the other areas that I don’t know anything about.

The case that overturned Chevron was an administrative case. It just happened to be incredibly important to dismantling the administrative state.

Because of the breadth of types of cases, SCOTUS does not like to take on repetitive cases nor too many cases in the same area. They would rather pick one to three cases that address issues significant to the Nation.

We can expect two or three Second Amendment cases to be heard in a term. The cases chosen will address large issues that advance jurisprudence in Second Amendment law.

Will there be an assault weapons ban case? At this point, I believe the court has indicated that it will not. The refusal to grant cert to Snope (Bianchi) is a strong indicator.

Snope has been an ongoing case since 2017. It was one of the cases looking for cert before cert was granted in Bruen.

The case was brought in the Fourth Circuit to get a favorable ruling to reverse Kolbe v. Hogan.

Bianchi made it to the Supreme Court. Was granted cert after Bruen. The opinion of the Fourth Circuit Court was vacated. The case was remanded to the Fourth Circuit for a “do-over” in light of Bruen.

Two years later, the en banc Fourth Circuit decided they had gotten it right the first time around.

A motion for cert was made to the Supreme Court. That motion was denied.

Why Didn’t The Supreme Court Take These Second Amendment Cases?

Because they are a do-over.

Bruen was a licensing case. The question asked was does the Second Amendment-protected right to keep and bear arms extend outside the home? The resounding answer was “YES!” The right to keep and bear arms does exist outside the home. All states are now must-issue states.

The rest of the opinion is dicta. In that dicta, the Court explained how to evaluate Second Amendment challenges. They stated that when there is a constitutional challenge, the first step is to determine if the plain text is implicated. If the plain text is implicated, then it becomes the government’s burden to prove a history and tradition of that type of regulation.

Note, this is for all constitutional challenges. This is the basis of originalism in jurisprudence.

Because the question asked had to do with the right to keep and bear arms outside the home, it was not a repeat of Heller. The Heller methodology was and always has been: is the plain text of the Second Amendment implicated? If yes, then the burden shifts to the government to prove a historical tradition of matching firearms regulations.

Bruen did not change that in the least. It affirmed the Heller methodology.

Heller‘s dicta talks about how to find matching historical firearm regulations. It also discusses every word of the operative clause of the Second Amendment and why the operative clause is controlling and not “well regulated militia.”

In their research into the historical laws of this Nation, the Supreme Court could not find any regulations banning firearms that were in common use. Because there are no matching regulations, there is no history nor tradition of banning firearms in common use, such as the pistols at issue in Heller.

The opinion held that the Second Amendment protects an individual right to keep and bear arms. The specific question allowed the gun-grabbers to limit that to “in the home”.

The gun haters then created a two-step shuffle where they would first decide on the level of scrutiny required to balance away any practical Second Amendment-protected rights in the anti-gun states.

Bruen extend those protections outside the home and explained that the two-step shuffle was not allowed.

So what is Snope? The question asked in Snope is can the state ban a firearm in common use?

This is the same as Heller. The observed fact that the lower courts are not applying Heller correctly does not make the case significant to The Court.

Misbehaving inferior courts can be slapped down via other means.

Types of Second Amendment Cases

I believe there are a few types of cases that are making their way up the court system that will interest The Court.

The first is “sensitive places.” While SCOTUS gave examples of “sensitive places” and examples of what were not “sensitive places”, the states have decided on their definition.

The state’s definition of sensitive place is any place they don’t want armed people.

The second type of case is a definition of “The People.” There have been several cases where 18-20 year-olds have challenged laws restricting their right to keep and bear arms. There is a clear circuit split.

This case would allow The Court to clarify that “The People” means all the people. They might choose to extend that definition to people under the age of 18 as well as legal residents of the United States.

The more important part of that decision will be the dicta. That is where The Court will, again, tell the inferior courts how to do it right.

Finally, I believe we are going to see a case on the NFA. It won’t address machine guns; it will address infringements when there is no justification.

Remember, the reason that you can’t buy a short-barreled rifle with a 4473 is because the federal government has to collect a tax on the transfer of that firearm.

All the requirements, extra background checks, fingerprinting, and chief law enforcement officer approval exist to make sure that you pay your transfer fee and that you can prove that you have paid, on demand.

And nobody is stopping you from buying a machine gun if you are willing to meet the requirements and pay your $200 tax. The closing of the NFA to new machine guns isn’t stopping you from buying existing (pre-1986) machine guns.

In a few years, we might see something challenging the right to acquire machine guns. Acquiring would include making them.

If it ever becomes possible to add new machine guns to the NFA, I can see a booming business for drill guide jigs.

Conclusion

There are big things coming from the Supreme Court in the Second Amendment area. I’m sure it will be good.

The Trump Administration has announced numbers for tariffs collected. The number is huge, something like $77 billion. Of course the panic vendors are now screaming that this means that Americans paid $77 billion in taxes. They also claim that the tariffs are causing the price of everything to skyrocket.

Let’s take the case of a lowly woodworker making a stool. The stool is made from two pieces of 2×4 by 8 ft.

Because the woodworker wants to up his game, he decides to use a different wood; he chooses Canadian maple.

A quick check on wood prices shows that hard maple is running $6 per board foot. The amount of lumber needed is 2*4*8/12 = 5.33 bf.

Or, 2*4*96 / 144 = 5.33 bf

At a cost of $6 per board foot, this means the cost of the lumber will be $32.

The woodworker uses a $25/hour labor rate. It will take him 3 hours to build the stool using hand tools and rough-cut lumber. That is $75 in labor.

There is another cost for the finish and time for finishing. We are ignoring that part of the equation. He also adds a 20% profit for the business.

Putting it all together, we get $32 for the wood, $75 for the labor, and $21.40 for profit, for a total sale price of $128.40.

Now say that there is a 25% tariff put on importing that wood from Canada. This would be $8 that needs to be paid to the US government.

From a bit of insider knowledge, I know that the $8 can be paid by the company shipping the wood, making the 25% come out of their profit. They might split the cost 50/50, or they can pass the entire cost on to the buyer, our woodworker.

Assuming our woodworker gets the entire $8 passed on to them, let’s see what that does to the cost of our stool.

$40 for the wood, $75 for labor, and $23 for profit, giving a total price for the stool of $138. With a 25% tariff on the cost of the materials, we see a $9.60 increase in the price. That is a 7.5% increase in the price of the stool.

The truth of the matter is that many products only use pennies of tariffed materials in their goods. Hershey increased the price of their chocolate recently. While the left is screaming “Tariffs!” the fact is that cocoa costs went up. The tariffs are a small part of the increase in costs.

The more value added in the US, the more the profit margin is the less impact tariffs have on your costs.

I do know people who are having a difficult time because of the tariffs. Their product uses a gizmo they import from China. That gizmo is not made in the US because there was no profit in making that gizmo here.

Until there is a US competitor for those gizmos, she is going to have to pay the tariffs on those gizmos. She has announced a very modest increase in the price of her goods to cover her increased costs. She feels miserable for doing so.

Regardless, our economy seems to be doing much better in 2025 than it was in 2024.