World swimming’s governing body has effectively banned transgender women from competing in women’s events, starting Monday.

FINA members widely adopted a new “gender inclusion policy” on Sunday that only permits swimmers who transitioned before age 12 to compete in women’s events. The organization also proposed an “open competition category.”

— World swimming bans transgender athletes from women’s events

If you are barely getting noticed as a male swimmer you can no longer switch to “easy mode” and claim to be a woman.

Somebody got the clue and now women competing under FINA rules won’t have their dreams and awards stolen from them.

“I don’t remember ever touching that trigger on the gun so I don’t know what happened, to be honest,” Hartin, whose ex-husband is the son of billionaire Lord Michael Ashcroft, said in the interview, an excerpt of which was published by the Sun.

— Jasmine Hartin: I don’t recall ‘touching’ trigger that killed Belize top cop

Ms Hartin is the ex-daughter in law of some important person in England. Wealthy too. She shot an important cop [claiming it happened] while attempting to clear her firearm. Channeling her inner Alex she [says she] didn’t even touch the trigger. It must be a faulty firearm that magically went off at just the right moment.

I’ve had ONE negligent discharge. I was attempting to lower the hammer on a Marlin lever action with a scope and hammer extension. Live round in the chamber but pointed down range. My thumb slipped off the hammer extension and the hammer struck the firing pin causing the rifle to go off.

My normal method of lowering the hammer on a live round is to put my left thumb under the hammer, holding the hammer back with my right thumb, releasing the hammer (pulling/touching the trigger) and lowering the hammer to my left thumb then getting my thumb out of the way and continuing to lower the hammer. With the Merlin with scope I couldn’t comfortably get my left thumb into place and so “bang”.

This is why we have the four rules and why we follow them. If you think there is an exception for following the four rules rethink your position. These rules save lives. Failing to follow them might mean you are on trial for unintentional homicide.

1. All guns are always loaded. Even if they are not, treat them as if they are.
2. Never let the muzzle cover anything you are not willing to destroy.
3. Keep your finger off the trigger till your sights are on the target.
4. Identify your target, and what is behind it.

We have tweaked those rules. If I’m handed a firearm, it is loaded. If I’ve confirmed that the firearm is indeed unloaded. Then I’m willing to treat the weapon as if it is unloaded, within limits. I still won’t point it at anything I’m not willing to destroy. So I will dry fire a firearm that I’ve confirmed to my satisfaction is indeed unloaded. But it will be pointed in a safe direction when I pull the trigger.

Regardless, know the rules, follow them, be safe.

Updated to show the version of accidental/negligent discharge is her claim. I don’t know anything about this case outside of her reported claims.

One of my personal battles is dealing with teachers that are bad. I’ve said it from time to time, my wife is a teacher.

My kids went to the same school system my wife taught in. Each year my wife would evaluate which teacher was the right teacher for each of our children. And every year she would say something like “Such and Such is a bad teacher. We don’t want our kids in her class. They won’t learn anything.”

The fact is that every teacher knows who is a good teacher in their school and who is not. Teachers that can get their kids into the class rooms of the good teachers. Yet whenever I talk about evaluating teachers I get so much push back. The statement is almost always “we don’t want to judge a teacher by how their students do. That means that a good teacher can have a bad group of students and then they are judged as bad.”

I’ve been told that teaching is the only profession where there can be no objective measurements so the only way is to reward teachers by time in grade and what credentials they hold. A teacher with a Masters in Underwater Basket Weaving will be paid more than a teacher with a Bachelors in Math minoring in Education.

The best way I’ve found so far is to evaluate students based on their progression over the time in a teachers class. Thus a student that has a 25 point improvement over the course of the year tells you something about that student. If that student had a 30 point improvement last year and a 35 point improvement next year, that might indicate that this teacher isn’t as good as the other two.

The thing is, that you can track this. If there is a teacher that consistently gets 35 point improvement for every student in their class but other teachers are only getting 25 points per student, this is a strong indication that this teacher is the better teacher.

It turns out that this does work. And it works regardless of the quality of the student. This is because we know the student. A student that normally does 15 points but for this one teacher they get 25 points and then back to 15 points, there is a reason for it. And it it turns out the one teacher consistently gets more points per student, reward her. If instead there is that teacher that consistently gets less out of their students, then it is time to let that student go.

Standards-based grading is a way of determining how a student is progressing. It helps grade teachers as well as the student.

Standards-based grading (SBG) is an intentional way for teachers to track their students’ progress and achievements while focusing on helping students learn and reach their highest potential. It is based on students showing signs of mastery or understanding various lessons and skills. In fact, many districts across the country have embraced the idea for decades. Standards-based grading is a way to view student progress based on proficiency levels for identified standards rather than relying on a holistic representation as the sole measure of achievement—or what Marzano and Heflebower called an “omnibus grade.”
—Standards-Based Grading: What To Know for the 2021-2022 School Year

Our kids are on standards-based grading. They have to reach “competency” on every assignment before it counts. If they don’t achieve competency then they have to re-learn the lesson and do more assignments, often with instructor help, until they do reach competency.

This means that a student doesn’t move forward in their lessons until such time as they have the foundation for future lessons.

A few years ago the daughter of a family friend was over and they talked about how much trouble she was having in math at school. She was doing all sorts of things, extra credit, extra instructions with the teacher, making sure she participated in classroom discussions. A huge effort on her part. And she was just squeaking by. She wasn’t actually learning anything, but the teacher saw the effort she was putting in and was giving her a passing grade.

In given my friend’s daughter daughter a passing grade the teacher was making next years class that much more difficult.

I like math, I didn’t understand why she was having such issues so I connected her with MobyMath which became MobyMax. This program did the standards-based assessments and discovered why she was having problems with math. She didn’t know how to do division. She could do simple division but she never mastered, gained competency in division which meant no working knowledge of long division that meant…

Her single gap in knowledge from elementary school doomed her in high school math classes.

The board also discussed the practice of standards-based grading in the district. According to the district’s website, standards-based grading is different from traditional grading because instead of averaging a student’s scores across the term, a standards-based grading system “measures a student’s mastery of content standards by assessing their most recent and consistent level of performance.”

…

Trustee Tracey Pearson said there have been instances where students who have put in consistent effort throughout the term are earning the same “number” as “students who are not putting in as much effort.” This affects student morale and motivation, and causes stress for parents, she said.

—Idaho Press: Standards-based grading, challenge books discussed at Nampa School Board meeting

And there it is. Standards-based grades are unacceptable because some kids have to put in more effort. It hurts morale. So let’s go back to the old system, where a student can get a passing grade for showing up and “putting in an effort.”

In education “putting in the effort” isn’t the goal, the goal is, or should be, learning the material.

So many parents today are more concerned about how hard something is rather than what is accomplished. They want their child to get the “participation award” grade.

Poor little Billy is working on homework 4 hours every night after he comes home, there is too much homework and it isn’t fair. Billy needs time to relax and have fun!

If your school system uses standards-based grading, support them. Don’t let grades become participation awards. If you are a parent, try and attend at least a couple of school board meetings every school year. It makes a difference. Don’t be afraid to step up and ask questions or make a statement.

I’ve fought my weight my entire life. Even when I was healthy I thought I was fat. I look back at pictures of me when I knew I was so fat and cringe. I wish I had that body again.

I am currently fat. It affects me in many ways. I’ve been fat for about 10 years now. I know exactly the moment when I lost my war with my weight.

The day my wife moved in. She had an abusive childhood with many fad diets and many that were for all intents, starvation diets. And when her mother would finally give in and give my wife, as a child, food, it was a sign of love.

For my wife, food is love, love is food. If she isn’t putting food in front of you, she isn’t showing love. Last night she was trying to shovel food on to my teenage son’s plate. He said “no”. She had to show her love and the best way for her to show her love is to put more food on his plate.

A lunch for me would be a sandwich. If my wife fixes us lunch it will be two sandwiches and a side and…

She feels love when she bakes. So she bakes and then I have to fight my sugar cravings all day and for the next few days.

She was the teacher that brought home every left over cake and cupcake. Because she couldn’t let it go to waste. So instead it went to my waist. I’d throw cakes and cookies and all sorts of things out and still more would show up.

I lost my war with food because my opponent was my wife’s love for me.

It was a slow grinding war. I was exercising daily. I was the guy that parked at the far end of the parking lot to get a little extra walking in. I always took the stairs.

When I started my own company working from home, my walk to the office went from 1/2 mile each way to 20 steps. And my weight went up. The gym membership failed when the panic started and when my doctor said I had to stop using the treadmill.

But Miguel’s story and looking at the need to be prepared beyond having skills and tools meant I had to find the discipline.

So I have my exercise bike. I get on that damn thing 5 times a week. And that’s hard. My wife says all the wrong things to motivate. She can’t give me my 30 minutes in the morning without having some demand for attention. I have to tell her to be quiet, which hurts her and I don’t want to hurt her.

I bought “salad” plates and use them for my dinner plates. They are much smaller, closer in size to the size of 50’s dinner plates. It means that my helping sizes have gone down. It means that my wife sees a full plate when there is one sandwich and small side, so she can still be giving me love.

I’m down nearly 20 pounds from my peak of 4 months ago. The discipline of eating less and exercising more.

I’ve got enough stamina that I can actually do other physical things that makes it still easier to lose weight. It is a war won battle by battle.

If you are overweight, no call it what it is, if you are fat there are things you can do to start losing weight. Then have the discipline to keep doing it.

This is our rule for commenting. For the most part our readers have followed this rule very well. There are very few times when we’ve had to remove a comment or worse still, ban a commenter.

Shortly we are going to a membership model. Commenting is a membership feature.

If you are a member, you will be able to comment. The “Don’t be a dick rule” will still be in effect.

So there are somethings that are obviously dick moves:

• Doxing somebody.
• Threatening somebody
• Verbally attacking somebody
• Implicitly or explicitly suggesting that we, as a group, will act in violence

For those that don’t know, doxing is the act of giving out contact information on somebody. This does not mean public contact points for politicians or other public people. I.e. it is ok to give the phone number for the Senate office of a Senator. It is not ok to give the private cell number or home number of that same Senator. Don’t be a dick.

It doesn’t matter if you hate that person, don’t make threats. Even jokingly. “I’m going to X such and such” is a dick move. It doesn’t really matter what “X” is. Don’t make threats.

We don’t all march to the same drummer. That is one of the wonderful things about this community. That means that we have disagreements. When we are disagreeing it is ok to attack an opinion, it is not ok to attack the person. “If you think that water is wet you are an idiot” is a dick move. Don’t do it.

If the only way you can counter an argument is by calling the person making the argument names, you’ve lost the argument. Stop now, don’t be a dick.

Implicitly or explicitly suggesting that we, as a group will act in violence is making a statement that can be read as a threat. “Well she’s going to be room temperature soon.”, “They better make sure their fire insurance is up-to-date”. The first isn’t a direct threat, it is a statement that somebody is going to kill her. The second isn’t a direct threat, it is a statement that somebody is going to burn something down.” Implying that we, as a group, are going to react to somebody’s past action is a dick move. Don’t do it.

The quote is: If we were as violent as the left thinks we are, there wouldn’t be any left.

When somebody within our community, or somebody posing as being within our community makes threats of violence it just looks bad. Don’t be a dick. Don’t do it.

These are examples. They are not a list of “don’t do this.” There is only one rule “Don’t be a dick”. We are not going to play wack-a-mole with somebody playing rules games. We don’t promise a warning. If someone violates the rule, admin will do what they feel is appropriate.

This post is a direct result of one commenter implicitly suggesting that we, as a group, were going to commit arson and murder. They were given warning for the first. This serves as their second warning. They will be banned if they violate the commenting rule again.

-Signed: GFZ Admins

Via the Holland Sentinel: Letters to the Editor: How can GOP candidates ask for our support when they don’t accept truth?

We all live in our bubbles. Information bubbles where we hear what we expect to hear and anything outside of our expectations can be ignored.

My Lady does Tarot readings and she has multiple decks she uses. She’s pretty good at it. But she says I’m better at it than she is, even though I’ve never done a Tarot reading. What she does is what is called a “cold reading”. She says something and looks for a response in the person she is reading for. Those subtle body hints are then used to create a more and more accurate telling of what the person is looking to hear.

In the end the person that got the reading walks away, amazed at how accurate the reading was. They then look forward to the predictions coming true. That prediction that good fortunate will come her way takes six months but when it does, she looks back in amazement that my Lady was able to predict the good fortune.

This works because the predictions that don’t come true are forgotten. The one that did come true is remembered.

When we live in our bubbles we lose sight of what is outside and can easily ignore it.

For the conservative side our bubble isn’t very tight. There are just too many places where we are forced to see the opinions of others. It is forced on us at every step.

We KNOW that there are huge numbers of people that are sure that Trump tried to over throw the 2020 election. We can’t escape it. We know that there are large numbers of people that believe that there was no cheating during the 2020 election. There is no belief we hold that we aren’t aware that there are all those on the other side that believe differently.

Even if all we did was read GFZ and watched Fox News we would still be exposed to other opinions and points of view.

Those on the left can exist in a bubble that is so strong that they have never had to even hear our opinions. If they have, they have heard the straw man version. The version where their sources tell them what our sources said, did or believe. Without ever given the actual words or actions.

At the top of this article is the link to this persons actual words. You can go read them for yourself. You don’t have to trust me.

I inquired as to what this was trying to convey, and he said that due to the Biden Administration’s irresponsible spending we were currently experiencing sky-high gas prices. I patiently explained to him that — no, the current administration, or any administration, is not responsible for gas prices. Oil is an international commodity, and is susceptible to the vagaries of the global economy.

I am growing impatient with this cheap, disingenuous and wrong-headed spin Republicans are using to criticize the Biden Administration. This is a lazy way to get Republican voters to the polls, and it’s actually disrespectful to the electorate for assuming that the voters are dumb enough to fall for this. The price of gas has very, very little to do with any administration.

This is a person speaking from inside their bubble. I don’t know Annie Sterken of Holland, MI. I can make some good guesses. I am willing to bet that three years ago when the Democrats were screaming about high gas prices and blaming Trump, she was blaming Trump.

She goes on to tell use that the price of gas is driven by the price of crude oil and that the administration doesn’t have control over the price of crude oil. That it is world wide pricing and as such the current administration can’t really effect it.

She blames inflation on all sorts of things, none of which has anything to do with what the current administration has done.

This is the bubble that the left lives in. It is a bubble so strong that they can hold four conflicting opinions at the same time and not see anything wrong with any of the four. They can do this because they will take each of those four opinions and only look at it in isolation. With the very next opinion, they will totally ignore what they said just minutes before.

The recent Scott Adam’s meme shows exactly this: “According to CNN, America is the kind of country in which the citizens will bring loaded firearms to any sort of occasion except for attempted overthrows of their own government.”

Annie goes on to say “We are now experiencing a very strong economic recovery, and economic growth also has a strong impact on oil consumption.”

She’s correct about economic growth having a strong impact on oil consumption, but we aren’t in a strong economic recovery. Article after article in all media talks about how inflation is here to stay and that it will get worse. The tea leaves certainly indicate that there are going to be food shortages soon.

The problem is that you can’t reach people that live in this sort of bubble. Any indicator or fact you use to show the administration’s policies are causing economic hardship and inflation will be met with denial and blame shifting. It doesn’t matter what opinion they have, no fact counter to their opinion makes it through the filter of their bubble. You can see the same thing from Senator Warren. Every bit of inflation is caused by greedy corporations and the only fix is for her to have more control over those corporations.

Do your best to talk to people. Remember they live in a bubble and they think you are the one with no outside the bubble view. There is a short video from Last Man Standing that fits this completely. Ryan is helping Eve(?) study for a debate. He has to present both sides of an opinion. For the liberal side he does a good job, as he is a liberal. When it came time to represent the conservative side, he put forth a one line straw man.

In the show, Ryan, much like Annie, had no way of seeing the conservative point of view in any way while knowing they completely understood conservatives.

The 1934 Supreme Court case of Miller challenged the NFA on constitutional grounds. There was nobody representing Miller’s side and the government lied, stating that there was no military use for a shotgun, much less a short barreled shotgun and since the second amendment was about a well regulated militia, no military purpose meant that the short barreled shotgun was not protected by the second amendment.

And the court so ruled. Under Miller, any “military style” or “military weapon” is a protected arm under the second amendment.

Unfortunately, the lower courts took one part of the opinion and used it to make the second amendment about collective rights. The reason we didn’t have another supreme court case until Heller was because nobody was ever given any standing to file a case.

“Banning modern sporting rifles is against the plan language of the second amendment!” “The second amendment is so that the state can have a militia. “Since there is an exception for national guard, military and law enforcement the states right is not infringed and since you are not the militia you have no standing.”

The amazing thing about Heller isn’t that we got the win, it was that the case made it to the supreme court at all.

Heller acknowledge that the second amendment was an individual right.

Since Heller the gun infringers have been scrambling to find ways around the second amendment. The current method is to use the tiered scrutiny methodology. With this, the lower courts have been able to say “Well yes, this is an infringement but it is actually constitutional because the government says they have a compelling reason for the infringement.”

Which takes us to today. We are waiting for the Supreme Court to issue its opinion on New York State Rifle & Pistol Association, Inc v. Kevin P. Bruen as Superintendent of New York State Police.

We are expecting an opinion at any time now. It is likely that Justice Thomas will be writing the opinion. This comes from court watchers that count the number of opinions each justice writes per term. Justice Thomas hasn’t written one yet so he is likely to be the primary author.

If the opinion is not very limited in scope then it is likely to have a wide ranging effect on many court rulings and current gun rights infringements. It could easily strike down all “may issue” licensing laws. It could mark make FOID requirements unconstitutional. I pray that we get a great opinion from the court.

It looks like the gun infringers are also reading the same tea leaves the same way. The second amendment might get a huge win.

That means that they infringers need some other way to stop citizens from owning firearms.

We know the games they play and for the most part it comes down to making firearm ownership or shooting too expensive for the common man.

• A 1000% tax on all evil firearms
• A 100% tax on all ammunition.
• Require special and expensive insurance of all firearm owners
• Require expensive storage requirements
• Require registrations

All of these exist to make it more expensive to own or use a firearm. We’ve all heard of the limited number of rounds per time period. I’m sorry but 50 rounds per month isn’t enough for a single range day. I expect to put at least 100 rounds down range everytime I visit the range.

I once lived in a state where I was required to keep my firearms in one location in my home, unloaded and locked and the ammunition in another location in my home, also locked. And that state defined a loaded magazine as a loaded firearm.

In order to make a firearm ready as the animals are breaking in you would have to unlock the firearm, take it to the ammunition storage area, unlock the ammunition, load a magazine and then load and make ready. Oh, I think they also considered stripper clips with cartridges in them to be “loaded firearms”

There are no silencers from the 1930s and 1940s because nobody was going to pay a $200 tax just to have a muffler.

In the end they will use whatever tricks and cheats they need to continue to infringe. We are making progress. We are winning. But sometimes it is so painful.

Via WPRI: ‘It’s devastating’: RI gun dealer reacts to high-capacity magazine ban

Jeff Goyette was in the process of opening a gun store in Portsmouth RI when the legislature passed three gun infringement bills. One raises the age to legally purchase a firearm from 18 to 21. The second was to ban the open carry of a loaded rifle or shotgun in public (No, this doesn’t mean while hunting). The third, a standard capacity magazine ban, was stopped in committee.

The bill was then pulled from committee to the floor where it passed. It is expected that the Governor will sign the bill.

But for Jeff, all of that just means he is likely going to lose his business.

Goyette is in the process of opening a new retail store in Portsmouth.

“I’ve got my life invested in this shop right now, and I haven’t even finished it,” he said.

Now, the ban on high-capacity magazines has stopped him in his tracks.

“This is hurting the law-abiding citizens, and it’s killing the dealers in this state,” Goyette said.

Via HH475 in the comments to The AR-15 has Ruined, RUINED I Tell You, America

I own a couple of AR style weapons. The author gets one thing right, though he doesn’t say it outright. The “problem” with ARs is not their lethality, their ammo, their rate of fire, the size of their magazines, etc. The problem with the AR is that owning it is a political statement. There is no real task that an AR is “best” at, really. For hunting, I prefer a .308 or .30-30. For plinking and varmints, I prefer my M1 carbine or a .22. For self-defense, I own shotguns and pistols. Oh, sure, there are plenty of folk who like to tweak their ARs with fancy addons, etc. and that’s a fine hobby. But most people don’t, in my experience. It’s a convenient weapon that isn’t all that good at any one thing, but isn’t all that bad at any one thing..

But really, I own ARs to piss gun grabbers off, because they are *symbolic* of gun rights. Gun grabbers hate ARs because they are symbols of gun ownership for the sake of gun ownership. I own ARs *because I can* and because it pisses people like Ryan Busse off. No more, no less. And it drives them crazy not because it’s such a horrible weapon, but because it’s the gun that says “screw you” to gun grabbers. It’s unapologetic gun ownership without the “excuse” of hunting, home defense, etc. And that kind of liberty enrages them.

I agree with HH475, owning an AR-15 is a political statement. There are few other firearms that attract as much hate as the AR-15 platform.

We fight the argument with descriptions of what an AR-15 is or is not. How it uses a wimpy round. It is only semi-auto. It is or is not this or that. And we lose because it is an emotional argument that we can’t win with facts.

As a political statement, it is incredibly powerful.

I will give you one place where the AR-15 platform does something almost none of my other firearms do. It gives my wife a platform she can use well. She doesn’t have the hand strength to cycle any semi-auto pistol outside of the .22. She would be able to handle the loading of any of the revolvers but she just doesn’t have the wrist strength to hold one up and no speed on reloading.

On the other hand, she can slap a magazine into the AR, drop the bolt or pull the charging handle with no problems.

The day she shot her AR-15 for the first time just caused her to light up. After spending 10 minutes trying to get a group tighter than 6 or 7 inches with the .22 pistol she picked up the AR and put 10 rounds in a 2 inch group. Yes, it was close. Pistol close. I don’t give a damn. It is the first time she looked at me and said “I can do this”

She now has the ability to defend herself and her family.

Via CNN: Man who carried Confederate flag in US Capitol and son found guilty of felonies

Stop staring at those gas prices!!! Look over here!!! January 6th!!! No, stop looking at your grocery budget! JANUARY 6th!

A man and his son found GUILTY of felonies!!! No, don’t look at your savings account, January 6th I tell you!!!

The man who was captured parading through the US Capitol with a large Confederate flag during the January 6, 2021 riot, was – along with his son – found guilty by a federal judge on Wednesday of obstructing an official proceeding, a felony.

That’s right folks, FELONIES!

What, only one per person? Still they’re felonies!

And they had a large Confederate flag! Felonies! Stop looking at your paycheck, it doesn’t really matter if you are deciding on food for you or food for your car. January 6th!

What did they actually pled guilty of, you might ask? They went into the building and wondered around for a bit, they got “close” to the Senate chambers. But because the Senate fled they were accused and pled guilty of obstructing an official proceeding. Were they actually guilty of this felony or were they beat down from spending a year plus in jail?

According to Wikipedia there have only been a few cases of obstructing an official proceeding and they were things like a crime family obstructing a grand jury investigation, a teacher that tipped off some drug dealers they were under investigation.

This is the sort of charge that gets tacked on to a long list of crimes.

Mr Smith, you have been found guilty of four counts of intentional homicide, three counts of forceful rape, 17 counts assault with a deadly weapon and one count of cruelty to animals.

Yep, horrible that he kicked that dog on his way to rape and murder.

When you see something that fits the narrative to closely, look again. Read what is actually said. Watch what actually took place. This is true for both sides of the narrative.

The narrative right now is that Trump supporters, and by implication all of us, tried to topple the US Government. Anything that supports that narrative will get front page coverage.

At the same time we have to be careful of stories that support our narrative. Just why were they in this location after dark? Animal Attacks.. or How to truly stop crime in Detroit. why was this person attacked? Why did he leave his home?

Is there more to the story?