• I am NOT a good source of information about the HPA. I’m not even sure the “A” stands for “Act”.

    That said, repeating what I’ve read and heard from people I respect and follow:

    The HPA removes suppressors from the NFA. This means they are no longer regulated under the NFA. No tax stamps, no registering them, no “extended” background check. No need for chief law enforcement permission. That is all gone.

    The GCA would still consider them firearms and require a 4473 to purchase them.

    This means purchasing a suppressor becomes just as easy as picking up another Glock or Sig.

    State laws might (will) vary.

    If the Senate were to pull the HPA or there are not enough votes, then the HPA can go away, but there is still an amendment to reduce the cost of registering from $200 to $0.

    All the rest of the bullshit remains, but that $200 savings isn’t something to stick your nose up at.

    I’m eagerly awaiting the day when I can start experimenting with cans. Of course, there is a boat load to learn about making a suppressor, I’m not sure how a booster works.

            

  • I know I harp on about practicing all the time, but it is THAT important. I do that on a fairly regular basis, more and more so as I pick up events as an author. When I go to an event, I’m cooking over an open flame at the very least, and sometimes living on site with limited access to water, food, and shelter.

    Yes, I pack in food and water with me. If an emergency happens, friends and family are a mere phone call away. I’m in a fort that does have electricity if I need it, even if it’s a bit less than convenient to get at it. Heck, I could walk to the grocery store if I wanted; it’s a mere mile away.

    While I’m there, though, I do my best to learn more about survival and prepping skills. I learn more about how our ancestors lived, knowing nothing about dishwashers, cell phones, televisions, and print on demand books. I always approach fort weekends (or an entire week, as in this case) with a goal in mind. I want to learn something that I don’t know much about yet, or have only book knowledge of. Or I go to practice a skill I already know, but am not comfortable with yet.

    This trip, I’m working on pie crust. You might ask, why pie crust? It’s not particularly necessary, not a skill that’s high on the list of things to help you survive. On the other hand, being able to whip up a hand pie for a journey IS a handy skill. Modern me might go buy a pasty, but here at the fort, I get the opportunity to work and make my own.

    So this week is all about Cheshire Pork Pies, Tourtière, Apple Pie, and baking bread. I consider myself a subject matter expert about basic breads at this point, but I am adding something new to my skillset. This week, I’m firing up the big outdoor beehive oven. It’s large enough to bake many loaves of bread and pies, all at the same time.

    I know that the basics are just like firing up the miniature one in my cabin. But this will be production cooking. See, there’s a primitive rendezvous going on in the lower field, and I’m going to be attempting to bake bread and pies for sale. Or rather, for trade, because while money is nice, I have several things I need that I can get at the rendezvous. I look forward to enjoying morning coffee with the folks in the field, then going “shopping” among the various vendors that attend.

    After, I get to go back to my comfortable cabin with the fireplace roaring to keep the chill out. Temperatures during the day aren’t supposed to get much above 65*F, and the evenings will be in the low 40s, so having dry wood and the ability to be comfortable and warm (and dry, on the days it’s likely to rain) will be wonderful.

    What skills are you working on this summer?

            

  • NPC Talking Points

    I am old. I remember how the world came together to punish South Africa for its extreme racist behavior. After years, South Africa turned the page and recognized that blacks were people to be valued.

    I watched as South Africa seemed to be a success story. An African country that was pulled from hand to mouth substance living to a thriving country via white colonists. Those colonists built something wonderful.

    When they stepped away, the people who came after seemed to value that culture, that level of civilization. When those leaders faded away, the barbaric culture of Africa came roaring back.

    South Africa is one of the most racist countries in the world. Their racism is thinly veiled, when it is veiled at all.

    “Kill the Boar. Kill the Whites!” is a rallying call.

    Imagine what an outcry there would be if the white leaders were to yell, “Kill the N*! Kill the blacks!” ? The media would go ape shit.

    The NPCs got their marching orders rapidly this week. Trump invited the president of South Africa to attend a meeting in the White House. He sent a low level white female to meet the South African delegation at the airport. When the cameras were rolling, Trump presented the proof.

    Video of crosses representing murdered farmers. Stories and articles of white farmers being murdered. Of husbands forced to watch wives and children being raped.

    And the NPCs in unison echoed “Fake”, “False”, “Unfounded”. “Well, actually, those crosses represent blacks and whites.”

    “There is no evidence of white genocide in South Africa.”

    “Kill the Boar, Kill the Whites!” from South African leaders dancing in joy at the thought of murder.

    Murder in The Streets

    We now have one attempted murder and one successful murder by the pro-hamas terrorists.

    Two members of the Israeli embassy were murdered in Washington, DC this week.

    The NPCs are talking about how this wasn’t anti-Semitism because they weren’t actually Jews.

    One of the pro-hamas assholes went so far as to return the “rape rag” to the murder after he lost it when arrested.

    Nerd Babble, JavaScript

    One of the most difficult things for me to do is to ask for help. I will get it done, by myself. In programming, this is especially true.

    40 years ago, when I started down this path, everything you needed to know to program an Apple II was in a red 8.5×11 book, about a half-inch thick. I was able to read the complete operating system manual for the ODU mainframe over the course of a week. The slow part being the fact that the manual set was about 10 inches thick.

    When I got to University, I read the manuals for the mainframe. All of them. About 12 inches of 8.5×11.

    I read the Unix manuals, all of them, online over the course of a month. The X manuals. The MacBooks. It was just what I did.

    Today, every tool or framework I want to use has page after page of documentation, or none at all. I read code when the manuals don’t exist or are lacking.

    JavaScript has advanced to the point where it is useful in its pure form. This means that THE library, jQuery is no longer needed. Yes, it has a more concise syntax, but it really isn’t needed.

    For the website I’m building in Django, I chose to stick to pure JavaScript for the management side. This gives me the longest runway until things are no longer supported.

    Which leads me to cropperjs. The manual says this will be easy. Yeah, not so much.

    One of the most important things this tool must do is give use the results of cropping an image. That means there should be a way of getting the current cropping rectangle simply.

    Nope, it doesn’t exist. Get the canvas where it is painting. Get the working image that we are working with. Find the bounding rectangles of the two elements. The image rectangle (x, y) – the canvas rectangle (x, y) is the offset. The first and third entries in the transformation array are the x and y scaling factors.

    If you reuse the cropper, it may or may not properly position the image within the canvas.

    There isn’t an event telling you that the cropping system is stable, to allow you to make changes.

    In short, I’ve spent 20+ hours getting this to a workable point. And it is not up to my standards — yet.

    Asking for Help

    One of the frameworks I use is “Bootstrap 5.2” If I recall correctly, it was originally developed by Twitter, and then released to the world. It is a powerful formatting framework that helps you position and color your website.

    I wanted an elementary thing, two text input boxes, side by side, and small. I fought that battle for 4 hours before asking one of my students for help. He works with Bootstrap every day and is a front end programmer.

    I typed my request into our chat on Saturday. He gets the message on Sunday, down in Brazil. He tells me it was simple and took him less than 5 minutes to figure out what I was doing wrong, correct it, and give me more options.

    NFA Is Under Attack

    I’m not happy with the weak spined representatives in Congress. As far as I can tell, almost none of the savings that D.O.G.E. identified are being terminated by law.

    But something good might come out of this.

    The NFA is a tax. All the regulations regarding NFA items are justified as taxes. This makes the NFA difficult to attack via the courts.

    The $200 tax stamp was designed to remove guns from the hands of regular people. It never affected the rich. They could pay if they wanted to buy.

    But as a tax, that means that Congress can change tax law like any other tax. Change the tax rate on those making more than $1000/year? Yeah, that’s a normal part of congressional duties.

    Yet so is deciding not to tax suppressors, short barreled rifles and short barreled shotguns.

    As of Thursday night, there was an amendment in the budget to remove suppressors from the NFA. There might be an amendment to remove SBR and SBS.

    If this happens, I know that I will be purchasing a can or three and some new uppers.

    Question of the Week

    What is the most egregious example you’ve seen this week, of the media hiding realities from the sheeple?

            

  •         

  • Today is the start of a near week-long event at The Fort at No 4. I believe it is called, “The Rendezvous.” It is an 18th century reenactment event.

    Ally will be there the entire time, she fired the bake oven last night to get it ready to use today.

    This is one of those things that is/was a lost art.

    A bake oven is a brick enclosure that is part of the hearth and chimney. To use it, you heat it with a wood fire until it is “hot enough”, then you let the fire die down or transfer the fire to the hearth.

    At that point, you can put your bread or pies or whatever else you are baking in the bake oven. The residual heat from the bricks then bakes everything.

    And here is the lost art, you have to prefire the oven. If you attempt to bake the same day you fire, the oven isn’t going to work as well as it should. The reasons is simple and make perfect sense, once you know.

    In the 1700s, those bake ovens were used daily or nearly so. They were always dry, they were always a bit warm.

    Today, those ovens only get fired when we have a multi day event with people staying in the cabins. Between times, not only do the bricks cool to ambient temperature, they also absorb water. Lots of it.

    That first firing is mostly to drive the water out and to bring the entire mass of bricks to a reasonable temperature.

    Lighting

    When we arrived yesterday, the cabin was dark, by modern standards. Moving in and out of the cabin, talking to people, your eyes don’t fully adjust.

    After the last goodbyes, Ally and I sat down to eat dinner.

    We lit two taper candles.

    That was enough. The light from the windows was fading, but casting long shadows in the cabin.

    I don’t know if I could have read a printed page, but it was close.

    But here is perspective for you. When we are watching TV at night, we have two 60 watt equivalent lights running. When we are using the kitchen, even in daylight, we will have 5 60 watt equivalent lights running.

    Each light puts out around 800 lumens. A standard candle produces 13 lumens. The “moonlight” mode on my EDC flashlight is 15 lumens.

    Because we were burning beeswax candles, we were getting around 30 lumens from those two candles.

    And it made a huge difference. It felt like the cabin was alive and ready.

    My biggest issue with being at the Fort after dark is how quiet it is.

    I’m sitting at my desk. I can hear the keys clatter, I can hear the disk drives moving in my computer, the fans spinning in my computer, the sound of CPU fans in the next room, the hum of something.

    When I used to babysit the Cray X/MP, I took to wearing ear pro when I was going to be in the machine room for any length of time. I was in the machine room when we had a power outage. The sound of silence in the room hurt.

    Sometimes it feels like that at The Fort.

    I’m currently working on a new website for them. It will be much more than just a website, but it is consuming much of my time. I still have to make a 4 TPI acme nut, lead screw, cap, and handle. I’m hoping to work on that this weekend.

    I need to grind a right-hand external 4TPI acme cutter for the lead screw. This will be fun!

            

  • I’m up at the fort from today until next Wednesday, so I’m writing up some canned words for you, to tide you all over ’til I’m home again. Of course if you want to come visit me at the Fort this weekend (it’s open Friday through Monday because of the holiday), I’d be pleased to meet ya! 😉

    One of the things that has gotten to me of late is the use of clickbait titles on articles. While the Left is definitely using them for everything and anything, the Right also uses them. I find it not only annoying, but disingenuous. It leads you down a path and you really don’t know what you’re going to find at the end.

    Headlines in my current Google news feed:

    • The over-the-counter medicine scientists say may raise your dementia risk.
    • Is there a least-bad alcohol?
    • Queen Camilla welcomes a new member to the Royal Family.

    Yes, there are still some decent headlines. More and more, though, even the more standard headlines are misleading. Some are that way because they are Left leaning. As an example, the ones suggesting Vance was “waved away” by the new Pope. The actual “news” is in there, but you have to read to the bottom of the article to find it. There’s definitely no BLUF, as Chris calls it.

    All of these headlines are about exactly the same thing. They each read differently. They contradict one another. Yet the information inside them is largely the same.

    The all powerful media is using headlines to alter how people think. It’s a bit disturbing. It’s something to keep an eye on, by the by, especially in your own news feeds. Especially in your own news feeds.

            

  • We have heard, over and over again, how some scum was released back into society to do more evil.

    In my opinion, the worst of these is when a criminal alien is released into society when the authorities know he has a detainer. Why would anybody allow someone who was picked up for a crime to be released to commit more crimes when they can have them removed from the country?

    The answer is partially word games and partially legal games.

    A detainer is a warrant, of sorts. It is a warrant issued by an administrative judge, not a part of the judiciary.

    We have been taught that the police are not allowed to enter your home without a warrant. In some cases, they can’t enter your house, even if they have a warrant.

    Sanctuary cities and states have been using this to allow criminals to roam our streets freely.

    If the locals are doing their jobs correctly, they should do a search for warrants on anybody they arrest. This will pick up both judicial and administrative warrants. If warrants exist, that person should not be released until those warrants are cleared.

    In sanctuary locations, the locals have not been informing ICE when they have a criminal alien in custody.

    This means that ICE needs to look through the records of everyone who is taken into custody, searching for people with warrants. If they find a person with an outstanding warrant, they must pick them up before they are released.

    If there are only administrative warrants, ICE is restricted on what they can do.

    They cannot enter non-public locations to detain a criminal alien.

    They can arrest the criminal alien if they are in a public location. Thus, they could pick them up while they are shopping or driving around. They can detain them at work, if they have permission of the owner to enter the non-public locations, or if the criminal alien encounters them in a public location.

    In other words, a criminal alien can hide at work or home. If they leave the protection of those non-public locations, they can be detained.

    On the other hand, if they have a judicial arrest warrant, they can go into non-public locations to affect the arrest.

    That warrant allows them to enter the home or apartment of the criminal alien, if that alien is legally the homeowner or lessee. They cannot enter a third party’s dwelling with an arrest warrant.

    A judicial arrest warrant allows them the legal authority to enter some non-public areas, such as jails, prisons, and courtrooms.

    In addition, if they can get a search warrant for the criminal alien, that warrant will name the location where they can enter without permission to search for the criminal alien. If they find them, they can then arrest them with an arrest warrant.

    ICE and the rest of the feds are now getting judicial warrants as well as the administrative warrants. This allows them to arrest criminal aliens, regardless of the “sanctuary” status.

    More progress.

            

  • I have heard this song many times. I love Eartha’s voice, and her ability to tell a story.

    This is the first time I’ve seen her singing. Wow.

            

  • I wanted to make a birthday cake for my vegan friend, and that meant no milk, no butter, and no eggs. I decided to search for vegan alternatives, and came up with several awesome looking ones. As a side note, chocolate is easy to make vegan. However, I didn’t have the ingredients for most of the cakes I found. I did what I usually do, however, and I took an existing recipe and re-made it in my own image. That’s right, I am a Food Goddess! This is my lovely sweet treat: Orange Cake

    Ingredients

    • 1-1/2 cups all-purpose flour
    • 1 cup sugar
    • 1 tsp baking soda
    • 1/2 tsp salt
    • 1 tsp white vinegar
    • 5 tbsp canola or vegetable oil
    • 1-1/2 tsp orange extract
    • 1 cup orange juice

    Preheat your oven to 350*F. Line a 9×9″ pan with parchment paper, leaving an inch over each side overhanging, for easy removal.**

    In a large mixing bowl, add your dry ingredients and mix well. Form three depressions in the dry mixture. In one, add the vinegar . In the second, add the orange extract , and in the final one, add the oil. Pour the orange juice over the top and, using a whisk or wooden spoon, mix together until fully combined.

    Transfer your cake batter, which will be quite runny, to the lined baking pan. Bake for 25-30 minutes and then check. It will probably take close to 45 minutes to bake entirely, but you need to start checking every five or ten minutes after the 30 minute mark. Continue to bake until a skewer comes out clean. Remove the cake from the oven and let it cool in the pan for 10 minutes before transferring it to a wire rack to cool completely. If desired, frost the cooled cake.

    ** I used a round springform baking pan, fully lined with no-stick-sprayed parchment paper. You do have to allow the cake to cool completely before removing the parchment paper, but it works very well. I used a 9 inch diameter pan that was about 1-1/2 inches deep.

    I had frosting for this cake. We didn’t use it. We literally ate hunks of it with our hands. It was moist, sweet but not unbearably, and delicious. I would recommend removing 2 tbsp of orange juice from the cup, if you plan to frost the cake. It was so moist, if I had tried to frost it, it would have fallen apart despite having good crumb.

            

  • Justice Sotomayor used to be the least talented Justice on the Supreme Court. Ketanji Brown Jackson said, “Hold my beer!” and took that title.

    During the oral arguments, Sotomayor asked:

    So, when a new president orders that because there’s so much gun violence going on in the country and he comes in and he says, I have the right to take away the guns from everyone, then people — and he sends out the military to seize everyone’s guns — we and the courts have to sit back and wait until every named plaintiff gets — or every plaintiff whose gun is taken comes into court?
    — Transcript 24A884, Justice Sotomayor

    When a case is opened, the plaintiffs can make a motion for a temporary restraining order. This is another name for an injunction. A TRO should last no more than a couple of weeks, should maintain the status quo and should not grant final outcomes. Sorry for the poor English.

    Thus, a TRO might stay an execution. This is the current status, so no change, maintaining the status quo. This is within the normal understanding of a TRO.

    The TRO should not release the prisoner. That is a final outcome. That might be what the plaintiff is requesting, to be set free. That is what the final judgment would or would not grant.

    In some cases, the plaintiff can be ordered to provide a bond before the TRO is issued. For example, the plaintiffs want the state to payout $2 billion as part of the TRO. They can be ordered to post a $2 billion bond before the defendants are required to pay out the $2 billion.

    By the end of the TRO, the arguments for and against a preliminary injunction should be fully briefed. If there are any oral arguments to be made, those will have also been made.

    The judge will then issue a preliminary injunction/stay as the TRO lapses, or will not issue the preliminary injunction/stay, which means the TRO lapses and nothing takes it place.

    In general, TROs and Preliminary Injunctions are only granted to the parties of the case. The judge can issue a TRO blocking the execution of prisoner A, but unless prisoner B is also a party to the suit, the TRO does not apply to them.

    If the case is a class action suit, once the class is granted, then orders of the court apply to the entire class. If the parties are an organization, the injunctions might apply to all members of the organization.

    So what happens in Sotomayor’s hypothetical if there are no universal injunctions?

    First, I don’t believe that we are going to have a situation where there are no universal injunctions. I believe that Sotomayor is correct, we need to preserve that capability for the judiciary.

    What I believe would actually happen is that a true universal TRO would be issued. This would have a limited lift time.

    Blocking the deportation of TdA for two weeks is a pain, but not unbearable. Blocking the deportation of TdA for the duration of a drawn out court case is unacceptable.

    Blocking the confiscation of guns for two weeks for everybody is just as bearable.

    This would give the inferior court time to certify the class, if such was needed, and to do a proper evaluation of the request for a preliminary injunction.

    As the Supreme Court said in A.A.R.P v. Trump, the inferior courts MUST answer the merits question of the Winter factors. They cannot side step this.

    In the case of TdA, the government will win on the merits. They have been granted the authority to remove criminal aliens from the United States by the Constitution and Congress. The most that might be justified is the process might require enough time for an attorney to become involved.

    In the case of a gun confiscation, the plain text of the Second Amendment would be implicated. There is no way around that. There is no regulation in this Nation’s history of arms regulation that is analogous to an outright gun confiscation. The People are likely to win on the merits. Having a Constitutionally Protected right violated is unrepairable harm. The balance of equities lies with The People who have been harmed. Being denied your rights outweighs any state harm. The public has no interest in upholding an Unconstitutional Law or Regulation.

    For the Circuit courts that would suddenly find that the Right to Keep and Bear Arms only applies to Nerf guns would cause a nearly instant circuit split, which would get appealed to the Supreme Court.

    In addition, it would be physically difficult to confiscate all guns.