• The games people play…

    Consider the following, a plaintiff comes to the district court with a challenge and a request for a summary judgment. The court looks at the filings by the plaintiff, agrees the plaintiff is in the right. The court grants the summary judgment.

    At that instant, the defendants will appeal to the circuit court. They will request an administrative stay pending the court deciding if a stay pending appeal is warranted.

    The administrative stay is supposed to be very short.

    In one of the cases coming out of the D.C. District Court, the inferior court granted a temporary stay on a government action. The TRO then granted the plaintiff the relief they wanted as final judgment. The government appealed to the D.C. Circuit court, which said, “You can’t appeal a TRO, even if it is acting like a preliminary injunction or summary judgment.” The government then appealed to the Supreme Court.

    The appeal was presented to Chief Justice Roberts, who granted an administrative stay. This required almost no argument, the papers filed by the petitioner were enough. When SCOTUS heard the petition for a stay of the TRO, the Court denied the stay because the TRO had already expired, and thus the petition was moot.

    If the appeals court denies the stay, the defendant can then appeal to the Supreme Court for a stay pending the outcome of the case.

    The point of all of this is that a summary judgment can be appealed up to the Supreme Court.

    A Temporary Restraining Order is a temporary injunction. It is supposed to pause actions until a hearing for a preliminary injunction is heard.

    Since it is such a short-term instrument, it is not (normally) appealable.

    These inferior court judges are granting TRO’s against the government that act more like preliminary injunctions than TRO’s.

    Winter Factors

    The Supreme Court, in the Winter opinion, gave clear guidance on when an injunction or stay should/can be issued. These are known as the “Winter Factors”.

    The first factor is the likelihood of success on the merits. That is to say, is the party requesting the stay or injunction likely to prevail on the merits of the case?

    For example, if you are requesting an injunction on the IRS freezing your assets, you have to have a strong enough argument that you will win before the court will consider your request. Since it is unlikely you will win, no injunction will issue.

    This is the place where most Second Amendment challenges loose. The courts will determine that the plaintiffs (good guys) are unlikely to succeed on the merits, and will thus not grant the injunction.

    The second factor is irreparable harm.

    In general, if the party were to prevail with no stay or injunction, could they be made whole with a payment of money?

    Any suit involving money is very unlikely to create irreparable harm.

    For example, if you are fired, and you sue for wrongful termination, your loses can be made whole with payment for your lost wages. The courts do not consider secondary problems, only the primary. So if you were to lose your house because you defaulted on your mortgage, you might not get enough money to recover from that lose.

    The third winter factor is Balance of Equities. This is designed to balance harm. If the injunction is granted, one party will be harmed. If the injunction is denied, the other party will be harmed. If granting the injunction would delay some “good thing” to the harmed party, but denying the injunction would cause somebody to lose their home, the balance of equities swings to granting the injunction.

    The fourth factor is Public Interest. Is granting the stay or injunction in the best interest of the public?

    When any court disregards the winter factors, they are going rogue.

    In Second Amendment cases, the courts would often say that the infringement was “in the best interest of the public” and deny relief to the Second Amendment plaintiffs. They would do this, even if the other factors would lead to granting the stay or injunction.

    The Supreme Court has emphasized that a denial of a Constitutionally protected right is irreparable harm, that the balance of equities always tilts to those being denied their Constitutionally protected right, and that the public has no interest in enforcing unconstitutional regulations.

    Winter v. public interest

    The opinions issued by these rogue inferior judges often discard the winter factors. This is something that could and should be appealed. But a TRO cannot be appealed.

    This means that these rogue judges are doing their best to make these TRO’s as broad as possible and to last as long as possible to stop the administration’s policies from being effected.

    Judge Shopping

    There are almost 100 federal district courts with 677 judgeships, with a few more senior judges thrown in.

    A senior judge is a judge who is no longer in the lottery but still hears cases. I.e. A judge who is very near retirement.

    If you want to file a suit against a gun company, you can do no better than filing your case in the District Court of Massachusetts. They haven’t found an infringement they didn’t approve of.

    There is no combination of judges in the First Circuit court who would agree that any law was an infringement of the Second Amendment. They are so anti-gun that I don’t believe there is a single case where they found for The People in a Second Amendment Challenge.

    The attitude of the Supreme Court has varied. Unfortunately, it takes a very long time for a case to make its way to the Supreme Court.

    These bad actors are intentionally searching out judges that they expect will go rogue. There also appears to be a thumb on the lottery system used to pick judges for cases.

    Oh, when a case is filed, the judge assigned is picked at random via a lottery. A plaintiff can request that a case be assigned to a particular judge, if the plaintiffs believe that their case is similar to other cases the judge is or has handled.

    This is why one judge in the Southern District of New York got so many of the product liability cases against drug manufacturers. He’s the guy who decided that even if a person couldn’t prove which company manufactured the medication, he would portion out the penalty based on the market share of the different manufacturers.

    Consider a judge who found that the distillery was liable for crashes where the driver was drunk. He has 1000s of plaintiffs demanding money from the distillery.

    The problem is which distillery is at fault for a particular crash. The guys drinking rum and coke, which brand of rum did they drink? It is unlikely they know.

    So instead of forcing the plaintiffs to point to a particular “guilty” distillery, the judge looks at the market share of each distillery. If the penalty is $1,000,000 then the distillery with 50% of the market share of that class of product is responsible for $500,000 of the penalty.

    The little distillery, that is producing Don’t Drive Vodka, is so small they only account for 0.1% of the market share of vodka. They would be responsible for $1,000 of the $1,000,000 penalty.

    But what if 90% of the drivers that are drunk were drinking “Don’t Drive Vodka”? Wouldn’t that mean they should pay more of the penalty? Yes, it does mean that, but it’s not what this judge did. It was all about market share.

    California in Massachusetts?

    Why would the lead plaintiff, California, be opening a case in Massachusetts?

    Because they know that it is an almost certainty that they will get a judge with TDS.

    On March 10, 2025, the United States District Court for the District of Massachusetts issued what it styled as a temporary restraining order (TRO) enjoining the Government from terminating various education-related grants. The order also requires the Government to pay out past-due grant obligations and to continue paying obligations as they accrue. The District Court’s conclusion rested on a finding that respondents are likely to succeed on the merits of their claims under the Administrative Procedure Act (APA), 60 Stat. 237. On March 26, the Government filed this application to vacate the District Court’s March 10 order (as extended on March 24) and requested an immediate administrative stay. The application was presented to JUSTICE JACKSON and by her referred to the Court.

    Although the Courts of Appeals generally lack appellate jurisdiction over appeals from TROs, several factors counsel in favor of construing the District Court’s order as an appealable preliminary injunction. Among other considerations, the District Court’s order carries many of the hallmarks of a preliminary injunction. See Sampson v. Murray, 415 U. S. 61, 87 (1974); Abbott v. Perez, 585 U. S. 579, 594 (2018). Moreover, the District Court’s “basis for issuing the order [is] strongly challenged,” as the Government is likely to succeed in showing the District Court lacked jurisdiction to order the payment of money under the APA. Sampson, 415 U. S., at 87. The APA’s waiver of sovereign immunity does not apply “if any other statute that grants consent to suit expressly or impliedly forbids the relief which is sought.” 5 U.S.C. §702. Nor does the waiver apply to claims seeking “money damages.” Ibid. True, a district court’s jurisdiction “is not barred by the possibility” that an order setting aside an agency’s action may result in the disbursement of funds. Bowen v. Massachusetts, 487 U. S. 879, 910 (1988). But, as we have recognized, the APA’s limited waiver of immunity does not extend to orders “to enforce a contractual obligation to pay money” along the lines of what the District Court ordered here. Great-West Life & Annuity Ins. Co. v. Knudson, 534 U. S. 204, 212 (2002). Instead, the Tucker Act grants the Court of Federal Claims jurisdiction over suits based on “any express or implied contract with the United States.” 28 U.S.C. §1491(a)(1).
    — Department of Education v. California 604 U.S. ___ (2025)

    The five Justices that wrote the unsigned opinion obviously thought the rogue, inferior judge, was playing games.

    The Chief Justice couldn’t bother to write why he dissented, but he did.

    Justice Kagan claims her dissent was because the government didn’t argue that what they did was legal. She entirely ignores the government’s merits argument, that the district court didn’t have jurisdiction, instead focusing on “irreparable harm” that involved money.

    Justice Jackson spent 15 pages on her dissent, with Sotomayor joining. Jackson also ignores the majority’s view that the government was likely to prevail on the merits, no jurisdiction, instead focusing on the inferior court thinking that the government’s termination of grants was somehow illegal.

    She argues that the TRO would be moot in a few days, so this wasn’t the right time to take up the issue.

    And finally, she thinks the government has to provide “meaningful explanation” of the cancellation of these grants.

    I still think she is a clown.

    Conclusion

    This is a win for the Trump administration. It is the Supreme Court taking a stand. They are calling this particular judge on these preliminary injunctions wrapped in the verbiage of a TRO.

    More importantly, that part where they say, …the Government is likely to succeed in showing the District Court lacked jurisdiction to order the payment of money under the APA &mdash, Ibid, that is a warning to the inferior courts that they need to reconsider if they have jurisdiction in these cases.

    The Supreme Court speaks in code. Lawyers understand the code. Courts understand the code. Those that follow the Supreme Court will often figure out the code. Leftist refuse to acknowledge the code.

    Rogue courts insist that the code means something different. All that you need to do to understand this is to watch a court twist one footnote into the most important part of Bruen while ignoring the thousands of words that refute the footnote.

            

  • We’re almost at the point in time when some of the seedlings you’ve planted should be going outside. Hardy greens like kale, cabbage, and chard will probably be able to weather the outside temperatures in the next week or two. This means there’s a lot of work to do!

    The first thing you need to do is start hardening off your seedlings. This is a long but simple process that ensures your new plants will thrive once they’re in the great outdoors. Now that we’re getting a few days in the high 40s and low 50s (and sometimes warmer), you want to pick a day that’s slightly overcast and warm, with not too much wind. Take your flats or pots of seedlings and place them in a wind-free spot that isn’t in direct sunlight, and let them bask in the natural light for about an hour. Do this at the warmest point of the day, just after noon, if at all possible. Then bring them all back in. Repeat this every day, adding an hour or so a day to the time outside, until your plants have developed stronger stems and secondary leaves.

    When the nights are all above freezing, you can leave your seedlings outside. Cover them up, though, because critters like raccoons and mice like to eat those yummy miniature plants. Once the plants are hardened off, you can wait for a nice, overcast day to plant your seedlings into the garden.

    Before that, though, you have to prepare your garden. If you’re going to be using buckets and/or bins of any kind, they need to be readied for use. This means cleaning them out, bleaching them (to kill any bacteria that could harm your plants or transfer to them), and then rinsing them thoroughly. Drill, poke, or melt some holes into the bottom of each container. This allows excess water to drain. Some people do it in the bottom of the containers, but I find doing it about an inch above the bottom, along the sides, works best. That way, excess water can still escape, but there’s a “well” below the holes that continues to hold water for the plants on dry days.

    (more…)

            

  • That New Car Feeling

    Well, a portion of the inheritance from my parents arrived. I gave myself a small amount and the wife. Money that wasn’t spoken for in other ways.

    The last few times I’ve needed a rental car, I’ve gotten a current version of my Toyota Tacoma. Every time I came away wishing I had a new truck.

    Then a few days after getting back in my truck, I would realize that I didn’t want a new Truck. What I wanted was the new radio/head end.

    So that’s what I got. A serious upgrade, It is an Alpine unit with Android Auto. I will be able to get in the truck and when I turn on the unit, it will hook up and give me navigation, calls, and music. Life is nice.

    And for much less than a month’s payments on a new truck.

    Boy they last a long time

    In 1967, my parents bought a VW Microbus. It had hauling capacity that a standard station wagon did not. It was the equivalent of today’s mom van.

    At the time, most cars were getting an astonishing 5 to 7 MPG. The VW got 20MPG. Given the amount of travel we did, this likely made a difference.

    They gave me that car when I turned 16. I drove it until 1987 when I traded it in.

    At the time I traded it in, it was on its third engine, its second gas tank, it didn’t have a working speedometer. The floor was nearly rusted through. Hell, it was rusted through. The aux. heater hadn’t worked in years. The main heater wouldn’t even defrost the windshields.

    The bumper was a replacement that my brother wielded up out of diamond tread.

    In short, it was at the end of its life. A year after I traded it in, I saw somebody driving it around town.

    My truck is 15 years old. At 15 it is in better condition than that VW was at 10. It is still on its first engine. There is no rust on it. I expect it to keep going for at least another 5 years.

    Lawfare

    We keep moving closer and closer to the administration telling the courts to pound sand until the Supreme Court Rules.

    It is sickening how inferior courts can find their way to always rule against trump.

    A stat I heard was that between 1900 and 1999, there were 22 nationwide injunctions issued. There were 87 issued against Trump in his first term.

    I believe I heard that there have been 30 so far in his second term.

    People Fall For This?

    I had numerous ads pop up because I purchased some computer stuff direct from China. Would you believe that you can buy a 2023 GMC Sierra for only $1,500? Sounds too good to be true.

    Looking at the listing, they only accept payment via Western Union or wire transfers. Yeah, too good to be true.

    And This

    A friend ordered a DVD he had been searching for over the last 5 years. It arrived. New In Box.

    Except it was just the box and book. No DVD. Amazon seller who was long gone by the time my friend received his package.

    Amazon is covering the costs, but still…

    Tariffs

    I spent the last two weeks adding tariff processing to a B2B e-commerce website. The Canadian was just frustrated at the extra work for him and having to finally track tariffs. He had just been eating the cost of tariffs for years, a part of doing business.

    In the meantime, I’ve been told that Trump’s tariffs are going to cost me thousands of dollars per year.

    I’ve watched videos of leaders in other countries say, “We aren’t going to take this from the USA!”

    One article pointed out that Vietnam has tariffs on the $10B they import from the US. Trump has put tariffs on the $150B we import from Vietnam. Isn’t it stupid that he did this to them?

    Question of the Week

    If the United States putting tariffs on imports is so bad, why is it good when other countries put tariffs on our goods.

    What do you think of this entire tariff thing?

            

  • Watching The Supreme Court is always frustrating. There is a tendency for things to take a long time.

    David Snope filed a petition for writ of certiorari on September 23, 2024. This will be the third or fourth time he has requested a writ of certiorari from the Supreme Court.

    It has been granted once, the ruling of the Fourth Circuit court was vacated, and the case was remanded back down to the Fourth for a do-over in light of Bruen.

    In November 2024, we were hoping that this case and Ocean State Tactical would both be granted cert. It did not happen.

    If cert had been granted by January 16th, the case would have had oral arguments in the fall, with the opinion issuing in August.

    As things sit, we might not hear the outcome of this case, if granted cert, until the fall of 2026.

    But there are things afoot here.

    First, the court heard Bondi v. Vanderstok and published their opinion on March 26th. This was not a direct Second Amendment Challenge, it was more of an administrative challenge. We did not win. Both Alito and Thomas dissented.

    Mexico’s lawfare case was heard. We will have an opinion on that before the end of the 2024-2025 term. This is a case where the Supreme Court can slap down the lower courts for abusing the Protection of Lawful Commerce in Arms Act.

    Snope is in regard to Maryland’s “assault weapons” ban. It is one of the many cases where the inferior courts have said things of the sort of “well, some arms aren’t arms under the protection of the Second Amendment.”

    Another case, with a docket that looks almost the same, is Ocean State Tactical challenging Rhode Island’s magazine ban. Here, the inferior courts have declared that magazines aren’t really arms under the Second Amendment.

    A third case has shown up on the radar.

    Antonyuk II is a Second Amendment challenge to New York State’s Bruen tantrum response bill.

    The heart of this is New York designating almost every part of the state a sensitive place. Even though Bruen explicitly said that the state couldn’t declare Manhattan a sensitive place, just because there were cops and people there.

    All three of these cases are being discussed by the justices, again, this Friday. If we get lucky, we will hear some movement on Monday.

    At this point, my tea leaves are missing, my crystal ball has clouded up, and the wife won’t let me sacrifice a chicken to read its entrails.

    I haven’t a clue what the justices are going to do. I am holding out hope.

            

  • The art of the emotional appeal, aka “emotional blackmail,” is usually mastered by around age 3. The first time your child’s chubby little hands rise up and they pout, saying, “Pweeeeeze?” you can feel it, that tugging of the heartstrings. As responsible adults, it’s our job to teach our offspring (and local offspring in our vicinity) that you can’t get everything you want, and sometimes the answer is going to be no.

    Saying no isn’t something that comes easily to the current crop of newly minted adults out there. Those who fall between the ages of 25 and 35 seem to have no concept whatsoever of “no” or “FAFO.” They’ve essentially never “found out” about anything, because they so rarely hear the word no.

    While I don’t always put a lot of stock into certain theories of civilization, there’s one going around that seems to have at least some grasp on reality.

    Ingraham, Eli. (2024). Land and Forgiveness: How One Woman’s Dream to Free the Land is Breaking New Ground. Interdisciplinary Journal of Partnership Studies. 11. 2. 10.24926/ijps.v11i1.6140.

    I don’t know if the dates are accurate, but it does seem to be grounded in factual research. Excuse the article I pulled it from; it was the only one with a decent enough graphic explaining it. The article is horrid, poorly written (imo), and not well grounded. But the theory that Ingraham’s study is based upon is real, and not too bad. If you want to really go down the rabbit hole, check out this post by Noema. You don’t have to do that, though. The graphic does a fairly decent job of making it easy to understand.

    The general idea is that society, civilization as a whole, goes through these multi-stage cycles that last somewhere between 180 and 280 years in length. This is borne out by history, which does indeed seem to follow such cycles. They’re not perfect, but they are present, and they can be seen quite clearly. Drop in the history of Greece, and it fits. Rome, it fits. Early China, it fits. And so on.

    The theory, followed through for America, states we’re in the end stages of one complete cycle. This isn’t too difficult to believe, considering we’re 248 years old as a country. Things were bound to break. After all, no one had previously attempted to run a country under a President, an elected official, prior to America. Our Constitution was radical in the most vast understanding of that word. The fact that so many other world leaders are now attempting to use our methods to run their countries is a testament to how well it has worked.

    The thing is, though, I believe our Founders knew it wouldn’t work forever, as given. That’s one reason why they created the Constitution. It was created in such a way as to allow We The People to change and ratify it, as we became better as a People, and as we matured as a country.

    (more…)

            

  • Love it or hate it, project management is a thing. It has to be there. If you don’t think it is there, you are just doing it badly.

    Project Managers are a different kettle of fish. Some need to be boiled alive. Others can just dance on hot rocks. And a very few can sit at the big boys’ table.

    I’m coming off the end of a rush project that was big. I had to take a customized system and add tariffs to it with about 14 days from concept to deployed. More than a little to get done.

    When I started programming, I had a choice of an 8080 with a 24×80 character display, or a 6502 with a 24×40 character display.

    When I was introduced to JOVE, Jonathan’s Own Version of EMACS, I fell in love with it. Multiple views into the same file, the ability to copy and paste from different files or different places in the same file. And auto indentation.

    Powerful stuff for the time.

    My fingers worked will with vi and later vim because I played Nethack and before that, Hack. The programs had a particular key set for moving the cursor based on the key caps of a terminal type used at MIT.

    The author had never seen a terminal without arrows over the J, K, H, and L keys. To give you an idea of how ingrained those are, I had to fire up vim and tell my fingers “down”, “up”, “right”, and “left” to record the keys for this sentence. My fingers know, I don’t.

    Besides jove, I learned emacs. Emacs is my programming editor. It is what I use when I need to write a lot of code or text. With modern computers, it starts just as fast as jove ever did on a 68020 class CPU.

    The problem we had was keeping track of what needed to be done or fixed. This might start off as a document, written with jove in troff. This could be fed to different processors to create PostScript files to be sent to our printers.

    Later, some of us used LaTeX for the same thing. Your “design document” was a separate file that was “fixed” before you started coding. These documents never contained more than brief pseudocode and discussions of algorithms.

    As you were coding, if you discovered something, you created a comment and marked it. The two most common marks were, XXX which meant that the code was broken in some way, but it didn’t need to be fixed now. All XXX marks had to be addressed before the code could be released.

    The other mark was TODO. This was working code but needed some features or extensions added. These did not need to be fixed before release.

    In general, we used grep to find all these markers in a list of files. It wasn’t difficult.

    The small program I’m working with has some 250k lines of code. After 3 or 4 years of supporting this site, I would say I’ve looked at every line of code in the system.

    Finding every marker in 4100 files across 1200 directories is a pain.

    Enter Kanban

    Kanban is a project management tool. The concept is easy enough to do with sticky notes and a white board or notes with push pins on a larger bulletin board.

    Today, the normal Kanban has 4 columns to hold cards. The cards are labeled, “backlog”, “To Do”, “Doing” or “Working”, and “Done”.

    When you create a card it goes into the “backlog” column. These are issues or tasks that have no resources assigned to them.

    Once per week, there is a meeting of the workers and the project manager. In this meeting, the project manager evaluates the cards that are in the “Done” column. If they are truly done, then they are removed from the board and added to the QA project.

    Cards that are in the working column stay in the working column. Cards that are in the working column can be moved into the backlog column if some other card blocks them.

    For example, if you have a card that says, “Put new tire on left front wheel” it cannot be worked on until the card that says, “Purchase a new tire for the front left wheel.” Until the purchase card is completed, you can’t work on the installation card.

    If there are any resources (workers/developers) that think they are going to need more tasks to work on, the project manager will take cards from the backlog column and move them to the To-Do column.

    When a worker requires more work, they move the card from the To-Do column to the working column. When they complete the card, they move it to the Done column.

    I’ve used Kanban in the past. It never really appealed to me as it didn’t feel any different from the old ways of doing things.

    For this latest project, I used my Kanban board.

    Instead of putting markers in the code, I opened a new issue. That issue just went into the “backlog” column. I could tag the issue as a bug or a feature. I could indicate that cards were blocked. It was faster to create the issues/cards than to make entries into the files and then try to locate them later.

    Today, I’ll be looking through anything in the QA column and writing unit or web tests for them. I’ll also be doing a QA across the site, to add to the project board.

    The biggest thing for me was the ability to visual see what still needed to be done.

    Conclusion

    Good tools make the work go faster.

            

  • You may ask yourself, why is Allyson posting up songs from 1967 that weren’t even popular back then? Listen to the song. Sure, it’s a song about Snoopy. No question at all.

    It’s more than that. I’ve been listening to bunches of OLD music (defined as pre-1970s, thank you very much… you know, EARLY 20th century) of late, and this one really struck me. On the surface, it’s just a silly song about Snoopy, our beloved cartoon dog. The lyrics aren’t particularly smart, but they scan nicely and the song is fun to sing.

    But the Red Baron was a real person, and he really did take down 80 aerial combatants in 1917. Of course he wasn’t stopped by Snoopy; his plane was shot down by a combination of RAF pilots and Australian ground gunners. He was killed by a single bullet, and went down near Vaux-sur-Somme, France.

    So why this silly song? Because it harkens to a time when this country actually cared about its position in the world stage. If the actions of Hitler in the 30s and early 40s were to happen today, we would do nothing. Today’s generation isn’t interested in fixing those kinds of wrongs. To misquote Karoline, the people in France would be speaking German. We can see this all around us. There are plenty of places where heinous things are going on, and we’re just not involved anymore.

    I’m not sure we should be, because America managed to get itself listed as the world’s police, and that’s not a good thing. But at one time, when we stood up the enemy nations cowered with fear. Today, they just shrug and go back to messing with little girls and silencing women and killing the innocent.

    There is hope. With Trump currently in office, military enrollment is up, exponentially. We see world bullies quietly standing down and skulking off to the shadows once more. The question is, can we keep it up? There is hope, but it’s going to take more than Trump’s four years in office to make it real.

    I want to live in a world where we can make slightly off color jokes about stuff, and have folks chuckle. Most of the music I’ve listened to in the last five days would NEVER be permitted on the radio today. Too sexist, too racist, too … whatever. But they’re fun, and light, and frankly, no one gets hurt by listening to them.

    So here’s to a world where we can cheer on Snoopy, and be proud of our troops, and stand up for freedom in our country… and then, when we’re in a better place at home, for freedom elsewhere.

            

  • Everyone in my house loves stir fry. I do all kinds of stir fry dishes, too. I make a great coconut Thai curry, and my ginger soy poke bowls aren’t bad either. Recently, I was in a mood for noodles instead of rice, though, and I went looking and found a recipe for using ramen noodles in a stir fry. This is my take on that!

    Ingredients:

    • 3 tbsp regular soy sauce
    • 3 tbsp dark soy sauce
    • 3 tbsp hoisin sauce
    • 1 tbsp oyster sauce
    • 1 tbsp rice wine vinegar
    • 2 tsp sriracha or sweet chili sauce
    • 1/4 tsp white ground pepper
    • 3 packages instant ramen noodles (discard flavor packets)
    • 1 lb skinless, boneless chicken breasts, diced
    • 3 tbsp vegetable oil, divided (see recipe)
    • 1 cup diced red bell pepper
    • 1 cup sliced white button mushrooms
    • 1/2 cup diced sweet yellow onion
    • 1 cup broccoli florets
    • 1 tbsp fresh minced garlic
    • 1 tbsp fresh grated ginger
    • 2 thinly sliced green onion
    • 1/2 tbsp toasted sesame seeds

    In a small mixing bowl, whisk together the soy sauces, hoisin, oyster sauce, rice wine vinegar, sriracha (or chili sauce) and white pepper. Set aside.

    In a large pot or saucepan, bring 6 cups of water to a low boil. Add the noodles to the water and cook for 2 minutes only (you just want to soften them). Drain and rinse the noodles in cold water to stop the cooking process, then set them aside.

    Heat a wok or other nonstick pot to medium high, and add a tablespoon of oil. Add in the diced chicken breast and cook for 4 to 5 minutes, until the chicken is thoroughly cooked. Remove the chicken pieces and set them aside. In the same wok, add the remaining 2 tablespoons of oil and let it heat up. Add in the bell pepper, mushrooms, and onions. Cook until the onions and peppers are tender but still toothsome. Add in the broccoli and continue to cook until it turns a vibrant green. Toss in the minced garlic and grated ginger, and cook for an additional minute.

    Return the chicken to the vegetable mixture and stir to combine. Turn off the heat but keep the wok on the stove. Add in the cooked ramen, and then pour the sauce over everything. Use tongs or two forks to toss everything together. Be sure to get the sauce on everything.

    Garnish your stir fry with the thinly sliced green onion and the sesame seeds. Serve this while it’s still hot.

    Notes:

    We don’t use peppers around here because of allergies. I substituted in some thinly sliced carrots instead. You could really go with any combination of vegetables for this (or any) stir fry, but do keep it simple. The sauce is the star of this show, and too many vegetables will take away from its glory.

            
  • Good points on flintlocks. Then again, making your own primers is definitely possible, including the charge inside. I ran into a reference (online) about making primer charges. You do need some chemical skills, though not a whole lot more than what it takes to make powder for some of the options. I once made mercury fulminate way back in college following the procedure listed in a German textbook I had read (Die Explosivstoffe by H. Brunswig, you can find it online). Not an optimal choice but easy and it would do the job.

    On “technology would return quickly”, maybe so, but I wonder about that. A month or two ago on a list I follow someone posed the question “what is your book list for the books to save if civilization were to collapse?” I tried to make a list of 3, a list of a dozen, and the outline of a list of 100. Even with 100 it’s not so easy.

    Suppose you have to start over with basic hand tools and a stock of metal. Can you make things? It would help to have a lathe. Can you make a lathe? A basic one (wood turning style) is not too hard. What about a screw cutting lathe? Maudsley figured out how to make a lead screw without a screw cutting lathe. How? Chase it? I suppose that must be the answer, but I haven’t seen the procedure documented.

    And this is just one example. You’ll probably want nitric acid. Can you make that?

    Do you want to communicate? Can you find Morse code, or semaphore code? Do you want a radio, and how would you make the parts? Even a first generation radio (spark transmitter, crystal receiver) takes electric power and headphones and other stuff you would have to learn to make.

    — pkoning

    Black powder is a low explosive. It deflagrates instead of explodes.

    Does this mean it is less powerful than a high explosive? I’m not the one to answer that.

    In doing research, I found that in some mining situations in the past, they would create a room to hold the explosives. The room would be filled with high explosives to shatter the rock and black powder to push the rock out. The cartoons of rooms filled with “gunpowder” and “dynamite” were based on real-world things.

    I have not attempted to make any high explosives. I have the knowledge, I have some books on how to do it, I have not done it. Therefore, I do not have the skill(s) — yet.

    One of the interesting aspects of high explosives it that many don’t like to go boom. They need an initiation charge to do so. So you need a small amount of a more sensitive yet still energetic enough explosive to make the high explosive go boom.

    One of my manuals describes how you create a blasting cap from a 5.56 case. Simplified, remove the primer from a spent case. Feed a slow fuse through the primer hole. Place it in the “press” to be filled.

    The press is a wooden dowel that fits in the case mouth. It is attached to a wooden lever, with one end of the lever attached to a firm upright. The dowel is positioned only a couple of inches from the pivot point.

    The lever is a couple of feet long. At the far end is a hole for a rope. The rope leads down to a snatch block (pulley) on the ground.

    To use the press, you put a small amount of the primary explosive in the case. You GENTLY put the wooden dowel in the case mouth. You go a good distance away to the end of your rope, and you gently pull the rope to pull the lever down to press the primary explosive into the case.

    When you have an unexpected explosion of the primary explosive, you are hopefully far enough away and behind cover so you are not harmed.

    Yeah, not for the faint of heart.

    Primers, again something I have knowledge about, I haven’t attempted it. I have been collecting spent primers for a few thousand rounds, just in case.

    As for technology returning rapidly? Yeah, it will. Not because of any one person, but because of the wealth of skills that exist. As my mentor used to say, “If the Internet were to be destroyed tomorrow, it would be back up in a couple of weeks because geeks can’t live without their porn.”

    It isn’t so much that we could rebuild everything, it is that we have so much “scrap” that could be brought back on line.

    My plan for books is to take a few thousand with me. A Kindle device with a low-power draw and a few thousand books sitting in a cage to protect it from EMPs. Hell, multiple such devices. I have small memory devices of 64GB. You can put a hell of alot of data on one of those. And duplicate it.

    Paper books would be a back-up, and we have bookshelves of such books.

    Suppose you have to start over with basic hand tools and a stock of metal. Can you make things?

    I have a foundry. I can make castings. I can make patterns. This is a good first step. Can I pour iron? I have the knowledge and tools to do so. I haven’t poured iron. I’ve only poured aluminum.

    Aluminum isn’t as good as iron for most castings, but it is better than wood. There is plenty of aluminum to be had as scrap.

    I do have a lathe. The lathe I have is belt-driven. That belt is powered by a 3 phase electric motor. I have the skills to make new leather belts for it. In a worse case situation, I can get slow speeds from it with a human-powered system, like a bicycle.

    This is the reason I learned how to make safe steam boilers (knowledge) and steam expansion engines (skill). I have a generator set that I plan to make steam powered, if required, to make electricity for the mill.

    Can I make a wood cutting lathe? Yes. I have the skills to use it.

    Can I make a wooden screw? Yes. I have done so. The thing about making screws is that you only need to make one course and nearly correct screw to be able to create any screw of any quality.

    The magic is in the reduction gears. Assume you want to make a screw that is a precise 8 threads per inch. You start with a hand cut screw of whatever pitch say 1.5x6tpi. This is a tap and die set you can pick up on Amazon. You can get different diameters and pitches.

    Even if this thread is not that precise, you can use it to make a more precise thread. If you feed this at a 4 to 1 ratio, you can get a pitch of 24. If you run it a 4 to 3, you can get your 8 threads per inch. The gearing might be a bit complex, it will take some time to get it right, but it can be done.

    Of more interest is making flat surfaces and right angles. With three right-angle samples, you can create three right angles and with 6 flat faces.

    Start by making a flat surface. This is done by starting with three nearly flat surfaces. Call them A, B, and C. Ink B and use it to find “high spots” on A. Scrape down the high spots on A. Repeat with C on B.

    A and C are now flatter as referenced to B. Ink C and use it to find high spots on A and B. Scrape the high spots. A and B are now flatter as referenced to C. Repeat for switching your inking surface each time. You can get a flat surface within the limits of your ink and the material you are using in short order.

    It took me a couple of weeks to accomplish this with rough aluminum castings. Mostly because I was only working a couple of hours per week on it.

    Once you have your flat surfaces, they become your reference. You can now make one face of each of your right angles flat. This doesn’t take much time because it is relatively easy because you are only scrapping one surface at a time.

    Now that you have those three faces flat, you can use the same method of A, B, and C with the vertical surfaces. If A is your reference surface, and it is out 0.100 over 4 inches, and you use it against B and C. Both B and C will be scraped towards a 0.100 IN over 4 inches.

    If you continued like this, you would end up with angle blocks that are not square.

    But, when you rotate through a different master each time, the angles will move towards vertical.

    A is out 0.100, this causes B and C to be IN by a little. Not the full 0.100. We now test A against B and A will be cut IN a little, making it more correct. B and C will hit lower than the top and will modify there.

    Each round, the surfaces get better and better.

    Can I make nitric acid? I have the instructions someplace. Again, knowledge, not skill.

    I don’t know morse well enough. I have knowledge but not skill. I have references for semaphore. Knowledge, not skill. I have real-world cypher experience. I haven’t built a radio in 50 years, but again, I have the references.

    So the brief answer is keep learning. Have fun learning. And make sure you translate that knowledge into skills.

    There is a shed on my property that my children and I built. I built it as if I were building a house, but in small. I built it to translate knowledge into skills. And we learned. Boy did we learn.

            

  • I grew up a prepper. Most of the people I knew were preppers. The difference was that it was normal.

    My parents were born at the tail of the great depression. They lived through WWII as children and suffered the rationing that took place in the US.

    My grandparents planted and tended a garden every summer. It was just the norm.

    We once lived a good 2 hours from any supermarket. There was a local grocery, but everything there was pricey. It was the sort of place you went if you ran out of eggs.

    Once a month, my mother would drive onto base in DC and shop at the commissary. She would have three or four carts of food. She purchased a month’s worth of milk. When we got home, everything was put away in freezers. We had “fresh” milk for about 3 days per month, thereafter, it was from frozen.

    When we could, mom had a garden. She was never happier than when she had an entire acre of garden.

    People think about “getting started” with prepping.

    I believe this is the wrong mindset. The correct mindset is to start thinking about what knowledge and skills do you need?

    Skills and knowledge are entirely different things. You might know how to wire an electrical outlet, but do you have you done it? Do you know how to use the tools? Do you have the right tools? Can you do it without harming yourself or others?

    Because of my parents, I started with a “being prepared” mindset. There was always enough food in the pantry, freezer, and refrigerator. It was just the way I grew up.

    I remember the first major snowstorm in Maryland after my daughter was born. Wife number one wasn’t satisfied with what we had in the refrigerator. Our child would starve if I didn’t get some milk, right now.

    I put on my calf high moccasins, my wide brimmed hat, my winter coat and walked to the 7/11 to get milk.

    On the way there, I pushed a female cop’s car out of the snow bank three times.

    My wife was in a panic. I was not. I had powdered milk, a supply of gravity feed fresh water, and a camp stove. There was nothing to worry about.

    I was wrong. I had knowledge, but not enough skills.

    I’ve spent the last forty years learning more skills. What skills I didn’t learn for myself, I found people I love and trust to have those skills.

    When I lived in Maryland, it felt like there was a strong chance of a war engulfing the East Coast. Not American vs. American, but of actual foreign soldiers on our soil. I had the money, I spent that money on firearms for battle. I wasn’t thinking of hunting. I wasn’t thinking of food and shelter.

    I was ignorant. But it was a step in the correct direction.

    Today I have more skills, I have a better idea of what I don’t know. I still don’t know what I don’t know, but I can see that I have gaps.

    One of the people making comments suggested that I have a flintlock style firearm. Amazingly enough, that is coming to my home shortly.

    The Fort At #4 represents the time around of the French and Indian war. I am working with some reenactors to find a smoothbore that is period correct and a rifle. I want a Kentucky long rifle. I’ve loved the look of that rifle since watching Daniel Boone on TV.

    I not only know how to make black powder, I’ve done it. I have extensive notes on how I did it. I have the tools to manufacture it, about 2 pounds at a time.

    We are practicing making salt-peter but haven’t succeeded yet. I’ve made proper charcoal. And I have some sulfur. KNO3 is also around here.

    I want to make my own primers, but it is not worth the risk.

    I’ve made my own slow fuse and my own fast fuse. I’ve made fireworks. All cools stuff.

    If I’m talking to somebody knew to prepping, I always start with the rule of threes.

    1. You can live 3 minutes without air
    2. You can live 3 hours without shelter
    3. You can live 3 days without water
    4. You can live 3 weeks without food
    5. You can live 3 months without hope

    Without air is first-aid, hygiene, medical. If you are bleeding out, you aren’t going to make it the 3 hours to die without shelter. If you aren’t breathing, nothing else will matter in a few minutes.

    Without shelter includes fire making, proper clothing, proper shelter from the elements, and the skills to build a home.

    While 3 hours sounds extreme, consider falling into a freezing river in winter. How long will you survive? How long will you survive in the desert without proper protection from the sun?

    For whatever reason, most people put food before water. Water is life.

    Back in the ’80s, the army was looking at the best way to hydrate their soldiers. One method was to only allow the men to drink at rest stops, and only as much as they wanted. Another was to make them drink a certain amount at rest stops. Another was drinking on the move and making sure they drank “enough”.

    The test was simple, take a group of soldiers, make them hike a distance, then test them in a combat situation.

    Method one had the men combat ineffective at the end of the march. They were combat ineffective for a couple of days after.

    Method two had the men combat effective after a few hours of rest at the end of the march. They were combat ineffective for the next few days.

    The third method? The troops arrived and immediately went into combat, they were effective. They were able to repeat the test the next day without issue.

    There is a reason that the military has hydration rules that push water into the men. There is a reason that hydration packs are worn by sailors.

    Three weeks without food is pushing it. People become less capable after only a few days without food.

    Our family added, “Three months without hope.” Hope is having some form of joy with you. Pictures of loved ones. A deck of cards. Anything to help take your mind off what you are going through.

    One of the biggest takeaways I can give you, if you are starting to prep, “Don’t plan on survival, plan on living. Life was strong before our modern society, and life was good.”

    I close with a definition of a zombie. A zombie is that city dweller, from a deep blue city, that hasn’t eaten in a week, is drinking unfiltered water wherever they find it, and they are stripping the countryside clean of all food and goods.

    We saw zombies burning down cities because a criminal died of heart disease while in police custody. When you think of zombies, think of those drones, living in a city with less than 24 hours of food.