West Baltimore Burned by Looters

The Black Mayor of Baltimore called for riots yesterday and got them last evening. Black Attorney General Eric Holder upset over violence does NOT arrest black mayor, once more proving black priviledge and immunity from the law. Calling for riots is very much illegal and is a felony in this case. This continues the ongoing racism by this administration. If you are black, your life only matters when you get killed by police, no matter what crimes you were committing. This situation is ridiculous. UPDATE: Apparently, Eric Holder is no longer the Attorney General. There's someone else now. Whether that person will get this racist mayor arrested for inciting violence, a felony, or not will define whether this Attorney General is lawful or evil. Now is your chance, lady. Are you competent?

If your community has black people in it, you should expect race crime like this. Any excuse will do. From what we see, there is now race riot tourism, because those with the money to travel to race riot areas can commit crimes and not be charged. UPDATE: the guy they were rioting over literally killed himself by deliberately, in front of another criminal witness, bashing his own head against a bolt inside the police van in order, it is believed, to claim police brutality and get his arrest thrown out and thus not get arrested for heroin possession for sale, something he was doing and is illegal in all countries on earth, including the ones where opium poppies are grown. He was looking at life in prison with this arrest. So getting out of the arrest was worth the risk of death.

That the city of Baltimore will throw a riot that burns down the city over the arrest of a heroin dealer who killed himself... because he was black... well, Baltimore is clearly racist; pro-black, anti-everyone-else. I hope they burn down the rest of it soon. Until black people decry these thugs as thugs, and demand arrest of those who enable thugs (like certain preachers and politicians), black people's silence to their population's thugs harms race relations and equality. You have to stand up to your criminals, loudly, or you don't belong in Western civilization.

The sane answer is to leave such places behind for communities that are color blind about applying the law to all people. As soon as you refuse to charge black people, your community is moments away from burning down. And that problem has clearly happened in Baltimore. This is really tough for black conservatives, who have looked at the genocide caused by liberal policies and have decided that the old time religion, actually practiced as intended, teaches another way. And they are vigorously attacked by Liberals who want to keep the genocide going. Liberalism kills black people.

Is the world better off without Baltimore? Considering it is now a racist murdering hellhole, burning it down further will ram the point home. I'd read that Baltimore got all the worst of crack addicts and black drug dealers from DC, because housing prices were too high for them to live there. African Americans do not have to be like this, but they sure like doing it on TV, or getting elected and making all black crime unpunishable. That is racism, and it drives sane people to leave such places behind. It closes down businesses and extracts good people from communities. White Flight has been joined by Asian Flight, Mexican Flight, and even Black Flight, to escape from racists like the Mayor of Baltimore.

Such behavior, being a excuse to loot and destroy, proves the worst that racists have said about black people since before the civil war. It creates not just racism, but fear of black people as generally violent and uncivilized monsters allowed to rape and murder in our communities. There goes the neighborhood isn't just words. Its a minute's warning to pack up your family and possessions, put your house on the market, and get out of town before the rioters burn down where you live too. This is the most extreme form of White Flight, and its rarely justified right away... but Baltimore burned. Ferguson burned. What city will burn next to extort money from cities for the race machine run by a certain "preacher" and "black pride organizations"? Do black lives matter? Or is that only the case when a black racist can make a buck from it through an extortion scam?

James Bond and his silly little Walther PPK

James Bond is a famous fictional spy, created by Ian Fleming, himself an actual spy during and just after WW2. The events of From Russia With Love were based on an actual mission he did. The James Bond movies tend to repeat many of the stories with slightly different changes. As you get older, you notice this. When you're a teenage boy its just a really awesome spy series. James Bond uses a particular gun in most of the films, a Walther PPK in 7.62 mm. It holds 6 shots and is easily concealled. It is worth pointing out, now, that 7.62mm is a soviet union cartridge that was long ago discarded because it rarely killed people fast enough to be of use. Its really puny. 7.62mm is .30 caliber, and that's very small diameter. Its also a small cartridge so its not very fast so it makes a small hole and a small wound. In a pistol, you can't get much velocity so you want a LARGE hole to the blood comes out faster and the person you're shooting stops doing whatever terrible thing they were doing to you, making them stop. In a modern firearm, the smallest caliber you'd even consider using for self defense is a .380 caliber, aka 9x17 Browning. It is even chambered in a PPK looking pistol suitable for concealled carry.

Pistol Cartridges

A .32 ACP, which is BIGGER than the Bond caliber

Bond rarely uses one of these, in .380 caliber

Most self defense experts only recommend these puny calibers in cases where the woman is so physically weak she can't shoot a 9x19mm NATO aka 9mm Parabellum, a round that has been in use since 1876 if memory serves. It remains in service all over the world.

Browning/Colt 1911 pistol

Just over 100 years ago, John Browning was tasked with inventing a sidearm (pistol) that would fire the new .45 ACP (automatic cartridge, pistol), meant to be powerful enough to making a charging cavalry horse stumble. Tanks and trucks hadn't been invented yet. The 1911 automatic pistol is rumored to have been invented to put down charging Filipinos because the service issue .38 Specials were worthless in the occupation of Manila following the Spanish American War. This is important because a 38 Special is largely the same power as a 9x19mm NATO. The upgraded version of that round, slightly longer and much faster, is the .357 Magnum, which is famous. It is also infamous for blowing through the target and hitting whomever is behind them, often up to 100 yards away, inside a house, possibly reading their magazine while on the toilet.

.357 Magnum revolver

Modern Special Operations .45 caliber pistol

In the real world, military troops who actually expect to use pistols in combat tend to shoot "hot" 45's in +P+ loads at magnum velocities. Or they will use Sub-machine guns in a pistol caliber such as 9mm, .45 ACP or even 10mm, which is superior to both, having the hitting power of a .45 ACP +P+ load, but the reach of a 9mm. So long as US troops are dealing with mad arabs hopped up on drugs and wrapped in armor and explosives, we will need such firearms and men willing to use them. Its not very nice, but life rarely is.




Glock makes a reliable 10mm pistol, which is a last defense against polar bears, the worlds largest land predator. You may have heard the polar bear is dying out from climate change. That is a lie. They were here before the ice age, and adapted to the ice. They are going back to their land hunting in places where the ice has melted. They are perfectly happy taking down caribou or going after seals on land. That is no problem at all. They also poke their heads into human quonset huts and eat anybody that happens to be around. Environmentalists do not talk about that tendency because it will interrupt their fund raising, and global warming is all about money, not science. And James Bond films are all very flashy and fun, but they aren't realistic. I think it is a good thing that the films have been cleaned up and remastered in high definition because they look great and sound wonderful and they're part of Western European cinema. They aren't realistic, but they do make boys all very excited and make "p-too p-too!" noises while rolling around behind bushes. Bond movies are fun. In the real world, when a villain gives a speech, its generally about raising taxes and you call them politicians.

Anime: SNAFU Season 2

I like that they start the second season at the climax of the first, in that ruthless but necessary confrontation with lazy narcissist chick feeling slightly guilty but more directly manipulative for conning others into praising her for a huge project she did almost nothing to complete but wants to take credit for. Sigh.

Its very human, which is why humans suck. I also like that the relationships between the despised anti-hero, Hikkigaya (name means Shadow or hidden or possibly overlooked), and those he's helped only allow a grudging respect for him, one they don't seem to want to admit when it counts, proving his point that human beings are crap. Many people reading this will deny this, but I can only say you are naive and haven't lived enough, or haven't paid attention to your own relationships. Sometimes the one being crap is you. Few notice when they're the one crapping on others.

Romance is in the title, but this is truly an anti-romance. Hikki knows better. I like that the two girls in his club, one more and more clearly crushing on him for her own reasons and we as the audience wish she'd get over it, and the other treating him like a lab experiment, not in love, only slightly curious of him some of the time, regardless of what she sometimes says, and whose older sister taunts them both over it because there is nothing there and that's the sort of sister she is. She teases and mocks them because there is no romance and she just wants to stir up trouble between them. Many young people would think she's giving her approval, but she really isn't. Its all just teasing, for her own amusement. The more times I watch segments where she appears in the story, the more I realize just how manipulative and spiteful she really is. She's all kinds of layers, being a politician's daughter, and used for hard core vicious political schmoozing and bribery up close and personal. Japanese politicians are just like american ones: utterly corrupt. They famously take bribes so their buddies can build projects and violate the law and get away with it. In the old days, the Japanese used to assassinate their corrupt politicians, and their politicians would use Yakuza or their own bullies to attack anyone who bothered them, competed with their monopolies, or otherwise interrupted their income or power. Pretty much ALL samurai movies are about destroying these kind of corrupt politicians. Its part of why Japan is so feudal where it matters. And Yukino's older sister deals with these sleaze all the time. Maybe she resents how Yuki is left to be normal, or maybe she's just cruel, but there's little reason for her to pick on Hikki if she isn't doing so for malicious reasons.

Hikki also has a younger sister, who is more normal and less abused/defensive than he is, and still young enough to be outwardly cheerful, a state he is careful not to disturb with too much truth. He is kind to her, despite her manipulations. True pessimists do fear how others are harmed by our comments in unguarded moments. We see things as they are, and remember what actually happens rather than how we'd have liked things to turn out. We drive optimists and narcissists up the wall. And this is unfortunate because both of those asinine twits LOVE to complain about how unfair it is to harsh their realm, man! Yes, telling the truth is socially wrong. Know what? I don't want to be part of a society that punishes me for refusing to coddle those useless and destructive morons. An optimist is a just a narcissist that imposes their views on everyone else. They do a fine job of lighting themselves on fire. We should stand back and let them burn. This is why I dream of mobility, though that would certainly cut into the anime I watch. I'd want broadband, wherever I stop. The rest of humanity is a sewer.

Hikki is the Japanese equivalent of Jeremy Clarkson, saying unpleasant but true things because he really does understand the ugliness in people. He is the mirror that never lies. I find it interesting that the villain of the story, his sexy chainsmoking teacher, who allegedly worries about him being anti-social keeps insisting on ruining his life and attacking his consistently proven beliefs with forced interactions with selfish and vain people who need to stop bothering other people, and probably will once high school is over and they have no value anymore. My own high school? None of us get together. We're happier apart, never seeing each other again. High school was prison. Hikki realizes this too, and I like the many comments on fans appreciating this ugly fact, seeing the truths from Hikki being things they wish they could phrase half as well. When people are bastards, you want to cut them deep with truthful and very hurtful words they won't be able to escape from. I know I got mine back, and rarely miss a chance to burn a bridge. Why let enemy tanks cross? The bridge is a lie.

Human beings only cooperate for short term gain. Long term are just competition for resources, and we are monsters, many of us right on the surface. Any good we do for a few others, we do a lot of bad as well. Usually bad that hurts many. And only a few even notice, and those tend to savor their pain as joy because people are really awful. I think this is what Hikki realized long ago, and having organized his life around avoiding relationships with monsters that only exist to hurt him, forcing him to interact with monsters is an act of cruelty. This is why I insist the teacher is the ultimate villain of the story.

UPDATE: 5/4/15 Episode 4 came out. My thoughts on this one are more complex. The blonde guy who was called by the older sister to tease Hikki about his old junior high crush, a vapid little bitch, forces him to come along on a double date with her and her bimbo friend for the express purpose of both mocking his original attraction to her, and to show what he isn't missing out on, then to chew her out for being a vain bitch. And this is supposed to make Hikki grateful? Hayato, the blonde popular guy with all the charisma and political acumen, is from a family subservient to Yuki and her sister the selfish fake bitch with the heart of iron. She's not a nice woman. I get the idea from this that she's actively jealous of her little sister for not having to deal with the politicians like she must. And that's why she's so mean to Yuki and her friends. I was curious enough about this I started reading Baka-Tsuki, which has the novels translated from Snafu. Hikkis motives are explained, but the girls remain baffling. Hikki thinks the girls are sort of getting revenge on him for solving the dork crush problem by pretending to sacrifice himself just so the dork could hear a rejection that wouldn't shatter their lame friendship. Meanwhile the girls are pissed at him and even his sister wants him to feel guilty for something lame and transitory and ENDING, because high school is temporary. And I think that's the most important thing Hikki understands that everyone else is missing, a point he made at the very start of Ep 1, Season 1. Youth sucks. Why can't they leave him alone? Japanese culture is often about exclusion. He's excluded from a hateful society. He was relatively happy with this, because it avoided all these nasty obligations. But then his teacher forced him to take random obligations, a really shitty thing to do to someone who gains NOTHING from his community, and essentially tries to make him suffer, to make his life worse through forcing him to deal with crap people, presuming that by solving their problems he will gain their appreciation, like that means anything, and redeem himself? Really? What has Chiba, where this takes place, done for Hikki? Its taught him that other people are shit. Okay, fine. That is so. Now what? Eventually he gains a small amount of respect from them, then is accused of being too aware of their actions and respect? What a bitchy complaint. This show is the smartest and most incisive and vicious depiction of Japanese culture. It damns them. I'm not even sure the Animators or Director is aware of just how damning it is of their culture, of how their obligations show their ugliness. Japan certainly needs more critics.

Road Decay

I went for a local hike and took pictures of the roads I see every day. For those of you who scoff at the idea that there will be less roads in the future, I offer you proof to the contrary. This is a real thing that is already happening. Roads are made of stuff using energy that is worth more elsewhere, so it mostly will be. The OPEC oil dump going on is going to send sooner or later. At this point, with nuclear proliferation and the race to get (and USE) atomic/nuclear weapons in the middle east and South Asia the happening thing since the current president removed all embargos from the declared terrorist nation (Iran), OPEC MUST SELL ITS OIL before they are all burned to cinders in nuclear hellfire. After that... well we'll be trying to get oil from fracking in the various other nations in the world and complaining about nuclear isotope contamination downwind, which is mostly countries which are as bad or worse so probably not that loudly when all is said and done. The downshot is we'll be turning tar into gasoline, and natural gas will be too valuable for home heating, cooking, and fuel to waste on concrete for roads. We are going back to gravel and dirt, and there is nothing we can do to prevent that because we stood by silently and allowed a president to cause a genocidal nuclear war as his personal legacy. This is his fault. Remember that when you are slipping and bouncing down a gravel track.

 A nice driveway off a paved road. When you are rich, you can afford such things. Someday the street will be gravel, but the private driveway will still be concrete because it belongs to a person, not the public. Public property is not cared for. This is called the Tragedy of the Commons and is the reason that Communism fails. Only private ownership leads to maintenance. Public property is the public's problem.

 A modern road, paved, striped, with underground utilities, sidewalks, and drainage. Perfect in every way, and made from asphalt, which is composed of sand, gravel, and tar to glue it all together. That tar is oil, and can be turned into gasoline instead of road surface, for a tidy profit. This is why asphalt prices have dramatically risen over the last 15 years.

This is a concrete road. It is made from concrete, which is created by cooking limestone in a kiln using natural gas. It chemically changes by adding heat. It is very expensive in energy cost and the concrete used in a house foundation is often around 1/4 to 1/2 the material cost of a home or building. That is NOT cheap. Concrete also cracks under tension, such as when a big truck tire rolls over it and stretches it. The broken part becomes a jagged edge that will then move independently from the remaining slab and will eventually need to have the entire slab chipped out and replaced. Since concrete changes size with air/ground temperature, you also have to cast the slabs in a limited size, with expansion joints. Roads with concrete slab underneath their asphalt pavement make a common "ba-dump, ba-dump" noise as you travel over them and annoy the crap out of people. They are also a safety hazard, and heavy trucks are taxed and fined for the damage they do to roads. It is worth pointing out that communists in the govt then funnel those road repair funds into racists projects rather than fix the roads. This infuriates everybody but the racists who benefit.

Around here we have paved roads and underground public utilities, city water and sewer, garbage pickup, and street sweepers. When it snows, there's a plow that comes and clears the roads if there's enough snow to justify it. This is what the rich neighborhoods get. In more remote locations people have well water or access to an irrigation ditch (literal, a holdover from the mining days) they then pump into a holding tank and treat before using. This is rural, keep in mind. Poor neighborhoods don't have good roads, or their ability to pay means lousy roads lead to nice driveways. This is a thing, too. It comes down to ownership.

When the resources for luxuries like smooth roads run out, replacing broken pavement is delayed. Patches are applied. Tar to glue it together while a proper repair comes.

This sidewalk is shattered because the road and the land beneath it is moving. There is a landslide underway. I am not joking. This is obvious to my Geologist training. This is a DRY YEAR, and a 4th year of drought. When a wet year comes, this slide will move feet instead of inches and the street will be cut off. Landslides move until they reach a physical equilibrium, so it could move 50 feet vertically and wreck a dozen houses before that happens. This spot is on the wall of a canyon, you see. This is an El Nino year. Satellite warming data shows the typical El Nino hot spot in the equatorial Pacific Ocean. This means we will get torrential downpours starting mid or late summer and continuing through next fall and winter and spring. We should expect 100 inches of rain. This landslide is going to let go then, and about 15 houses will be damaged or destroyed in the landslide. That's a Darwin Award too. Nobody pays geologists to point this out to them. Suffer.

These plants grew up this spring. There's a bunch of places like this, where gaps in the pavement fill with seeds and the local bean-plants (legumes) sprout up, growing more beans and widening the cracks, creating soil and giving more places for more plants to grow. In California, the growing season is anytime there's water supply because it is only cold enough to stop plants above the snow line. Down here, they grow till the water stops. Now, a person could come along and rip this out by hand, but its always someone else's problem, so there it sits. Imagine this same approach happens, only the street sweepers and maintenance stop coming, due to budget cuts. How fast is the road overgrown?

This is a one lane access road, similar to most driveways, but also what happens when you don't apply normal amounts of maintenance. This is what happens in 4 months without trimming back the brush. There are deer, bears, and cougars living in this brush, along with homeless bums and feral dogs and wild pigs. It is about 10 feet wide, but in a summer that will drop to 6 feet as the brush grows to gain sunlight. It is a luxuriant growth area, and it is nobody's job to clear. If you live down this road, you will scrape your paint off your car driving down it. And that's without trying to make room for a car coming the other direction to pass by you. Those of you in cities don't appreciate just how fast this happens.

This is a gravel road. It has been cared for a groomed by maintenance several times a year. They spray weed killer so you can see the rocks, and it is flat so the gravel hasn't washed away in a storm. There is a cable across it to prevent anyone using the road without the key to unlock it. If you stop spraying weed killer and stop doing maintenance, weed seeds that fall between the stones quickly cover it.

This is the same road 200 feet down. You can still see gravel, but it looks more like a pathway than a road. Seeing the road is a major skillset in the country. If you get off this nearly invisible surface you will get stuck and your vehicle will become a smoking ruin, and you will have to walk. Going anywhere on gravel roads in the country means you may have to walk out, so thinking about walking is actually a requirement in any decision made here. That means you need to carry supplies in the car to walk back to civilization again. Really. It is very much NOT like the city.

This is that same road a couple hundred yards away. Its now just a singletrack, covered in weeds and hard to see. This is what happens to gravel roads in about 6 months with no maintenance. Poof. Gone.

This is a road after two years. See the road? Nope. Its a field now. You can see for 100 miles to the north, and the sort of singletrack and gravel and vanished roads like this are most of what's up there. Anywhere that isn't paved turns into this within about 3 years time. Even paved roads can overgrow from the sides, and any cracks first fill with legumes (beans), then grasses, then bushes, then trees and before you know it, you can't really tell there used to be a paved road there.

This is a singletrack under the trees. They cut down the bushes, and it is used daily. See it? Its that faint dirt path. There's quite a few roads that look like this. In the real boonies, nearer to the Yuba River, places like this have pot growers living in tents or shacks, and cougars pounce on the unwary and actually eat them. There are signs warning of this on the south Yuba. We also have packs of coyotes that surge out of the canyons on moonlit nights that eat people's pets and their garbage if it is left out. The yelping can be quite loud. This place is wild. And it wants to go back to this wild condition as soon as we stop paving and cutting it back.

Soon enough parking lots will go back to gravel. This is nice enough now, but what about after 100 inches of rain this Fall? How many parishioners at this Church will be stuck after their cars sink up to the axles in mud? Uneven road surfaces and central high spots catch on the transfer case of your car, leaving you stuck. The solution is a taller vehicle with 4WD so all wheels are powered, but smoothing the road would be better... only roads are empty most of the time and who has money for that kind of thing when all the jobs are in China? And Diesel Fuel isn't free either. Rich people who own their own tractors say it costs about 100 gallons per mile of gravel road, twice a year, to scrape and clear it and lay more gravel back down, and the next time it rains, that gravel piles up unevenly or washes away, and you need more delivered, and more diesel fuel to smooth it and pack it flat and then plants grow in the spring and you have to bulldoze those down too and if the roots remain, they will grow back in a few months, so you have to do that again. If you don't, the road vanishes into manzanita and scotch broom.

Scotch Broom. Five feet tall, highly flammable even when green, and grows this tall in 1-2 years. Found all over California. The Manzanita (not pictured) grows to 12 feet high, burns very hot, and requires a serious bulldozer to remove. Roots will regrow a plant you can't drive through in 1 year. This is a dominant shrub in the California hill country and mountains, and clogs gravel roads. Deer and pigs and rattle snakes will live under and around it. These attract coyotes and cougars and black bears.

Sooner or later, roads get ceded from maintained status to neighborhoods that don't care or can't afford the costs and eventually those roads that aren't used are lost entirely. Tiger files from the department of the Interior keeps records of old roads and treats them as all active, those many are just history, long gone. This is already happening, the loss of roads, thanks to the economy collapsing under this Administration. The last 6 years of incompetence will continue to erase all the gains made in attempting to civilize America. We will fall back until we resemble the Anasazi cliff dwellings, with wildness between the occupied towns, cleared by hand and defended from predators. It isn't very nice, but this is what happens when you export your jobs and pretend nobody has to work.

Blizzard in California

We are having a blizzard here in California this morning. There's inches of snow on the street and its been coming down hard and steady for a couple hours. I am making pea soup with ham. Satellite TV is out, since the snow on the dish blocks the signal, but internet, obviously, still works via landline.

So much for "global warming". This is putting at least a couple feet of snowpack down, and probably several feet more than expected. It might even end the drought.