The Mechanical Engineer's Conundrum

In a series of several linked novels I wrote in the 1990's I included a bunch of gun stuff. A bunch of it was wrong. I didn't actually learn to shoot until 2000. Then I learned a LOT of things. Including that I was wrong about many things I'd previously put into my prior writing.

Since then I've been fiddling with theoretical designs and adapting mechanisms, some in the real world and some based on readings, photos, and videos. I even got into various calibers, wildcats included, to try to figure out the appropriate ones for my region, and thus my stories. I eventually came up with some good ideas, but now I'm afraid to post them because there's a lot of scum out there who would use what I invent to hurt people on my side. And that's the trouble with good design. It can be used against you. Even vague descriptions would be useful to the bad guys. This is frustrating.

Even knowing the SBR rules, and the workarounds to a good carbine without breaking that, and the workaround for suppressors using porting and heat shields. And the counterweight piston to create smooth action to reduce felt recoil, and a telescoping bolt, and the trick to fixing both op rod weight and bullpup trigger flex, and forward ejection, and even multistack magazines that work without tumbling. I know how to build all of that. And when I move to another state I will get the license to do so, a Class 3. I'm even reasonably sure I can mod an AR-10 into a bullpup with the above features so I can finally build and shoot 270 ARM. And 6x45 PDW. But I don't want gangers and Islamic murderhoboes having access to them. So I can't build them, to protect us.

I'm probably better off taking most of these skills and applying them to aerogel fiber and weaving machines that will make canvas for car panels and boat parts, and knit for personal bulletproof vests and jerkins (pullover that hangs past the waist). Cheap enough, it will stop rifle bullets and still be comfortable to wear daily. Aerogel is sort of like the polysaccaride in spidersilk, but it is silica, not carbon. It is a wonder material, and really useful for many kinds of vehicle parts. It is safer to distribute in the world. It is harder for gangers to use against me. The ideas I have using these materials would make for a truck camper that weighs half as much. Same with a teardrop trailer, or an A-frame popup trailer.

I have also given real thought to applying these materials to RVs and trailers, upgrading their existing vacation capacity and minimalist living features to something a bit lighter, more portable, and better able to provide utilities for longer while you dry camp (without utility hookups). Most have no suspension, or very primitive suspension. They could go faster if it was better. A really modern suspension could be based on the McLaren MP4-12C, scaled up to the trailer weight. I also thought about applying using that same system to apply lean to the trailer. It wouldn't take much to make it corner better. Finally, I thought about using electric motors to charge a battery onboard and then release it into the wheels to assist in climbing steep mountains.

And how about processing grey water into clean, either for reuse or for dumping (dumping clean isn't harmful). Or using that same grey water into a second stage process into distilled so it is safe. You need lots of solar panel power for that. And you need a serious pack of LIFEPO batteries to hold it.

These are solutions to existing problems. Better answers to the direct confrontation that mostly results in helping evil, and wiping out the best of us.

Mountain Hermit

There is a special kind of freedom in a mobile lifestyle. You don't have to stick around and deal with the fallout from bad public policy when your house has wheels. You also don't have to make excuses when your boss crosses the line and wants you to come with into breaking laws that will see you in jail. Just say no, give notice, and move on. This is the sane response, especially here in the West where the evidence of failed or expired towns are all around us. Poor civic policy or exploited resources are the cause of most of the ghost towns.
I need a house on wheels to avoid getting nailed down to a community doomed to failure. Ever since I left home I was an outsider, and everywhere I go I see the insiders getting a pass on breaking laws, but the outsiders get exploited and discarded like trash. That's just how people are. Its always been an Us vs Them paradigm. So I want a house with wheels to avoid those problems.

If I had the money I would probably own one of these. This is an Airstream Land Yacht. It is pure luxury inside, and they cost around $148K. They are mostly trailer park queens, as they are known, hauled into place and parked for years at a time. They need a seriously powerful truck to haul them. Because of the weight they don't get moved often, so while this is the most luxurious, it doesn't actually make sense for a truly mobile life. And I like the high mountain passes. I like mountains. They have lots of peace and quiet. The lowlander color gangs mostly don't go there.

I think I might enjoy life with the right view, but I keep thinking about certain dirt roads climbing to remote mountain tops, where you get serious peace and quiet.

While I might be able to make a smaller Winnebago work for me, they're really expensive for being a van that sleeps more people than I want, and their kitchen is really too small for my needs. Also, their ground clearance is fine for paved roads but I can't help observing that roads aren't what they used to be. The best mountains do not have paved roads. Quite a few really nice places to visit are on gravel or dirt. For that you sort of need a 6-wheel-drive RV with knobby offroad tires, and a suspension capable of powering up largely non-maintained roads, most of which were made by logging companies for cutting down trees, then turned over to the national forest service. They only keep the roads they can afford, and that's based on budget limitations. The headquarters for the Tahoe National Forest is in Nevada City, down the street from the library where I volunteer. It has a couple satellite offices, one in Sierraville, a town I would love to live in for a summer.

While these really expensive options exist, I'm more inclined towards this shorter Airstream. I think I could pull that much easier, and park in way more kinds of campgrounds. I could also pull it with a bigger SUV (or smaller truck) rather than a huge truck with a loud diesel engine. I realize that diesels have great torque, but very poor torque range, which means they can pull things over mountains at one speed, which isn't so great when you need to speed up and slow down for the curves and hills, etc. From what I have seen, it makes more sense to use either a V8 or a V6 twin turbo powered pickup truck. They have the torque and power to accomplish pulling one of these trailers when it is time to move to a new town, a new campground, or new park. As I said above, I don't want to help people who hurt me, and the surest way to avoid harm is to avoid engagement in the lives of those who pay you. Do your job, get paid, move on.

CalPERS and Social Security Both Bankrupting

The Baby Boomers have a problem. They have several, but this specific problem is huge. Most of them know about it. Social Security is a Ponzi Scheme, and its managers don't have enough money to pay for all those retiring onto it. They were counting on my generation being bigger and better employed, so we could pay for those wages, but my generation is less than half the numbers of the Baby Boomers, so the 2:1 ratio of retirees supported by workers is going to 16:1 and later higher numbers. The high Obama-Poverty rate also meant that far fewer workers were paying into the Social Security scam for the whole duration of his tyranny. Most of my generation knows, since 1990, that we'll never see a dime of the Social Security we paid in without a choice. We've been robbed, and the Baby Boomers are bankrupting it. The only good news is that the Baby Boomers aren't going to see all they paid into it. and when they get older they won't see any either, no matter what they vote. I figure 10 years and we'll be unable to bail it out by voting.

The second problem, which is more of a California problem, is all public service workers (teachers, librarians, clerks at the bureaucracy) are screwed. CalPers, which is the single biggest chunk of money in the world was heavily invested in Housing Derivatives. They lost half the fund when it collapsed in 2007. The money remaining is no longer enough to pay the pensions on all those state and county employees because the original fund was based on paying 12 years of pension, at which point they would die at 75. Now people live into their 90's and even 100 years, getting pension all that time. The fund isn't large enough. And the amounts adjust with inflation against minimum wage. Remember that minimum wage is going up to $15/hr by 2022? That's a 50% increase over 4 years ago. That also means the pension payouts have to rise 50% by 2022. That makes them collapse even quicker. The Ponzi Scheme is doomed. The Governor, never one for admitting his own failure when he can party with Hollywood Communists and Billionaires in Silicon Valley, keeps raising taxes to "fix CalPers" but then the money goes to the Bullet Train To Nowhere. This is not good news for all those public employees. Their unions are bought and paid for, so do nothing. Most estimates predict 6 cents on the dollar invested. 6% return on their investment is terrible failure. That's 94% loss. All those public employees, much like the Bonus Army in 1932, may choose to protest, and they'll get maced, tased, and arrested for "unlawful assembly", the current crime for using the First Amendment. Socialists don't like being mocked for failure. All these old guys are going to be looking at terrible poverty in their final years of life. They served, possibly not well, but served California, and they're about to get screwed.

Realistically, we are looking at a future where the things we enjoy now we won't be able to afford for much longer. We're going to learn to get by with library books instead of TV shows, with walks and bicycle trips instead of vacations by air. We're all going to be eating government cheese and getting a lot thinner. And we'll pretend its okay, but it really won't be. Part of the reason that older people don't transfer power to my generation running the businesses they founded is they can't believe that the economy sucks, or that the methods they used 40 years ago don't work anymore. So when we manage them under the modern laws and taxes, they complain we're doing it wrong. Then they retake control, FAIL HARD, and the business collapses. They give up, sell off, and we're out those dozen or hundred jobs because Boomer Senility is responsible. Its very hard to make new jobs and businesses thanks to all the regulations created by Boomers to limit competition. They are the Worst Generation, after all.

Work till you die. About the only good news here is when you move on to another town, you can escape a lot of taxes that enable the survival of those who caused this apocalypse. We don't have teepees. We have Winnebagos and Airstreams, but the movement of Natives isn't just the immigrants from 10,000 years ago. Its those from the last two centuries, too.

Leftists Should Choose Another Party

We all gotta make a living. For 8 years we've had a terrible economy, lost a bunch of wars, saw a huge increase in domestic terror attacks, and laws haven't been imposed properly to the point that even the FBI is now in ethical trouble. The voters spoke and we got a major change in management. The stock market response was to rise 3000 points, up 300 today alone. The economy is improving because the Democrats aren't in charge anymore. That is really important. Democrats were hurting everyone, and most of them have to be wondering if they're voting for the wrong side. Some will switch to republican, but lots more won't. So what are their options?

Fed up voters should really think about third parties. There are several worth knowing about.

The Libertarian Party is sort of right wing, but not exactly. They're opposed to taxes, being controlled, and telling other people what to do. They are in favor of drugs, freedom, and personal responsibility. There's several famous examples of Libertarianism. Libertarians also don't wait for the police to show up with the chalk: they have guns to defend themselves. So libertarians are all NRA members and heavily armed, but not hostile. They just want to be left alone and look after themselves.

If you want dope intoxication, living in Washington state, Colorado, California and Oregon are legal for recreational dope. You don't need to vote. Just relocate. Every conceivable type of weather is available in those states. Pick the one you can live with. In 30 years the Green Party failed to get dope legal. That happened by popular state votes, not the Green Party.

The Green Party also claims to be about protecting the environment but seems to do no actual work. They complain, but they don't build or clean up rivers. They could be motivated to DO THINGS instead of just complain about them if new people took over. The Sierra Club helps a little, but not as much as they fundraise to hold more fundraisers. Their former president lives about 8 miles from here, in a wild animal preserve, which is borderline illegal and totally hypocritical.

There is also the Peace and Freedom party, which is diametrically opposed to Democrat policies of oppression and murder. This might be a good choice for those who voted for the wrong people while holding their noses. Don't hold your nose. Vote for a party that you can morally support.

Bernie is the face of communism in America today: addled, lost, unable to explain how to pay for anything, and has never held a paying job in his life. Much like modern Hippies, who at least want to look after themselves, socialism and communism are death cults. They have little to do with reality, and prior examples, and the millions who died in each, are poignant reminders of what they really become.

Weekend Fishing Trips

I was chatting with the @ultralight_backpacking group here in Google+ about food while backpacking. The OP described being the campground manager at Prosser Reservoir, which is NE of Truckee, on the other side of the Sierras from me but part of the same county I live in. Prosser is down on the plateau, one of the places where it resembles high desert, but you can see the mountains clearly. It is in the Banana Belt East of Donner Pass and the high Sierras but up the mountain from Reno.

When I ponder taking weekend breaks from being a librarian, once I start working for a living in my chosen career, I could easily see building a Teardrop trailer to camp in, and one of the above boats to fish with, using oars, and sail with after the fish stop biting, which happens around 9 AM. While I currently think a camper shell on the back of a truck is too small to live in full time, it would be fine for a couple nights of camping at the lakeside. It is possible to park these on the jacks, with them levelled, and go elsewhere for things like groceries, dumping the tanks (if you have them), and getting more water and beer. This is a viable idea, thanks to being single. I don't have to suffer the vagaries of an enraged woman in my life.

I'm taking interest in these things because TV sucks. Anime is dying out. There's too much politics and bias to even find news which isn't more than propaganda of one of the sides, who are each getting more extreme. Boating and recreation is healthier.

The above boat is fascinating for being made out of wood you cut and shape yourself, using epoxy and fiberglass to hold it together, and the result is lighter than a plastic boat or foam-core boat. The above boat is also interesting because you can add oarlocks to row it, a daggerboard and removable mast to sail it, or even a small motor to drive it around with that. You can even use an electric trollling motor if you want. I'd probably want to put in oar and the sail so I could switch my recreation based on conditions. Since I don't want to get wet while boating, that means that a kayak isn't for me. My insulin pump isn't waterproof. If I roll over and right myself I will be fine but my pump will die, and its $6000. Ergo, higher sides are needed. I might also be clever and put some ballast rocks wrapped in a towel on the bottom of the boat to keep it stable.
I'm also reasonably sure I can fiddle with sails and mast setups for any type I like. I'm learning a fair bit from other building sites, and found a useful resource on ballast and "righting moment". Considering my car isn't the sort that can haul a lot of weight, a very light boat, and probably one of these teadrop trailers would work best for me.
They aren't perfect, but they're pretty cool. And warmer than a tent. I don't enjoy sleeping on hard ground and being freezing cold when I want to sleep either. The construction methods used makes it really strong for its weight, and its very light. The roofrack could probably hold one of these boats I like. And the oars. And the mast. Or I could put it on the roof of my car, using a modified hitch-mount, which is probably better. Especially if I'm clever about integrating leverage and the dolly to roll it down the ramp into the water, or across the ground there. I can do these things. It is better to use tools to help yourself than rely on others you can never count on when it matters.

Oroville Tip Of The Iceberg For Govt Incompetence

The Oroville dam evacuation last week was a nightmare that stopped early. It could have been really really bad. The coffer dam was only feet of erosion away from collapse. We're talking about 30 more minutes and it wouldn't have been fixable anymore and a quarter cubic mile of water heading for Sacramento, destroying every house on the way South. 200,000 people had to run for it, but its better than 10% of them drowning and 50,000 injured.

Why did this happen? The short answer is Jerry Brown, the governor, is more interested in showy projects than maintenance of critical infrastructure. We hear about the Train To Nowhere, and his promise to launch satellites to study global warming using California tax dollars. Not protect our water supply. He's got an expensive plan to replace ObummerDontCare, since the provider companies are bailing on it.

California is ungovernable. Dividing the state into several new ones would save us, so it won't be done. Moonbeam loves power, and shitting all over everyone to keep his pals in Silicon Valley and Hollywood, billionaires who preach communism without following through, he doesn't need the rest of the state blocking his mania. He's clearly senile or evil because 200,000 people got screwed and he still won't show his face. We think he is an evil D1cK.

As I see it, having studied all this for 20 years, the USA is looking at Balkanization. The Balkans are the home of Yugoslavia, six small countries of people who hated each other passionately but ruled over by a terrifying dictator named Tito, and I don't mean Jackson. When Tito died, Yugoslavia restored their borders, armed up, and went to town on each other with mass killings. I doubt we'll come to that, exactly, but I could easily see the Left Coast becoming a Communist Country, invite in China, which then brings in its own security, which then starts killing them off with guards and drones like that one scene in Terminator. And since I know a bunch of Chinese people I know they consider EVERYONE competition for resources so its not racism that drives the genocide. Its just resource wars like always. Doped up California hippies are easy targets. Same sort of thing as happened in Bosnia would happen here, given half a chance.

Rural California, where I live, is all about the agriculture. While the Left Coast controls the ports, except San Diego and Eureka, both of which need work for proper high volume shipping, and Sacramento and Stockton, which could be blockaded by the Bay getting shut by greedy communists. Communism is a cult. It doesn't last because Pol Pot is the best example of true Communism. He killed half his country, to purify its vision. That's what would happen here if Moonbeam got his way, and his most extreme billionaire backers. The Saul Linsky Zealots like #antifa are the true face of California communism. Its all about rioting, racism, and murder. Its political.

Dealing with those killers sounds like a strong argument for guns and prepping, but that's incorrect. Moving away from them, far enough that they will face the full wrath of California's weather, which wants to kill all humans much of the time (despite what you have heard). So distance is a fantastic defense against #antifa. Rural living, done correctly and with proper perimeter defense warnings, means these urban murder-hobos are not able to reach you. The smarter answer, once you get away from the murder-hobo cities, is that the Left Coast has only a couple powerplants, no water supply except salt, and very little food (mostly south of Gilroy). They're the same idiots who think they can grow magic trees for free stuff, and voted for Bernie Sanders. The downside of rural areas is since communism is a kind of cancer, it eats its neighbors. It starts denying resources to the distant parts of the body (the state) to keep itself happy. Cancer is selfish, and breeds fast making more of itself, which is also selfish. The Left Coast is cancer, only the selfish cells are evil people. Isolating the evil by creating a new body (a state) which contains the evil with no ability to steal from its neighbor (us), could save the rest of the body. Losing Hollywood and Silicon Valley is not a tragedy. They don't pay much taxes, they don't employ many people, and they're not as important as agriculture, which makes way more money. Also, we don't need more immigrants. We have enough workers here. The naturalized citizens already know this. They don't want more competition driving down their wages. They've got a mortgage, after all, and the governor tried to drown their kids. I wonder if they'll still vote Democrat after this?

Its ironic, but more important than guns is a good wood stove so when the power goes out in the winter, you don't freeze to death. More important than guns is a mountain bike so you can ride to the market for groceries if there's no gasoline. The communists at the coast would totally tax the everloving hell out of fuel to pay for their fun. Musk is facing autoworkers union at his Tesla plant in Fremont/Milpitas, so he'll close the place and shift production elsewhere, to places like Reno which is a non-union town. He's already building a plant there. The Left Coast is the Bernie Sanders kind of Communists. Filled with doped up dreamers, no idea how to pay for it, or that it shouldn't just be given to them because they were born. That's the most common reason I hear from them. "You should give me everything because I was born!". Yeah, you can imagine what I think of that when I smirk back. It is worth remembering that this same coastline was overfished, then the sharks started eating people who started surfing in the same murky water as sea lions swim through, which look a lot like a person on a surfboard to a shark attacking from below. Surfing on the California coast is suicidal.

Having plenty of food in your pantry is key. Having a backup that can keep you safe and warm despite the lights going out sometimes is key. Not living directly below a dam that can drown you is key, even if that dam provides most of the agriculture water. Normal recommended maintenance would have prevented the problem, but Brown is either incompetent or evil. That's a question which won't matter if my state gets split off from the Left Coast. If they can't hurt us anymore, because their votes aren't in my state, we matter again, and we can save ourselves from their predations.

The Real California

The Real California is agriculture. Not cities. Not high technology. Not hippies, who arrived here in the 60's and 70's and didn't go home. Hollywood and Nancy Pelosi are an unfortunate symptom of the Nerfherders that allowed Darwin Awards to be denied in my home state of California. The real California is industrial agriculture, war with nature, and a desert with a bunch of oases. The drought of the last six years is finally over for the whole state and the reservoirs are full, the snow pack is high and we're in good condition to hire back all those gang members to the farms. They in turn will have the money to rent houses so their senoritas can be senoras and have bambinas, like good Catholics should. Most of our problems get resolved that way.

In the map above you can see that only the coasts, and San Bernardino County, and Alpine and Mono County are blue, mostly due to communists retired from LA. The rest is red, because the red part of the state works for a living. The blue is mostly communists on welfare, and their billionaire slave overlords. The billionaires pretend they "really care about the poor" which is why they work so hard to keep them poor. Duh! The contrary problem is the ultra leftists in the cities want the power and they don't want those poor Black or Mexicans to work for a living. They want them poor, angry, and ready to riot and murder for them, like the blacks do.

Early this week, a gay conservative was invited to give a public speech at UC Berkeley, a state funded leftist college responsible for the invention of the Hydrogen Bomb decades ago, but shifted in the 1960's into full leftist fascism. If you aren't a vegan with a Prius or a Bicycle, you're a target for violence. That's how UC Berkeley works, and they've been allowed to get this extreme because the college is the dominant employer in the city, which is just north of Oakland, and across the bay from San Francisco. Berkeley used to be more tolerant, but that's long gone. Its now fully extremist and by the 1990's it was creating eco terrorists who actually murdered people up on the north coast of the state for the crime of working for a living after these same ecoterrorists finished building their own redwood decks. They hypocritically murdered the guys who cut down the trees to build their decks in Berkeley. This is pretty much the entire communist ecosystem. Use people as your slaves, then kill them and eat their corpses. Any fool can tell that doesn't work for long, but the Berkeley communist want to depopulate the world so their long game is actually genocide. This explains a great deal.

Milo the gay conservative immigrant had things to say, but the antifa tried to assassinate him and the Berkeley cops hid in the building rather than use the teargas they were carrying to disperse the rioters or protect free speech. The mayor of Berkeley tweeted encouragement to the rioters, which is hate speech. He wasn't charged with hate speech because the city cops work for him and they're... fascists too. Left wing fascists. This was basically #krystalnacht in #Berkeley.

This also means the mayor committed both sedition and violated the constitutional rights of those coming to hear the speech. That's a federal crime. Its 10 years in prison and $100,000 fine for each person violated. He won't be charged because the state governor is also a communist. He lived in a fancy millionaire commune nearby while he was mayor of Oakland. He was proud of this. So as bad as the riots were, and how the #antifaterrorists were allowed and encouraged to break the businesses and neighborhoods of fellow leftists, this is fantastic advertising for white flight and gun sales.

Conservatives should seriously consider the Mossberg or Remington 12 gauge pump shotgun. 00-buckshot is effective on rioters no matter how many drugs they're on. That's why the police carry them. Effective police, which Berkeley does not have, have probably used the above video as a training aid, and I will expect they'll be holding 3-gun matches with silhouettes of black-clad terrorists so they can practice shooting them. England may let hoodies run rampant but we (our law enforcement) in Rural California will just shoot them. The survivors will get charged and off to prison. The rest get buried. I do hope they're practicing, locally. Lots of practice. Even with the rain there should be lots of visitors to the gun range today. The real California is armed and conservative. Not leftists in black hoodies.