#read the whole thing

[asummersarah]

I’m really glad frank talked about the bob he used to know and just told it like it was and didn’t downplay just how much bob had changed for the worst these last few years

[xoxojisu]

chat what if i reread the entire remarried empress series

[sawbuckplus]

Watching everybody I know on the left pontificating about the proper way to conduct audits, after getting their accounting degrees from the University of Internet this week, is absolute cringe for me. Guys, listen, I say this with love… You don’t know dick about shit and it’s fucking embarrassing. Just stop. You sound like idiots. So now, as a guy who used to be an auditor, who has defended companies from dozens of audits from different government agencies, I’ll try to correct some of your incredibly stupid NPC talking points you keep endlessly barfing up. First off, you need to know there’s a difference between an outside audit and an internal audit. An outside audit is when somebody who isn’t part of your company comes in and checks your stuff. 

...

You do NOT need to be an accountant to be an auditor. Anybody who says this is a total dumb ass with zero grasp of how any of this shit works in real life. The people who make up your audit team are recruited from whatever skill sets are necessary to audit that particular system. I (the accountant) have been on audit teams with IT guys, programmers, lawyers, and even machinists. (why machinists, because I was auditing a factory, and I could count the parts, but I couldn’t tell you if the parts were bullshit or not) So if you are auditing a computer system, then your auditors would obviously require computer people. Fucking duh, morons. Holy shit. The reason most auditors come from an accounting background is because most fraud, waste, and abuse comes from fuckery on the books. But if the fuckery is taking place in the particular systems before they get to the financials, that’s where we bring in systems experts. Next, you morons are acting like the entire organization is half a dozen 20 somethings, because that’s who got doxxed first and you fuckers are too stupid or dishonest to realize that’s not the entire team. Newsweek has compiled a list of known DOGE staff so far, and their ages are 33, 42, 28, 34, 67, 30, 33, 36, 33, 47, 25, 24, 43, 23, 25, 45, 19, 28, 21, 44, 39, 57, 45, 41, 32, 28, 22, 37, 37, 35, 24, 42, 36, and 36.

...

But (insert sob story here about how some good necessary wonderful saint of a government employee or super awesome wonderful government program got cut here) REEEEE!!!! Except too bad that’s total bullshit. The time for a gentle, caring, measured (slow), careful pruning of government to only remove the bad tissue with a scalpel was generations ago. We are now at the axe and TQ time before the patient dies. Yeah, that sucks, but that’s what happens when you procrastinate going to the doctors while a cancerous tumor the size of a fucking watermelon grows out your back.

...

Next, Elon now has access to our personal data! REEEEEE! Which is the stupidest fucking thing I’ve ever heard, because if Elon wanted all our personal data he could just buy it off the Communist Chinese, from one of the last seven times our incompetent and unaccountable federal government leaked all our data, for way cheaper. This is just idiotic obfuscation.

...

If a company’s records were full of broken bullshit, the government would assume the worst, fine the ever living fuck out of you, and possibly send you to jail. Because the government’s default assumption when a company’s books are all fucked up is that it is on purpose to hide fraud. Except when our government’s books are filled with things like 30 million dollars to fund a Transsexual Peruvian Orchestra, and 99% of that money never made it out of northern Virginia, we’re supposed to assume that’s just nice fluffy goodness, and HOW DARE YOU assume there’s anything dishonest going on.

Read the whole thing, and then take a wander through the comments. Well worth your time.

[arcticdementor]

What is the deadliest weapon on the modern battlefield?  FPV Drones are the new hotness; Nuclear Weapons hang like the Sword of Damocles; Airstrikes plunge like thunderbolts with Jupiterian Precision; Artillery rains like a storm God’s deluge ( or at least it does when you have a manufacturing base); IEDs and mines lie in wait for the unlucky traveler; Precision rifles take their silenced harvests; and chemical and biological weapons lurk like an emperor’s poisonous consorts. But Yet… when you start adding up the bloody results of the full scope of the modern battlefield: Interstate wars, guerilla wars, Clandestine operation, Gang wars, Marriages… Shocking statistical realities reveal themselves. The deadliest weapon in American history… Is the Handgun.

…

When you add up every official causality in every war the US has ever fought since the revolution, Including DISEASE depending on what you include as a war related disease… The approximately 1.2 million Americans who’ve died in all wars since the Revolution of 1776 is SLIGHTLY LESS than the 12000-15000 Americans who die annually to guns violence (90% of which are handguns) which very roughly averaged over a 100 year period would be about 1.2-1.5 MILLION Handgun deaths. (and the republic is 200 years old not 100, though populations do shrink dramatically the further back you go) And remember… This is just Handgun deaths OUTSIDE of declared wars… Within wars presumably some percentage of those killed are via handguns (think of all the policing, executions, feuds, enforcements, assassinations etc. that occur which can end with a handgun death… Even conventional wars are quite irregular in the manner civilians, partisans and soldiers interact).

…

Applying the logic which we have already seen, that outside of the most war-ravaged countries ordinary homicide, gang wars, feuds, and clasdestine actions are VASTLY more likely to kill people than high intensity warfare… You quickly notice a trend. The 3 deadliest weapons in the world today in terms of body-count (your likelihood to be killed by them) varies between  • Handguns in the New World where guns are plentiful but open carry of rifles is not the norm • Auto and semiautomatic (and previously bolt-action) rifles in the third world of Africa and failed parts of the Middle-East where it is perfectly acceptable for gangs to walk about with AK-47s in their arms • Knives and bladed weapons in Gun restrictionist jurisdictions (Europe), Asia, Prisons, etc. If you die a violent death dear reader whether in the killing fields of darkest Africa, darkest Detroit, the trenches of forever war or the smuggling tunnels of Mexico, to an enemy you’ve never spoken a word to or to a spouse you said just one word too many to, it will almost certainly be to one of these 3… Even in the age of FPV Drones, IEDs, Cluster munitions, and Thermobaric rocket artillery… a super-majority of the time the person who decides you need to die will be within 2-200 meters of you see you with their bare eye or possibly a simple optic, and decide in sight of your face to end your life with the tool they have at hand. Knife, handgun, or rifle. And it’s very hard to tell which of the 3 actually leads the pack globally.

…

However, notice something about these 3 weapons and modern warfare. Every single soldier in every army in the world goes through some kind of Rifle qualification, a soldier with no idea how to use a rifle (at least at the rudimentary level non-specialized soldiers are trained to) can barely be regarded as a soldier. Likewise across a wide sections of Infantry and various occupations handgun qualification is a right of passage for much of military life as well as the police… and of course civilians, hobbyists, and irregulars of all sort take courses, read books, look up manuals, watch YouTube videos… etc. Regarding Handguns and rifles of all sort.

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Who can say the same of the knife? who are the experts on knife fighting?  Who studied the blade?

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Seeing such a practical and mutli-use object one might wonder why I’m being so harsh on the bayonet? Why would I seemingly side with Marshall when I just opened this essay discussing why knives are indeed one of the deadliest weapons on the modern battlefield? Well notice the difference between the words “Knife” and “Bayonet”… For an object like the M9 the distinction might be purely semantic…  What is the difference between an M9 Bayonet and an M9 Knife? Nothing. But What is the difference between a “Spirit of the Bayonet” and a “Spirit of the Knife”?  Everything. The fundamental feature of the Bayonet, the very word, is that it affixes to a rifle, and is made specifically to affix to the specific rifle (there is no such thing as a universal bayonet). A Bayonet is a piece of uniform issued kit for a uniformed military. And the Bayonet’s entire origin and history is tied up with this. It is irreducible from this. If the drill instructor’s cry “Squad Affix Bayonets” cannot be followed by the timed mechanical manipulation of the bayonet… It is no bayonet. Its origin is in the 17th and 18th century with the pinnacle and peak of drilled uniformed line infantry. The bayonet is not to be improvised, concealed, smuggled, plunged into the unsuspecting back, disposed of…

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The Bayonet is a proud uniformed part of a proud uniformed army. One charges the enemy with a bayonet, and as seen from 17th, 18th, 19th, 20th and now 21st century battlefields the enemy pretty consistently runs from such charges such that many uproariously successful bayonet charges produce not a single bayonet kill… Rather a good percentage of the time (such as Afghanistan) they have a morale effect on the enemy similar to what the bayonet produces on southern civilians.

The Knife however have been killing for 10s of thousands of years… from battlefields to sacrificial alters, sleeping spouses to ascendant emperors, old women to newborn babes… All have fallen under the merciless indifference of the knife. Fatal knives have been made of stone, glass, wood, bronze, steel, plastic, fiberglass, graphite, and shell. Knives are anything but uniform varying from dozens of inches to under 1 inch, curved in every way imaginable, bladed and unbladed, concealable and disguised or ostentatious, bound and fashioned in every way…

…

And yet whereas the removal of the bayonet, or the cutting of bayonet training would bee met with outrage… even removing the bayonet from drill (and thus saving maybe hundreds of thousands of man hours of training over the course of a decade in pure ceremony) would be met with outrage and think-pieces, and great odes to tradition. And yet NO such care, concern, or sentimentality is given to the vastly MORE traditional, historied, and lethal consideration of blades as whole. A 400 year old weapon system is centered in ceremony like no other weapons system save the rifle (there is no Antitank-guided-missile drill) yet the wider topic of the 50,000 year weapon category is quietly ignored. with the Exception of Don Pentcost’s brutal and often hilarious 1988 classic “Put Em Down Take Em Out: Knife Fighting Techniques from Folsom Prison”(ENTRY 6 on the Warlord’s Reading List) Shockingly little interest has been exerted studying the actual world of Knife violence and murder as a combat reality instead of a hypothetical or vehicle for eastern mysticism (or vehicle for the UK nanny state). And that which has been exerted has been largely squandered on Self-Defense from Knives, disarming techniques, and Knife vs. Knife fighting… All of which is largely a mix of fantasy, eastern mysticism, and goofy ww2 era combatives attached more to Hollywood and fictional morality plays completely divorced from how the hundreds of thousands killed by knives every year die bloodily, scared, alone, surprised and begging for their lives… and how their assailants effect their deaths via ruthless unity of action and forsaking of those moral hypocrisies. The problem of course is the reality of real world knife fighting cuts through (I won’t apologize for this pun) many of the moral confusions, hypocrisies, and fairy stories for children, voters, soldiers and officers that define the modern west and discussions of warfare and combat specifically. Indeed, as you will see, breaking these taboos is the essence of effective knife fighting instruction. Any honest discussion of the devastating effectiveness of this ancient technology must break through the Hollywood depiction of Knife fighting which Don Pentecost so aptly attacked in his work.

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Anyone alive has by now been exposed to MMA and UFC and has come to pretty much accept that wide swathes of traditional martial arts and self-defense are bullshit.

…

But the central conceit of Martial Arts, the idea that popularized them, the central conceit of every Karate and martial arts movie from the 70s to John Wick… is that via strengthening and training the body in the techniques of a “Real” martial art one can attain a level of mastery which is nigh superhuman, whereby a person vastly lighter, weaker, and shorter of frame and body can defeat a vastly larger and stronger opponent with skill and technique. And… invariably, that via that superior technique, an unarmed person can defeat an armed attacker. Of course gun instructors and others can tell you how deadly stupid basically every martial arts disarms is compared to a gun, where compliance is basically always preferably except in cases where you expect life, liberty or honor are going to be permanently taken from you no matter what you do, and therefore you should risk it. But there are martial arts and knife instructors who only teach disarms… So it is widely believed, assumed, and/or culturally inculcated that knives are different and can be disarmed by sufficient martial arts techniques whereas guns probably cannot be. This is the part of my Lecture where I ask you to use your eyes:

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These are skilled Martial artists. You might object to some specific styles, or that your favorite UFC fighter could take them… But they do impressive stuff in the midst of this. These are fit guys. These aren’t the fat senseis in the strip mall your parents took you to to tell you to do pushups… Yet almost all of them are stabbed more than once per second. many over twice per second. Even the ones who do INSANELY well and even pin the attacker successfully receive stab wounds in the process that would be fatal in real life.  The exact ONE and only round someone arguably survives, he received fatal wounds a split second after the bell rang. And that’s on his Forth and final round, after losing and being killed and refining his technique in the first 3. Just 20 seconds.

…

The mythology of modern martial arts, the modern morality play of Hollywood knife fighting, was obvious in the 1980s and spelled out and ruthlessly mocked by Don Pentcost in “Put Em Down, Take Em Out”. That a morally upright, spiritually centered, balanced, trained, disciplined, and merciful unarmed good-guy can- with cool confidence and a reassuring smile- take on a knife wielding opponent unarmed and effectively disarm him, even without hurting the assailant. A bad-guy tough of some failed moral character will brandish a knife at a morally upstanding hero, say or demand something, hold the knife way out in front of him leading with it instead of keeping it close to the body, then the hero will either disarm him, or say something morally upstanding, provoking the attack (in which the attacker will lead even more, and then disarm him… At which point the villain will be shamed in front a girl he was trying to impress or his friends or simply god… And run away. This makes highly marketable TV. Little boys, their minds wired to look for warriors to imitate and desperate for role models, get to admire and latch onto some Hollywood hero for his competence at violence. And no mother will complain about her boy seeing such a toothless morality play philosophy of violence. Likewise no parents will get pissy and take their child out of a martial arts class that teaches such a toothless idea of violence…  The Hollywood executives get their market, the Fat Sensei gets his cut of the family’s sports budget, mom doesn’t have to worry about Junior getting violent ideas or developing any of the honor culture or aggression that has marked every single group of boys actually trained in violence in history… And Junior thinks he’s learning real skills and becoming a man… Until he either gets disillusioned and embarrassed by his childhood Karate lessons if he’s lucky… or doesn’t, and becomes an interracial crime statistic when a thug shouts something obscene at his date and he tries to be a morally upright, spiritually centered, balanced, trained, and disciplined gentleman… You know: like a retard. He might as well try to pull a Micheal Jackson and Jesus the rifle away.

…

I’m going to tell you the golden rule of knife fighting right now: A KNIFE FIGHT IS WON BY THE MAN WITH THE KNIFE repeat that into the mirror. Understand every variant of its meaning. Contemplate this. Go through your questions on knife fighting and sub in the golden rule. “What if both men have knives?” A Knife fight is Won By The Man With The Knife. two men with knives facing eachother basically never happens, anymore than high noon quickdraw duels. It is vastly more likely 2 men with knives will attack someone then 2 men with knives will fight eachother. Even when both men have knives one of them will be faster, angrier, have the element of surprise, and be initiating the conflict… And the other will be unaware or caught off guard or struggling to draw the blade. This will be decisive 95% of the time. 2-4 stabs per second is the rate in the vital first second when the defender doesn’t know what’s happening If however two men with knives do fight… 2 stabs per second was the rate for defending martial artists. And it takes a dozens of seconds to bleed out, so both would be screwed if they actually went at it.

…

Decades of Technique, martial arts training, military discipline, harsh conditioning, fanatical faith… All of it is ultimately worthless at the moment of conflict in a knife fight compared to nigh-suicidal psychotic will. Many a special forces soldier, black belt martial artist, ancient hero of legend, boxer, bodybuilder, etc. Have died when they were stabbed to death by their psychotic wife or girlfriend who thought they were cheating.  THINK ABOUT THAT. The most advanced training in the world, decades of discipline, years of physical refinement and competition, the pure spiritual certainty of eastern enlightenment or Monotheistic crusader/jihadist faith, the favor or even blood of the gods themselves… Does not consistently defeat a jealous 4’10” girlfriend with a kitchen knife and a psychotic rage.

…

This overwhelming, unavoidable logic of knife fighting basically drove the development of swords, since the only defense against a knife is being outside of its range, this has driven since time immemorial the development of longer blades that could out-range each-other, shields to block, and techniques to hack the blades and limbs of your opponents to create openings. If you want to truly “win” a knife vs. knife fight (which again basically never happens) the way you do it is by having a longer better knife that can more easily and more devastatingly strike and disable your opponent’s limbs or body from a range where they cannot strike you.

…

This brings up the second point.  Don’t Bring a Knife to a Gunfight. But likewise a Gun is massively disadvantaged in a Knife-fight. If a knife is SUCCESSFULLY out ranged it is not a knife fight and the knife will almost always lose.  Every other weapon ever developed in history exists first and foremost to out-range a knife. If they can do this, they win. HOWEVER If they cannot do this, they lose. Modern police pistol training revolves around this paranoia of knives getting closer than a police officer can draw or employ a pistol.  None of them that I know of teach unarmed knife disarms.

…

The oldest continuously read existent texts, works that never needed to be truly rediscovered (older than all but small 4-32 line poems and fragments included in later books of the Bible; and continuously read, unlike lost epics or records such as Gilgamesh or the Egyptian Hieroglyphs) are of course Homer’s Iliad and Odyssey.Composed sometime around 800-700bc. And at the center of the Odyssey, “the Greek New Testament” is something rather shocking: A mass casualty terrorist attack. The massacre of 120+ people… 108 Suitors, 12 of Odysseus’s traitorous servant girls, and some number of the suitors personal servants… In a manner that resembles nothing so much as the Virginia tech massacre, right down to the pre-planned barring of doors, and exits, and the removal of weapons or tools that might serve as such.

…

4 men: 1 Veteran, 1 Novice Aristocrat, and 2 Slaves… Massacred 120+ people almost entirely BY HAND. Via the use of slightly longer knives and knives on sticks. A ratio over 30 per person evenly split or probably over 60+ for Odysseus if we assume he had to pick up a lot of the slack from these green fighters. Don’t assume this is mythological and can be ignored… Homer’s description of his non-magical fight sequences are highly tactical and gritty detailed, such that many commentators and soldiers since have speculated that he simply HAD to be a veteran to get so many details correct, or to have gotten incredibly detailed input from soldiers. Whilst archeologists have pointed out his accounts do not reflect 11th century bronze age warfare that predominated at the time of the historical Troy (Homer doesn’t understand how chariots archers work)… They agree he REALLY understands how warfare worked in the 8th century Iron Age when he was composing the Iliad and Odyssey.

…

Mass stabbings are shockingly common… Indeed one gets the impression that they are profoundly under-reported in the west due to the political battle surrounding mass shootings and gun control. The dramatic thing about them however is how dramatically fat the tails of the distributions are. Given a weapon with effectively “infinite ammo” one can immediately see the effects of will, fanaticism, ideology, clarity of malice, and the contrasting lack there of. Many of the attacks are plainly pathetic and you can see the attacker’s hesitation and lack of focus with 3-10 injured and none killed, almost certainly mental illness related… With others you can see the premeditated malice. The Chinese in particular seem to produce people who can produce knife deaths that dwarf most US mass shootings… This may be due to the population, something about the Chinese condition producing more ideological extremism, or simply Chinese culinary practices producing vastly more people experienced with turning living creatures into severed meat… However this is not the upper limit of knife violence.

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Of course the deadliest mass blade attack in history was the Rwandan genocide in which 800,000 were slaughtered within 100 days by Hutu “Extremists”… Who I feel the need to air-quote not because their actions weren’t extreme, but because if they managed to amass the manpower to kill 800,000 people in a country of 8 million at the time… They can’t have been that non-representative of the Hutu Population… They might have indeed been “Hutu-Centrists”. 10% of the Pre-war Rwandan population, killed in 100 days. 8,000 per day. Each day the equivalent of a major battle in antiquity. If we assumed one murder per man, that’d be 20-25% of all surviving men in Rwanda having killed someone… however of course, we can safely assume most of the militias were killing vastly more than 1 per member.

…

They didn’t need basic training… They didn’t need mental conditioning… they didn’t need technique or martial arts classes… They didn’t even really need a coherent chain of command, many were directed by AM/FM radio. This is simply what hominids are adapted for as the most basic form of violence and warfare. You can see little boys discovering sticks or pool noodles, without being shown anything, will intuitively start sword fighting and feel compelled to practice these exact muscle movements the same way kittens and puppies and other carnivorous animals will intuitively chase each-other and wrestle when they’re young. Now think of your ethnic rivals in your own country… would they do this to you and your people given simply the right spark and direction? Would your people do this to them?

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The knife as a weapon at the strategic and tactical level exists to create and exploit extreme differences in will. EVERYONE has knives, the vast majority reading this could, if they were possessed with sudden life or death urgency and clarity of purpose, dive out of their seat (send their laptop or device flying) and grab a knife from within arm’s reach or run and grab one from the next room over in less time than it takes to finish this sentence. Those who do not have a knife near them could very quickly fashion one by smashing a window, or their device, wrapping their hand around an article of clothing or torn cloth, and grasping one of the shards.

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Probably the greatest tactical espionage operation that has ever or will ever be carried out, in human history, was John Wilkes Booth’s assassination of Abraham Lincoln.

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When Mrs. Lincoln’s scream upon realizing her husband’s state broke the confusion… Booth was already mere steps from his exit. Countless men and officers, many otherwise very daring heroes who’d charged positions and engaged in hard fighting, were later distraught and commented despairingly that they had had loaded weapons on their person and an extraordinary amount of time to shoot Booth, yet had done nothing.

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Now really CONTEMPLATE this: John Wilkes Booth was an actor with no combat experience. He was assassinating maybe the most important man in the world, right next to a skilled and veteran infantry officer, in a room with dozens upon dozens of veteran officers and soldiers, in a militarized city with THOUSANDS of officers and soldiers… Controlled choke-points at the bridges of the city… And not only did he succeed, not only did he successfully get away, not only did he avoid being shot or even drawn upon… but he did all of that whilst arranging to also get center stage, make his statement, and take the equivalent of a theatrical bow after just making himself the most wanted man on earth. A veteran Delta Force Officer with 20 years combat experience could not do this… Yet Booth was not an elite veteran, he was untrained civilian thespian.

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“Sic Semper Tyrannis” is of course an ancient phrase in Roman history sometimes attributed to Brutus’ ancestor Lucius Junius Brutus who overthrew the last Roman King and established the republic, but was more famously invoked by the descendant who assassinated Caesar. Unlike Dante, early Americans admired Brutus and Casius, and the phrase was commonly used by almost every faction of American life, the founders, George Mason saw it included in the Flag of Virginia, in the lead up to and during the civil war it was used by both Southerners and Abolitionists, and since it has had a storied history… Timothy McViegh was arrested with the phrase emblazoned on his T-Shirt. But of course it is most associated with the Assassination of Julius Caesar, the most staged and restaged assassination in history. Booth himself played Mark Antony in a performance of Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar (ironically playing not an assassin but the aggrieved friend and avenger). However these bottomless layers of theatricality and symbolism can miss the base fact of the Assassination itself… The original assassination was an act of theatre itself.

…

As we’ve covered pens, shivs, kitchen knives, dining implements, and sharpened toothbrushes have all been used to kill within the past 10 years…. A knife can be formed from just about anything, But the social meaning of these knives can be just as important… The 9/11 Hijackers (if you believe the official story) were able to hijack the planes with box cutters which were not restricted at the time. By contrast the 1960 Assassination of Inejirō Asanuma by Otoya Yamaguchi, the chairman of the Japanese Socialist Party was done with a Wakizashi a tradditional Japanese Short Sword… Chosen specifically to communicate the idea of tradditional Japanese cutting down the communist threat to Japan.

…

That man’s most ancient and fearful weapon is also man’s most basic and useful tool ensures that such confusions, manipulations, and creations of meaning are inevitable. the same blade with which an ancient mother might cut the umbilical chord, or prepare a family meal, might also be used to murder the father or perform the sacrifice.

…

The best defense against a knife attack is anticipating it and avoiding it. A knife is a zero range weapon. Even if you are in a country which doesn’t allow you to carry a gun, simply anticipating, avoiding, and running is enough to avoid random knife violence. Thugs don’t like to chase their marks if they weren’t lazy, they’d get jobs instead. By contrast if you think someone might try to stab you, go armed, move through space paranoidly, choose clothing that provides protection from knife attack, secure your home, apply bolts, hide out in your vehicle… secure your phone where you can’t be tracked by it. Etc. It would be the height of Hollywood folly to train for a handgun fight expecting to stand and shoot your opponent’s bullets out of the air. Even quickdraw duels are largely fantasy. Gunfights are decided by who gets their weapon trained on the other man first, who has the element of surprise. The one initiating the gun fight almost always has his weapon drawn, ready, and knows where his opponent is before his opponent even knows there will be danger.

…

Knives are the exact same. Sure there might be a scenario where a guy out with his girlfriend ever so cleverly starts removing his jacket, getting it over one arm and then when threatened with a knife. ever so cleverly smashes a window with the protected hand and comes back with a shard of glass of his own… There are a million one of tricks that might work in a million fantasy scenarios… But it doesn’t change the fact that your odds of survival, once you are unarmed and someone is at hand with a knife, are pretty-much as bad as the man held up by a gun. If you don’t have an equivalent weapon of your own at hand immediately, the odds are wildly deathly against you, and even if you do the odds are extremely against you because your opponent controls the engagement. Unless you are heavier, stronger, more aggressive, and get a blade of your own as fast as possible, your will get horribly injured. The only time I have EVER seen an unarmed man defeat an armed man, the unarmed man was twice his weight the armed man seemed exhausted from drugs, and he still got a dozen attempted stabs that could have been devastating. Also the races were exactly the races you’d think could be that wildly different in skill. The Hollywood fantasy of heroically coming away unscathed after winning a violent encounter that impresses your girl is just that… a fantasy.  It appeals to you because you’re a loser who’s alienated from any sense that you have a right to commit violence, and so simply impressing a girl by bullying a guy at a bar or threatening a homeless person who looks at her funny (which would actually get her going though she’d never admit it) has been drilled out of you by your teachers and Hollywood. . The reality is that any meaningful defensive knife fighting… Is OFFENSIVE KNIFE FIGHTING.

…

Per Don Pentcost, the most efficient and hard to block way to attack someone with a knife, the way prisoners themselves really have never developed a counter to, is to hold your primary knife hand back close to your body like a spear whilst holding your blocking hand forward like a shield… Similarly to how a boxer leads with his non-dominant hand, holding his dominant hand back. Then the attacker alternates between jabbing with the forward hand to distract, block, and bind up the opponent, then stabbing for the body with the primary knife hand while they’re unable to defend themselves. Repeat 2-4 times per second, be aggressive.

…

Of course this is far from comprehensive… There’s tons of stuff to do with stab-vests and knife resistant clothing, riot control, and once you get up to longer blades with more reach technique comes back into the matter as the longer blades employ various tricks to overcome shorter blades. Again this was warfare right up to the 1600s… People have iterated a LOT on how to hack each-other to pieces. But I hope you have seen what I wanted to emphasize.

…

And yet even as knives and shivs alter history, define prison life, define crime and non-state and irregular warfare in much of Europe and Asia… And remain historically the most relevant and important weapons to maybe ever exist… Conventional militaries teach little except incredibly antiquated bayonet drills, and the popular conception and understanding of knife fighting is driven by Hollywood morality tales and crappy self-defense course lies.

…

To this day you can order books on Tanks, rifles, handguns, etc. and no one cares! No customs agent will stop you, there’s no country that restricts them. You’re fine. Likewise you can order all kinds of books on martial arts right down to the Mythical Dim Mak the legendary Death Touch. Yet Don Pentcost’s "Put ‘Em Down Take ‘Em Out” is STILL banned from several major Commonwealth and European nations. You can read how to punch people, you can read how to death poke people, you can read how to shoot people… But stabbing them? That’s a banned book right there. The intersection of lethality with ordinary household capability is something the total states of western “Democracy” are deeply frightened of their populations understanding.

[haggishlyhagging]

The reproductive function of a woman is the only innate function which distinguishes women from men. It is the critical distinction upon which all inequities toward women are grounded. It is, therefore, crucial for women to understand clearly what the nature of this function is, how it is to be defined, and in what relationship the reproductive function stands to a woman.

The reproductive function is a special ability, capacity, or talent held by women. This function is a property which determines their womanhood. The distinction between this function and the usual sense of property is that the latter is static, or primarily spatial, while the former is operational, or exists over time. The reproductive function has the status of property because of its definitive nature.

. . .

The Constitution of the United States, in the Fourteenth Amendment, clearly protects the life, liberty, and property of every person. Any legislation interfering in any way with any woman's self-determination of her reproductive process is clearly unconstitutional. It would interfere with her life by interfering with her person; it would interfere with her liberty by interfering with her freedom of choice as regards her own person; it would interfere with her property since her reproductive process constitutes, in the most integral and strictest sense, her property.

-Ti-Grace Atkinson, Amazon Odyssey

[intrepidmare]

In order to make AO3's rules clearer to our users, we intend to update the AO3 Terms of Service (TOS) in mid-November 2024. Once this occurs, all users will need to agree to the updated TOS to continue using AO3. The full text has been posted for public review, as well as a detailed explanation of what has (and hasn't) change.

[the-pitchfork-kids]

IMPORTANT ANNOUNCEMENT.

This will be regarding the future of the PFK series. Please read EVERYTHING it is very important.

I've been doing a lot of thinking lately about the direction of the series and being a better writer and such and I've realized that- I really dislike Headless Hummingbirds. I think it's sort of well-known within y'all by now that it was originally a joke. A silly joke for my friends- and it somehow blossomed into this big idea and story that I want to tell through my writing, but because Headless Hummingbirds was originally a joke- and ultimately, that time the group was changing far more than right now, it causes a lot of plot points and characters to be rushed and messed up and it was just all a mess to write.

That plus the fact I never put any real effort into this to being with all led to a product yes, but a product I could have improved. At the time I kept holding myself to deadlines and I forced myself to publish the absolute moment I could, I never through of re-writing and despised the idea of writing a draft so I just published what I had and called it a day.

That was back in September, five months ago- and a girl can change in those months.

Since I've published the book I looked more into actually learning how to write better- because nobody, no matter what you wish; can make a career on pure talent alone. You gotta actually take time to learn stuff- so that I did!

And that learning made me realize that I really dislike the book and I don't want to continue the series with a book starting it off like that. I want this to be good and entertaining- I want this to tell the story right. And what I've made currently is nowhere near how I want to tell the story.

I won't get into nitty, gritty details of what I dislike and what I think is wrong- because I don't want anybody's pity. I just want patience and understanding.

I have decided to re-write Headless Hummingbirds.

So book two will be paused- and actually the few pages of it I already have are going to be deleted. I now know what I want to do with this series unlike before- and I'd like to start with a book in this series that I wrote keeping that in mind. I want to start with a book I put effort in, that I knew was something big I wanted, not a silly joke that I accidentally blew up.

The original idea for Headless Hummingbirds was supposed to be a big, fat, joke. It was supposed to be 50 pages of fun nonsense for us to laugh at- I was actually planning to start writing a different book at the time, but then as I wrote I kept needing more and more pages and adding more and more and eventually- you got Headless Hummingbirds.

But that Headless Hummingbirds can be improved- it can be better and I want it to be. I want to give you guys quality that you'll actually enjoy reading- not something you'll just tolerate for the sake of getting to see what happens to the main gooberish cast.

Now I will say, a re-write does come with some complications that you may or may not like- but I know this is the best decision for my series. I know what I want- and I want to deliver it to you guys in a way that had heart and soul poured into it instead of overused metaphors and brainless ideas.

What does this mean for the audiobook?

This means not that much for the audiobook project actually.

If you don't know, I'm producing a voice-acted audiobook for Headless Hummingbirds- because I'm really extra like that.

In all seriousness, you don't have to worry. The audiobook will still come out- and it won't be paused either! Now it will still take a long while to be published- probably taking till next September or November to release because of re-casting issues and VA's quitting, but the re-write has not effected it at all.

It just means we'll have two Headless Hummingbirds audiobooks!

Speaking of...

What does this mean for the old Headless Hummingbirds book?

Again, it doesn't mean too much- it just means that everything that book says it no longer canon!

As you might have griped- not too long ago I updated saying that the book was the "prologue" to the series, to try and make it seem like a faraway distant to the better books of the franchise I was going to write- but it still didn't feel right.

Now I will still keep it up on the blog! Because it's still a part of the series and should still get it's spot! Though it will be listed as the "Beta Draft," acting sort of as those concept art releases shows will have! This is what we thought of before compared to what you got!

Honestly, that is what it is- I got all the ideas out onto paper- now it just needs re-working and an uncluttered brain to organize them into a proper story- and honestly, I think it's very cool and interesting to look at concept ideas for shows and games- so why shouldn't books have that same thing? Why shouldn't I share the concept and the splatter of messily conceived ideas that brought you the real product?

So don't worry, the book will still be up- it just won't be canon anymore. I know a lot of you probably really liked the original and won't like the fact some of it will have changed, but trust me. The story will be almost identical to the new one I'm writing- just a few character, relationship, setting and event changes is all.

And hey! Who knows, I might make it a thing I do! Share the concept manuscript for the actual installment so you can see where the glory you read came from!

What does this mean for the blog?

Does this mean a restart? Does this mean a deletion? Does this make every single post up to this point incorrect? No No And again, no. Most of the posts I already said aren't canonical don't canonize anything specific I plan on changing from Headless Hummingbirds.

This also does not mean the blog is going to be stopped.

Yes, I have been cheating you out of incorrect quote content- but that due to something entirely different.

Something called school.

(And Hazbin Hotel but I digres.)

But the blog will run smoothly and most everything of recent is 100% canon if I didn't already say it wasn't canon!

In conclusion

I hope you guys wait and stick around to see the re-write of Headless Hummingbirds. I really do, I want to start the series with a book that I wrote knowing what I wanted our of it. I'm a terrible pantser and that is very noticeable in my writing- so this would help me make everything better for you guys! I really want you guys to love this series and I'm going to try my best and write you quality, entertaining things for you to enjoy later down the line!

Thank you for reading

And thank you for your patience :)

I cannot wait to get you the actual HH book!

[midnitestar]

a welcome wagon and a makeshift date.

⸻ the fixer upper ranch challenge: chapter 5

introducing the town's sheriff, don gooseman; the renowned horse racing champion, sienna grove; and girl-next-door, autumn.

read from the beginning here!

[arcticdementor]

"The entire system of federal government power has been built with the assumption that some variety of liberal, from a certain very specific intellectual tradition, would always be given the reigns of state power. There were certain filters in place (especially through unelected credentialing bodies and universities and professional organizations) that would ensure that, regardless of party, the sorts of people who make their way to centralized power would hold certain world views and values. And... now we're in an era where it looks like that's possibly no longer true. And that is clearly disruptive. (And for this narrative, too, it's worth recognizing that the current 6-3 conservative Supreme Court is the first time America has had a Supreme Court that conservative since the 1920s. That, on its own, is a radical, radical shift, considering how much liberals of all stripes used their dominance of the court in the middle of the 20th century to remake America in their vision, and how central it has been to their moral story of progress) Anyway, given that story, I think it's very likely we'll see many more examples of this, of liberals becoming shocked and horrified to discover what happens when the central state they built with the assumption of permanent broad liberal control falls into heretical hands. I'm not saying this with pleasure, exactly, because I personally would have preferred many of those tools dismantled long ago. But..."

—CrispyFriedBarnacles

[arcticdementor]

1. How great the white man’s burden— You bid the sickness cease, Fill full the mouths of famine— Their numbers do increase. ’Cross bleeding boiling seas— In western shores’ pursuit— The silent sullen millions Land, accuse, and file suit.

[hislittleraincloud]

Can you post that pic of you at 17 again??? Pleasssse! Or better yet you can post a current one 😏😜 lol jk. I know people on here can be lil shits so of course I’m not expecting a current pic (or any picture for that matter. Just thought I’d try and ask)

It's right here.

ETA: Before some assholes tell me I was fat, that Homey the Clown shirt was about as big as the Crumb shirt Mogwai wore (relatively speaking, in terms of size and fit on a body...). I wasn't fat (look at my little toothpick arms LOL). I liked to wear huge t-shirts and nothing else underneath when I was 17.

[benrobertson2004]

This is great read the whole thing

[soperomitch]

[tzipporahs-well]

Hello scientist, writer, and artist here who is vehemently against GenAI in various things. I’d like to expand on this.

In my opinion, moral AI usage depends on the purpose and usage.

TLDR: AI in science may have benefits but there are still large negative costs. It also cannot be simplified to good analytical AI vs bad gen AI

AI in Science

Analytical AI vs. GenAI is a False Dichotomy

Analytical AI can be used for bad. For instance, the police may task the AI to determine the most likely groups to commit crime. Howeve, garbage data in = garbage data out leading to racial profiling.

GenAI can be used for good in science such as AlphaFold/RosettaFold and similar programs used to determine protein structure and develop drugs.

Unethical AI Usage:

GenAI in the arts of any kind: mass copyright infringement. Arts are meant for humans to enjoy; the AI is soulless

GenAI for daily tasks (eg: rewording, making resumes, etc.): it atrophies people’s brains and skills in doing those tasks

GenAI as therapists or alternatives for social connection: this can go south quickly and has seen multiple accounts of worsening people’s mental illnesses

GenAI to spread misinformation: very dangerous in distorting the truth

GenAI in Education: combines more than one of the above problematic things and worsens the garbage data = garbage out problem

Forcing ai for every scientific situation: methodologically unsound and an overestimation of AI capabilities. This is what’s going on at the NIH right now

‘Good AI’ Can Never Be Perfectly Ethical

Even good ai can never be perfectly ethical since there’s still consequences that I would argue are quite negative.

Garbage data in = garbage data out for all AI. If the data the AI uses for its model possesses fundamental flaws, the AI is also going to spew out garbage. This is especially the case for analytical AI. Because a lot of data may be garbage, using analytical AI to analyze and predict based on garbage data can easily reinforce unethical status quos.

GenAI still uses massive amounts of energy and water even when used for good. Until we can solve this problem with better sources, genAI will never be perfectly ethical even if used for a net good purpose. I should note however that pretty much nothing in our world is perfectly ethical, so 🤷

Specific Example: In radiology (the example from the tweet), AI has increased the skill threshold for an entry level position or even an unpaid entry as a high school intern. I entered a radiology lab as a high schooler, but I can no longer recommend the same for other high schoolers unless they have significant programming experience now. When research experience is key for getting into grad schools and potentially undergrad institutions, this is a problem.

[arcticdementor]

Yesterday @realchrisrufo asked why we should repeal the Civil rights Act Today @AcademicAgent_X dropped a bombshell report about a secretive agency with the job of silencing Americans and covering up antiwhite violence Let's talk about the Community Relations Service🧵/1 

…

Virtually nothing CRS agents do is entered into public record The CRA is basically immune to Freed Of Information Act requests /2  All notes drafted by CRS agents are destroyed and those agents may invoke a confidentiality privilege for both Congress and the courts, which they have done previously 

…

The purpose of the CRS, as described by one of its founders Bertram Levine, was to prevent white backlash to the CRA

…

The CRS was involved in the forced integration of Catholic communities in Boston, and when 17-year-old Michael Faith was stabbed in 1974 CRS was on the scene immediately, not to help the victim or protect the community, but to prevent white students from fighting back /6 

…

The CRS also set up operation Rumor Control, which still operates to this day Rumor Control manipulates local media sources to control reporting on the damage done during riots and downplay the role of Civil Rights leader in instigating them /10  The CRS is responsible for stage managing the entire Trayvon Martin incident including parading the family before Congress, carefully managing protests in Sanford Florida, training activists, and astroturfing progressive organizations like Dream Defenders /11 

…

The most despicable aspect of the CRS is its murder cover up operations You've seen the pattern: A white victim is killed by a minority assailant, family members come out and make a gratuitous and obviously scripted statement downplaying the racial motivation on camera /14  The spokesman calls for fogginess and peace, condemning anyone who would use the incident as a rallying point  The common script isn't an accident, its coordinated by the CRA