Uncategorized

I am going to warn my readers that blog posts may be short and sporadic for the next couple of weeks. I am studying for a new board certification. I am looking to add a board certification in a nursing specialty. Boards are a bitch. (The title is a play on words)

I recently had in depth conversations with a couple of my patients. They were quite topical. The first one was a conversation that I had with a retired Army Warrant Officer whose job it was to fly Blackhawk helicopters. One of his postings was to the same unit that the helicopter that was involved in the recent collision between an Army helicopter and a civilian airliner.

His thoughts were that the crew was wearing NODs while flying the aircraft. If you have ever worn those devices, you know two things- you lose depth perception, and any lights you see tend to look like any other lights that you see. This area, according to him, is very busy airspace with a lot of things going on, lots of lights on the ground, and lots of aircraft with lights flying around. The helicopter was flying higher than it was supposed to, and for these reasons, the oncoming airliner’s lights likely blended into the background.

My thoughts on this, is that if this airspace is that dangerous, the military either needs to no longer be permitted to fly in that area, or if it is determined that national security requires them to still fly there, then the airport needs to be shut down so civilians no longer fly in the area. It’s the only way to be sure this won’t happen again.

The second person I spoke with is a poultry farmer from Kentucky who told me that he hasn’t had any problems with avian flu. He has over 20,000 egg laying birds, and not one case of any sickness.

My opinion here is that this was a problem created by the outgoing Biden administration to screw with Trump. This is another fake pandemic.

When I got divorced in 1997, I was making $1000 every two weeks. I lost $280 in taxes, leaving me $720 every two weeks. Following the state law formula, the court ordered that I pay $348 to my ex wife, nominally for child support, leaving me with $720 per month to live on ($372 every two weeks). The support was taken from my check before I even saw it so I wouldn’t be a ‘deadbeat dad.’ The rent on my apartment was $600 for a small one bedroom, making my rent more than 80 percent of my take home pay.  I was soon homeless and without a car, moving from couch to couch at the homes of friends. 

I understand feeling down when this happens:

American Citizen breaks down in tears as his most recent rent increase means 90% of his income now goes just to paying rent

1 bedroom apartments in some states now average $2,200 to as high as $3,900

We have a cost to rent crisis in America, we are crippling our own citizens pic.twitter.com/0Zi4uMqSY7

— Wall Street Apes (@WallStreetApes) March 17, 2025

The difference is that I didn’t stand in my kitchen, filming myself crying before posting it to social media. Instead, I did what a man does- I figured out a way to deal with it. In this guy’s case, he set up the camera, set the scene, then cried on cue. This isn’t genuine emotion, this is a man child looking for someone else to come and take care of his problems.

I got a second job, picking up garbage after the Shamu show at Sea World. I walked, rode a bike, and took the bus. I wouldn’t eat for several days at a time. I lost 30 pounds that summer. Two months later, I bought a car at a “buy here, pay here” place. I wound up living in that car for another few months. I was eventually able to get an apartment by moving in with several roommates.

There are different ways to deal with disappointment. You can sit around and cry about it while asking daddy government to come and fix it, or you can fix it yourself. It’s OK to bitch and complain a bit, but at the end of the day, your problems are yours to fix.

Most of us were poor at some point. Get roommates. Get a second job. Get a cheaper apartment.

Take a look at this video. A man resists arrest and the cops use force to get him under control.

At first blush, I would say that it looks proper- you resist arrest, the cops can use force to affect the arrest. However, if you look closely, the officer is holding handcuffs in his fist, and is using them like brass knuckles to punch the man in the face. Some rando on Twitter made the point that police training allows the use of handcuffs as weapons. He even posted an excerpt of the policy to make his point.

Except he was lying. If you read the entire policy and not just one isolated sentence that was selected to try and make a point, you see that it only permits police to use the cuffs to push on pressure points like the hands or ribcage. It does not mention using them to deliver blows, especially not to the head or face.

The use of brass knuckles, especially to deliver blows to the head, is lethal force. While police CAN use force to affect an arrest, nothing this man did justified shooting him, nor did it justify repeated blows to the head with a weapon. This arrest did not rise to the level of lethal. The cop was out of line. I would have made that point there, but like a chickenshit, he made his comments and then blocked me before I could respond.

I would also point out that lying and misleading people in order to make a point usually indicates that your point didn’t need to me made.

The cheapest way to get it appears to be find a corrupt cop and buy it nalyevo.

Twitter appears to be down this morning. It isn’t just me. Downdetector reports that it is not responding.

I think everyone knows the story of the Cuban missile crisis. In October of 1962, JFK learned that the Soviets had put nuclear missiles in Cuba. This especially frightened him, because he spent so much time at his Mother’s house in West Palm Beach that in 1960, the US government installed a Presidential Emergency Facility on Peanut Island, Dubbed Detachment Hotel. It was a 1500 square foot bomb shelter, designed to house the President and his family in the event of a nuclear war.

We came so close to nuclear war that the decision of one man is all that stood between the world and a full nuclear exchange. Captain Savitsky, the commander of the Soviet B-59 submarine had loaded and armed a nuclear torpedo on October 27, 1962. That night, he had surfaced the boat to charge his batteries, and was surrounded by US forces demanding that he surrender. Believing that he was under attack, he ordered a crash dive and the firing of the nuclear weapon. The only reason it didn’t happen was that he couldn’t dive fast enough. That’s how close we came.

But why did the Soviets put nuclear weapons in Cuba? That’s the part of the story that the Americans have never really liked talking about. The Jupiter missile was a nuclear armed, medium range ballistic missile. With a range of 1700 hundred miles, this missile could deliver a 3.75 megaton nuclear warhead within 1000 feet of its aiming point. Almost, as they say, only counts in atom bombs, hand grenades, and horseshoes.

In 1961 and 1962, the US put 15 of these missiles in Turkey, near the town of Izmir, just 1300 miles from Moscow and 45 missiles were located in Italy. This put 60 nuclear missiles just 15 minutes’ flight time from Moscow. Launch detection satellites were still 6 years into the future, so these missiles would be detonating all over the Soviets’ command and control systems before anyone knew the attack was coming.

The Soviets did the only reasonable thing from their point of view- in May of 1962, they reciprocated by putting their own missiles within the same distance of Washington, DC in Cuba. That is what led us to the brink of nuclear war in the fall of 1962.

The resolution of the entire thing included an agreement for the US to remove the missiles from Italy and Turkey. Part of the deal included the Soviets agreeing to keep the existence and removal of the Jupiter missiles a secret from the US public. The operation to remove them was called Operation Pot Pie. The missiles were pulled out of Turkey, but the US still maintains a stockpile of as many as 50 nuclear weapons in Turkey to this day.

The US government has a long history of bumbling through the world, screwing up, but then making the other nation’s reaction to the screw up look like aggression. Name nearly any warlike event of the past century, and it is likely that actions taken by the US government precipitated them. Sometimes it was just inept bungling, sometimes it was deliberate provocation, but our government’s own poor actions resulted in Americans getting killed. A sampling:

• Bin Laden was a CIA asset
• Gulf of Tonkin
• Panay Incident

What shocked me the most about this story is that there actually is a Kenya Space Agency. I mean, why? What rockets have they launched? Are they funder by USAID?

So many questions…

I have a wide variety of ammo, mostly because I am not picky. My biggest requirement is that it function well with the firearms that I am going to be using it in.

The only ammo I standardize is rifle ammo. In 5.56mm, I am buying 62 grain green tips. I have optimized my rifles for that. In 7.62 mm, I am shooting 149 grain, but I also have some 168gr BTHP as well.

For handgun, there is a wide variety. Still, here are the main cartridges that I have in stock, and this is largely what I am carrying:

Note that when more than one bullet is listed in a given caliber, the heavier one is the one that I use in firearms with longer barrels. The lighter bullet is for shorter firearms. For example, that 135gr 9mm bullet makes best use of the longer barrel from a PDC like my Scorpion EVO and its 8 inch barrel. You can tell that I am a fan of the 125grain loading. I also stock subsonic 9mm for using with a suppressor.

However, I also have odds and ends of ammo that I have tested and you will see some odd stuff like 184 rounds of this, or 20 rounds of that. (The 20 rounds is rat shot for the .38Spl)

*For reference, I included the 500 rounds of 10mm that I bought to test. Once I get sights, magazines, and I am sure that this ammo functions well with this handgun, this one will be ready for use.

My wife likes to use the 380 for handguns, but her home defense gun is that EVO, and I don’t blame her. It’s easy to use, recoil is great, and with the 30 round magazines, it gives you a decided advantage against an assailant.

My EDC is either the 38 snubbie, or my Shield Plus in 9mm. My house handgun is a full sized M&P45, and its loaded with the 230gr +p’s.

I may add that 10mm to the mix at some point. The numbers are impressive. I am looking at a company called Underwood that appears to be loading defense ammo to its full potential. The S&W10 is nice because it is the same sized as the 45, and uses the same holsters.

Here is Garand Thumb reviewing the Underwood loadings for the 10mm. I like this video, because it is more entertaining than a dry lecture on the benefits of a cartridge, even if he does take some liberties with strict range safety.

I have never bought or fired Underwood’s ammo before and I know nothing about them, other than their website and the above video. I have to admit that 15 rounds of 180 grains moving at 1300 feet per second is interesting.

Silicon Graybeard lost his pet cat- it died in his arms while they were both asleep. It causes me to tear up, thinking about it. I hate losing a pet, and thinking about the day when either my pets or I will lose each other makes me want to go hug them. I believe that the Oatmeal summed it up best with this cartoon.

“He is my best friend, and I am his, but he will go to his grave having never known my name.”

Hug your pets. There is no love as pure as the one between a pet and his human.