This is why I don’t want to

I saw this post today over at Wirecutter’s about the government demanding the identifying information of people who post things critical of the government/FBI/cops. Wirecutter said:

Yeah, keep that in mind next time you leave a comment on a blog about killing feds.

I can guarantee you that this will extend to blogs and different blogging hosts will fall all over themselves to turn over information about people leaving threats, even if they are just venting.

That is the exact reason why I don’t want people who post comments here to have to register. I don’t collect information on anyone who posts here. I don’t want to know who you are. I can’t be forced to turn over information that I don’t possess.

With that being said, making threats is just a good way to be on the radar. My advice to anyone who is opposed to what is happening is this: be the gray man. Don’t be on the radar.

Hollow Shell

Now the special warfare community is falling to this woke nonsense. The Navy SEALS are reporting that they spend more time on diversity training than they do on actual combat training.

And we only have X amount of hours in the day. And so you have a two hour training block. It’s not two hours — you’ve got to add half an hour ahead or half an hour after. So you’re looking at really three hours. So three hours is what, 600 hours? Just do the math on that, and then multiply that across the entire Department of Defense.

Retired Navy SEAL Derrick Van Orden

I’ve been saying for awhile that our military is rotting from the inside out and from the top down.

It has me wondering. What if the so-called nuclear secrets possessed by Trump were reports that things have gotten just as bad in some part of our strategic forces? It isn’t as if the Air Force hasn’t already alluded to the fact that they can’t maintain a nuclear ground alert force. The Air Force only has 66 nuclear bombers remaining, out of the more than 600 that were once available for nuclear alert.

Graft, greed, and corruption form those who nominally serve have gutted the picked over carcass of what was once the greatest nation the world had ever seen. That nation doesn’t exist any longer.

Stalkers and Spammers

This blog has been having issues with problem comments. More than 200 of them in the past 5 days.

There are the spammers. The most frequent one lately is a series of comments that begin with “Google paid me XX dollars an hour…”

Then there is an obsessed IT nerd who has been engaging in 2,000 word comments that are both insulting and inflammatory. Here are some excerpts from some of his recent comments:

this is you: “this is all terribly important and you should be doing it way better, YOU’RE HERE TO SUPPORT MY MISSION”, i.e. demonstrating that God-tier entitlement complex I talked about in pluperfect form

Or perhaps:

I hope you don’t approach your patient care with that kind of lackadaisical attitude (lol, who am I kidding)

Or even:

Things somehow never managed the trick of reading simple English; instead they post on blogs about what awesome lifesavers they are, despite the fact that their plumber has saved more lives in a week than any one of them has done in an entire career. 

I support the free exchange of ideas and opinions. One of the few rules that I have here is that no personal attacks are permitted. Another thing that I want everyone to understand is that I am the one who pays the bills here, this blog is my property, and I decide what goes down on here.

I try very hard to keep moderation of comments to the very minimum needed to keep things orderly and civil, but at the end of the day, it is still my call to make.

If this sort of thing keeps up, we may have to move to a registration system for commenting. I don’t want to do that, but the amount of spam I get is getting out of hand.

Saving Grace

Fellow Blogger Big Country Expat needs some help with his granddaughter. She was taken from him, and he is in desperate need of financial assistance with which to hire a lawyer.

Read about the entire story here. He is asking for $15K. Anyone who has ever needed to hire a lawyer knows that this is likely a lowball amount for an interstate custody battle. Help him out, if you have the means and the desire to do so.

Outsourcing

There is a nationwide shortage of medical personnel. It is so bad in some specialties that pay is going through the roof. Emergency room nurses are making sky high bonuses in order to pick up extra days. Right now, if you are willing to pick up extra days, my hospital will pay you double time plus a bonus to come to work. Technicians like respiratory therapists are getting a bonus of $500 to come to work. Registered nurses are getting bonuses of $1,000 to $1,500.

I know nurses who are making $30,000 a month, although that is an extreme case. They are working more than 80 hours a week to do it, but it can be done. Most nurses are working 50 or so hours a week, and making somewhere around $13,000 a month. Even with that, we never have enough people.

These jobs are demanding jobs that require education, critical thinking skills, psychomotor skills, the ability to think quickly in stressful situations, and the ability to make life altering decisions in a fast paced environment. All with zero errors, hundreds of times per day, 12+ hours per day. Skills like that cost money. It’s money that hospitals are tired of paying.

So how are hospitals fixing it? They are importing nurses from the Philippines. The hospitals can force salaries lower by importing nurses from third world countries and paying them far less than their US counterparts. The average Filipino nurse makes less than $4,000 a month.

We have a mandatory meeting with management next week, where rumor has it we are being told that much of our staff will be replaced with foreign workers beginning in January.

This isn’t a slam on the nurses. They are well educated, with some of them even being licensed as doctors in their own country. What sucks is that you spend years becoming experienced and educated only to see your employer bring in people from other countries to do your job at a fraction of the pay.

Election Tampering

As we enter the days before the election, word is coming out that multiple conservatives are being targeted by big tech for censorship. Steve Crowder has had his YouTube channel shut down, and LibsofTikTok has also been banned from multiple platforms.

I don’t want to hear about how they are a private company and can do as they please. As long as they are immune from lawsuits because they are claiming to be a neutral platform that can’t be blamed for what people post, they must remain free of using the ban hammer to influence the conversation. Otherwise, they are just another arm of government censorship.

Suing Out of Business

New York City just settled a lawsuit against a seller of gun parts, where the seller has agreed to modify their website to prohibit sales to anyone living in NYC.

The article calls them sellers of “ghost gun” parts, but the industry of 80 percent firearms is coming to an end in a couple of weeks. No, this is aimed at the parts market. They are nibbling away at gun culture.

The city’s complaint came after undercover investigators with the New York City Sheriff’s Office were able to purchase from Rock Slide’s website a Polymer80 PF940C unserialized, “unfinished” frame, slide, internal upper parts kit, recoil spring and guide rod, lower parts kit with trigger, and 32-round magazine — all to be delivered to an address in Manhattan. Rock Slide does not require customers to have a valid state or city license or permit, and it did not perform a background check on the buyer.

The reason that the seller didn’t require a license, permit, or background check is that one is not legally required for gun parts. There was no firearm sold there.

There is a NY state law that allows the state to sue gun makers. I wonder if the defendants in the case made a motion to dismiss on the grounds that they are not gun makers, the customer who bought the parts were.

I also wonder if the new ATF regulation will stand up to a legal challenge. I guess we will see.

Dirty Bomb

Because some people don’t seem to be clear on what one is, let’s review.

There are some materials that are radioactive. That is, they produce radioactive particles like neutrons, alpha particles, beta particles, and gamma rays. Those can be hazardous. However, these materials are not capable of causing a nuclear explosion.

A dirty bomb is a bomb made using conventional explosives, but the explosion merely scatters radioactive substances across a wide area. The bomb itself isn’t more dangerous than any other bomb, except that is used to scatter this radioactive material. Although the radioactivity is hazardous, the chief effect of such a bomb is to instill fear in people.

A dirty bomb is not a nuclear bomb. A nuclear bomb creates an explosion that is millions of times more powerful than a dirty bomb. The cloud of radiation from a nuclear bomb could spread thousands of square miles, whereas a dirty bomb’s radiation could be dispersed within a few blocks or miles of the explosion.

Any explosion that occurs in your area may be caused by a dirty bomb. The only way to know if a bomb has dispersed radioactive material (is “dirty”) is to have some sort of radiation monitoring device like a NucAlert or other radiation monitoring device that will alert you to the presence of the radiation.

In general, protection from radiation is afforded by:

  • Minimizing the time exposed to radioactive materials;
  • Maximizing the distance from the source of radiation; and
  • Shielding from external exposure, and inhaling or ingesting radioactive material.

If you were in the immediate area of the explosion, do not eat, drink or smoke. If you have an N95, gas, or other respiratory protection mask, put it on. Even a bandana tied over the nose and mouth will help. Anything that will minimize your ingestion and inhalation of radioactive material is a good thing.

Get out of the immediate area of the explosion quickly. Wash yourself, your family, and any possessions down with water spray. This is called gross decontamination. Remember that runoff from this washdown is likely contaminated with radioactive materials.

The goal is to stop the radioactive material from harming you. Most radioactive products scattered by a dirty bomb are easily stopped as long as you don’t inhale or ingest them, and get them off of your skin.

The big threat from a dirty bomb is the public and government reaction to them.