Friday Ephemera
Emotional drama at the dentist. || Some dunnies are nicer than others. || Cheeeldren of the night (daytime version). || How to turn a health supplement into the smell of death. || Humpback and hand-crank. || To please her, you must hallucinate. || How clouds are made. || A little too close for comfort. || Capturing a special moment. || “Endless love and happiness.” || They do say the laundry never ends. || Danger, Will Robinson. || The brightest and best, you know. || Stunning and brave. || Not quite what I expected. (h/t, Ben) || Today’s words are preschool teacher. || The popular music of ancient Rome. || Pyramids ahoy. (h/t, Julia) || Process accelerated. || And finally, the thrill of footwear.
Update, via the comments:
In coping news, a thread. Somewhat related:
100 shots fired but only two downed and 11 winged in a 200-strong close-packed herd? Not very good at shooting either.
I have read that very few ghetto punks actually practice, much less systematically study how to shoot (and how to clean and maintain firearms.)
I have read that very few ghetto punks actually practice
Well the traditional gangsta gun pose explains why they might miss alot.
Holding the gun above your head and pointed down won’t win you many marksman medals.
How to shoot gansta style.
How to shoot gansta style.
Heh. My favorite gangsta style, however, is the one where the punk accidentally kills himself or a fellow lowlife.
A Twitter review for Dr Who fans:
#DoctorWho thought I was watching Carry on Columbus and realised it’s actually Doctor Who. How bad is this
How to shoot gansta style.
Well, as we were taught in school about dueling (thus this is most likely complete bullshit) sometimes the point of the duel was to save face/honor. Participants would often ( cough, cough, choke, choke) fire into the ground to make their point. They really didn’t want to kill the other guy. Because Aaron Burr or something. Peanut butter may have been involved, however historians vociferously disagree as to what degree. So what with the whole thing with Hamilton having actually been black (historians are coming to a consensus on this point), there are understandable cultural underpinnings for such methodology.
“sometimes the point of the duel was to save face/honor”
The technical term for shooting into the ground was Deloping. This may be a British term, though perhaps of French origin.
If your opponent fired first, and missed, it was more gentlemanly to delope. Both of you had proved your honour, so what was the point of going through with your best shot? Besides, shooting a man holding an empty pistol might have interesting legal consequences, perhaps involving rope.
I have shot with/at a highly technical duelling kit, involving timers and lights, with a .22 single shot pistol with a hair trigger. The experience convinced me that it is better to apologise than meet at dawn on a lonely heath.
They really didn’t want to kill the other guy.
Somehow I don’t think that sentiment is felt often by these lowlifes.
How to shoot gansta style.
Heh. I remember a couple of detectives telling me they could easily id the gangbangers who (despite claims to the contrary) who had just fired a gun this way from the fresh hot brass burns on their necks or chests.
https://www.zerohedge.com/markets/something-rotten-state-shanghais-latest-covid-lockdowns
Or 4) China wants to pretend that there’s something about the virus that they know that no one else knows in order to usurp more power, partly as an excuse to slow production to leverage even more power (or so they hope). But hey, I’m sure that can’t be true or a dummy uneducated idiot like me wouldn’t have figured that out. Otherwise I would be writing for Zerohedge.
Somehow I don’t think that sentiment is felt often by these lowlifes.
Oh, I do think they feel it more important to look good and have bragging rights and street cred over actually accomplishing a task. The mafia however…
After having been suspended, reinstated, and shortly thereafter suspended again it appears Libs Of Tik Toc is back again.
I would call that horseshit, but few people now know what that looks or smells like. (The rest of the random rant about scatological-based adjectives and how they don’t translate to modern sensibilities deleted.)
Ahem. Smooth-bore muskets of the time of most “pistols at dawn” incidents were inaccurate to the degree that you couldn’t be be sure to hit anyone in a block of soldiers in a rather dense mass at 100m, much less hitting the person you were targeting. So, with both duelers doing the 20 pace thing and assume that a pace is ~30 inches (~76.2cm), that puts our duelers roughly 100 yards (3.048m) apart. So, dueling with a musket wouldn’t end up well, but smooth bore pistols at that range could be survivable.
Suitable odds for a test of courage, I guess. There’s a discussion at https://www.muzzleloadingforum.com/threads/smoothbore-pistol-accuracy.117620/ that I found, for those interested.
FWIW, there’s reason why what worked for musket armed armies for centuries stopped working at the introduction of the rifled musket. IIRC, the Americans found out about that before most other belligerents. (I spent most of my childhood in the state of Tennessee; we occasionally found old cannon balls and the occasional Minie ball on our property.) Once you get rifled breech loaders (you pretty much have to stand up to reload a muzzle-loaded rifled musket), then things get more interesting. Well, for those who do find such things interesting.
…that puts our duelers roughly 100 yards (3.048m) apart.
No – 20 paces at 30″ (which I think is a bit long, but no matter) is 600″ or 50′ each way from the starting point, for the two duelists being 100′ (not yards) apart.
Ahem. Smooth-bore muskets of the time of most “pistols at dawn” incidents were inaccurate to the degree that you couldn’t be be sure to hit anyone in a block of soldiers in a rather dense mass at 100m, much less hitting the person you were targeting.
Heh. So basically what I had read and mostly believed until just doing re-reasearch today to confirm I knew what I thought I knew but I apparently didn’t know anymore, nor do you. Except we do. Except all knowledge is bullshit, but you gotta go with your gut.
And thus my original instinct. I’m not saying these idiot gang-bangers really care about other people, but given how often these shootings happen yet hit everything but their targets, I suspect they at some possibly even subconscious level, they desire to spread fear outweighs killing their “targets”. I’m not saying they care about human life. They obviously don’t care about the lives of innocent bystanders. But, similar to mature viruses, if they can install fear into their enemies without actually killing them, they possibly accomplish spreading even more fear. Therefore the spray of gunfire, and thus possibly killing people close to their targets but not necessarily their targets, is the best tactic. But then again, maybe I’m just talking bullshit. Had I any ambition and especially some academic pedigree however, I’m fairly sure I could work this into a PhD thesis at Harvard. Based on what we’ve seen, they reward far stupider ideas.
that puts our duelers roughly 100 yards (3.048m) apart
Very big metres too at about 30 yards each. 100ft (as dcardno correctly says) is appromimately 30m.
horseshit, but few people now know what that looks or smells like
Just ask a pony-obsessed teenage girl.
Yes to you on the math (AKA, I was wrong on the distance), but a 30″ stride was military spec at the time. That still ends up with the distance being ~100’/3 or ~33 yards apart.
God knows I heard in in several marching songs back in the day when we actually wore tarbuckets, crossbelts, and cartridge boxes below the small of our backs. Keeping alignment was critical in the early days of gunpowder warfare.
I had given a link to people who have fired smoothbore pistols with their views on the matter. You should weigh the comments of someone who purposely tries to use early 18th tech in the late 20th/early 21st century against those who simply tried to use what was available at the time. Depending upon your view of aristocrats during that period, you might think that the later folks have assumed too many things.
I’m certainly not from aristocrat stock nor would my ancestors done anything like a duel. Something closer to Uncle Fester’s idea: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1OnJt98B6Oc
Once our brilliant scientists figure out what a woman is, they can tackle the even more difficult question of what a heartbeat is:
https://www.nbcnews.com/health/womens-health/heartbeat-bills-called-fetal-heartbeat-six-weeks-pregnancy-rcna24435
Well, that girl would be one of the few who had an idea what horseshit looks and smells like. Give her a thumbs up on understanding one of the links to the interaction of horses and people that existed for several thousand years prior to the middle of the 20th century.
My point was that for thousands of years, humans knew what horse shit looked and smelled like. (They probably knew what bovine shit looked and smelled like, as well.)
Modern times? In somewhat civilized locations, you may see dog shit as well as wild animal shit. In uncivilized locations, such as San-Francisco, you might see human shit that didn’t come from you.
(Plumbers, of course, get to deal with with human shit when the wonderful infrastructure that we build to make that stuff go away doesn’t work for various reasons. That can be a very unpleasant job, which might be why I’ve never had a female plumber to respond to a blockage.)
Wow. You guys got part of the screed anyways.
@Richard Cranium
I give you the point on urban dwellers but, certainly in UK, there are plenty of folk who live in t’countryside who still know what horseshit (and for that matter, bullshit) looks and smells like. You know, the sort of people that understand that meat comes from animals and not the supermarket.
But then, in my teen years I worked horses so maybe I’m biased…
Speaking of horseshit: in the late 1800s, urban planners in NYC area held a conference with the big item what to do with all the horse shit in cities. The cities were becoming unliveable as they got larger. This was the big environmental problem of the day and they had no solution. Cars came along and saved us from nonstop poop smell. I can’t even imagine.
Twitter did indeed implement a poison pill to stop musk. This can dilute existing shares to the point where they are worthless. That is, they destroy the company to save it from Trump. This violates their fiduciary duty to shareholders. A company only exists for the shareholders, not for the board. A poison pill should be illegal.
Read The Good Old Days—They Were Terrible! by Otto Beckman for a look at the manure problem, plus many others that plagued our ancestors,
The Good Old Days—They Were Terrible!…
Thanks. I’d forgotten about that title–a classic, I seem to recall. Interlibrary loan request placed.
…by Otto Beckman
That’s Otto Bettmann of the Bettmann Archive. The book title plus “Beckman” will yield “no results” from Amazon.
That’s Otto Bettmann of the Bettmann Archive
PST-speaking of archives, always check Archives.org, they have it over there.
PST-speaking of archives, always check Archives.org, they have it over there.
Thank you: I keep forgetting about that, even though I bookmarked it years ago.
I swear I typed “Bettman”. Spellcheck strikes again! Thanks to all who noticed and corrected.
I swear I typed “Bettman”.
Zombie Mister Clippy is stalking us.
For those who don’t know…
1) Horseshit is normally in clumps (suitable for throwing) and not especially malodorous. Horses, however, do fart quite often. If you see a movie with horses and one of those horses raises its tail, there is a fart happening.
2) Cowshit/Bullshit is (from my experience on a farm) normally fairly liquid (hence, “cow patty”). I have seen turds similar to those provided by horses in the areas where our cattle shat (and those may have been produced by our bull or our demi-steers [you really don’t want to know about how they came to be]).
3) Sadly, I have some experience with goatshit as well. Somewhat similar to rabbit shit, but probably larger pellets.
4) I’ve only dealt with pigshit by the smell. The stench alone tells you that is a thing to be avoided, unless there is an end result of bacon. (Which is one reason why people raise pigs; my family never did raise pigs, but we did raise cattle.)