When You’re a Billionaire, Government Will Do Your Legal Work For You, Gratis

Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton said Monday he is investigating Twitter over its reporting of how many accounts on the platform are from bots and fake users, saying the company may be misrepresenting the number to inflate its value and raise its revenue.

So Musk threatens to walk over the issue of how many bots are on Twitter, and Paxton falls all over himself to help Musk out.

If that doesn't smell like favoritism/corruption, I don't know what does.

Historical Heater

A "battlefield pickup" revolver from the Battle of Little Big Horn:

It sold at auction for 3/4ths of a million.

The Original Gerber Baby

That was Ann Taylor Cook. She died on Friday at age 95.

Mrs. Cook was a retired English teacher whose husband died in 2004. She is survived by four children, eight grandchildren and nine great-grandchildren.

Apologies to Some Commentators

A bunch of comments got snagged up in the spam filter and I was lax on checking it. At least one was from Old NFO, I don't remember who else. I have no idea why those comments got vaccuumed up, but I apologize for not releasing them sooner.

Fuck That Shit, Let Them Hammer the Russians

President Joe Biden said Tuesday in a New York Times opinion piece that he would “provide the Ukrainians with more advanced rocket systems and munitions that will enable them to more precisely strike key targets on the battlefield in Ukraine.”
...
The White House National Security Council said Tuesday that the “more advanced rocket systems” were longer-range multiple-launch rocket systems. They are capable of reaching Russia, officials said, but are not intended to fire rockets into Russia or be used outside Ukraine.

Fuck that shit, and this is why:

Russia struck Ukraine's capital Kyiv with missiles early on Sunday for the first time in more than a month, while Ukrainian officials said a counter-attack on the main battlefield in the east had retaken half of the city of Sievierodonetsk.
...
Ukraine said Russia had carried out the strike using long-range air-launched missiles fired from heavy bombers as far away as the Caspian Sea - a weapon far more valuable than the tanks Russia claimed to have hit.

The Russians are free to strike anywhere in Ukraine from hundreds of miles away, but the Ukrainians are not free to strike inside of Russia? What sort of handicapping bullshit is that? We didn't give/lend/sell weapons to the British with a provisio that they not be used on Germany itself. Why are we so handicapping the Ukrainians?

Your Sunday Morning Turboprop Noise

A Kiwi P-3:

Some annoying airshow narration, but the airplane drowns him out from time to time.

How Putler Has Fucked Over the Entire Planet, Forever

International efforts to combat climate change may now be impossible, thanks to the hell unleashed by the Russians.

I've been skeptical of the ability of humanity to do anything about climate change, other than suffer and die from it, taking much of the global environment with us. Dr. Teller told those fuckers in the oil industry about it 62 years ago. That knowledge was reinforced over three decades ago. Half of the atmospheric carbon emitted since the dawn of the Industrial Age has been pumped out since 1990.

Those in the position to do something about this were the Greatest Generation and the Boomers. None of the political leadership of those generations did a fucking thing of note, other than flapping their gums. Too many companies and other jackholes have been more than willing to see the world go up in flames, just so they can make a quarterly profit. Part of this is because there are damn few corporate executives that are going to do anything that jeopardizes their bonuses, so they have been complicit in the destruction of the habitability of our only home.

So now and into the future, humanity will have to spend trillions upon trillions of dollars to adapt to a warming planet. That's even if we can; much of the natural world won't adapt and will die off. Sure, the planet's been warm before. Carbon dioxide levels have been higher. But those changes took place over thousands, if not millions of years. Not over a handful of centuries. And we could trigger something far worse.

It really doesn't matter what else we do; go to the Moon (again), establish settlements on Mars, cure cancer, all of that will pale in comparison to our inability to do anything to save our home when we all knew damned well what was coming. Our spirits will be cursed for centuries.

(H/T)

.30 Super Carry

Gun Jesus looks at it.

If you live in a state that limits magazine capacity to ten rounds, then, to my mind, this cartridge makes no sense. There is no benefit to it over 9mm that is worth the difference in ammunition cost and availability.

For foreign sales, the cartridge makes sense in countries that prohibit the civilian use of military cartridges.

Caturday

Solar Chip.

Urban Warfare

A "how-to" guide.