Shot:
Chaser:
(I would really like to know what that gun is. It looks like a small 1911-style .380, like maybe a Colt Mustang or one of those SIG Sauer .380s?)
Drink!
October 2nd, 2026Obit watch: October 2, 2026.
October 2nd, 2026Playing catch-up:
Gordon Johncock, noted racing driver. He won the Indianapolis 500 twice. His first win was the notoriously bloody 1973 race. His second win was in 1982.
That race featured a spectacular duel in the final laps, with Johncock and Rick Mears vying side by side. Johncock, on the inside, driving a Wildcat/Cosworth, finished a few feet ahead of Mears, winning by 16-hundredths of a second, the slimmest margin in the race’s history at the time.
Johncock’s margin now ranks fifth. The closest finish came this year, when Felix Rosenqvist bested David Malukas by 0.0233 seconds.
Dennis Haskins, actor. Other credits include “Hardcastle and McCormick”, “Cutter to Houston”, and “The Dukes of Hazzard”.
Your Friday loser update.
October 2nd, 2026Two things snuck up on me while I was on the road and/or down with the crud.
The first thing was the end of the MLB season. As I stated in a previous update, there were no historically bad teams this year. The Colorado Rockies were not good, but they finished 58-104, with a .358 winning percentage, the lowest this season. The White Sox were 84-78, for a .519 winning percentage, and are in the playoffs. The City Unknown Athletics finished 64-98, with a .395 winning percentage.
And the Astros went 81-81.
The other thing that sort of snuck up on me was the start of the NHL season. I knew it was coming, but I wanted to wait until today before posting a loser update.
NHL teams that still have a chance of going 0-84:
Detroit
Ottawa
Buffalo
Tampa Bay
Carolina
Philadelphia
Washington
New York Islanders
Dallas
St. Louis
Winnipeg
Nashville
Chicago
Anaheim
Los Angeles Kings
Calgary
Brief trip report: DFW.
October 1st, 2026As previously noted, Mike the Musicologist and I took a short trip up to the Dallas-Fort Worth area for the Gun Rights Policy Conference.
After we got back on Monday, I went down hard with con crud. This is the first day I’ve felt like trying to blog.
In my personal opinion, the two best talks at AMM-CON (Alternative Mass Media Con, the prelude to GRPC) were:
- “AI & Ethics: How 2A Media Can Use AI Without Losing Trust”, by Rich Yumul.
- “How To Read and Understand 2A Court Decisions” by Mark Smith of Four Boxes Diner.
Mark Smith’s presentation was the one I wanted to follow up on, but I can’t find any contact information for him. But the link above goes to YouTube video of his talk, which has a transcript, which gives me what I was looking for: his list of the best and worst appellate courts. “The Supreme Court is very good.” After that:
- The next two best: the Fifth Circuit which covers Texas, Mississippi, and Louisiana. And the Third Circuit that covers Pennsylvania, New Jersey, and Delaware.
- “reasonably okay. They’re not great, but they’re not terrible”: The Eighth Circuit out of Missouri, the Sixth Circuit, which is “Kentucky-ish” and Michigan, and the 11th Circuit out of Florida.
- “the bad stuff”: “The 10th Circuit is generally bad, but occasionally you will get a good panel.” After that, the Fourth Circuit out of Virginia (“terrible”), the Ninth Circuit out of California (“terrible”), and the Second Circuit out of New York City (“generally terrible”).
- “And the worst court in America by far is the US Court of Appeals for the First Circuit out of Boston. There is no combination of three judges that you can get that will uphold the constitution in any respect.”
Here’s a map of the courts for easy visualization.
I can’t find video of Mr. Yumul’s talk on AI, but I did take notes, and may try to post those tomorrow. One thing he did provide us was a very interesting prompt that will take a piece of writing (such as a blog post) and analyze it as if the AI was a hostile fact checker. I intend to ask him if he would mind me sharing that here.
I also want to make note of his four principles, which I think are a good general approach to AI:
- Is it TRUE?
- Is it MINE?
- Is it HONEST?
- If it’s wrong, did I FIX it?
I may want to write more about GRPC tomorrow and over the weekend, though I do think the window is closing. Two things I do want to squeeze in:
- The director of BATFE spoke at GRPC. Let me repeat that: the freaking DIRECTOR of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives, an organization that most firearms owners consider a “wretched hive of scum and villainy”, spoke to a room full of gun people. Along with the agency’s chief council. That link will take you to video.
- The freshly pardoned Patrick “Tate” Adamiak also spoke at GRPC and at AMM-CON, along with Lee Williams (who did much to draw attention to his case). If you’re not familiar with Mr. Adamiak: he was a US Navy sailor, who’d been selected to try out for the SEALs. Then BATFE raided his house over his collection of firearms. He was convicted and sentenced to twenty years in prison for allegedly selling “machine guns” in an egregious example of BATFE conduct under the Biden administration. (One of the “machine guns” was a toy STEN that you can buy off the Internet today. The BATFE also took a de-milled RPG, completely rebuilt it in their lab so it could fire a single round of 7.62 ammo, and then claimed it was a destructive device.)
(One of my compatriots noted that a lot of Secret Service types were nervously fingering their sidearms during the BATFE talk. There were also more than a few people in the room who were open carrying, and who knows how many that were carrying concealed.)
(Seriously, the “Tate” Adamiak case should outrage anyone who gives a flying flip at a rolling doughnut about justice. I had vaguely heard about it, but wasn’t following it very closely. MtM gave me a briefing in the car on the way up.)
Obligatory:
Your NFL loser update: week 3, 2026.
September 27th, 2026Still on the road, so not a whole lot of sophisticated commentary this week.
NFL teams that still have a chance to go 0-17:
Miami
Houston
Tennessee
Chargers
Tampa Bay
Sunday musical interlude.
September 27th, 2026I like Hank Williams, Jr. personally, though I’ve never met him. I know he’s a serious gun guy: he and Mike “Duke” Venturino used to hang out shooting and tinkering with Colt Single Action Army revolvers. I understand he’s also quite fond of Ruger revolvers, too.
“The Pressure Is On” is, in my opinion, a great album. Any time you have at least four solid bangers on an album, I think you can call it great.
There’s “The Coalition to Ban Coalitions”, a funny ha-ha only serious song about nanny state-ism. There’s a really really good cover of “Tennessee Stud“. There’s “Ballad of Hank” with Don Helms (this song is where the recurring WCD trope “fired everybody just as hard as he could go…fired some people that he didn’t even know” comes from).
And then there’s “A Country Boy Can Survive”, which I am picking this morning for reasons. If you don’t know the song, the reasons should become obvious as you get into it.
The preacher man says it’s the end of time
And the Mississippi River, she’s a-goin’ dry
The interest is up and the stock market’s down
And you only get mugged if you go downtown
I live back in the woods, you see
My woman and the kids and the dogs and me
I got a shotgun, a rifle and a 4-wheel drive
And a country boy can survive, country folks can survive
I can plow a field all day long
I can catch catfish from dusk ’til dawn
We make our own whiskey and our own smoke too
Ain’t too many things these old boys can’t do
We grow good ol’ tomatoes and homemade wine
And a country boy can survive, country folks can survive
Because you can’t starve us out and you can’t make us run
‘Cause we’re them old boys raised on shotguns
We say grace, and we say ma’am
If you ain’t into that, we don’t give a damn
We came from the West Virginia coal mines
And the Rocky Mountains and the western skies
And we can skin a buck, we can run a trotline
And a country boy can survive, country folks can survive
I had a good friend in New York City
He never called me by my name, just “Hillbilly”
My grandpa taught me how to live off the land
And his taught him to be a businessman
He used to send me pictures of the Broadway nights
And I’d send him some homemade wine
But he was killed by a man with a switchblade knife
For 43 dollars, my friend lost his life
I’d love to spit some Beech-Nut in that dude’s eyes
Then shoot him with my old .45
‘Cause a country boy can survive, country folks can survive
‘Cause you can’t starve us out and you can’t make us run
‘Cause we’re them old boys raised on shotguns
We say grace, and we say ma’am
If you ain’t into that, we don’t give a damn
We’re from North California and south Alabam’
And little towns all around this land
And we can skin a buck, and run a trotline
And a country boy can survive, country folks can survive
A country boy can survive
Country folks can survive
So…
September 25th, 2026Mike the Musicologist and I are in the DFW area for the 2nd Amendment Foundation‘s Gun Rights Policy Conference (GRPC).
If you would like to play along at home, the agenda is here.
And they are livestreaming the conference.
Saturday livestream.
Sunday livestream.
Today was AMM-CON. “AMM” in this case stands for “Alternative Mass Media”, and was targeted at podcasters, YouTubers, bloggers, and other “content creators”.
As a side note, I hate the term “content creator”.
I took a lot of notes during the sessions, but I’m not sure if and when I will have time to type all of them up here. I also need to follow up with one of the more interesting presenters. That is, if I can. I’m having trouble finding an email address for him right now…
On the road again.
September 24th, 2026Travel day today. I don’t think things are going to be as busy as they were in Springfield, and I know it is going to be a shorter trip.
Blogging will be done as and when I can, though I hope to be able to blog at night and bring back some interesting information.
Your NFL loser update: week 2, 2026.
September 22nd, 2026NFL teams that still have a chance to go 0-17:
Miami
Houston
Indianapolis
Tennessee
Chargers
Washington
Tampa Bay
Atlanta
Still early in the season. Probably still to early to panic. But: Houston is 0-2? Washington looks to be in trouble. And the worthless Chargers are 0-2 as well.
Happy Talk Like a Pirate Day!
September 19th, 2026It has been a busy Saturday, between catching up on sleep and trying to catch up on all the undone tasks, plus all the new tasks I have as a result of the Symposium.
But I did want to get this in.
What is a pirate’s favorite weapon?
Some people say the cutlass. Some people say the AK.
But they are wrong.
A pirate’s favorite weapon is, of course, the AR-RRRRRRRRRRRR!
Somebody doesn’t like Cody.
September 18th, 2026In 2018, there was a fire at an apartment complex in San Marcos. Five people died. Fire investigators say it was arson, which makes the deaths homicides.
Our local Fox outlet published a story yesterday: investigators are asking for help identifying some wireless networks that were in the area.
- belkin.bff
- CCGuest
- Cody Really Sucks
- FBI Surveillance Van
- KitaGirl
- lolwut
- Suddenlink.net-4C82
- Swagpad521
- Wake The Dead
“Sir, can you explain to this court why you named your network ‘Cody Really Sucks’?” Say what you will about keeping the default name for your network, at least it probably isn’t embarrassing if you have to explain to the police.
Also, can we agree that the “FBI Surveillance Van” joke is old?
(This is actually a matter of some interest to me at the moment. Spectrum replaced our router on Tuesday. Which meant that all of our network names and configs are gone. At some point, I have to try to rebuild the configs, or at least change the network names. And the new Spectrum box has a very limited GUI: if you want to do anything like change a network name, you have to install Spectrum’s app. Not that I’m bitter or anything.)
Previews of coming attractions.
September 18th, 2026
Travel notes: Springfield, MO.
September 18th, 2026Mike the Musicologist and I were in the middle of a used bookstore in Springfield, Missouri, browsing the shelves. MtM came up to me and said “Let’s go.” in that tone of voice. You know the one I’m talking about: not mean, not angry, but that tone of voice that tells you “Some s–t has gone down and we need to leave right now.”
He told me in the parking lot as we were heading to the car. It was in a Signal group chat we both belong to, but I hadn’t been looking at my phone. It seems to me like we spent a couple of hours (but it may not have been that long) in the cafe at a Barnes and Noble making calls to other people and trying to figure out next steps.
===
We had dinner with Lawrence and some other mutual friends of ours and Andrew’s on Monday night, the night we got back to Austin. I remember thinking to myself, “If ever there was an appropriate time for the ‘Other than that, Mrs. Lincoln, how was the play?’ joke, this would be it.” Then Lawrence walked in and made that joke.
===
I’ve been running flat out for the past couple of days. I got up Tuesday morning, after a short sleep, to find out that I had to deal with an Internet outage (that Spectrum didn’t fix until Wednesday morning) and also with our trash. I paid someone to deal with the trash so I didn’t have to deal with it when I got back. They failed. Enough said.
So this is really my first chance to catch up and explain myself and my adventures last week. Of course, it has taken me a few days to write this.
Quotes of the day.
September 17th, 2026“Do you not know that a man is not dead while his name is still spoken?”
–Sir Terry Pratchett, Going Postal
While I was trying to find that quote, I ran across another Pratchett quote:
“No one is finally dead until the ripples they cause in the world die away, until the clock wound up winds down, until the wine she made has finished its ferment, until the crop they planted is harvested. The span of someone’s life is only the core of their actual existence.”
—Reaper Man
Obit watch: September 16, 2026.
September 16th, 2026Annie Dillard, author. (Pilgrim at Tinker Creek)
…
…
I have several of her books, but haven’t really dipped into them. I feel like I need to be in the right place and right frame of mind for this kind of work. But I do find this quote (from For the Time Being) quite striking:
There were no formerly heroic times, and there was no formerly pure generation. There is no one here but us chickens, and so it has always been: A people busy and powerful, knowledgeable, ambivalent, important, fearful, and self-aware; a people who scheme, promote, deceive, and conquer; who pray for their loved ones, and long to flee misery and skip death. It is a weakening and discoloring idea, that rustic people knew God personally once upon a time– or even knew selflessness or courage or literature– but that it is too late for us. In fact, the absolute is available to everyone in every age. There never was a more holy age than ours, and never a less.
While we were driving home on Monday, Mike mentioned a headline on his phone about the death of a “legendary” designer, and asked if any designer was truly “legendary”.
Bob Mackie. Even I have heard of Bob Mackie. Among his credits: Carol Burnett’s curtain dress.
Jay Maisel, photographer.
…
The “On Taking Pictures” podcast devoted much of an episode to Mr. Maisel. I think he was also featured prominently in the OTP drinking game, but I seem to have lost my copy of that.
Peter Max, 1960s “counterculture” artist.
His simple graphic images, brightly colored and infectiously happy, lent themselves to a long list of licensed commercial products, from sheets and glassware and shower curtains to airplanes and, on one occasion, a stamp for the Postal Service.
Incorporating Art Nouveau, Op Art and psychedelic motifs, Mr. Max’s designs offered instant visual gratification and a cheery endorsement of the generational politics of love, joy and universal consciousness. His “panopticon” images repeated visual elements in tight formation, producing a kaleidoscope effect that recalled Easter mandalas.