Illuminating lecture by the late, great Petr Beckmann. For more on Beckmann, see my posts:

• Access to Energy (archived comments);
• A Basic Physics Reminder for Solar Energy Advocates;
• Beckmann’s Economics as if Some People Mattered, or, Small is Not Beautiful;
• Carson: Libertarians for Junk Science.

Outdoor Life shooting editor Jim Carmichael also found that sabots tended to group tighter than rifled slugs during a comprehensive slug test in 2008. Carmichael tested 27 different slugs, firing over 1,000 rounds from a 50-pound remote-operated slug gun. The best three-shot rifled slug group at 100 yards was 6.819 inches from a trio of 2¾-inch 20-gauge Winchester rounds. The best sabot group came from a 2¾-inch 12-gauge Lightfield load and measured only 2.062 inches–over three times tighter than the rifled slug. //

Deciding which load to buy depends on where you hunt and how much money you want to spend—a box of five sabots can cost more than $20, while rifled slugs go for as cheap as $6. If you keep shots inside 100 yards, there is only a slight advantage in shooting a sabot in terms of drop and energy on target. But push that range just 25 more yards, and the sabot begins to separate itself from the rifled slug.

Depending on the load, a .30-06 has a power factor of about 400, but 12-gauge slugs can reach the 700s with ease.

If you really want to put the hurt on something, like a big critter, a 12-gauge slug does that. And here I will be speaking only of the 12-gauge variety, because while the 20 can come close, the rest … meh. The 16-gauge is so rare that it might not even exist, and 28 and .410 slugs are pointless.

General Motors has been around for a long time — 117 years, in fact, as of the date of this writing in 2025. It was founded as a holding company by William C. Durant in September of 1908, and the first thing it did was purchase the Buick Motor Company. Over the intervening century and change, 43 different auto companies have operated under The General's banner, running the gamut from famous marques like Cadillac, Pontiac, and Oldsmobile to companies like Oakland, LaSalle, Sheridan, and McLaughlin that only big car nerds like me remember.

Somehow, every Arizona factory and wholesaler selling parts to us became our branch office when we asked them to ship directly to our customers. Address labels became stores, refrigerator magnets became salespeople and, magically, RockAuto was in Arizona.

No previous court case (including ours in the Arizona Tax Court) found a retailer "physically present" without employees or assets or someone making in-state contact with customers. ADoR's own publications say "drop-shipping" from Arizona suppliers does not create tax liability. But ADoR persists in demanding six years of taxes (which we didn't collect from customers) plus interest and penalties — far more money than we earned in 20 years selling auto parts to Arizonans!

Boeing aircraft, including the 747, 757, 767, and 777, all take on a sleeker, forward-stretching and beak-like shape at the front, while the Airbus planes, such as the A320, A330, A340, A350, and A380 families, have a rounder front profile with a smooth curve from top to bottom. This difference isn't just cosmetic or a preferred choice in design — it's the product of decades of engineering philosophy and aerodynamics history.

Boeing, since 1916, has continued to follow its engineering legacy of pointed noses borrowed from the earliest B17 and 747 aircraft. This was during a time when wind tunnel experimentation was big among the aircraft engineers who believed that a tapered, pointier nose helps reduce drag and cut through wind faster. This design had also become Boeing's signature look and straying away from it would've meant compromising the brand's identity.

Airbus, on the other hand, was born much later in the 1970s, in an era where aerodynamics history had evolved and computer modeling introduced a new idea that at subsonic speeds below Mach 1, a smaller, rounder nose shape actually helps reduce drag and smooth airflow. As a result of this new understanding, Boeing began embracing the compact, dolphin style that now defines its fleet with the arrival of the 787. //

At subsonic speeds, the shape of the aircraft matters less than it does at supersonic or transonic speeds, where a needle-like nose is needed to cut through pressure fronts to avoid the harsh drag that builds at higher Mach levels. Thus, computational modeling prescribed a shorter, rounder shape for lesser skin friction and to minimize the total wetted surface area to facilitate the movement of air particles around it. This is why Airbus has kept its round, bubble shape that is refined for laminar flow, and Boeing is following suit.

You know what’s not fun? Sorting LEGO. You know what is fun? Making a machine to sort LEGO! That’s what [LegoSpencer] did, and you can watch the machine do its thing in the video below. //

If you want to build your own, you might want to track the new Sorter V2 that is under development. If you are building V1, you can find what you need on GitHub.

Changing the pads on your car’s brakes is a pretty straightforward and inexpensive process on most vehicles. However, many modern vehicles having electronic parking brakes giving manufacturers a new avenue to paywall simple DIY repairs. //

Much to their chagrin, despite buying the required $60/wk subscription to the National Automotive Service Task Force (NASTF) and the $2,000 interface tool, [SoultronicPear]’s account was suspended because it was not intended for use for anyone but “service professionals.” Not exactly a Right-to-Repair friendly move on Hyundai’s part. After trying a number of different third party tools, they finally found a Harbor Freight T7 bidirectional scan tool was able to issue the parking brake retract command to perform the pad swap, albeit not without throwing some error codes in the process.

You can check the installation date of a FreeBSD server by looking at the /var/log/bsdinstall_log file, which typically contains a line indicating when the installation began.

Alternatively, you can use the command stat -f '%SB %N' / to see when the root filesystem was created, but this may not reflect the actual installation date if the system was modified later.

New “computational Turing test” reportedly catches AI pretending to be human with 80% accuracy.

In a couple of ways, a Cessna is more difficult to fly than a fighter jet! The first has to do with mass. A typical Phantom configuration tips the scales at about 50,000 pounds. It takes about 36,000 pounds of afterburning thrust to get it going fast enough (175 knots) to generate enough lift to overcome the 50,000 pounds of gravitational resistance; chewing up about 2,000 feet of concrete. Once airborne, it was an incredibly stable platform because of that mass; trimmed up, it pretty much flew itself—-minimally affected by wind, speed changes, or even turbulence. Speed up? Push the throttle forward. Climb? Pull back on the stick. Turn? Push the stick right or left. Roll out? Push the stick in the opposite direction from starting the turn. Easy Peasy!

‘My son’s Cessna 182 has a maximum weight of 2,950 pounds driven by a 230 horsepower gasoline engine. It takes about the same 2,000 feet of runway to overcome gravity, but at around 55 knots (63 MPH). In order to takeoff at that speed, it has a massive airfoil. Combined with its light weight, it’s affected by every gust of wind, every change in speed, and every change in temperature. Level flight requires continuous trimming (sans auto pilot). Speed up? Throttle up, adjust prop (RPM), manifold pressure, fuel mixture, carburetor heating, cowl flaps, pitch trim. Continue to adjust all of the above according to variations in EGT (Exhaust Gas Temperature), cylinder head temperature, carburetor temperature; hoping to get minimum fuel flow as you don’t have a gauge.

Civilization is based on principles which imply that the passing moment is permanent. The only permanent thing is God, and if I put anything else as permanent, I become atheistic. I must build only on God (John 14:6).
The Highest Good—Thy Great Redemption, 565 L

Whatsoever ye do, do all to the glory of God. — 1 Corinthians 10:31 //

It is one thing to go through a crisis grandly, but another thing to go through every day glorifying God when there is no witness, no limelight, no one paying the remotest attention to us. //

The test of the life of a saint is not success, but faithfulness in human life as it actually is. We will set up success in Christian work as the aim; the aim is to manifest the glory of God in human life, to live the life hid with Christ in God in human conditions. Our human relationships are the actual conditions in which the ideal life of God is to be exhibited.

for /l %i in (1,1,254) do @ping 192.168.1.%i -w 10 -n 1 | find "Reply"

This will ping all addresses from 192.168.1.1 to 192.168.1.254 one time each, wait 10ms for a reply (more than enough time on a local network) and show only the addresses that replied.

For every action there is an equal and opposite government program. -- Bob Wells

The first multi-spacecraft science mission to launch to Mars is now on its way, and catching a ride on the twin probes are the first kiwis to fly to the red planet. //

“Rocket Lab has a tradition of hiding kiwis in many areas of its design,” said Lindsay McLaurin, senior communications manager for space systems at Rocket Lab, in response to an inquiry from collectSPACE.com. “The birds have snuck onto our rockets and satellites since the beginning of the company, reflecting the New Zealand roots of the company and as a challenge among our designers and spacecraft builders.”

The birds, which are native to the island country in the southwestern Pacific Ocean, appear as graphics on twin plaques attached to Blue and Gold. The metal plates, which adorn one of the two solar panels on each probe, also feature the Rocket Lab logo, the company’s motto (“Non Sufficit Hic Orbis” or “This World Is Not Enough”), and a similar icon of a bald eagle.

“To represent our company’s global presence,” said McLaurin, referring to the American icon. //

GFKBill Ars Tribunus Militum
21y
2,658
Subscriptor
*pushes pedant glasses up nose"
As a Kiwi myself, I need to point out that the Maori language doesn't use the "s" to denote plurals, or even have a letter "s", so it's two kiwi, not two kiwis.

Also, go Rocket Lab!

winwaed Ars Scholae Palatinae
9y
711

GFKBill said:
Maori language doesn't use the "s" to denote plurals, or even have a letter "s", so it's two kiwi, not two kiwis.

So the plural of "sheep" is "heep"?

GFKBill Ars Tribunus Militum
21y
2,658
Subscriptor

winwaed said:
So the plural of "sheep" is "heep"?

Well, we do have heeps of them.

SiberX Ars Scholae Palatinae
15y
1,249
Subscriptor++

GFKBill said:
Well, we do have heeps of them.

We just went over this; heep of them.

You see a certain person suffering, and you say — “He shall not suffer, and I will see that he does not.” You put your hand straight in front of God’s permissive will to prevent it, and God says — “What is that to thee?” If there is stagnation spiritually, never allow it to go on, but get into God’s presence and find out the reason for it. Possibly you will find it is because you have been interfering in the life of another; proposing things you had no right to propose; advising when you had no right to advise. When you do have to give advice to another, God will advise through you with the direct understanding of His Spirit; your part is to be so rightly related to God that His discernment comes through you all the time for the blessing of another soul. //

A saint is never consciously a saint; a saint is consciously dependent on God.

in 2025, the next archivist may well be among the most important appointments President Donald Trump will make. Why? Because the federal government’s ability to function transparently, legally, and accountably now depends almost entirely on fixing a catastrophic, decades-long failure in electronic records management — a failure that no other agency but the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA), which the archivist heads, has the authority to repair. //

Most Americans have no idea how bad the situation is. And that’s not their fault. If the government had been managing its electronic records as required by law, we would all have access to the information needed to understand how decisions are made, money is spent, crimes are investigated, and power is used.

Instead, we now have more than two decades of abject information chaos — a level of dysfunction that threatens the very foundations of democratic governance. NARA’s dysfunction has damaged transparency, as seen with Jan. 6, Russiagate, and Arctic Frost, to name a few. On oversight, it has contributed to the Pentagon’s inability to account for trillions of missing taxpayer dollars. With cybersecurity, it has resulted in the loss of more than 25 million classified electronic records, as demonstrated by the Office of Personnel Management’s data breach. Lastly, it has made it difficult to hold anyone accountable for federal health agencies’ misconduct. //

In 1997, NARA endorsed the Defense Department’s DoD 5015.2-certified electronic records repositories as the official solution for managing federal electronic records. The problem? Those systems were designed by professional records managers who — through no fault of their own — had little to no understanding of electronic information management. The result was predictable: applications that were theoretically compliant on paper but fatally flawed in practice.

Federal agencies spent millions purchasing these certified systems. Yet not a single agency ever successfully deployed one in a production environment. The reasons are detailed in a stunning investigative report by the Epoch Times, which chronicles how these failures have cost taxpayers billions, compromised national security, and endangered the lives of innocent Americans. But the bigger story is this: because the DoD 5015.2 systems never worked, federal agencies never managed electronic records in accordance with the Federal Records Act at all. //

If agencies and vendors fail to demonstrate a solution’s compliance with these requirements, NARA can reject it as a suitable solution for managing agency information. Thus, NARA effectively became the government’s default IT regulator — a role for which it was neither trained nor equipped.

As a result, the archivist of the United States, a position once considered ceremonial, suddenly became responsible for overseeing the digital infrastructure of the entire federal government. //

In February, President Trump fired the previous archivist, historian Colleen Shogan. Given her lack of technical experience, her support for her predecessor’s participation in the FBI’s raid on Mar-a-Lago, and her questionable political independence, I fully supported that decision.

But it has left a vacuum at a time when NARA desperately needs leadership with vision, technical expertise, and the ability to rebuild trust across partisan divides. The president has not yet nominated a replacement. //

The person who steps into this role will carry responsibility for ensuring the U.S. government can function in the digital age. If the next archivist fails, the consequences will cascade through every policy domain — from national security to public health to economic oversight. //

The failure of federal electronic records management has already cost billions of dollars, jeopardized transparency, and eroded public trust. It has allowed agencies to operate in the shadows, shielded from accountability by systems too broken to track what they do. //

The archivist of the United States is now the guardian of every recorded action of our government — and therefore the guardian of the public’s right to know.

As our nation nears its 250th birthday, Ken Burns’ miniseries should give us a newfound appreciation for the sacrifices of our ancestors.

Playing the Game
Goal: Win by scoring the most points after 10 questions.
How to Play
Each player gets 1 whiteboard and 10 voting tokens of their color.
The player who most recently watched a Veritasium video starts as the Question Reader.
The role of Question Reader moves clockwise each round.
The game lasts 10 questions.
Each Round
The Question Reader reads a card out loud (without taking it out of the box). Starting with the player to their left, everyone places one voting token face down on the mat.
Each chip can only be played once; if placed on the correct answer it is retained, if not it is discarded.
Players choose which token to use based on confidence:

• High number = high confidence.
• Low number = low confidence
  Scoring Each Question
  The Question Reader reveals the correct answer.
  If you were right, move your token to your scoring pile.
  If you were wrong, your token is discarded.
  Game End: After 10 questions, all tokens will have been used. Players add up the numbers on their scoring piles. The player with the highest total wins!