We have all the best people. Really!
BlueGuitarist linked to this video in yesterday’s post about Adrian Fontes, and all I can say is WOW.
It’s 4.5 minutes of your life, and it’s so worth it.
Adrian Fontes on the 2nd amendment.
He cuts straight through the bullshit. We might have a new explainer-in-chief!
Open thread.
WaterGirl
Maybe there was an afternoon front-pagers siesta that I wasn’t invited to? Anyway, I had this one in the hopper, so it’s going up.
Did everyone (who’s interested) see this really fun thread from yesterday? Someone kept sharing some of the replies in the comments, but I can’t recall who it was.
Maybe the funniest twitter thread I have ever read.
edit: I got distracted and forgot to include the link!
another edit: In yesterday’s thread, Jeffro posted some of the examples, and Steeplejack provided the link.
Almost Retired
Wow, that was powerful! Can he run for Senate, please? And BJ raised almost $5,000 for him!
zhena gogolia
@WaterGirl: Do you have a link?
WaterGirl
Old School
@zhena gogolia: I think it was the Woke Banks thread
Edit: Should have just let WG respond.
WaterGirl
@Almost Retired: He is not timid! He just went for it. None of this middle of the road crap we see from some candidates.
He’s got that certain something, for sure!
WaterGirl
@Old School: Was that you who posted several of those yesterday? If so, forever in your debt.
WaterGirl
Women are still pissed.
zhena gogolia
@WaterGirl:
Haha, I like this one:
Don K
Tell it, Brother!!!
Old School
@WaterGirl: Nope. Your debt should go to Jeffro. (And Steeplejack who posted the link.)
Betty Cracker
I’ve heard his name but had never seen Mr. Fontes or heard him speak — what an impressive dude. I like how he emphasized that yeah, Dems have two turds in the Senate punchbowl on gun control, but ALL of the Repubs are part of the problem. If a small fraction of Repubs were reasonable, Manchinema would be irrelevant. Without that sense of proportion “both sides are the problem” perceptions take hold.
WaterGirl
@Betty Cracker: We really do have all the best people.
* and a few duds, but still.
trollhattan
To my California peeps, here’s our snowpack. Seems we will end the winter with a new record, especially because we’re not done adding to it.
For the uninitiated, snow is our biggest water reservoir and the last three years that reservoir volume was basically bupkis. Bupkis is metric for no acre-feet.
Two sunny days before the next storm. Slap on that sunblock and enjoy!
Betty Cracker
The Bucs signed Baker Mayfield! My hubby and brother are skeptical, but I said fuck y’all — he’s cute!
The Kropenhagen Interpretation
@trollhattan: You have snowpack this year? We decided not to do that in MA. I’m glad the big snow industry was able to find a new customer.
WaterGirl
@trollhattan: The unlabeled blue line must be this year. Looks like you skipped a coupe of grades. (years)
Tony G
This guy is great! Another point that he could make is that (to my understanding as a civilian non-veteran) guns on a military base in a non-combat environment are very strictly controlled — generally kept locked away unless needed for marksmanship training or guard duty. Violation of that strict gun control on military bases can lead to a court martial and a prison sentence.
kindness
Militia types aren’t in it to protect the Constitution (even though they say they are). They’re in it for their own toddler egos so they can shoot big guns and pretend to be able to force others to their infantile will. I mean, look how often they completely ignore the ‘Well Regulated’ part of the second amendment.
More power to this guy. I will donate to him.
Roger Moore
@trollhattan:
Yay! Apparently most of the state is now officially out of drought, and much of the state is officially no longer even “abnormally dry”. Not that we should give up on drought tolerant landscaping and other smart water conservation measures.
Dan B
@Betty Cracker: Boy howdy is he White! Time for a fundraiser for sunscreen.
RaflW
Colorado high country is doing pretty well for snow. Nothing that will ‘save’ Lake Powell, but we’re in the 125%-150% of normal snowpack range in the various tributaries to, and of the Colorado River headwaters. Rio Grande headwaters are abt 114% of average.
But, because I’m part Eeyore, and still a bit freaked out by being in the CO Rockies when the 2020 East Troublesome fire exploded and swept through Grand Lake (several dozen miles from our condo, but well in view of, and sometimes downwind of, the smoke plume) I’ll note that 2020 was an above average snowpack year and, whelp, that only goes so far.
We were dry as a bone by September of ’20. Global Weirding will continue.
🐾BillinGlendaleCA
@trollhattan: Here is how to tell if it is going to rain…if BillinGlendaleCA is working at the Home of the Orange Apron, it will not rain, if BillinGlendaleCA is not working, it will rain.
Geminid
@Betty Cracker: Tampa Bay sounds like a good spot for Mayfield. He has the elements of a good quarterback. Maybe he’ll put them together as a Buc.
Roger Moore
@RaflW:
Here in California, at least, it dries out enough that high precipitation years also tend to be bad fire years. No matter how wet the winter was, the vegetation will be dry by the end of the summer. Wetter years just mean there’s more vegetation to feed the fires.
Dan B
@RaflW: Washington is doing fine with 129% snowpack and 16 feet of snow at Rainy Pass in the North Cascades. That’s from something like 30-40 feet of snowfall. We’ve had the world record annual snowpack of 95+ feet at Mount Baker near the Canadian border and also at Mount Rainier. I pulled into the snowbank at Mount Rainier one March day. It was vertical because that’s how it has to be plowed that way. It was 25 feet tall. Nearly broke the bumper since it was solid ice.
eversor
Fontes is pretty close to my view. I have nothing against gun ownership but we cleary aren’t a nation that can handle it. I own guns. I learned to shoot early on. I’m also a vet so I have been professionally trained. Also had to use guns when people shoot back at you. I don’t mind them. Hell I own a large caliber revolver (we go hiking in areas with bears), a gun for bambi (mostly just sitting about talking smack and camping), a shotgun (hand me down, it’s a breach loader), and a .45 (after I left the service I still worked in areas of the world where being armed was required and I needed to keep current). I have no problems with firearms in general. Tons of my vet buddies have them. I still known tons of people who do other work where it is required when you travel. I’m fine with it.
Thing is I also don’t have kids at home and they are all locked and in my safe with other items. I’ve also been, as I said, trained on it. Most people buying all this stuff are nitwits and morons who have no training at all and were never psychologically evaluated. It’s insane! As is the logic of “I need an AR because bambi”. Really? I’ve played the bambi game and you use a bolt action with a much more powerful round. Home defense is more laughable because you’ll just put rounds through rooms and if you haven’t been in a fight before you’re going to panic and fuck this one up hilariously. The idea that you are going to take on the military is just lunatic.
The only gun related upgrades I got was a nice scope for bambi and some tritium sights (these are just normal sights but with glow in the dark radioative paint on thme) for the .45. The rest of this shit is all just fucking stupid.
Nobody is coming to take my guns. I’d have zero problems just going down to the bambi blaster or the bird blaster (harharhar). I have no problems require to go through a safety course once every few years.
The refusal to deal with any regulation is making people like me more pro regulation. The carnage has to stop and clearly a large enough portion of our population cannot be responsible or even rational with these things. I can play the bambi game with a bow if it comes down to it. Been done for hundreds of years. I can get issued a gun if I have to go a place no problem there. And for home defense that’s likely to just be a race for the kitchen knives or a hammer anyways. If I want to shoot, I’m sure gun ranges will still be around!
Everytime I run into someone who is not or was not military with all this stuff it’s sort of “ummm, ok” and then I don’t go back there.
P.S. I don’t keep ammo at home. We pick that up at the range or before camping. There is no way in hell I’m getting into a run gun battle in Arlington VA and it’s just safer that way. If someone came through my condo door the place is small enough I’m not unlocking the safe so it’s grabbing the first physical object to “pointy end goes in the other person” or just clobber them with. The notion of a gun for home defense is just off. You’ll shoot yourself through the head through your own pillow with your loaded pistol before you stop anything in most cases. The one home invasion I’ve had they ran off when they saw me.
Ramalama
Zoweee. That video is great.
eversor
@Tony G:
Weapons are kept under lock and key for those not on duty and some specific overseas postings. You don’t wander around with one. MPs and other types who’s jobs require it do. But then when their “watch” (work hours) expire there is all sorts of official crap where they pass it over. The weapon is inspected, checked, papers are signed often.
You can’t just check a gun out and waltz about with it.
schrodingers_cat
Related article on how to combat disinformation from the Scientific American
kalakal
I like this guy.
WaterGirl
@🐾BillinGlendaleCA: sad chuckle.
Baud
@🐾BillinGlendaleCA:
California should pay you to not work to end the drought forever.
Dan B
Fontes is great. He adds vital details and his emotions are on target. He seems like a forceful Marine vet.
Baud
Apparently, in France, the president can enact laws and it’s up to parliament to veto them.
schrodingers_cat
Here is the YouTube channel that the article talks about in partnership with Google
WaterGirl
@Roger Moore: that makes sense.
edit: I guess you just have to rake the forests, then :-)
WaterGirl
@Baud: interesting!
WaterGirl
@Baud: even California isn’t that forward, thinking!
Almost Retired
@🐾BillinGlendaleCA: I wish I had your photography skills. Thanks to all the rain, we’re heading out to the desert next week to catch the early wildflowers in Anza-Borrego State Park and around Lake Havasu. My photography skills are such that even the most spectacular super bloom will look like a field of spent dandelions in my photographic rendering. Sigh.
trollhattan
@WaterGirl: Yep, dark blue is current year. This version lets the user pick their own years–comparing against the most-recent few is instructive.
Geminid
@WaterGirl: By the late 1950s, the Algerian war for Independence created a lot of heated political instabity in France. When people pressed World War II hero Charles deGaulle to step in and salvage the situation, he told them,”Not under that stupid 4th Republic constitution I won’t!”
So France adopted a new constitution with a strong executive branch, and deGaulle became the first President of the 5th Republic. The new system has worked out pretty well, considering how contentious French politics can be.
Bee Girl
@trollhattan: As a lifelong CA peep, I can also report that for the 1st time in almost 3 years, the river that “runs” through my city, is actually running through it!!! The ’84 Summer Olympics in LA held white water rafting events in the nearby mountains on this river. For the past several years, drought conditions and water management demands, the mighty Kern River disappears by the time it reaches what passes for civilized here.
Ken B
@Baud: My understanding is that he can push a bill through the lower house without a vote. The upper house has already passed it.
But the opposition then automatically gets 24 hours to call a no confidence vote. If Macron loses that, he’s gone, the bill is negated, and I think the government falls in general.
So high risk strategy, and Macron’s presumably only doing it because he doesn’t have the votes to pass the law in the lower house, but expects his party/coalition to stand together against the no confidence vote.
Betty Cracker
@Geminid: The Bucs are getting him dirt cheap, so we’ll see what he makes of it. Could be a good fit.
Baud
@Ken B:
Thanks!
It’s obvious Biden is feckless for not doing the same thing.
Geminid
@Ken B: Macron’s government could fall over this legislation, but he will still be President through 2028.
Ken B
@Geminid: Thanks, I’m still trying to figure out the details.
My understanding of French politics and their government is neither wide nor deep.
BlueGuitarist
Tell it, Adrian Fontes!
Just want to reiterate his emphasis on
which gives Congress the power “to provide for organizing, arming, and disciplining, the Militia”
“Well-regulated” in the 2nd Amendment means
“according to the discipline prescribed by Congress”
WaterGirl
@Bee Girl: “A river runs through it. Really!”
lowtechcyclist
@Baud:
Maybe he just has no fecks left to give.
Roger Moore
@Almost Retired:
You may never get as good as BillinGlendaleCA, but you can certainly work on improving them. The key to being a good “found image” photographer (i.e. someone who takes pictures of the world as they find it, rather than someone who arranges objects to create their images) is to learn to recognize what makes a good photograph. That means looking at a lot of photographs, your own and others’, with a critical eye.
When you see a photograph you really like, don’t just admire it; try to figure out what about it draws your eye. When you see one that doesn’t work for you, try to figure out what about it keeps it from working. That second one is especially important when looking at your own photographs. You remember what you were trying to achieve when you took the picture, so you can look at it and see what kept it from succeeding. Figuring out what’s keeping your pictures from being as good as you want them to be is critical, because it gives you a list of things to work on.
The most important thing I’ve learned as a photographer is that the camera sees the world differently from the way I do. Things that are amazing to me wind up being flat and lifeless in a photograph, and some things that are less exciting to me can turn into great photographs. A key part of developing as a photographer is training your eyes to see what a camera will see, so you can know in advance what is more or less likely to work.
The other, amazingly simple trick to being a better photographer is to show people only your best pictures. I remember reading a story from one of Ansel Adams’s assistants, who said one of his great revelations was seeing all the duds in Adams’s collection of negatives. He said it was incredibly educational and liberating to know even an all-time great photographer will take many more ordinary pictures than great ones. They just understand it’s part of the process. Not every picture will work, and not every one has to work. As long as you come back with something good, your day as a photographer hasn’t been wasted. Just be sure not to share the bad pictures.
Geminid
@Ken B: My knowledge of French politics might be wider and/or deeper than yours, but not by much.
I keep in mind an important distinction between the U.S. and France, though. We have a federal system, with a lot of functions residing in the states and localities. France has more of a unitary system, so the French Presidency and Civil Service are powerful indeed.
Ruckus
@Dan B:
Had a HS buddy whose dad lived in Mammoth Lakes so we’d go up there from time to time. Went up one winter and next morning there were no cars on the road but there was 2-3 ft of snow and I have a picture of my buddies car with the drivers door tunnel dug out. It looked like we were going to be there till summer.
Roger Moore
@Ruckus:
There are apparently a few ski resorts near Tahoe that are closed because the snow is so deep it’s buried the lifts.
Almost Retired
@Roger Moore: This is excellent advice. It seems to me like great photography is partly art (framing, etc.) and technology (using the editing tools). Bill has mastered both of those components. I’m googling stuff on how to better utilize iphone photography, because my photos of the last super bloom did absolutely no justice to the extraordinary beauty of the landscape. I also need to edit out the obnoxious influencers trampling the poppies for an Instagram post.
Roger Moore
@Almost Retired:
Here are some of my pictures from the previous superbloom in 2019. One of the things I found was that I was more successful with closeup pictures of individual flowers than trying to convey the carpet effect. This is one of the points I was making about different things working in photographs and our perceptions. I really wanted to capture the feeling of having a huge field of wildflowers in front of me, but a small photograph has a hard time conveying the sense of that. On the other hand, a small photograph is perfect for showing a single poppy. It can even capture fine details you’d have a hard time seeing firsthand.
🐾BillinGlendaleCA
@WaterGirl: Yeah, I want to speak to a manager about this!
@Baud: Sure, but then no Milky Way pics.
🐾BillinGlendaleCA
@Almost Retired: I may head up to the poppy preserve next Wed, weather permitting, of course.
🐾BillinGlendaleCA
@Roger Moore: One of my best pics from the last superbloom is one of a single poppy with the rest behind past the depth of field(out of focus).
Tony G
@eversor: Thank you. That’s more or less what my understanding had been. I guess that’s because the military leadership understands how deadly these weapons are, and they understand that a dead soldier or Marine is a waste of human resources. Most of the gun fetishists are just morons who think that the gun gives them a bigger dick.
BellyCat
I need a cigarette after watching that Fontes video!
eversor
@Tony G:
You know who really cares about dead “our troops”, our troops.
Paul in KY
@Betty Cracker: Browns fan here. Baker has some talent, but needs to manage his game better. Ran into problems when he held the ball too long trying to make that pass. He has tremendous belief in himself, and that can sometimes cause him to look for the homerun play, rather than throwing the ball away & punting.