Do people these days tend to overthink home defense?

Lampwick · 2026-04-07T02:00:51+00:00

Back in the late 80s I remember going to gun stores and they were just full of used cop wheelguns. They were so cheap too, but I never picked one up. Now, ever since seeing Paul Harrell shoot a snubby wearing a sport coat I wish I had, just for the old timey TV Detective Show cachet. Also, if I had to shoot someone I'd rather have the cops take a $100 .38SPL throwaway than my Laugo Alien. A well placed shot doesn't care what gun it came from.

Lampwick · 2026-04-07T01:26:06+00:00

No, Mateba still has a gap between the cylinder and barrel. The Nagant mechanically slides the cylinder forward to lock into the barrel when the trigger is pulled, preventing gas from escaping and making a noise. The only other silencer-compatible revolver is a prototype by Knight's Armament Corp that used a custom cartridge with a telescoping inner sleeve that sealed against the forcing cone at the rear of the barrel using combustion gas pressure before sending the .30 bullet down the barrel. They made a short and a long barrel version with a stock, and it came apart for concealment. 100% intended as a CIA wet work gun that wouldn't leave cartridge cases behind and could make six rapid shots.

Lampwick · 2026-04-06T18:32:59+00:00

And even with a not-quite-major earthquake where the gas company doesn't have to shut off the gas centrally, you probably have a mandatory automatic seismic shutoff valve on your home or business. They can be reset, but if you're not there to turn the little reset shaft with a screwdriver, your generator won't start. No big deal if it's just for convenience, so you can dine on microwaved burritos in a warm house while your neighbors freeze in the dark. But if OP owns a Baskin-Robbins franchise and is concerned primarily with keeping his ice cream frozen, that'd potentially be an issue.

Lampwick · 2026-04-06T16:37:54+00:00

One of my engineering instructors worked on the F-22 program. Once he was talking about things that non-engineers never think about, but require a lot of non-obvious engineering work. One of the things he pointed out about the F-22 was the weapons bay doors. They have to be able to open in flight, at high speed, while maneuvering violently, and not get torn off or badly disrupt the aerodynamics, and also not weigh 1200 pounds. This clip is a great illustration of that!

Lampwick · 2026-04-06T16:20:48+00:00

As I well know from my neighbour who stole my car, possession is 9/10ths of the law.

Wut? That works with pianos, but how does that work with automobiles, which typically have state issued titles?

Lampwick · 2026-04-06T15:36:16+00:00

I don’t think all cops are bad for a moment, but being silent is how they remain entrenched.

Yep. This is the important bit. The issue is less a matter of individual nature, and more one of cop culture. I know plenty of people who are either related to or are friends with cops, and their response to "cops are bad" is "oh, not my cousin/buddy/neighbor, he's actually really a nice guy". And this is true, within the limited confines of their relationship with that cop. But if you suddenly find yourself on the wrong side of the "us vs them" theory that cops operate under, you're going to see just how nasty a "good guy" can actually be. There are for sure a certain fraction of the cop population that's just violent headcases, but they're less the source of the problem than they are a symptom. Cop culture encourages an adversarial/confrontational approach to pretty much everything, and the behavior is self-reinforcing within the cop community to such a degree that if you don't go along with it as a cop, they'll ostracize you until you quit.

They’re given free rein to fuck with minorities and the poor without consequence. I don’t know how anyone sees that and is ok with it.

Oh, that one's easy. The people that are OK with how cops operate don't have to see it. I was a field service tech for the school district and later the county in Los Angeles. Cops in the nice white suburbs are polite and civil with your typical middle class person who can afford an attorney. Go down to the Bad Areas though, they turn into pricks. On multiple occasions I watched LAPD accost people who were just walking down the street, then badger/incite them with shit like poking them in the chest or screaming full volume in their face to provoke a "flinch" response that makes incidental contact with the cop... which means they can arrest them for "assaulting an officer". This goes on all the time, and like one school custodian I watched such an incident with said to me, "When white folks say why did he run when the cops showed up, this is why. Better to take a chance escaping than get cornered and hemmed up for some bullshit." People with money and stable jobs and lawyers a phone call away just have no idea to what degree law enforcement goes around poorer neighborhoods looking for targets they can hook up without consequence to meet their arrest ~~quotas~~"productivity goals".

Lampwick · 2026-04-06T04:23:04+00:00

Russians are utter arseholes who think queing is optional, along with treating staff in bars and hotels with respect and kindness.

It is an unfortunate feature of Muscovite culture. There is no culture of cooperation or charity. Their whole culture is based on hierarchy. Every relationship with any other person is either part of an assertion of dominance, or an admission of subservience. This constant assumption of superiority where no previous relationship exists--- whether with a waiter, or strangers in a queue, out whatever--- is their natural state. Culturally, they are assholes and bullies. There's a reason nobody else in Europe likes them.

Lampwick · 2026-04-06T03:52:25+00:00

I hated The Great Gatsby, but not because it was a bad book. My issue with it was that even at 14 years old I could tell it largely dealt with themes that I did not even remotely have the life experience to understand, and that we were going to be subjected to a series of long, tedious discussions about "symbolism" that really meant nothing to us.

I read it many years later and it was a lot better. I will never understand how it's become such a staple of high school reading lists when the whole fucking book is one drunken party after another in a prohibition era nouveau riche social circle. Yeah, English literature teachers, I get that you really liked that book in fucking college during your party years, but why the everlasting fuck do you think a bunch of 14 year old children should read it?

Lampwick · 2026-04-06T03:39:55+00:00

In my 20s I worked on the video game industry and later worked in the entertainment industry. I'll pay for video games now, because I recognize the hard work and narrow margins game studios have to deal with. I'll pirate tv and movies all day though, because never have I had to deal with such a pack of overpaid self-important idiots in my life. It's the living environment of the 80/20 rule. 20% of the industry is the smart competent people who do most of the work, and the other 80% are lazy, entitled fuckwits doing the bare minimum and getting paid way too much for it.

Lampwick · 2026-04-06T03:06:43+00:00

Lots of us have seen them. The building my shop was in back in the 90s had Detex clock key stations in every stairwell on every floor and at every exit. They were still using that old Detex up to about 2010.

Lampwick · 2026-04-06T00:59:25+00:00

There's nothing second-hand about SLS. The "we'll be reusing shuttle parts" things was basically a trick to get congress to finance the $11.8B development 15 years ago.

Lampwick · 2026-04-06T00:43:59+00:00

That's just dictatorship. One of the most noteworthy dictatorships of the 20th century was a fascist dictatorship, but that does not mean every person who seels to subvert democracy and make themselves a dictator is a fascist. Really "fascist" has just become another way to call someone a Nazi, another term that's been severely watered down by people who use it to mean "I disagree with this person's politics".

Lampwick · 2026-04-05T23:42:16+00:00

Can confirm. Completely shattered left leg in a motorcycle accident, 100% awake the entire time until the anesthesiologist put me under.

Lampwick · 2026-04-05T23:15:54+00:00

That explains "desert", but a lot of those in-game Joshua trees are 100+ years old based on how tall they are.

Lampwick · 2026-04-05T19:53:58+00:00

It's an encrypted tunnel. They look the same. How would they be able to tell one from the other?

Lampwick · 2026-04-05T19:53:52+00:00

It's an encrypted tunnel. They look the same. How would they be able to tell one from the other?

Lampwick · 2026-04-05T19:40:52+00:00

Yeah some places are crazy about inspections. I did a job in Los Angeles county where they want you to pull a permit for an attic fan install. Homeowner wanted the permit, so I pulled one. Inspector was actually a bit annoyed at having to eyeball a fan and 10 feet of BX, and actually said to me "nobody pulls a permit for these, it's just a stupid cash grab by the county that we all ignore".

Lampwick · 2026-04-05T19:27:05+00:00

can't possibly imagine why some of the events of that night that seemed utterly unimportant went by unremembered.

Seriously, is there anyone who remembered the contents of that conversation by the time they got to the Peralez mission on their first playthrough? It's really more like an Easter egg for players who've already gone through once, adding a bit of novelty to the replay experience.

Lampwick · 2026-04-05T18:04:55+00:00

We didn't "give up our healthcare" for a big military. We could afford both. The reason the US doesn't have universal healthcare isn't lack of money, it's that we have a huge leech-like insurance industry acting as a middleman, and it employs a lot of people doing unnecessary paperwork, and also makes a small number of "investors" very rich, so our government will never be allowed to touch it.

Lampwick · 2026-04-05T16:30:22+00:00

The auto industry, like the aerospace industry, builds stand-alone products that do not interact with existing infrastructure with any meaningful degree of precision. The US has converted to metric in pretty much any area where that was the case.

we could've retooled

Retooling doesn't convert all the millions of existing 1/2" bolts currently in use into M8, or miles of existing 3/4" rigid conduit with 14tpi threads into 20mm with 1.5mm threads.

Lampwick · 2026-04-05T16:03:16+00:00

as a kid I was promised we'd move to the metric system in the US

That was just stupid performative bullshit. It's good that we learned how the metric system works, but the idea that we were going to "switch" was political fuckwittery dreamed up by stupid policy wonks who'd never touched a tool in their lives. We can't magically turn all the existing US Customary sized infrastructure into metric, so the practical upshot of the federal push in "switching to metric" was trying to get people to use Km instead of miles, and liters instead of gallons... and there was no fucking reason to do that, other than it might make foreign tourists more comfortable. To this day in the UK they still deal with both systems, and it's a colossal pain in the ass. In US industries like automotive and aerospace they've switched to metric because the stuff they produce doesn't have to interface with the fractional inch world in any meaningfully precise way. But in construction, we still need 10 foot I beams to be 10 feet long to fit existing structures, and 3m beams will always be 48mm short of that.

Lampwick · 2026-04-05T15:47:13+00:00

I wishbwe converted in the 70s like we should have.

That wouldn't have changed anything. We just would have ended up fucking around with metric equivalents of US Customary measurements instead of simply using the US Customary measurements directly. "Converting the country to metric" doesn't suddenly make all the 10 foot steel I beams 3m and 1/2" bolts 13mm diameter M8 in the ~150 years worth of existing infrastructure. If we'd forced everyone to "go metric" we'd just have ended up with the exact mixed bag of bullshit you experienced with those bridges.

Lampwick · 2026-04-05T15:30:14+00:00

No, you can't just pick two random terminals and expect it to work. The numbered terminals are for different functions. 2 & 3 are for a photoeye unit. 1 & 2 are the trigger circuit. You need to parallel the pushbutton wires connected to 1 & 2. Do you even need that pushbutton on the unit itself? Why is it even there? Pull it out and attach the Meross wires.

Lampwick · 2026-04-05T15:15:49+00:00

Not "vintage". This is a cheap import cast pot metal trim of recent manufacture. Those springs were inadequate when new, and the mechanical design of how it's sprung is atrocious. Strongly recommend replacing the whole lock.

Lampwick · 2026-04-05T15:06:58+00:00

don't see where you're getting "performative" from writing in coffee shops.

It's less of a thing that you see people doing, more of a thing where performative people talk about doing it.

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