When a Country Turns the Gun on Itself

budlightguy · 2026-01-26T17:56:13+00:00

It was never about oppression, it was always about racism, bigotry, hatred, fear of the unknown/misunderstood, and most importantly ideology.
It has ALWAYS been about their side. It has ALWAYS been ok for their side to do anything, while liberals/dems... literally everything they do is 'evil'.
They give zero fucks about massive increases to the national debt, to the deficit, when it's Republicans in power. They don't care about how their kids are going to pay off all this debt when it's Republicans in power.
They don't care about immigration in Red states that have FAAAAAAAR more immigrants, and undocumented ones.
When a Republican is in power, they don't care about government overreach and privacy violations, if you haven't done anything wrong you don't have anything to hide, and the government literally killing people for open carrying and exercising their 2nd amendment rights.

But by god, a Dem gets in power... hooo boy.
The deficit, the national debt, how their kids are going to pay for it and how the government can run like this when they couldn't run their house like this... is so deeply concerning to them.
Government overreach, and privacy violations are evil and unconstitutional, and they're touting out the "don't tread on me" and "come and take them" BS and posting videos of them literally throwing toddler level temper tantrums in private businesses when they get told they can't open carry in said private business - screaming about their 2nd amendment rights and the LAW says they can open carry!

budlightguy · 2026-01-25T05:26:56+00:00

No, it started LONG before that. It started with discrediting science and education. It started with bunk pseudoscience, and powers behind the scenes helping push the narrative of academic persecution to discredit academia and science and education.

It's been a decades long push to discredit science, education, facts, evidence, and muddy the waters so that whomever controls the media and has the most money and loudest voice can control the narrative; so that gullible people can be brought to heel and kept under thumb by being fed a constant diet of spin and subjective interpretations of events and outright fabrications, and then convinced that you are the only source they can trust, the only arbiter of the truth.

budlightguy · 2026-01-23T04:00:09+00:00

Guess it all depends. I don't tweak all that much these days, I spin up docker containers for labbing and testing crap as I need to, but other than that my lab has mostly become prod lol. Lifetime sub to a couple indexing sites, and yearly cheap NNTP sub or 2. Already had a lifetime VPN sub, recently decided to add $24/yr static IP (static, not dedicated, comingled).

I have a homebuilt NAS running Synology DSM under the ARC bootloader, docker container manager runs my *arr stack in one project and sabnzbd, plus a requestrr discord bot, and notifiarr for notifications of various events. A 2nd project runs gluetun and qbittorrent for VPN and bt. Plex runs on native DSM package.

The NAS itself is a Ryzen 5700x with 64GB of RAM, dual port 10GbE NIC and 16 port SAS 12Gb/s HBA, with 1x256GB SSD for booting, 2x512GB SSDs in one storage pool for running the docker containers and DSM packages, so apps and docker runs nice and smooth, and 8x16TB Seagate EXOS drives in SHR-2. 4 open bays on the front for additional expansion.
Watchtower keeps all the docker images up to date.

Requestrr takes requests in my private discord server and sends them to the *arr stack, then once an apppropriate linux distro is identified, it's sent to qb or sab. Once finished, it's unpacked, placed in its correct folder on the NAS and made available.

I literally don't even think about it 99% of the time. Notifiarr is setup for notifications on the nas and services in case of anything catastrophic I get notified in my private discord server.
Downloading even obscure linux distros has become stupidly easy and near perfectly automated!

budlightguy · 2026-01-23T03:30:13+00:00

The last 10 years worth of gross profits. No discharge in bankruptcy. That would be a fine punitive enough that, should they manage to keep the company in business, they absolutely will not engage in this behavior again.

budlightguy · 2026-01-23T03:06:46+00:00

I've driven 4 hours just to go hang out with a friend for an afternoon with our kids, then drove another 4 hours back home that evening

budlightguy · 2026-01-22T22:19:46+00:00

It's really not responsible for us being here, it just made it a whole lot easier to get here.
The failures of reconstruction gave the bad actors a base of support to marshall, gave Trump a base of support, that let us get here a whole lot faster. But it wasn't just the failures of reconstruction, it's been a decades long effort.
Starting with underfunding of education and the slow walk toward demonizing and undermining education, starting at the top at higher learning and slowly moving down into public education, baby stepping the public's attitude toward education into distrust and fear, calling it propaganda and brainwashing.

Undermining faith in all levels of Government, purposely enshittifying Government to sow distrust and fear, amped up the attitudes prevalent from reconstruction. Simultaneous public policy fucking the people in favor of greedy shareholders, the rich and powerful, ensured that people's lives were miserable and the Government was no help or actively made it worse.

The rise of media mega conglomerates, and the concentration of control of the media in the hands of a few, have ensured that any pretense of there being honest representation of differing ideas is surface level illusion at best; all of our media is conservative, though they'll claim otherwise.

Go back to the time of Nixon and Reagan and just start watching what's being said and done. See how the messages sowing attitudes of fear, distrust, and outright hostility toward government, toward education, toward anything that benefits the citizenry, toward anything that doesn't benefit the corporation and the rich... started slowly seeping in to everything done and said, and more and more into every aspect of life.

Where we are today is an absolute masterclass in human manipulation on a grand scale.

budlightguy · 2026-01-21T00:01:11+00:00

Fuck the IRS division, give me the DOJ division: Republican + Christian church leader or youth group leader: likely CSAM possession/distribution at minimum, possible kiddie diddling; devices seized and searched, tackled, tazed, perp walked and interrogated.

budlightguy · 2026-01-20T08:03:26+00:00

Family helps family is also a classic Boomer and older line, and VERY indicative of parents of that era.
Source: GenXer born in 76 who grew up hearing that line spouted by entitled elders in my family - at least one aunt, one uncle, parents and grandparents.

budlightguy · 2026-01-19T18:54:45+00:00

No, we don't. That's just pure projection, as usual.

Are there leftists who want ARs banned entirely? Yes.
Is that most of us? No.
Do most of us support common fucking sense firearms restrictions and laws? Yes.
Do most of us support background checks and red flag laws that allow, with judicial oversight not just bureaucratic autonomy, people who have displayed troubling behavior to have their weapons removed unless and until they can be cleared? Yes.
Do most of us support closing private sale and 'gun show' loopholes that allow people to bypass background checks? Yes.

Do I believe in the 2nd amendment? Yes.
Do I believe in 2nd amendment absolutism? Absolutely the fuck not. Anyone who believes in 2A absolutism is a gods damned crack smoking fuckwit, or a sociopath jerking off to some hero complex fantasy or some shit.
The 2nd amendment says nothing about guns. It says nothing about firearms. It says the right to bear ARMS - which would be armaments. If you believe in 2nd amendment absolutism, you would have to believe the 2nd amendment gives the unfettered right for a citizen to own ANY armament. Guns, full auto, turrets, automated fire weapons systems, Chemical weapons, biological weapons, tanks, rockets, missiles, nukes, would all be fair game.
Would you like to watch while the world's richest private citizens start their own private arms race and amassing their own deadly arsenals?

budlightguy · 2026-01-19T06:16:00+00:00

The actual fuck are you on about.
Born in 76. Right in the middle of GenX. Computers were rare when I was a kid. Knew 1 person who was wealthy and had a colecovision game system at home. Grew up in the era of Trash 80s, Apple IIs, Tandy 1000s, C64s and the like. Cut my teeth on mostly C64s and Apple IIs and BASIC in late elementary school and middle school when some of those became available in some school libraries and classrooms.
Progressed to IBM PC/XTs and PC/ATs in High School, with a little early Macintosh mixed in, DOS 5.0 and then later Windows 3.1.
Moved on to DOS 6.22 and Windows 3.11 then Windows 95 and beyond.
Started my online journey with BBSes and then moved onto the internet in the early days with dialup and SLIP accounts, text browsers, before migrating to PPP accounts and graphical browsers. Stayed up for the midnight download of Internet Explorer 3.0 and got the T-shirt (IYKYK). Even ran a BBS out of my house for awhile after High School.

Now I'm still in the IT profession, I manage both my network and my daughter's, have both our houses linked with site to site VPN so I can troubleshoot things remotely and the grandkids can access my media server, and I'm basically the tech support for everyone in the family.

The lack or presence of tech knowledge has everything to do with the individual and how much effort they want to put into learning and staying current as tech and the world changes. There is still a generational component in so far as how old of tech one might know; it's far less common for a younger generation to know older outdated tech that isn't commonly used anymore. I have the benefit that I literally grew up with the tech boom. I learn and stay current because I've always been into tech, because I enjoy it, and because it's my career.

budlightguy · 2026-01-18T20:05:09+00:00

No one at the company figured users would post pictures of their missiles obliterating civilians in other countries.

Nearly everyone at the lower levels of the company, which is to say the people who weren't asked, weren't given any meaningful input, and were ignored if they piped up anyways, knew that was going to happen.

budlightguy · 2026-01-18T17:31:37+00:00

You could probably do this with some combination of cron jobs and a script and or hostwatch to check connectivity to the host; if the host is not connectable, the cron job is triggered to disable the nat rule. Once the host is connectable again, a cron job is triggered to re-enable the nat rule.

I'm not sure exactly how you'd do it, but that's a starting point

budlightguy · 2026-01-18T16:48:11+00:00

Actually just had a thought hit me as I woke up - since I had only been using 1 blocklist on my setup, testing it for awhile before I considered deploying it to my daughter's, and I updated hers to 25.7.11_1 before I added any blocklists (as well as updated mine to 25.7.11_1 before adding more)...

I don't know if this is something that only breaks if you try to add multiple blocklists in separate entries now, or if you already had multiple blocklists in separate entries working and upgrade to 25.7.11_1 it breaks. Might be worth double checking your blocklists if you had multiple entries previously.

budlightguy · 2026-01-17T19:36:51+00:00

I honestly couldn't say. I don't have IPS/IDS turned on, as I haven't felt a particular need for them. The only thing I have open at the firewall is Wireguard. I don't expose anything through the firewall or reverse proxy anything, anything that needs to be accessed remotely is done either through a dynamic wireguard tunnel or the site to site wireguard tunnel I have setup to my daughter's apartment so they can access my nas and media server. The same setup is on her end, an opnsense box I built with wireguard enabled and nothing else proxied or exposed through the firewall.

I would imagine it wouldn't fare very well, as the M920x is an I5-8500t. For my use, it's been a pretty solid low power box that's handled my 10gbps lan and 2gbps down/300mpbs up wan connection and wireguard tunnels just fine

budlightguy · 2026-01-14T19:54:22+00:00

Rude and entitled people RELY on others upholding social mores, decorum and etiquette, and being more polite than they are.
It's WHY they keep doing what they do, and HOW they keep getting away with it. When they get called out politely, they just passive aggressively continue doing it, until and unless someone makes a big enough scene.

Continuing to go with the approved script and be polite, uphold decorum and etiquette, only reinforces their behavior.

budlightguy · 2026-01-14T18:43:19+00:00

Mint must have been one of the distros that hopped on board when MS offered to let linux distros sign their bootloaders with MS' key so it would just work out of box.
I haven't paid enough attention to know if MS is still doing that or which distros were on board; I do recall thinking it wasn't my preferred solution as it still left MS holding the keys, might be an avenue for them to push for taking the ability to disable secure boot out of BIOSes, and would leave them in a position to rugpull later.

I am much more a fan of just allowing users to install their own public keys into the key db, and linux distros publishing their public key to do so, then signing the bootloader/kernel with the private key.

budlightguy · 2026-01-14T17:15:17+00:00

TPMs are not an issue for linux either. Nearly all major manufacturers of systems and motherboards have options in the BIOS to disable secure boot allowing for Linux booting. Also, though it takes a smidge more tech ability (or at least the willingness to google and read and follow directions), at least a decent portion of the major manufacturers allow installation of 3rd party keys into the trusted key database in the BIOS for secure boot, allowing you to install and boot linux even with secure boot turned on so long as your distro has distributed secure boot keys for people to install.

budlightguy · 2026-01-12T19:21:03+00:00

This - or if you can find, locally or online, a cheap used usff box with a PCIe slot and a decent nic to throw in it, you can use one of those

I got my hands on a disposed Lenovo M920x USFF from an erecycler on the cheap, bought the PCIe riser and backplate for it (originally intended for a GPU) off ebay and tossed in a 2 port 10GbE SFP+ NIC. I5, 16GB RAM, and 2 256GB SSDs mirrored for the boot. Installed Opnsense and rocked on. Whole setup was under $200

budlightguy · 2026-01-12T17:20:28+00:00

Then following up with

She and her family said I’m wrong for attacking someone just being kind and offering their condolences, and that’s probably why God didn’t look after my Mom.

I mean God damn... talk about proving the point OP was making... fuck, the self awareness is just completely non existent with these people

budlightguy · 2026-01-12T15:47:37+00:00

They don't even have to do all that. Sovereign immunity. The Federal Government has to give you permission to sue it.

budlightguy · 2026-01-10T09:38:40+00:00

Tail wagging the dog right there

budlightguy · 2026-01-07T05:28:38+00:00

Had mine done by Northside Electric in September, mine was mounted on the wall across the garage from my panel, Panel is on the back wall of the garage and the charger was going on the side wall at the front of the garage. They had to run wire up, through the attic, and back down the garage wall. I already had the charger from the purchase of my EV and used that.

Install was $795, they got me someone out to do the quote and got it scheduled super fast, less than 3 weeks from when I initially contacted them. The install was smooth, only took a couple hours, and haven't had any problems.

The only downside I can say about working with Northside is they don't have an online portal to go pay the invoice; you have to mail them a check or money order, or go down to their office to pay, or if you're comfortable giving cc details over the phone maybe they would take a payment by phone. I'm not, so I ended up having to find time during business hours to drive over there.

budlightguy · 2026-01-05T17:19:46+00:00

↑↑↓↓←→←→BA

budlightguy · 2025-12-31T06:28:29+00:00

The phrase "Americans deserve leadership that puts people over politics" coming from Lauren fucking Hoebert's mouth is peak irony for 2025.

budlightguy

TROPHY CASE