Because I don't like leaving my best material on Facebook...

Enjoy this bon mot:

Me: Dating sucks. Meeting people sucks. Trying to "sell" myself sucks. Almost makes me wish for an arranged marriage.

Katrina: How many chickens do you have to offer me?

Me: Just this one average-size rooster.

SHTFriday: Useful Car Additions

So, you have jumper cables and a spare tire and a jack and a lug wrench in your car. You're all set, right?

Head on over to Blue Collar Prepping to look at some items you may have forgotten about, and could be a real game-changer for you in an emergency.

The Salt Mines of Valhalla

I lost my old picture again

It's Thorsday, and you know what that means!

I've written previously about the female Thor situation, in less than complimentary terms. I've outlined valid reasons for not liking this change that extend much further than certain sources who'd have you believe those complaints are simply 'hur durr woman bad bring back manly man.' Today, I'd bring you an example of just how effective it is to make a change like that, and what happens when you release one, just one, issue that doesn't fall into line with what the people who laud you for your poor decision.

Behold, The Mary Sue (archived for your protection): Crusaders of truly the highest calibre, and an honourable website to boot. They obviously genuinely care about the stories and not the naughty bits of the characters in the story.

Tying in with the Secret Wars event, series writer Jason Aaron returns with Thor #1 – a story meant to continue the threads of new!Thor’s heroic journey, but one that fails to be remotely as empowering as her solo series.

Because obviously, stories are only meant to empower characters, not to test them, not to challenge them, or not to *gasp* tell stories about them? 

So let’s just address the most pressing concern of that recap: Jason Aaron decided to follow up the empowering story of Jane Foster becoming Thor and finding her place in both Asgardian and human society with a story that features her being murdered – repeatedly.

No, I think you missed something, TMS. The Jane Foster that because Thor isn't in this story. It doesn't feature her being murdered. You said not a paragraph earlier that it was multiple reality versions of her. 

At no point in this issue do we learn anything about any of these women as characters, about their lived experiences or their perspectives on these brutal crimes. Our empathy is never encouraged by the narrative to align with them.

I remember in Edge of Spider-Verse where all the Spidermen of multiple realities were being brutally slaughtered -- on-panel, mind you -- by a multiversal fox-hunting party of ancient immortals. I'm so glad we got to learn about the hopes, the dreams, the very essence of those Spider-men. No? Oh, and all the Spider-women: Mayday Parker, Ultimate's Jessica Drew, Gwen Stacy, Silk, and (inexplicably, as she's not even a proper Spiderverse character) 616 Spider-woman all suffered losses on their side of the gender divide too, right? No? Oh..

Instead, the focus surrounds the Ultimate-Thor, Thorlief (a coconut for anyone who can crack the naming conventions going on here), and his determination to solve this crime for pretty self-involved/white knight reasoning.

I've been told only misogynists use the term white-knight. You're not a misogynist, TMS, are you?

At this stage of cultural saturation they’re just normalized, and so audiences have grown numbs to the shock of gratuitous female mutilation and excessive male violence dressed up as redemptive justice.

Yeah, it's a good thing men are never blown up, shot, stabbed, mutilated, or otherwise brutally murdered in comics.

Aaron’s use of this particular trope in such an unimaginative and predictable fashion is precisely what makes it so damaging: stripping Jane Foster of her legacy as a brave and meaningful character

...who is letting cancer kill her because she thinks Asgardian science is too magicky.

Imagine if it was Jane Foster having to investigate a series of her own murders? Not only would that reassert her agency, but it would also offer opportunities for a more interesting detective-victim connection because, hey, they’re all the same person.

That actually would be a better story. Too bad she's off doing something *awesome* like fighting in the Secret War thingie that's going on. We could have had her in a b-list miniseries instead of Ultimate Thor, who no one's cared about since like 2004.

There were other ways to tell this story without taking feminism out into the woods and cracking it over the head with a shovel.

Readers, I was torn between "[EXISTENTIAL SIGH]" and "Actually, it's about ethics in shovel-wielding" here, so have both.

Not only does [Storm] suffer verbal abuse from an older Thor (‘drunken and grizzled detective who doesn’t play by the rules!’) who argues she should be facially branded to remind everyone she’s a mutant, but also has to put up with Thorlief hitting on her while at work?

Hey, at least he's not selling her to rub his hammer because it'll grow like the Thor of myth and legend would. Progress!

She’s also dressed in a shoe-string swimming costume outfit with a headdress that looks like a Thanksgiving turkey at Coachella, it’s all very bad.

Which managed to a) still cover more than her most popular recent outfit and b) look like an homage to old-school Jack Kirby Thor comics. Also, you dropped this - she's wearing practically the same headgear as everyone else.

I think she looks kind of awesome. Also, really no love for Mjolnir-wielding Storm? Really? 

Just imagine discovering and loving an empowering, resilient determined hero like Jane Foster as Thor, only to then see her be brutally murdered and replaced with (for all intents and purposes to new readers) the ‘original’ Thor again. While the Jane Foster that readers have followed in Thor is alive in Secret Wars (following the events of the main series), how on earth are people that only want to read her adventures supposed to know that?

She hasn't been replaced. This isn't even the same book. She's off fighting in the Secret Wars (which is a *main* titles, and this is a mini-series. And they could probably find out by looking at the cover. Which, given that comic shops usually sort titles by publisher and title name alphabetically, would probably be at most 2 slots over on the shelf.

We’ve got our safe spaces, Marvel; but why is the rest of your world still so dangerous?

SAFE SPACES FOR EVERYBODY!!

But seriously, though. This is an even clearer example of why you never apologize than when I discussed Shut Up Wesley Wheaton. You can create the most perfect example of something that they'll rally behind, but make one single issue that isn't in lockstep and you'll be dragged under like a pack of hungry wolves are at your heels. Make something, write something, film something, code something... but stop trying to please people that will turn on you the moment they smell blood. 

WNW: Nekkid & Skeered

As readers of my prepping blog already know, I have a thing for watching survival shows. Naked and Afraid is one of my guilty pleasures.

With that in mind, I present to you this short episode of Naked and Afraid starring James Franco and Seth Rogen.

Enjoy!

Traveller Tuesday: Facilities of the IISS

In a nice follow-up to my Random Thoughts about the IISS post, I present to you a lovely article written by Tom Chlebus for the Traveller RPG Facebook Group and prettied up by me.

My use of Traveller setting and dress falls under
fair use guidelines for both Mongoose and Far Future Enterprises. 

IISS Facilities

The term "scout base" usually refers to one of three kinds of facility: an Xboat station, a way station, and a "proper" scout base. When I refer to something that applies to all three, I will use the term "IISS facility" or "IISS base." I leave it to you to decide what goes in a highport and what goes dirtside.

The first thing to keep in mind is that in most cases, an IISS facility is not a separate entity. Whether or not there is one is directly tied to the system's class of starport, and if there is a facility it is physically part of the starport it is associated with. The separation between the facility and the starport proper is usually a fence marked "keep out" but it can range from a line painted on the pavement to a ditch and parapet. Berths for Scout Service ships are always separate from and in addition to berths at the starport.

Repair Facilities: The repair and shipyard services available at an IISS base are determined by the starport.

Transient Housing: According to GURPS Traveller Starports, transient accommodations are common in Class A and B ports, so at Class D and most Class C the IISS facility will provide its own places for Scouts to bed down. If there is a Naval base present, Scouts might be assigned to Naval transient housing.

Fuel: IISS facilities always provide refined fuel to Scout ships.

Scout Base
The representative IISS facility is the scout base. A scout base almost always has an orbital component, however minimal it may be. Sometimes an arriving scout ship has to offload its crew quickly, and the orbital component provides a place for it. I imagine this would include a hospital with a surgery and 20 beds. The orbital component might consist of a Purcell-class Xboat tender with its 600 dton bay converted for the purpose. Most Class A and B ports have substantial enough highports not to need a separate Scout Service element.

There will be at least one berth for a 1,000 dton ship, 3 to 5 berths for 500 dton ships, and about a dozen for 100 dton ships.


Xboat Station
These perform routine maintenance on express boats before sending them on their way; consequently they are bare-bones facilities. An Xboat station will have one or two 1,000 dton berths, two 500 dton berths, and five 100 dton berths. 

Way Station
A way station placed in the Xboat network is there to service the Xboats. Outside the Xboat network, a way station maintains and repairs an exploration or survey fleet. However, neither function is exclusive to the other. In order to keep Xboats as close to zero failure as possible, Way stations perform a level of maintenance that would be considered unreasonable in other services. All way stations therefore have repair facilities capable of performing overhauls, regardless of the class of port it is associated with. 

Most (or all) of a way station is in an extensive orbital element. Berths typically are four 1,000 dton, fifty 500 dton, and one hundred fifty 100 dton. If the way station serves both Xboats and an exploration/survey fleet, it may have considerably more berths.

Special thanks to Tom Chlebus  for allowing me to reprint his article. 

Monday Gunday: A Troubling Philosophy

I've been working on this post for a while, so my apologies for being late. I wanted to get it right, rather than be on time.

There was a webcomic I used to read. (No links = no drama). I don't read it any more, because the creator said something which didn't sit right with me, and rather than get annoyed as politics crept into a once-fun comic I just decided to stop reading it altogether.

That statement stuck with me, though, and continues to bug me, and so I figure I need to have a nice rant about it in order to purge it from my head.

Here's what was said:

I'm not a big fan of personal firearm use.

Oh, don't get me wrong, I don't have an issue with hunting. A personal handgun isn't a hunting weapon. And I don't even think guns should be banned or even really restricted among competent, trained adults. If you feel the need to own a gun and you know what you're doing with it, then I think you should certainly be allowed to have it... but, to me, ownership of a handgun tells me that you've more or less given up on civilization.

You see, while handguns can, in theory, be used for other purposes, they're really designed and intended to shoot other human beings - and, while you certainly can shoot to wound, any responsible firearm user will tell you that you never draw on anything you wouldn't mind seeing dead.

Presuming that you intend to use your firearm legally and ethically, there's really only one situation in which you can whip it out - when deadly force is threatened against you or your loved ones, and you need to respond appropriately, to kill or threaten to kill before you or your loved ones can be killed. When I see someone who owns a personal firearm, the unspoken implication I hear is "I fully expect that dangerous criminals will pose a danger to myself and my loved ones, and I do not believe that local law enforcement is sufficient to keep these threats at bay - the only way I can ensure my safety is to be prepared at all times to end the life of one or more of my fellow human beings".

I do not own a gun for the same reason I do not filter my own drinking water or generate my own electricity - I live in a city, where, for a reasonable price, security, like water or electricity, is provided by trained professionals.

Normally I'd just jump right in and start making my thesis points, because I wouldn't want to dilute or divert my argument by listing things I didn't intend to address. However, I've been at this game long enough to know that if I don't mention them someone is going to say "But what about X?"  and then I end up talking about the things I didn't think were worth talking about in the first place.

Therefore, here are the things that my post is not about:

1. Whether or not the author is entitled to his opinion. I mean, duh. Of course he's entitled. That also means he doesn't need to defend his opinion, either. His comic, his rules. 
2. Whether or not it was the author's actual opinion. It was below the comic and next to the author's icon, and not spoken by a webcomic character. 
3. The right to keep and bear arms; America, the Constitution, history, etc.  The author is from Canada, if I recall. 
4. Paragraphs 1 and 3. I have no problem with those. 
5. The whole "When seconds count, the police are only minutes away." While this is true, I have larger concepts to deal with in this post. 

So what's this article about, then?

Two statements which bug me. Not so much simply because I disagree with them, but why I disagree with them.

1)  "To me, ownership of a handgun tells me that you've more or less given up on civilization."

There are two ways to parse this, and both of them have troubling implications. The first is the assertion that anyone who owns a handgun is, effectively, a savage. After all, isn't that "giving up on civilization" means -- saying "screw it" and either figuratively or literally embracing the ways of wild barbarism in order to eschew civilization? If you give up on civilization, aren't you ipso facto uncivilized? I find it troubling that the author is effectively dehumanizing those who disagree with him by calling them unworthy of being able to exist within civilization.

The second possible interpretation, albeit unspoken, is that anyone who chooses to own a handgun as opposed to owning one as part of their job, i.e. the military and the police, has given up on civilization. This is actually far more troubling to me than the former, as it ties into the second objectionable statement below.


2) "I do not own a gun for the same reason I do not filter my own drinking water or generate my own electricity - I live in a city, where, for a reasonable price, security, like water or electricity, is provided by trained professionals."

With this statement, the author is essentially saying "I don't need to protect myself, there are people who will do that for me." And, referring back to statement one above, these trained professionals are either savages (because they carry handguns) or -- and this is actually the worse interpretation -- he supports the creation of police as "a separate moral species, specially bred for violence, to be called from their fortified compound to vacuum up problems and guilt."

Not-really-pacifist “pacifist” liberals, I find, often get wrapped up in a recurring ideological process of shedding and assigning guilt. I wouldn’t touch a gun. I’ll just call my paid servant the policeman to come and shoot my assailant for me. My hands stay clean of gunshot residue and other stains; he wields the horrid gun and the moral responsibility, and quandary, of using deadly force – which I’ll endlessly analyze with my colleagues over dinner. And if it really was my ass that was saved, we’ll all congratulate ourselves for maintaining our “pacifist” guiltlessness, while romanticizing the guy who did the dirty work for us.
"The Rifle on the Wall: A Left Argument for Gun Rights", The Polemicist, 1/31/13

Later, the Polemicist (correctly) calls our current concept of police a "quasi-professional caste created to be my absolving wet workers".  This troubles me, and it ought to trouble all of you, because it once again reinforces the concept that handgun owners are The Other:  a thing which is not human, and doesn't deserve to exist within polite society, and yet which society needs for protection because truly civilized beings don't engage in such behavior.

Or put another way, because I am a gigantic nerd and sometimes people do better with fantastic analogies:

• Elves/Starfleet Officers/My Little Ponies do not believe in violence, as it is barbaric and uncivilized. 
• However, sometimes violence is necessary to defend Lothlorien/The Federation/Equestria. 
• But because civilized beings in a civilized society don't DO violence, that violence must be subcontracted out to Orcs/Klingons/Griffons. 
• This creates a "moral slave class" of Orcs/Klingons/Griffons, who are looked down upon because they do the filthy work of necessity. 
• Therefore, Elven/Federation/Equestrian Civilization (which is pacifist) is protected by the warlike and uncivilized (who are hated and feared and shunned) and yet whose service is admirable and lauded because it is necessary for the continuation of civilization. 
• And somehow, the disconnect between these two positions isn't noticed by those espousing this philosophy.

Conclusion
This individual posits a society where predators protect their prey, and yet still believes that the prey will be in charge of the predators because it's in the predator's best interests to keep their prey happy.

What does this remind me of, again? Ah, yes: livestock in a slaughterhouse.

But, Erin, the police aren't predators.

An excellent point. Why then do we treat them as the only ones with moral dispensation to kill? And why are we surprised when, treating them as such, they increasingly see us not as citizens but as the enemy?

My position is that treating law enforcement as a separate class, the Morlocks to our Eloi, is dangerous and wrong and will only result in greater "us versus them" confrontations where the purpose of "protecting and serving" comes dead last and the Thin Blue Lie is to be upheld no matter what egregious violations occur.

If, on the other hand, we stop looking at the police as state-sanctioned gunmen and instead return to Sir Robert Peel's Principles of Policing, we would realize that "the police are the public and that the public are the police."  This would handily reduce the "us versus them" conflict. 

It would, however, require certain people to face the uncomfortable truth that the dirty matter of self-defense is not something to be pawned off onto some moral scapegoat in uniform, but a duty that is an inherent to humanity as is the duty to keep oneself fed and clothed -- in other words, it's your own damn duty as an adult to keep yourself alive. But that would be icky for certain people, and we certainly can't have that in today's enlightened society. 

Ickiness today, or civil war tomorrow. I know what my choice is. What's yours?

Gun Blog Variety Podcast #50

http://tinyurl.com/nmwoenx

Another exciting episode of The GunBlog VarietyCast helmed by Adam and Sean!

• Erin Palette tells us some of the interesting uses for Superglue.
• We already know that Mullah Omar is dead. But Nicki Kenyon explains how the time of his death tells us interesting things about our supposed allies in Pakistan.
• Special Guest Dr. Brian Anse Patrick joins us to talk about how media misinformation convinces low information voters that gun control is a good idea. 
• Barron B talks about Windows 10.
• And Weer'd finally does an audio fisk of our Gun Grabber-in-Chief, President Obama. 

Thank you for downloading, listening, and subscribing. A special thanks to our sponsor, Law of Self Defense. Make sure to use discount code "Variety" at checkout for 10% off anything you buy.

Listen to the podcast here.
Show notes may be found here.

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