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Cake day: June 17th, 2023

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  • Edinburgh may be my favorite city I’ve ever visited. I want to go back again later this year. That being said: thoughts about some of the things we did.

    Edinburgh Castle is iconic, has great views, and outside of the Scottish crown jewels it was not that terribly crowded though there is also not as much to see as something like the tower of London though the history is still quite interesting. Can probably see it all in under a half day, realistically I think we were there four hours and saw everything but the crown jewels.

    The royal botanic gardens in Edinburgh was not on my list of things to do before visiting but it was beautiful. Would definitely book at least half a day to explore it.

    The johnny walker experience wasn’t all that great. Would book a seat at their bar way early but the tasting wasn’t particularly special. The west end brasserie right across the street from there actually has a stupidly long scotch menu if you have an idea of what styles you already like and just want to go taste a broad variety of things you could probably have actually spent less money there for better scotch (I don’t particularly love most of JW’s blends).

    We actually took a fly fishing trip for native brown trout on one of the lochs northeast of Glasgow. VERY reasonably priced, gorgeous scenery, and fun letting my (now) wife catch her first trout on a fly. Pun intended but she’s now hooked. Definitely needed to pack better waterproof gear for that though. The rain jacket wasn’t good enough sitting in a boat going across a loch in a strong mist.


  • “Empress” Verdiacee “Tiari” Washitaw-Turner Goston El-Bey of the Washitaw de Dugdahmoundyah (the article missed aa few of her names or self proclaimed honorifics). Now thats a name I haven’t heard in probably two decades(and one she continued to add onto and embellish throughout her life), but reading the article immediately made me remember just how absolutely batshit crazy she was. I grew up in Northeast Louisiana and remember her stirring up problems at various civic meetings for years. I can’t believe anybody would ever take anything she said as serious, because she was so clearly mentally ill that even as a kid I picked up on it. But somehow they did, and she even led a movement for the “town” of richwood to secede from the city of Monroe, taking with it a good portion of the more densely populated areas but almost none of the tax base to support the basic civic infrastructure. You can probably figure out how the next two decades plus looked for residents there.






  • I mean, you CAN make wine out of Concord grapes, but it still tastes like Concord grapes after fermentation. Many places that lack the more temperate climate of France or coastal California make a lot of wine out of Concord and similar grape varieties bred from native grape species that are in many cases more disease resistant and tolerant of extreme temps. Overall, they tend to be sweeter wines(though concords technically have a lower natural sugar content on average than many traditional varieties) and often they get mixed with other fruit wines (blackberry, blueberry, strawberry, and even another native grape called a muscadine) because they aren’t easy to extract a lot of tannins out of, and are a real one trick pony from a flavor perspective. Many attempts have been made to breed grapes that exhibit more “traditional” wine flavors, to varying degrees of success.

    That being said, this is some real prison hooch territory and there’s zero reason to do something like this with as accessable as winemaking kits are these days. Now if you’re in a prohibition type scenario maybe it makes at least some sort of sense.




  • Yep. Most people clutching their pearls at this story don’t have any idea how difficult it is to actually build anything outside a gen 3 Glock or an ar-15. And those have “80% kits” that basically say “drill hole here” available on the market. Try finding a hi point, lorcin, or even Taurus or low end S&W pistol, or cheap shotgun(like a Stevens or Remington 870) receiver(because that’s most of what comes into these guys who have businesses like this), and you’ll find out it is a) cost prohibitive, b) still has to go through a nics check bc there’s nobody home building much of anything (well, the hi point may be the odd one out bc there are 3d printed frames you could make). What they do end up doing is a lot of business with guys refurbishing grandpa’s old deer or duck gun.



  • Thats not what’s happening though. The Casing is a .378 case but the neck of the case (which holds the bullet in place) is formed down to .223. The barrel is also presumed to be .223 diameter with a chamber that is reamed out to accommodate the length and diameter of the cartridge to be fired. It’s a path to putting a ton of powder behind a small diameter bullet (much like an even more extreme version some more modern calibers like 6.5-300 weatherby magnum). Actually with a little work (and some very long and heavy .223 diameter bullets) you could probably make this thing hilariously accurate for a thousand rounds or so before you absolutely wrecked the rifling.


  • I think you’re misunderstanding what most of them keep practicing. It’s not the kooky cranial/cervical manipulation(you can make an argument that them having to learn that stuff in the first place is BS and a waste of time), but most do pick up a few muscle pressure point tricks and stretches that are essentially the same as what PT instructs patients on how to do. Is it bullshit? No more so than most medicine that’s practiced(the data behind the vast majority of what your average physician does is at best all over the place, the truly “settled” clinical questions are few and far between). In my book though, anything that keeps you from having to prescribe a scheduled drug (read as:narcotic or muscle relaxer) to get someone functional from something like severe trapezius tightness or piriformus syndrome is a heck of a tool to have at your disposal in a primary care or urgent care setting.



  • The LA Democrat party leadership has been a lethal mix of inept and corrupt for a while now. I would argue John bel Edwards won in spite of rather than due to their assistance. There is a rumor floating around (not confirmed) that they hosted a fairly large fundraiser for Shawn Wilson (ostensibly to funnel whatever they raised into his ongoing gov campaign) and then just pocketed the money. Given that the former dem party chair Karen Carter Peterson just got sentenced to 22 months in fed prison (on the day of the primary no less) for helping herself to campaign money, that seems more plausible a story than it might otherwise. Seriously, who is going to throw their hat in the ring for ANY statewide office if that’s the kind of support you can expect for your flagship candidate? And then you get to get your veto overridden by a repub supermajority ? Nah, way less stress to just stay in a lobbying job somewhere. Say what you want about Karl Rove and co, but the state level elections were where he and his cohort of repub strategists focused quite a bit of effort grooming candidates since the late 90s and it has continued to pay dividends for them.


  • I own a musket for home defense, since that’s what the founding fathers intended. Four ruffians break into my house. “What the devil?” As I grab my powdered wig and Kentucky rifle. Blow a golf ball sized hole through the first man, he’s dead on the spot. Draw my pistol on the second man, miss him entirely because it’s smoothbore and nails the neighbors dog. I have to resort to the cannon mounted at the top of the stairs loaded with grape shot, “Tally ho lads” the grape shot shreds two men in the blast, the sound and extra shrapnel set off car alarms. Fix bayonet and charge the last terrified rapscallion. He Bleeds out waiting on the police to arrive since triangular bayonet wounds are impossible to stitch up. Just as the founding fathers intended.