So Much For Security

Here’s one that made me go “Hmmm”:

Cocaine trafficker, 28, was caught by police after moaning on encrypted phone network Encrochat about how Covid lockdown was affecting his international drug dealing business.

Now I don’t care about this asshole — he got 16 years, and that’s good — but I can’t help wondering…

No, I’m not wondering.  It’s clear that all this encryption protection that the public imagines they’re getting is no more than a figleaf.

And yes I know, EncroChat was nothing more than a criminal enterprise facilitator — but remember that it’s the Fuzz who decides what exactly constitutes a “criminal enterprise”, and if they could penetrate EncroChat, they could have — and may already have — penetrated any encryption system or software.

Caveat emptor.

Top Picks

Hagerty (UK) has just published its latest list of “future collectible” cars (i.e. older models that are sought after both by car lovers and investors).

(right-click to embiggen)

So:  if you were offered just one of those cars, which would you take, and why?  (And yes I know, some would be insanely expensive to maintain and keep running — Maserati hem hem — but ignore that for this exercise.)

Read more

Turning Brownouts Into Blackouts

In the latest insanity emanating from California, we see this:

The California Air Resources Board (CARB) passed a regulation aimed at “Small Off-Road Engines” on Thursday that will ban the sale of portable generators in the state — which includes generators mounted in recreational vehicles.
The ruling bans the sale of gas-powered leaf blowers and lawnmowers in the state beginning in 2024. Portable generators will be required to meet more stringent standards in 2024 and meet zero-emission standards starting in 2028.
In the 2024 model year, portable generators will have to improve their efficiency by somewhere between 40% and 90%, which seems unrealistic in such a short period of time, so the reality is, it will be very hard to find a generator in Cailfornia in two years.

The song will be rewritten to show that the lights all went out not in Massachusetts, but California.

Morons, fools, imbeciles.


N.B.:  Insty wants to open up a portable jennie store in Nevada, just over the CA border.  Won’t work:  California will be stationing some Stasi state agents in the parking lot to report the car numbers back to the Fuehrer HQ , and woe betide the CA plates caught “smuggling” generators back into the Dark State.)

No Big Deal

Both New Wife and I got our second (“booster”) Covid jabs a couple weeks ago, and boy, how I suffered.

For the next two days, I couldn’t raise my left arm past shoulder height without it aching like a muscle pull.  Then on the third day, it rose again [sic]  without a problem.

In other words, I felt fine — not even mildly “off”, like I did with the first one the day after — and New Wife felt no side effects at all.

I honestly don’t see what all the fuss is about.

I do think that I’m growing a new head out my chest, though that may just be the gin talking.

Gloom

It’s getting on top of me.  The world’s going to hell at breakneck speed, and for the first time I feel powerless to prevent it happening.  Read the headlines of today’s Instapundit — just the headlines, not the stories — and tell me why I should feel any other way.

This feeling has been growing for some time now, which is why these pages have featured so many scantily-clad women, news snippets with snarky commentary, cars and other such trivia.

The weekend’s two posts about the future of the car business sum the whole thing up, really:  change, really bad change, is coming down the pike and there’s not a single thing that I or anyone else can do to stop it.  Standing athwart the tide of history shouting “Stop!” is a completely pointless exercise when yours is the only voice against a cacophony of voices cheering the tide along as history plunges inexorably along towards the abyss of pointless chaos and Dark Ages II.

The barbarians aren’t just at the gates, they’ve chopped the gates up and are using them for firewood to burn up not only our rights, but all those things which give us some small measure of joy.  Modern movies are total shit, modern cars are shapeless and emasculated, modern handguns are like the cars, indistinguishable from each other and underpowered by being chambered mostly for the rat-shit 9mm Paralympic.

The once-Stout Bulldog Brits are being told to cancel Christmas dinners and parties because of a virus that’s more akin to a bad cold — and they’re going to comply meekly, the gutless bastards.  And speaking of gutless bastards, the Australians, once renowned as the most ferocious warriors in the world, are being arrested in parks and confined to house arrest, all for the heinous sin of not wearing a piece of useless paper over their faces — and they’re doing fuck all to resist it.

The only good news of the day is that liberal asshole Chris Wallace has left Fox News;  except that Fox News has become more like NBC since the halcyon days of Roger Ailes, so even the good news is sprinkled with shit sugar.

I need a day off, maybe two.

And now, if you’ll excuse me, I’m off to the range, because that seems to be one of the few joys left.  I’m going to shoot my Mauser’s 8mm ammo till my shoulder aches — I don’t care where the bullets land, I just want to shoot until I can’t anymore.  Then I’m going next door to the pistol range, and I’m going to shoot my 1911 to pieces, or my wrist, whichever breaks first.

My only regret is that I can’t get to the range in a truck with a loud, gas-guzzling V8 engine.