From Karol Markowicz, talking about how she became a Gun Guy:
“There is no reason for a Jew not to be armed in 2024.”
…because those who would do you and your kind harm most certainly will be.
Welcome to the club, kid. Oh, and by the way: those who would help protect the Tribe (e.g. me) will most certainly be armed, too.
I’ve spoken about Loretta Young and her sister Polly Ann before, and in the intro to the latter, I said the following:
Actor David Niven once described the Young sisters (Polly Ann, Elizabeth and Loretta) thus: “Each one was prettier than the others.”
So if I’ve looked at Loretta and Polly Ann, then where’s Elizabeth Young?
Here she is; only she changed her stage name to Sally Blane. In the early years:
And later on:
Good grief. Small wonder that David Niven was so frequently a guest at the Young sisters’ house, the old dog. Here he is with Loretta:
Please watch just the first 8 minutes or so of this video, and then tell me why I shouldn’t lust after an Arnholt-Bristol:
Good grief, they’re beautiful. And spendy. Typically, they run for well over a quarter-million dollars, when you can find one.
Quality + scarcity + performance… you get the picture.
And speaking of the above features, the other two cars featured later in the video aren’t bad, either.
Yeah, don’t fuck mess with Texas:
Texas has sued insurance provider Allstate, alleging that the firm and its data broker subsidiary used data from apps like GasBuddy, Routely, and Life360 to quietly track drivers and adjust or cancel their policies.
Allstate and Arity, a “mobility data and analytics” firm founded by Allstate in 2016, collected “trillions of miles worth of location data” from more than 45 million people, then used that data to adjust rates, according to Texas’ lawsuit. This violates Texas’ Data Privacy and Security Act, which requires “clear notice and informed consent” on how collected data can be used. A statement from Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton said the suit is the first-ever state action targeting comprehensive data privacy violations.
How so?
According to Texas’ complaint (PDF), the data collected included “a phone’s geolocation data, accelerometer data, magnetometer data, and gyroscopic data, which monitors details such as the phone’s altitude, longitude, latitude, bearing, GPS time, speed, and accuracy.”
With that data—plus, in some cases, data from connected vehicles—Allstate could see when, how far, and for how long someone was driving, along with “hard braking events” and “whether a consumer picked up or opened their phone while traveling at certain speeds.”
Texas’ lawsuit claims that Arity incentivized—through “generous bonus incentives”—apps like GasBuddy, a gas price-tracking app, and Life360, which is intended to keep tabs on family members’ location, to “increas[e] the size of their dataset.” Under their agreements with app makers, Arity had “varying levels of control over the privacy disclosures and consent language” shown to app users, according to the complaint.
And now for the doublespeak:
“Arity helps consumers get the most accurate auto insurance price after they consent in a simple and transparent way that fully complies with all laws and regulations.”
But they’re not the only villains in this piece:
The suit also cites Allstate as gathering direct car use data from Toyota, Lexus, Mazda, Chrysler, Dodge, Fiat, Jeep, Maserati, and Ram vehicles.
And if these assholes shared data with Allstate, you can bet your house that they did so with other insurance companies too.
If you’re not into letting corporations do this to you:
…you may want to avoid any dealings at all with these bastards. It’s not like Stellantis (Chrysler, Dodge, Fiat, Jeep, Maserati) are reporting a boom in sales, after all.
When the Texans win their suit, at it should, I would argue against fines because those bastards will just pass the cost into their customers and claim a tax deduction at worst.
What I would do as TxAG is get a list of all Texans with Allstate policies, and demand that Allstate provide free insurance to them for a period of time commensurate with the start date of Arity’s snoopery.
I know, that would just cause Allstate to cease operations in Texas. That’s fine, too — take away access to the second-largest pool of drivers in the U.S.
I genuinely do not know what to make of this.
Federal is kicking off 2025 with a bold announcement: it’s “reinventing ammunition.” The company released its new 7mm Backcountry cartridge today, but that’s not even the biggest headline. The Peak Alloy case technology that houses the round is shaking things up even more.
What wizardry is this?
Engineers were clear that from the beginning, they were working to answer a market call for Magnum velocity out of shorter barrels and tailored to suppressed hunting – all without increasing recoil.
Wait: building something new in response to actual customer wishes? (Be still, my fainting Marketing heart.) Are we talking about the gun business?
Anyway, let’s see how they did this:
The physical casing itself is what allowed this round to come to fruition. The case technology, known here as Peak Alloy, is fundamentally different from standard brass casings. According to Federal, the alloy was developed using a proprietary steel alloy that includes other unique elements as a response to United States military solicitations.
The goal is a stronger build that allows Federal to safely increase chamber pressures “far beyond the limits of brass case ammunition, significantly increasing velocity and energy.”
Okay, I get where this is going: MOAR power and therefore greater velocity coming from the stronger cartridge casing, coupled with lower recoil. The good news is that they stuck with the tried-and-true 7mm (.284″) boolet instead of reinventing the whole frigging wheel (which would probably have been the case back in the 1990s).
I would love love love to have seen this happen with the 6.5mm boolet — imagine a “new” cartridge casing for my favorite 6.5x55mm Swede — but of course nobody’s going to spend time, money and resources just to please this (my) particular segment of the market.
In any event, these new Wunderkind-Patronen will of course require a new rifle (as if we couldn’t have predicted that little consequence).
And will these rifles be affordable to our suffering hoi polloi? Don’t be silly: just look at the manufacturers who’ve signed on to this little exercise:
…none of whom are renowned for their affordability. (Although Savage is also slated for an entry, an educated guess will suggest that their guns will likewise be among their existing premium products and not Axios.)
Bah.
Look, I’m sure that this is a great innovation. But color me skeptical, because at the end of the day, this looks like just another WSSM or Rem Super Magnum product (remember them? me neither) and yet another attempt to sell more rifles. There’s nothing wrong with all that — hell, it’s actually a Good Thing, especially in a military context — but it just means that people like myself won’t be participating.
I would be curious, however, to see how this new alloy casing would work in dangerous game calibers such as the 9.3x62mm, .375 H&H or .458 Win Mag, where reduced recoil would be welcomed with open arms.
But that’s never going to happen, is it?
And here’s what I was alluding to in the above post. It’s all very well to go all gooey-eyed over some new whizz-bang cartridge that does x and y better than the older cartridges did x and y.
But I have to ask myself: how much better, and at what cost?
I have no doubt that the 7mm Backcountry (what will its abbreviation be, I wonder? 7mm BC? 7mm Back? 7mm BCKTRY?) will perform as advertised: astounding velocity, greater penetration, less recoil, etc. etc.
But if you’re going to drop a premium-priced new product on the market, couldn’t you just get a proven rifle and cartridge to do almost the same thing — bearing in mind that your quarry is highly unlikely to differentiate a boolet arriving at 1,300 foot-pounder from another arriving at 1,100 ft-lbs.
Even better, you could get an old, reliable rifle (such as a pre-’64 Winchester 70) in traditional garb instead of a show-off “operator” rifle of unproven value. A rifle such as this custom Model 70, in 9.3x62mm:
…or, if we stick to a 7mm bullet, this Wiebe/Kaye Mauser in 7mm Rem Mag:
…and the latter’s barrel, with no iron sights, can easily be shortened, and threaded to take a suppressor. (I know, they’re as expensive as hell, at well over seven grand each; but that’s what you get when you start playing with one-of-a-kind custom rifles.)
Let me tell you, I’d take either one of the above out into the field, and not feel hard done by or undergunned.
And still talking about hunting: I’ve never been that seriously affected by recoil when hunting (except possibly that time with a .458 Win Mag rifle shooting juiced-up handloads — ow, my shoulder just gave me a twinge at the memory); and in any event, recoil is most keenly felt when firing lots of rounds on the trot, which doesn’t happen when hunting.
It does matter if you’re doing target shooting, of course, where you will be firing lots either in practice or during the event itself. And this might be where the 7mm Backcountry round will shine — but will it outshine the target-specific cartridges like 7mm BR or .280 Ackley? I’m not so sure, and nobody will be until we see actual comparisons.
All I can say is that the newbie is going to have to work hard to beat the established players.