Glibertarians.com 2018 Archive

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  • Sunday Morning Bye Week Links

    I have some few small comforts in life, and today’s is that the Ravens won’t lose. And there’s rumors about that Flacco is injured and Jackson will be given a chance to start next week. This may not be a good thing for this season, but long-term, that’s what has to happen. We might even see a guest appearance by RGIII. We live in interesting times.

    Speaking of interesting, November 11 is rich in significant birthdays. A few: Paracelsus, the father of modern medicine; George Patton, who probably got performance reviews saying, “You’re extremely effective but you piss people off.”; the Pride of Milwaukee, Pat O’Brien, who was in a disproportionate number of my favorite movies; fellow Baltimore native Alger Hiss, from the days when there really WERE Russian spies under every bed; Kurt Vonnegut, inspiration to generations of college freshmen (and who inadvertently wrote one of the strongest cases for libertarianism in one of his short stories); and the funniest human to ever walk the face of the earth, Jonathan Winters.  And of course, November 11 is the day that all of us should pause and remember why Woodrow Wilson was the biggest piece of shit to ever occupy the White House. The blood of tens of millions soaks his grasping Progressive hands. I wish that my atheism would allow me to believe that he’s burning in Hell, but I have no such comfort. I shall give myself the marginal comfort of drinking some beer with Swiss this afternoon. He’ll be in full uniform, making the ladies swoon.

    On to the news.

     

    As my illustrations show, I’m tremendously amused by the election-rigging stuff that no-one is even bothering to hide. I guess this is a form of honesty, right?

    @GeorgiaDemocrat
    BREAKING: A handful of Georgia counties just reported thousands of new *absentee*, *early*, and *Election Day* votes that @BrianKempGA’s numbers did not account for, significantly closing the gap. #CountEveryVote #gapol

    How conveeeeeenient. More chaos and de-legitimizing of government. Good, I say, let’s have more!

     

    Diversity is bad, mmmm-kay?

    Artists and intellectuals across Europe are calling for the founding of a continentwide republic to replace its many nation states.

    Activists planned to proclaim a “European Republic” in dozens of cities at 4 p.m. (1500 GMT) Saturday, almost exactly 100 years after the end of World War I.

    The event is being organized by a group calling itself the European Balcony Project. Its listed supporters include political scientists, philosophers and writers…

    The “republic,” of course, to be run by political scientists, philosophers, and writers.

     

    After Clinton, Bush, and Obama, it’s nice to have an administration which respects civil liberties and doesn’t want to spy on citizens. Most Libertarian President Ever! Oh, wait…

    The US Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) and Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) have hidden an undisclosed number of covert surveillance cameras inside streetlights around the country, federal contracting documents reveal. Christie Crawford, who owns Cowboy Streetlight Concealments with her husband, a Houston police officer, said she was not at liberty to discuss the company’s federal contracts in detail. “We do streetlight concealments and camera enclosures,” Crawford told Quartz. “Basically, there’s businesses out there that will build concealments for the government and that’s what we do. They specify what’s best for them, and we make it. And that’s about all I can probably say.”

    However, she added: “I can tell you this—things are always being watched. It doesn’t matter if you’re driving down the street or visiting a friend, if government or law enforcement has a reason to set up surveillance, there’s great technology out there to do it.”

    Amazon has been particularly interested in outfitting cameras operated by the US Department of Homeland Security (DHS) with facial recognition, according to emails recently unearthed by the Project on Government Oversight. “We are ready and willing to support the vital [Homeland Security Investigations] mission,” an Amazon employee wrote in an email that touted the company’s facial recognition software.

    When you fine people elect me president, the very first thing I pledge to do is abolish every goddamn acronym agency. And fuck Amazon, who are delighted to help here. They should not get a penny of public money or subsidy, and won’t under President OMWC. Also, I hope Christie and her cop husband die in a fire. The OMWC administration will not cause such a fire, but we will not so much as direct a stream of urine in its direction. These are evil, evil people.

     

    Clearly, I must be the most truthful and honest human alive.

    Scientists at the University of Granada investigated the so-called ‘Pinocchio effect’. [They] have shown that your nose actually shrinks when you tell porkies because its temperature drops.

    Look at my honker- I must be a regular fucking George Washington.

     

    Hey, we haven’t heard about the caravan in a while. I was worried that they had been Cindy Sheehaned. So it’s a relief when brief news items pop up at convenient times.

    Some members of the caravan of Central American migrants that has drawn the ire of President Trump began leaving Mexico City early Friday, splitting from the main group and heading for their ultimate destination — the U.S.-Mexico border — still hundreds of miles away. But the majority of the 5,500 caravan participants remained in the Mexican capital and were planning to leave on Saturday.

    The caravan’s next planned stop after leaving the Mexican capital is the city of Queretaro, some 135 miles to the northwest, where officials were readying shelter space for the migrants’ anticipated arrival. Thousands of migrants, mostly from Honduras, have spent days at the sports facility next to Mexico City’s airport, where city officials and various aid groups have been providing food, medical treatment, legal advice and other services, including entertainment from clowns and wrestlers. The stop was a chance for many to rest and recuperate after weeks on the road from Central America.

    Clowns??? No-one deserves that.

    Old Guy Music! I was wavering between a bunch of odd-but-interesting classical bits but then thought, “Nah, this won’t annoy people enough. What will…?” And then it hit me. But listen anyway- it’s a terrific song with a great story. H/T to Spudalicious who gave me this album nearly 20 years ago, and it’s stayed in my rotation.

     

  • Coming Attractions (and Saturday Night Open Post)

    We’ve got another full week of great community contributed posts queued.

    Of course, we’ve got you covered with links from Sloopy, Brett L, and OMWC.  The astrological forecast by Not Adahn arrives at the usual time tomorrow, then, in the afternoon, Nephilium begins a series on home brewing.

    Monday brings some fiction by UnCivilServant, and get schooled in the mysterious ways of veganhood by Web Dom. Tuesday, Evan from Evansville continues his travelogue from Kazakhstan and CPRM has a piece in the evening.

    Wednesday, we expect new satire/sadly-not-so-much-satire from SugarFree, a Glibfit check in with trshmnstr and Mrs tshmnstr, and I’ve got a question for you Wednesday night. Thursday Tonio continues the tale of The Glibening and Dbl Eagle has his second outdoor recreation suggestion for you.

    Friday, Animal drops in with something a little out of his ordinary. Mexican sharpshooter wraps up the week for us on Saturday.

    You, too, can be among the illustrious writers mentioned here. Find out how and get to submitting!

     

    And now it’s time for Saturday Night Open Post! Have a great rest of your weekend.

     

  • Fall BIF Special

    Once again our Beer it Forward (BIF) QB (Nephilium) did us all a solid and set up another BIF in honor of the change of season.  Okay, maybe it has to do with bottles exploding in the winter so if we were going to do it, we’ll have to do it now.

    I do plan on running reviews from other Glibs in the near future, once we can confirm everyone gets their beer.  FOr now, you will just have to deal with me talking about mine.  First up, what did I sent to Hyperion The Hyperbole?  That’s a good question–a damn good question…well:

    You can see a few that might be familiar, others that you haven’t seen.  If The Hyperbole want to chime in and tell my how much of an asshole I am for conflating him with Hyperion good guy I am, I’ll let him tell you what he thinks.

    As for what I received (H/T Trials and Trippelations):

    These come with a bit of backstory.  One thing I noticed when I was stationed in the south is they all had, what I considered to be, screwy liquor laws.  There were dry Sundays and the like but one that stands out, and likely keeps a lot of craft brewers down is a self distribution law they are lobbying to repeal:

    For the second time in as many years, a 20-year-old “secret agreement” between Anheuser-Busch and a North Carolina wholesaler is being highlighted as a key piece of evidence as Tar Heel State brewers look to change a decades-old distribution law. The document, first reported last year by NC media, is part of a franchise agreement between AB and Raleigh-based R. A. Jeffreys that encouraged the distributor to give priority to Anheuser-Busch products above others, which itself would be illegal under a 1989 state law, says a lawyer representing North Carolina breweries suing the state.

    According to the Charlotte Business Journal, ABC Commission Administrator Bob Hamilton agreed in the assessment. Last year, distributors noted that “the kind of favoritism suggested in the 1997 franchise agreement is barred by a 2012 state law involving franchisers,” according to the Charlotte Observer.

    It all surrounds an ongoing fight to overturn a state law that prohibits self-distribution when a business surpasses 25,000 barrels of production. Two Charlotte-area breweries, NoDa Brewing and Olde Mecklenburg, have helped lead the legal battle for their in-state peers.

    Which is something I is something I was surprised to learn Arizona once did, until recently.  They may be wrong, but at least they fixed it, right?  Many have issues with the InBev distribution deals, but I am ambivalent about it.  On one hand it means InBev is fully aware of its inferior product but banks on it’s ability to distribute, and on the other hand it allows a smaller player to quickly gain a bigger footprint.  InBev is not making the beer, and they are not making other brewers change their product.  If they did, it wouldn’t sell.  In the end both sides win, that’s how the market works.

    So I picked up my package and was informed by T&T it arrived during the last week of October.  Which was good timing because I was out of beer and the World Series was on at the time.  The artwork on a few of them as you can tell is much nicer than what I am used to here.  There are three IPAs in the package and I drank all of them over the course of the marathon 8 hour game that I totally shouldn’t have stayed up for.  But I am a petty sports fan and mainly wanted to see the Dodger loose, so I was disappointed that night.  The three IPAs are all in the solid 3-4 range:

    • Burial Brewery Asheville, NC  Surf Wax IPA  3.1/5
    • Catawba Brewery Asheville, NC Hopness Monster IPA 3.5/5  (SEA SMITH APPROVED)
    • NoDa Brewing Charlotte, NC  Hop Drop and Roll IPA 3.5/5

    My beef with IPA is how many of them often taste the same.  Your mileage may vary.  As for the others:

    • Durty Bull Durham, NC Lager .  They get extra points because Bull Durham is one of my favorite movies.  3.8/5
    • Southern Pines Brewing Southern Pines, NC Malty by Nature Scottish Export Ale.  Reminds me of Kiltlifter, in a good way.  3.5/5
    • Holy City Brewing Charleston, SC  Pluff Mud Porter.  Charleston is an awesome city and if you have never been there, you are wrong.  This is a nice balance between dark malty beer, while keeping it light.  I feel like I can drink dozens of these.  3.8/5
    • Ponysaurus Durham, NC Rye Pale Ale.  Definitely my pick of this bunch as I have mentioned my affinity for the use of Rye in beverage making.  Take that German MEDIEVAL.TOP.MEN. 4.0/5

    Specials thanks to Trials and Trippelations for the awesome beer, and Nephilium for putting this on!

  • Saturday Morning Links Links Links Links

    As Hank Kingsley would say, “Hey now!” It’s Saturday morning, I’m up ridiculously early, and the weekend is full of work in preparation for a business trip next week to what might be my least favorite city in the US (Atlanta). I’ll be trying to explain the Butler-Volmer equation to a room full of people who have to open their flies to count to 11. This does not please me, so don’t piss me off.

    Notable birthdays today include constipated Jew-hater Martin Luther; Nobel laureate Ernst Fischer, whose work will be part of my PowerPoint deck next week; Mikhail Kalashnikov, inventor of the eponymous weapon; Roy Scheider, star of one of the worst movies I’ve ever seen and scourge of giant rubber fish; and bassist and supergroup stalwart Greg Lake.

    Fuck that, the news has to please me today.

    The first story did. It’s no secret that I’m not a Trump fan, but I admit he pisses off people who I think need pissing off. In this case, hapless granny-chaser Emmanuel Macron.

    “President Macron of France has just suggested that Europe build its own military in order to protect itself from the U.S., China and Russia. Very insulting, but perhaps Europe should first pay its fair share of NATO, which the U.S. subsidizes greatly,” Trump tweeted minutes after landing in France. He is set to spend the weekend in Paris to commemorate the centennial of the end of World War I.
    Tuesday on Europe 1 radio, Macron called for a “real European army” within the European Union, according to AFP. “We have to protect ourselves with respect to China, Russia and even the United States of America,” Macron said.

    Yeah, the US is a major threat, Manny. But of course, les flaques are busy with le clarification. “What President Macron REALLY meant was…”

    A senior French official said Friday night that Trump took Macron’s words out “out of context.” According to the official, Macron will likely want to respond to Trump’s tweet directly himself, and likely Saturday.
    The official, though, clarified the language Macron used, saying that the French leader did not mean he wanted a European army but better coordination and funding of Europe’s already-existing resources. The official said that Macron was conveying that Europe should organize better to protect itself. There is already a European defense project, and Macron would like to see more capability, the official said.

    Translation: “We didn’t even need an army to surrender this time.”

    My evil black libertarian heart is warmed when our system delegitimizes itself. This is actual Third World shit, and no-one is even bothering to pretend otherwise.

    By late Friday, attorneys for Governor Scott said they didn’t get very far in their efforts to inspect the ballots, as required by the judge’s order. Scott’s attorneys say they did receive documents before 7 p.m. but they could not access them. “We don’t know how many pages of documents,” said attorney Jessica Kopas. “We don’t know the quality of the production. We don’t know much at all.”

    Scott’s lawyers waited outside the Supervisor of Elections office into the evening Friday waiting to get in and do their inspection. Then they CBS4’s Carey Codd that they were asked to return for their inspection at 10 a.m. Saturday.

    “Did they tell you why not tonight?” Codd asked.

    “Just logistics. Just logistics,” replied attorney William McCormick.

    “This process is about one thing — making sure every legal ballot is counted,” Nelson said in a video statement. “Clearly Rick Scott is trying to stop all the votes from being counted and he’s impeding the Democratic (sic) process.”

    Insert Nelson Muntz “HAH hah!” here. Love the unintentional capitalization, which makes a lie into truth.

    Sometimes, stuff is beyond parody.

    With strict British laws making guns hard to obtain, knives have become the weapon of choice for members of London gangs, who youth workers say fight over territory and are prepared to kill over trivial slights. As stabbings become more frequent, more young people feel compelled to carry knives for their own protection, fueling a cycle of violence. There is little consensus on why knife violence began increasing in 2014, after declining for years, and continues to grow. Some opposition lawmakers have blamed government cuts to police numbers, while those in power argue that changes in drug trafficking, such as the greater involvement of teenagers in the sale of drugs, is the key factor. Youth workers say the closure of youth centers because of government budget cuts have left children to make their own rules on the streets. Numerous British charities are working to educate children about the dangers of carrying knives.

    Moar funding needed!

    The knives themselves have gotten bigger, said Detective Inspector Paul Considine, who led the investigation into Daniel Frederick’s murder. “The weapons we are coming across at the moment are zombie knives, specifically designed to cause major injury to human beings,” he said, describing a type of knife, banned in Britain, the size of a machete with serrated edges and jagged protrusions.

    Assault knives!

    The actual numbers aren’t actually scary. But saying, “There’s been a minor rise in reported knife crimes which may not be statistically significant” doesn’t generate panic, clicks, and demands for more government “investment” and control.

    SP is remarkably flexible and tolerant. But there are certain things she will NOT abide, and having “smart” devices like Alexa or Echo in the house is one of them. And for good reasons.

    Prosecutors said they believe the Echo device, which listens for Alexa voice commands, might have recorded audio of Sullivan’s death, as well as anything that happened before or after it. State police have the speaker, and the judge agreed to let them access the recordings and ordered Amazon to turn over any recordings on its servers.

    Experts said the case reveals some of the implications of having such devices in people’s homes. “I think most people probably don’t even realize that Alexa is taking account of what’s going on in your house, in addition to responding to your demands and commands,” said Albert Scherr, a professor at the University of New Hampshire School of Law.

    Law and order types will argue that this was a murder case, so of course this is valid evidence to gather. After all, it takes a court order to get Amazon or Apple to release information or recordings. Paranoid libertarian types note that FISA courts and other secret tribunals would be very inclined to favorably treat requests for court orders to investigate crimethink. I still think this technology was a brilliant ploy to get citizens to pay for wiretaps out of their own pockets, analogous to Chinese families being billed for the bullets used in executions.

    Once more, mainstream media beclowns itself.

    In September, the Texas daily was rocked by scandal after questions were raised about the reporting of Austin bureau chief Mike Ward. A lengthy investigation was unable to identity a number of sources Ward quoted on the record for his stories. He ultimately resigned from the paper after being confronted by Barnes. The Chronicle then began an extensive effort to investigate all of Ward’s reporting to identify if there were any other instances of phony sourcing during his career there. The paper brought in Pulitzer Prize winner David Wood to lead the effort. The results of his investigation led to the the paper’s decision to retract the stories.

    “Of the 275 people quoted, 122, or 44 percent, could not be found. Those 122 people appeared in 72 stories,” said Wood. “It’s impossible to prove that these people do not exist, only that with extensive research and digging, the team could not find them. And in this age of online records, including property ownership and court filings, almost everyone can be found quickly.”

    I know this is going to shock you, but… the fakery all appeared to go in one political direction.

    And surprisingly, there’s some really inspiring and heartwarming stuff in the comments to this story.

    Old Guy Music time, and today, it’s Old Jewish Guy Music. There’s a long history of cantorial vocal pyrotechnics, and within the Orthodox community, skilled cantors are superstars. Here’s a young guy I stumbled across who’s starting to break out of the ghetto and achieve some success outside the usual niche. This song is a Passover favorite for drunken after-dinner singing, and is both Aramaic (actually, it’s a curious mix of Aramaic and Hebrew) and cumulative, but I can assure you that at our family gatherings, it never sounded like this. Brilliant singing, with elements of scat, choral, and opera intertwined. Amusingly, the capsule Google provides when I searched Lemmer’s name classified the music as “Christian-Gospel.” And several commenters were unhappy with Lemmer’s Ashkenazi pronunciations. Ah well. Listen with an open mind and I bet you’ll enjoy it despite the impenetrability of the lyrics.

  • Friday Afternoon Links

    Sorry to post and run on a Friday, but I have to prep for and attend a come to Jesus meeting with a client. Hope your afternoon is better.

    Today is the 80th anniversary of Kristallnacht. Here is a moving Twitter feed with actual pictures of Nazis attacking a synagogue, presumed to be from Kristallnacht.

    Sorry for your loss, but you already have gun control. No additional gun control will save anyone else’s child from being murdered.

    A good breakdown of what the issues are in the FL Senate race.

    Self-Hating woman details how “multiple men were willing to take a bullet [for women]” during the Thousand Oaks shooting. Well done lads, even if you were there to linedance

    Its kind of “come to Jesus” song, right?

  • Life of Pie: Romanian summer food

    Reading my previous posts on the culinary delights of the fair Romanian folk, it may have seemed a bit to focus around various bits of animal, with focus on the mighty pig. So I thought of writing a piece on somewhat lighter fare that is eaten in the summer. It is no longer summer at the time of writing this post, it was not at the time the pictures were taken and it will certainly not be at the time of posting, but it was a particularly mild autumn so I will keep the title.

    October is one of the nicer months in Bucharest, a city of very hot summers and quite cold winters. It is the driest month, historically speaking, not too cold and not too hot. It is so nice people often say: I don’t remember the last time we had such a nice October – usually the last time was the previous year. But the meteorological memories of people can be unreliable. This particular October was, in fact, nicer than usual, especially the last week when temperatures got to the mid 20s, some 8 degrees above normal. This post was written on a particularly nice day mid-month, although ever so slightly on the too windy side of things. The sun was shining, the swans were swimming and the last tomatoes were still struggling to ripen on the vine. And we had a nice family meal in the style of summer.

    I will begin with a note that this particular post will not have exact recipes, that is not really my thing, but more of an overview, focused on the starters. Romanian meals usually start with ciorba during the week day, but during a weekend gathering other things are preferred. I should mention that whenever I reference oil, it is sunflower oil I am speaking about. It is, by quite some distance, the most popular cooking oil in Romania because it is quite cheap and Romanians consider it neutral tasting, although this may be just because they are used to the taste. It is not particularly healthful – seed oils generally are not in my opinion – and I use none of it in every day eating – I use mostly olive oil or butter – but these dishes just do not taste right to Romanians with oil other than sunflower.

    One of the more popular summer foods in Romania is “salata de vinete cu ardei copt” – eggplant “salad” – more of a dip really – with roasted pepper. This is done quite simply. The eggplants and peppers are roasted – on a grill if available or on a stove top if not – until done, which I cannot tell you when it is, you have to see it.

     

    A medium eggplant should take some 40 minutes until it is charred on the outside and baked on the inside. When done baking, it needs to be processed still hot or the flesh can darken. This can be difficult and lead to burning of fingers if care is not used. Just remove some of the skin and scoop the flesh with a spoon in a colander. Salt it some and leave drain for 20 minutes.

     


    The resulting eggplant can be turned into the dip – just add a tablespoon of oil per eggplant and a very finely chopped raw onion, mix and that is it. The drained eggplant also freezes reasonably well, and people sometimes freeze a few bags of it to be prepared at a later date – the preference is to bake more eggplants at a time.

     


    The peppers are easier – bake until the skin is slightly charred and can be peeled off. Add salt and vinegar to taste and that is about it. Usually the core and seeds are removed from the pepper, but that is not the way of the Pie household. Each one removes the core of the peppers they eat. So to eat get some good bread, cover in a layer of eggplant and either put a piece of pepper on top or, as I do, take a bite of each, alternatively.

     

    A second popular dish is a form of deviled eggs. This is simple; hard boil the eggs, remove the yolk, crumble it and mix it with salt, pepper, some herbs, and either butter or liver pate and a tablespoon of mayonnaise. Refill the egg with with the mixture.

     


    The next dish is a fish roe dip and it is made from either carp roe – cheaper – or pike roe – pricier and preferred. It is practically like making mayo, but with fish eggs. Add the row, salt and some lemon, and then mix while slowly adding oil until desired consistency. Add finely chopped onion to taste – the onion is sometimes served on the side, but most often mixed in.

     

    Next we have green string beans and garlic. This type of beans are ones that grow long and thin – we call them Chinese beans in Romania, don’t know what particular cultivar it is. This is also quite simple, pick tender pods, boil for 3 minutes and add a lot of minced garlic and some mayo to tie things together. The garlic is the secret – boiled green beans being disgusting themselves. Often a similar thing is made but with mushrooms instead of beans.

     

    Finally no Romanian summer meal is complete without some raw vegetables – tomatoes, peppers, radishes, onions –  and plain white cheese – usually a piece is fresh, softer and less salty, the other is aged, harder and saltier. All these starter are placed on the table and each eats what they want.

     

    The main course was catfish – the Wels catfish – two ways.

    One is the traditional way of cooking fish down these parts saramura – which translates as brine. But unlike most places when things are brined before cooking, here the brine is like a sauce. You basically add a teaspoon and a half of salt per cup of hot water, with fresh ground black pepper, paprika and thinly sliced chilies to make the base – or thin brine. The fish is taken hot off the grill and placed directly in the brine. Various vegetables can be added on the grill next to the fish – tomatoes, peppers, chilies, onions – to be used as a side. Sometimes these are peeled and mashed in the brine to for a thicker brine – more similar to a sauce, other times they are on the plate next to the fish. The dish is usually served with polenta. In my family we usually do the thin brine. Also this type of brine is also used with grilled chicken.

     

    The second way is simply fried – just dredge it in a bit of cornmeal and fry it on both sides in a pan – we don’t usually deep fry fish. This is eaten simply with a good squeeze of lemon or mujdei de usturoi.

     

    So this about covers the food for the day. It was warm enough to eat outside on the patio. The lake looked good and clean – for reasons I do not understand the last few summers it was plagued by some vegetation that completely filled it to the point you barely realized there was water there. The white wine was properly chilled and of good quality. Overall it was not a bad day.

     

     

  • Friday Morning Banjos Links!

    After a long exhausting auction day, Sloopy is still dead to the world.  Leaving you, dear Glibs, with the links stylings of the one and only Banjos!

     

    The Birthday list sucks today, so you’re not getting one.  And I don’t have the energy to find out what happened historically today.  I’ve been too busy to follow sports.  Here’s some news stories.

     

    What? Franken came by last night and found some boxes in my car.

     

    Florida governor Rick Scott is suing Broward County for some serious shenanigans.  Understandably so.

     

     

    Nanny state is being the nanny state.

     

     

     

     

    Utah Man who regularly allowed bats into his home to fly around and land on his hands surprisingly dies of rabies.

    ET Phone Home

     

     

    In case you were keeping track, homophobic slurs flung at conservative politicians? A-ok!

     

     

    This kid gets it!

     

     

     

    I’ll finally give you kids a break from all the classic rock.

     

    I am now off to get my kids out the door! Have a Banjotastic Day everyone!

     

  • The Little Mine: Kitbashing ideas

    My extended building project is a series of 2’x2’ dioramas, each with its own theme, add some bridges to join the sections, then let my granddaughters play on them. At the same time, I’m building a nice resume for my infant scenery business, more on that later. The scale is 28mm/ Heroic scale, but this is a bit different, the entire scenario is little people that mine gold and are protected by fairies. So far so good. I was asked to build a castle at the same time, so I did, but the further I went, the more the castle interfered with my view, so I dropped it from the scene. I’ll use it later.

    Here’s where I started. This is just drywall mud in a multilayered foil form, easy and cheap.

     

    Then I used the pieces to clad some foam to get this shape. A good start.

     

    Here is after a few washes, and some basic water layout. Not done yet!

     

    This is after a few water layouts and accents.

     

    I have an entire castle made, but I can’t see inside! I finally said, “Nope,” and dropped it for some palisade work I had laying around, and it looks like this.

     

    Much better view, and lots more things to add for coolness, like torches.

     

    A farm, with Grandma.

     

    GOLD! With miners.

     

    Next up are the details, more trimming, drybrushing etc. Enough for another episode, til then…

     

    Left to Right: Granddaughter #1, Granddaughter #2, Guardian Faeries, 3,4,5.

     

    And of course, the Gallery, with lots of great stuff this time.

    I’ll be starting up a business around my scenery work soon, so if you have ideas, or potential clients, lemme know. /Shameless Promotion

  • Thursday Afternoon Links

    Hey guys, how’s it going? Happy Thursday to everyone. We’re working on a rule in my house: it’s okay to be unhappy when you don’t get your way, it’s not okay to cry about it. Step 1 is: the crier goes to his room until he can express himself without crying. Step 2, coming December 1, is that I start revoking privileges and sending people to their rooms. Hopefully, Step3 — Operation I’ll Give You Something to Cry About does not become necessary January 1. Call me sexist, but there’s nothing worse than boys who whine. They’ll become men who whine if not corrected.

    Beloved certified crazy-Glib dbleagle was kind enough to share with us a PDF version of Ain’t Nobody’s Business If You Do which we have available on our downloads page. It was a heavy favorite from last night’s book post. I will be taking the time to read it in the near future.

    Bionic mushrooms generate energy. Some people might think this should be a band name, but its really more an album name to me.

    Dem despair at RBG’s injury generates new scientific insights into sadness. Just kidding, this research started a while ago, it was Herself’s lost to Trump that uncovered the link.

    Anyone want to adopt an emu and a donkey who are inseparable?

    This is why Google needs driverless buses.

    Florida boy excited to show cops how he strangled his mom. Yeesh.

    Finally, returning to the subject of toxic masculinity, I’d like to take a second to honor Ventura County Sheriff’s Sergeant Ron Helus. We always complain that the cops don’t go right in to these active shooting situations and he did, losing his life. Godspeed, Sgt. Helus, you did the right thing putting yourself in harms way.

    Always good to seek out an original you’ve only known the cover of. The cover of this came up on a Pandora station yesterday and I realized it was obviously a cover.

     

  • Kitbash: The Wheels on the Wagon

    Now that we’ve assembled a passable Caisson, we can move on to the main body of the scratch build. To start with we need to make sure it can hold the weight of the model. While on the human scale, the main model is light, on the scale of the styrene we’re working with, it has a bit of heft. So the basic chassis is going to be a ladder frame of the thicker box tube. As I measure it out to fit the appropriate width of the model, I make a discovery – I cannot cut the box tube squarely. Every slice has a deviation from perpendicular, and there is a variation in length. Not huge, but enough that they will not all have that great of a contact surface on both ends if the ladder frame is assembled hollow. I found this out when the ladder frame fell apart. So Plan B – I take the ladder frame and assemble it on a sheet of plasticard, gluing it to the flat surface. Once glued down, I take a pair of scissors and cut the ladder framed section off the main card. The particular sheet I used was the same one I’d taken the Caisson parts from, so there was a notch already cut into the board. It was also thin enough to cut with regular scissors and not fail catastrophically. I then took little scraps of plasticard sheeting and reinforced the joints on the side facing away from the sheet.

    Hand crafted by trial and error

    The platform is now very sturdy and will serve as a proper base for the remainder of our work. But it’s ugly, you might say, and I’d agree with you. It is also the underside. People will not be getting a good look at the kludged face of it. They will be seeing the perfectly uniform sheet that we glued the box tubing to. The next step is to position the ‘bearings’. They’re not real bearings, they’re just short sections of box tubing through which the axles will run. But they do fill the important role of attaching the platform to the axles, and thus the wheels. When I first set about planning this, I realized that the slope would be defined by the front and rear wheels, and the middle wheels will be a bit tricky. So I positioned the bearings for the front and rear axles and began brainstorming. I’d initially envisioned short posts which would hold the middle bearings at the proper level below the plane of the platform. This idea got torpedoed by the inability to get precise lengths on the box tubing.

    After going through a couple of possible ideas in my head, I decided that the best move would be one which did not depend upon my precision to keep the middle wheels on the proper level. I was inspired by a leaf spring. With the flexibility of plasticard sheeting (or at least the flexibility of the thickness I was using), I could have the bearing for the middle wheels float, and the weight of the model would hold them against the surface underneath. I could have made independent suspensions for two bearings on the middle axle, but I was worried about the strength of such a structure. I had a panel of a good enough width, and a length of box tubing long enough to make a suitable bearing along that width, so I affixed one spring to the front end of the platform and under the front bearings, thus holding the middle axle at whatever height was appropriate for the surface the model rested upon.

    There was much rejoicing.

    Yay.

    Testing our new suspension

    The rejoicing stopped as I turned my attention to the question of keeping the wheels on the axles. Initially, I rejected the idea of gluing them in place. On the Caisson, I’d capped the axle with bitz large enough to prevent the wheels from sliding off. I had no more of them, so I started looking for alternatives. Inspiration struck as I spied by collection of skulls. Not real skulls, mind, but plastic ones for decorating miniatures in Grimdark. So far I’d only used one, and I’d paid good money for them. And the Ork skulls looked just the right size to act as hubcaps. So I started futzing about with the correct angle to trim the end of the axles to get enough plastic to plastic contact to make sure the skullcaps don’t fall off. When I realized I’d trimmed an axle too short, I asked myself why I was going to such trouble to avoid gluing the wheels in place.

    The answer was simple – I didn’t want to work with superglue.

    The alignment looks good.

    Whining aside, I realized that the simplest way to get the look I wanted was to glue the axle into the wheel and glue the skullcap on the hub. Then I could adjust alignment by simply nudging the skull while the glue was still wet. So, I got out my superglue, cut the axles to the proper length, and affixed the wheels and caps on one end of the axles. Then it was simply a matter of sliding the axles into the proper bearings and gluing the wheels on the other end. I waited until the wheels were dry before attaching the other set of skulls. That way I only needed to worry about lining them up, and not that I was going to dislodge the alignment of the wheel as I did. Why persist with the skullcaps when their purpose was no longer relevant. Two reasons – one, I had grown attached to the visual; two – I’d already cut them from the sprue and cleaned up the attachment points. I could have thrown them in the Bitz box, but there was scant little decoration on this wagon chassis as it was.

    Decorative touches

    Speaking of decoration, at some point I took the flag from the chariot kit, extended the flagpole, and attached it to the back of the chassis. I also attached a not-so-random towhook under the back end. This towhook is for the Caisson. While all of this was going on, I was also spray-priming the animals and the Caisson. It had gotten up to forty out, and I wanted to take advantage of the warm weather. The assembly of the main chassis took so long that the sun had set before I was spraying that component. Luckily, my spray area is indoors, and I had light to see by. Unluckily, I had an open window sending all my warm indoor air into the cold outdoor air.