In these impacts of electrical blackout posts, Practical Engineering has several power grid outage videos. Power will be a premium commodity in the near future. Plan accordingly.

Electricity is not just a luxury. It is a necessity of modern life. Even ignoring our own direct use of it, almost everything we depend on in our daily lives, and indeed the orderly conduct of a civil society, is undergirded by a functioning electrical grid. Of course, life as we know it doesn’t break down as soon as the lights go out. Having gone without power for three days myself during the Texas winter storm, I have seen first hand how kind and generous neighbors can be in the face of a difficult situation. But it was a difficult situation, and a lot of people didn’t come through on the other side of those three days quite as unscathed as I did.

Source.

The writer has it at (5) Lee-Enfield, (4) AR-15/M-16, (3) Mauser Gewehr 98 / Karabiner 98k, (2) Mosin-Nagant, and (1) AK-47 and derivatives.

They don’t do much in the way of producing evidence for their assertions and I have my doubts.  For example, who is to know how they counted AR-15s/M-16s?  If you sum the total deployed to SE Asia, Iraq, Afghanistan, other armies across the globe, and AR-15 and variants, including upper and lower receivers sold separately, would you have come up with their number of 20 million?  I seriously doubt it.  I think there have been more than 20 million full ARs sold in America just in the civilian market alone.

However, it’s worth nothing that the gun that was built for conscripts (AK) who didn’t know how to shoot and didn’t want to mechanically understand the gun has been quite successful.

That’s one observation that should be made, of course, that genius Eugene Stoner designed his rifle for the professional soldier who needed MOA or sub-MOA performance, and wanted to understand how to work on his rifle.  As it is said, the AR is an MOA gun, while the AK is a minute-of-man gun.

Furthermore, America was built, at least up until the 1980s or so, with garage, backyard and farm mechanics working on cars, gun, and machines of all sorts, repairing them, cleaning them, and making them better.  Eugene Stoner knew this, I suspect, and didn’t worry too much that it was “too professional” of a rifle for the professional soldier.

From my point of view, Stoner understood the AK about as well as Kalashnikov did. Watch and tell me I’m wrong.

Here are the preceding two videos of Stoner and Kalashnikov at the range (Link 1 and Link 2).  One day I’ll embed the entire Eugene Stoner tape library for viewing.

Outdoor Life has an article entitled The Best Scope Rings of 2022.  They go the spectrum from Seekins to Night Force, from Zeiss to Leupold.  As for prices, they go from budget (just over $50) to around $500.

That’s what I’ve noticed about this market – the massive divide in price point.  Precision Rifle Blog has a rundown of what the long range competition shooters use, and as anyone might guess, it leans towards the pricey end of things with Nightforce being the most prominent of the choices.

Spuhr makes some very expensive mounts/rings too, mostly in the range of $400, up to $500 for quick detach mounts (which in my book are preferable to fixed mounts and rings).

What are the experiences of our readers?  Do you find much difference between moderately priced rings and the pricey ones?  Which ones do you prefer, and why?

I find that the really cheap ones are really cheap and not much worth having.

Source.

Florida sheriff’s deputy was fatally shot by his roommate, a fellow deputy, over the weekend, in what the sheriff described as a “tragic and totally avoidable death.” Austin Walsh, 23, was killed Saturday in Palm Bay by his roommate Andrew Lawson, Brevard County Sheriff Wayne Ivey said Sunday in a video statement on Facebook.

The roommates, who were taking a break from playing video games with friends, were talking when Lawson “jokingly” pointed a handgun he though was unloaded at Walsh and pulled the trigger, Ivey said. A single round was fired and fatally struck Walsh, the sheriff said.

Lawson called 911 saying he accidentally shot his roommate, Ivey said. When officers arrived, they found Lawson “fully distraught and devastated.”

Lawson was taken into custody on a no-bond warrant on a manslaughter charge by agents from the Florida Department of Law Enforcement and transported Sunday to the Brevard County jail, Ivey said.

“Austin and Andrew were the best of friends and Andrew was completely devastated over what happened. Even with that, there is no excuse for this tragic and totally avoidable death,” Ivey said.

The rules of gun safety are there for a reason.  The fact that they hadn’t had them ingrained and tattooed on their soul shows the complete inadequacy of their training, or perhaps the complete inadequacy of their selection policy for police candidates, or perhaps both.

As TCJ has observed before, you’re never in more danger than when the cops are around.  Leave their presence as soon as legal and possible.

This is a timely and informative video.  I had suspected that the increased bullet weight caused enough decrease in muzzle velocity to cause a wash between the two bullets in terms of energy, but until this video I hadn’t researched it or convinced myself.

Watch this video until the last to understand what the fourth circuit thinks about the rights of the people.  The judge is making up rights for cops out of whole cloth.  There is no such thing in the constitution.

What an old fart.  A school child is capable of more sound reasoning than he displayed.

And by the way, that cop showed too much familiarity with the person he stopped and not nearly enough respect for him as a free man.  I don’t like his attitude or demeanor.  The man’s name is not “Cuz.”  He has a name, and you should call him that, along with “Sir.”

Specifically, leopards.  As best as I can tell, both of the incidents in the linked videos happened in India.  The first dog gave up enough fight to end it.  The second dog had that big cat by the neck and the big cat wondered why he had decided to get into brawl.  It both cases, the fights ended with both the dog and big cats deciding to retreat and live another day.

I love dogs.  Man’s best friend and best protector.

LINK.

For the second encounter use this link.

Source.

While the sacrament of communion or the Eucharist — which is present in many Christian denominations and involves consuming bread and wine in remembrance or exaltation of the body and blood of Jesus Christ — has shifted in presentation and delivery over the centuries, most contemporary churches have similar systems.

Parishioners may be called to the pulpit to receive bread or a wafer from a church leader and to drink from a common cup of wine or — in the case of some more conservative denominations — grape juice. Alternatively, deacons may pass around a tray of wafers or small hunks of bread, followed by small disposable cups of juice. This is a common enough approach that most religious goods stores carry specific communion trays with slots for 1-ounce cups.

However, in the age of megachurches — as well as that of a global pandemic, which caused many churches to reconsider the sharing of bread and use of a common cup — an alternative delivery system for the Eucharist has increased in popularity in recent years. And it’s something of a booming business.

These days, when attendees enter Southeast, they’re guided to a row of long tables filled with small, plastic two-packs of wafers and juice. These aren’t a new product, but they have been primarily used to deliver the sacrament to individuals who are hospitalized or otherwise infirm, or when worshiping outside the walls of a physical church. When indicated by leadership from the pulpit, worshipers serve themselves and eventually dispose of the cups and wrappers in the large recycling cans that are now stationed outside the sanctuary doors.

You can read Kenneth Gentry’s book on wine for yourself.  Nothing irks me more than Christians who think they’re holier than God.  In the time in which the NT was written, refrigeration didn’t exist.  Any grape juice quickly turned into wine.  And if you want to somehow figure out an engineering solution to that dilemma (refrigeration didn’t exist until Carrier), you have to deal with Deuteronomy 14:26-27, and tell me how the term “strong drink” can be interpreted in any fashion than one which can make you inebriated if abused.  And just to be sure not to neglect those among us who rely on tithes, Moses makes sure we invite our local pastor when consuming wine.

Look, I’m not trying to tell you what to do with your life, nor do I have strong opinions about the modern practice of using pre-packaged do-dads for communion.  But Jesus instituted His supper with wine and unleavened bread, and that’s the way it should be taken.  To say that conservative churches sometimes use grape juice means only that they are in slavery to the temperance movement created by do-gooder social gospel ladies in northern churches.

I recall a lecture by R.C. Sproul once in which a student asked him why we couldn’t take the Lord’s Supper with crackers and coke.  Sproul screamed, “Because Jesus didn’t institute it with crackers and coke.  He used wine and unleavened bread.”

Coyote drags two-year-old away.

Heart-pounding footage shows the moment a quick-thinking Israeli man jumped into action to save his two-year-old daughter before she was dragged away by a coyote outside their Los Angeles home.

Georgia sheepdog, Casper, fights off, kills 8 coyotes after pack attacks his sheep

A harrowing story in the video at the link. That’s one tough dog.

A Georgia sheepdog is recovering from injuries after squaring off against a pack of coyotes, killing eight of them, while protecting his flock.

Casper, a sheepdog who works on John Wierwiller’s Georgia farm, fought off the more than half a dozen coyotes in a fight that lasted over half an hour, WAGA-TV reported.

Wierwiller says that Casper disappeared for two days after the brutal fight.

“We knew he was hurt because we found parts of his tail and blood and other things, so we were worried,” Wierwiller said.

That’s a good boy.

H/T Battle Beagle @HarmlessYardDog

He makes a good point about removal of the brass shavings under the extractor with a small tool.  I had never thought of that before.