Japs Bomb Pearl Harbor

and in other “news”:

Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell admitted that he was wrong to expect inflation would be transitory when it started to rise three years ago.

I wonder what clue he and the other asswipes at the Fed missed:  that government spending was increasing exponentially, that the Federal debt was spiraling upwards, or that the government was printing ever-more money to pay for government-created Covid-related expenses and social program giveaways instead of paying down the debt?

That’s some college degree you must have there, Chair Guy.  You fucking moron.

You’re “wrong”, and we’re being bent over the desk and raped by your mistake every time we go to the grocery store or try to pay down our credit card debt.

Head & Shoulders

Sent to me by Reader Tony H (thankee, squire), an analysis of shotgun brands sold.

Executive summary:  It’s Mossberg (43%), and then all the others.  (Add Legacy, at 24%, and that’s two-thirds of the market.)

I’m rather surprised at Mossberg’s dominance, but no overly so.  The shotgun is the most basic kind of firearm extant and the fact that Mossberg’s budget-priced line dominates the market reflects its commodity positioning.

Me, I’m casting longing eyes at the shotgun I’ve always really wanted, the Mossberg 590 Mariner (~$625 street):

And yes, despite my preference for the 20ga chambering in general, I’d get it in 12ga because nothing says “Fuck Off And Die (FOAD)” like a couple pops of 00 Buck thereof.

Self-defense in its purest, and most basic form.

Difficult Comparison

Here’s an interesting one:

A new survey of 6,000 respondents from the UK, France, Spain, Italy, Germany and the US has found which European language is considered the most attractive.

The previous poll, which was released in 2017, named French the sexiest language — but that was displaced by this new research.

This year’s survey showed that Italian is now rated as the world’s most attractive language.

Hmmm.  Of course this is subjective, but it’s quite fascinating as a thought exercise.  It’s also difficult to stage the question, because in many cases the respondents may not have actually had experience with hearing the languages spoken in sexy tones or in a sexy context.

One could try to imagine who would sound sexier over a romantic dinner, say Marion Cotillard vs. Monica Bellucci:

…but really, it’s almost impossible.  Now, which one of the above two has the sexier accent when speaking English?  Ooooh, even more difficult.  French is softer, but Italian is more passionate.

Try Françoise Hardy vs. Ornella Vanoni, then.  Even more difficult, and more so when you understand the lyrics — wistful vs. heartbroken.

Maybe a few more choices would help.  Catherine Deneuve vs. Sophia Loren?

How about Melanie Laurent vs. Francesca Dellara?

Okay. I don’t think any of this is helping.  I myself cannot decide between gentle and passionate, so I’m declaring a tie.

Close, But No Cigar

Reader Mike L. asks me whether this incident is worthy of being classified as a Righteous Shooting.

It nearly is, Mike, except for this part:

The break-in attempt did not go as planned. The owner, Gordon Richard Sr., 75, used a muzzleloader rifle to shoot one of the three men, causing the other two to flee. He then secured himself inside the home and called the police.

State police say the man who was shot was 39-year-old Paul E. Brown of Milton and St. Albans, he was seriously injured.

When police arrived, the other two intruders had fled. The police report states, “Responding troopers located Brown in a neighbor’s yard. No other individuals were found at the scene. Brown was transported by ambulance to Northwestern Medical Center in St. Albans and later transferred to the University of Vermont Medical Center in Burlington, where he was listed in critical condition Wednesday afternoon.”

You all know the rules:  no dead goblin, no Righteous Shooting.

But Our Hero deserves a huge “Attaboy” from all of us for using a muzzleloader to send the “Leave Me Alone” message to the would-be property redistrubutionist.

Oh, and Mike?  Let me know if the goblin snuffs it, so I can upgrade the award from Armed Good Guy to Righteous Shooter.

Overshooting

No, that’s not when you shoot off all your ammo at the range and have to drive home with an empty gun (yeah, we’ve all done it, nothing to be ashamed about).  What I’m talking about here is a series of predictive models which are not only wrong, but hopelessly wrong.

We all know (I think, except maybe for “climatologists”) that the way to test your model is to take all the history available except the most recent set, and feed that back data into your model to measure its prediction against the most recent data.  (Back when I used to do this stuff for a living, we used to call it “using history to predict yesterday”).

So here are the conclusions of a whole bunch of predictive models used to predict future temperature change / increase for a specific area:

Looks kinda alarming, doesn’t it?  (Okay. what’s alarming to me is the variation in predicted output between the models, but leave that alone for the moment.)

Now let’s drop the actual recorded data for the period and area into the graph, to see where it falls (same graph, plus actual):

Ummmm yes.  The only model which came even close to reality (Observations) was “INH-CMS-0”, and even that one overstated actual temperature increase by a factor of almost 40%.  Oops.

And by the way?  A change of 1.6 degrees over an average decade over four decades (80 40 years) is what we model builders used to call “noise” — i.e. insignificant.  Never mind a large area like the U.S. Corn Belt;  an increase of 1.6 degrees in air temperature is insignificant in your house.

Here’s the whole analysis, which is long and kinda involved, even for me.  The executive summary is what I’ve reproduced above.

And Robert Spencer gives us the summary of the executive summary, which is:

…or as we statisticians used to call it informally:

And John Hinderaker pointed out something else which should make everyone suspicious (it did me when I first looked at the chart):

Someone pointed out with respect to these data – I would credit him, but I can’t now find the reference – that if it were simply a matter of mathematical errors or inconsistencies, one would expect some models to err on the “hot side” and others on the “cold side” of actual observations. But that isn’t the case: all of the models run hot. That suggests that global warming alarmism is a political, not a scientific, movement.

Yup.  Let’s worry about something else;  this horse (Global Warming Climate Cooling Change©) is dead, and cannot be revived by MOAR HYSTERIA or STILL MOAR WHIPPING.