"Rainbow Reload" is an LGBTQ+ gun group
I've come to have strong feelings on gun control which amount to "get rid of them all" - but this was an interesting read about one of the gun groups growing on the left.
In March 2023, former Fox News host Tucker Carlson did a segment on Democrats and gun control. At the top of the show, he called out Rainbow Reload, an LGBTQ+ gun group in New Hampshire. "Rainbow Reload. They're packing heat," he said. "You can't have guns, but faithful servants of the Democratic Party can."
After being spotlighted on national television, Rainbow Reload's social media got hacked and members received death threats. But instead of scaring people away, the attention prompted more supporters to join and new Rainbow Reload chapters sprouted in Tennessee and Vermont.
Gun owners are an anomaly within the LGBTQ+ community. According to research from UCLA and the Pew Research Center, gun owners in the U.S. are more likely to be straight and Republican, rather than queer and Democratic. While there is no specific data on how many gun owners in the U.S. identify as LGBTQ+, queer gun rights groups across the country are noticing that more LGBTQ+ people are becoming interested in gun ownership, and they are turning to their own community to learn.
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Rembrandt found using lead base layer on The Night Watch
The Dutch painter Rembrandt covered the surface of his canvas with a substance that contained lead before he began painting his 1642 masterpiece The Night Watch, according to new research.
Using X-ray imaging techniques, scientists have discovered a previously unknown lead base layer beneath the paint. These findings, published last week in the journal Science Advances, add to the art world’s understanding of one of Rembrandt’s most famous works. They could help conservationists better preserve the piece moving forward.
Bullets in a baby diaper caught by TSA
Posting here solely to recognize the author's first line of the article:
It was a loaded diaper, but not like you would think.
Security officers found 17 bullets concealed inside a disposable baby diaper Wednesday at New York's LaGuardia Airport, the Transportation Security Administration said.
Officers pulled the otherwise clean diaper from a passenger's carry-on bag after it triggered an alarm in an X-ray machine at an airport security checkpoint, the TSA said.
Today is the Winter Solstice
Winter in the Northern Hemisphere will officially arrive tonight with the rays of the sun shining directly down on the Tropic of Capricorn — latitude 23.43-degrees south — at 10:27 p.m. Eastern Time. At that moment, if you were located in Western Australia at a point near Lake MacKay, the sun will be shining directly overhead and its six-month southward migration will come to an end, marking the beginning of summer for the Southern Hemisphere.
Starting tomorrow, the length of daylight will begin to increase — imperceptibly at first, but a month from now, it will become obvious that the sun is rising earlier and setting later. Yet, there is an old saying: "As the days grow longer, the cold grows stronger." If the insolation — the total energy received from the sun — alone governed the temperature, we should now be experiencing the year's coldest weather.
But the atmosphere in temperate regions falls behind the sun and continues to get colder, a situation that lasts several weeks or more. A reverse process occurs after the summer solstice in late June. Thus, there is a temperature lag of about a month: Our coldest weather usually comes in late January and our hottest in late July.
For those who yearn for milder weather to come more quickly, we end this discussion of the seasons with this little bit of philosophy published years ago in the Farmers' Almanac:
"It is only 100 days from New Year's Day to the bluebirds."
Ukraine legalizes marijuana as tool for veterans to combat PTSD
Ukraine's parliament voted Tuesday to legalize medical marijuana, after the war with Russia left thousands of people with post-traumatic stress disorder that many believe could be eased by the drug.
The new law, which will come into effect in six months' time and which also allows cannabis to be used for scientific and industrial ends, passed by 248 votes in the 401-seat parliament in Kyiv.
ChessCam.net takes video of chess games and transcribes them digitally
I originally heard about this tool on Lichess, the free chess website which I play on regularly. It was just a short blog entry, clearly intended to drive awareness of the online tool which the author 'BlindfoldBlunderer' created.
It didn't go into depth about the project but it was enough for me to dig further into it.
The video demo shows that at the start of the game you identify the four corners of the board, defining which is which square, and from there it orients, identifies pieces, and moves. At 1:36 it transitions out of watching the video and shows that it recorded the moves and can replay them digitally.
I don't have any plans to make use of this, but who knows, perhaps. Still an interesting tool and I'm sure a passion project for the author.
A reading guide for Frank Herbert & Dune
Originally I found this on Facebook. Linked the original thread on Reddit for those curious. Of the following options, I lean towards #1 or #3. It's been a longtime since I read God Emperor of Dune, maybe it's time I go back and do this four-book run again...
But seriously, don't read the Brian Herbert books. The ROI is very low.
Collection of lifehacks from Reddit
Take some of these with a grain of salt, but they seemed notable to make note of:
If you have an itchy mosquito bite, hear up a spoon under semi-hot water (like 45-50°C), dry it off and tap or press it on the bite. Just as short as you can tolerate it but also as long as possible.
The heat dissolves the protein that makes the mosquito bite itch.
Percentages are reversible. Working out 4% of 50 will give you the same result as 50% of 4
Future you - always do things throughout the day that will benefit future you.
Hang dry your shirts inside out to avoid the little shoulder horns.
Simply call your partners phone to remotely turn off any of their alarms.
When driving for long periods. Turn off recirculating air. One of the reasons you get tired in the car is not from lack of sleep but from too much co2 in the car. You ever been so tired driving home and when you get home you’re no longer tired. It’s because of lack of oxygen in the car. Especially if you have passengers in the car.
And here's a link to a study which supports this lifehack.
Sharp(er) knives help prevent the sulfenic acid in onions from getting everywhere. Dull knives press and crush the onion and that causes the release of the enzymes.
27 years since Carl Sagan died
"When my husband died, because he was so famous and known for not being a believer, many people would come up to me ― it still sometimes happens ― and ask me if Carl changed at the end and converted to a belief in an afterlife.
They also frequently ask me if I think I will see him again. Carl faced his death with unflagging courage and never sought refuge in illusions. The tragedy was that we knew we would never see each other again. I don't ever expect to be reunited with Carl.
But, the great thing is that when we were together, for nearly twenty years, we lived with a vivid appreciation of how brief and precious life is. We never trivialized the meaning of death by pretending it was anything other than a final parting.
Every single moment that we were alive and we were together was miraculous-not miraculous in the sense of inexplicable or supernatural. We knew we were beneficiaries of chance.
That pure chance could be so generous and so kind. That we could find each other, as Carl wrote so beautifully in Cosmos, you know, in the vastness of space and the immensity of time. That we could be together for twenty years. That is something which sustains me and it’s much more meaningful.
The way he treated me and the way I treated him, the way we took care of each other and our family, while he lived. That is so much more important than the idea I will see him someday. I don't think I'll ever see Carl again. But I saw him. We saw each other. We found each other in the cosmos, and that was wonderful."
― Ann Druyan
Chris Christie with a solid drug plan for opioid crisis
Credit where credit is due. Christie is pushing for handling the ongoing crisis. I forgot he worked on this under Trump, so it's not a new development for him to be attached to facing this issue.
Christie led a White House commission on opioid misuse in 2017, and he praised former president Donald Trump for endorsing all 56 of its recommendations. But only about half have been enacted, and both Trump and President Joe Biden have treated the problem as a crisis in name only, Christie said.
Christie said he would increase access to medication-assisted treatment by making the telehealth policies created during the coronavirus pandemic permanent, requiring all federally qualified health centers to provide such treatment and creating mobile opioid treatment programs.
He also called for expanding block grants to states, tied to specific requirements for data collection and sharing. The pandemic, he argued, showed that vast amounts of data can be gathered and shared quickly, and the same should be done to track overdose deaths and identify the areas of greatest need.
"We've been told for decades it's just too difficult to accurately track and understand," he said. "If we keep saying that these things are too hard, what we're saying is that working harder at this is too much and that the lives that we're losing are not worth it. I'm sorry, I just don't believe that."
If you had asked me ten years ago how much I'd respect Christie in this day-and-age, I'd have laughed in your face. It's a statement on the state of the right that Christie is among the best of them right now.
Migrated post: Anthony Bourdain (1956-2018)
I was reminded I never migrated this post from my Wordpress blog. Here it is, if you're curious for my writing in response to Bourdain's passing.
It's wrong to call myself a fan of Anthony Bourdain. That overstates it. I read Kitchen Confidential and enjoyed it. When I watched one of his shows, I enjoyed it. But I didn't seek his content out, I didn't wait for news of new seasons or projects. But above all, I held jealousy of the career and life he had. It is a romantic way of life.
The vision of traveling the world to eat food and experience life around the world. I've been able to see many places around our world, and yet there remains a whole world that I haven't seen yet. What I've done is a step more than most people, and those places I have seen have confirmed this famous quote by Bourdain.
Narrow lanes are safer than wide ones
A little over a month ago, Johns Hopkins University released the largest-ever research on travel lane width and safety, providing conclusive evidence that 9- and 10-foot lanes do not contribute to greater automobile crashes and, in some cases, reduce collisions. Traffic engineers have long shunned narrower lanes—which benefit walkable cities by providing more room for pedestrians, bicyclists, and landscaping—citing safety concerns.
Automated Archives for December, 21st 2023
This post was automatically generated
Wallabag Additions
These are articles that which I saved today so that I may read them later. Substance and quality will vary drastically.
- They Cracked the Code to a Locked USB Drive Worth $235 Million in Bitcoin. Then It Got Weird
- The Truth Is Out There
- Disney Is a Language. Do We Still Speak It?
Chess For the Day
Record: 1-0-6
Net Elo Change: -31
Games Played
- panda-drps - LOSS
- andreyloaco - LOSS
- dpfarce - LOSS
- MOVAJOLI - LOSS
- Romaha1967 - LOSS
- aronmein - LOSS
- sagarb_chess - WIN
Blog Posts On This Day
- 1 year ago (10 posts)