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Cake day: November 22nd, 2023

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  • AFAIK, a silencer is essentially a double-walled tin-can filled with some form of metal mesh or other way to divert and slow down the gases (like baffles or valves) between the walls and holes to allow gas into that space.

    I think you’re right on needing a larger design, as I remember the one I saw had pretty thick walls and was a single piece design meant for printing in PETG, but I think heat is more of a concern rather than pressure, because you still want the gas to exit the front of the gun, you just want it to take longer to do so by traveling through more space before exiting the barrel. The one I saw looked larger than what I would expect a silencer to be, but probably only by about 50%, and I believe it was designed for an AR-15, which is usually chambered in 5.56, which is a projectile that’s just a tiny bit wider than a .22, but has more gunpowder in a longer casing for a faster projectile. I believe the Mythbusters back in the day did an episode where they proved that even something like a potato or a pillow does work as a silencer for a pistol, if only for one shot.

    I believe that glocks are usually chambered for 9mm, which is a bigger bullet but has a comparatively small amount of gunpowder for the size, and if he was using subsonic ammo, that would reduce the gunpowder even more. If that’s what he was using, it would stand to reason that he wouldn’t need as sturdy a silencer for the gun (and would also explain why he had to manually cycle the gun after each shot as there probably wasn’t enough pressure to fully cycle the gun normally). But it’s all conjecture anyway on whether or not he actually 3d printed a silencer because it’s too hard to tell from the footage that we have without knowing specific 3d printed silencer designs that it could be.





  • Fun fact that may or may not be true: The left side of a ship used to be called “larboard” (to go with starboard) because that’s where the larder was - where the food was stored, and this was supposedly changed to port because that’s also where the wine was stored and it was both easier to say and easier to identify as being different from starboard.

    Another fun unverified nautical fact: The word shit originated as an acronym for the storage of cow manure during transport at sea - Store High In Transit. Dried cow pies apparently have…violent reactions to salt water.


  • Where did I ever say otherwise? No need to be so defensive. The extremists are obviously the priority, and anyone who says otherwise is either ignorant or a patsy, but we can’t forget those who spread their message. The cultists today, the enablers tomorrow. Gotta keep the big picture in mind so we don’t lose momentum or get complacent after the short-term victories.




  • Which wasn’t a revolution, Jan 6th or the Civil Rights Movement? The Jan 6th was definitely an attempted coup (unless you ask the MAGA cultists), but the Civil Rights was definitely a revolution of some form. And the Kent State Massacre is just an example of the violent suppression often used by the US government (though we usually prefer it to be in other countries).

    The US isn’t a dictatorship (yet, who knows where we’ll be in 2 years time), but you look at how militarized our police force is and how many US citizens are gunned down by them every year and tell me we that we aren’t a militarized police state. Our cops are buying surplus IFVs from the army to drive around in. Palestinian protesters at colleges were having their belongings seized and thrown out by police and administration both - including things like medications. During Bush Jr’s administration, you could only legally protest against the Iraq war in areas cordoned off with concrete barriers and fences (sometimes with barbed wire on them). Several studies were done years back by some Ivy League schools looking at laws that were passed or not and their popularity with the 1% vs the majority of Americans, and their conclusion was that the US cannot be considered a democracy and is in fact an oligarchy.

    Dictatorships are usually brought down by their own incompetence, but resistance groups speed that up and help keep people from dying. The point isn’t open warfare against guys with tanks and beyond visual range missiles, but asymmetric warfare meant to cripple the government’s operational capacity for oppression and community support for the population. Like in Myanmar, where resistance groups are fighting against the ethnic cleansing being done by the military using 3d printed guns because not a single nation in the world cares enough to send them aid. They can’t get guns, but they can get hobby 3d printers and bullets, and that’s good enough to kill a soldier and take his gun.

    Like George Washington said when he opposed the Second Amendment, “Farmers with guns will never win against a professional army.” But you don’t need to, you just need to be annoying enough that the government falls on their own knife trying to catch you. Rambo getting gunned down in a blaze of glory will be remembered as an idiot. The black militia put together and trained by a black WW2 veteran who put down sandbags and machine gun emplacements on people’s porches to protect them from retaliation by the KKK are remembered as heroes. Just like the people who showed up for MLK’s show of force in D.C. that we call The Million Man March today. That wasn’t just a protest. It was a threat that terrified every white suburbanite across the country. If he could mobilize a million people to the capital just to march, what else could he do?


  • Don’t misunderstand me, I agree the extremists are responsible for their actions and the extremism. But there are other factors that led to those views being pushed into mainstream politics. The Democrats didn’t help things by funding extremist candidates for the easy win in the same way that the Republicans breeding their core voting block of “I’m a Republican, I vote for the nominee” cultists didn’t help when Trump stole them from less extremist candidates in the primary. Like how TV channels choosing to air 30 minutes of Trump’s empty podium instead of Bernie’s speech during the Democratic primaries didn’t help run a fair primary that year.

    Extremists are responsible for their actions, but those who help to push their views aren’t spotless.


  • If they had had guns, they probably would’ve succeeded. What kept them from executing Senators was basically a single locked door in a hallway and one or two police officers holding it while the politicians were evacuated through the tunnels.

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kent_State_shootings

    I don’t think you understand how a military police state works. The government’s monopoly on violence keeps the population in line. It wasn’t until after MLK was killed and over 2 billion dollars worth of damage was done by rioters burning down entire sections of cities that civil rights laws were passed. Years of protests led to nothing. A week of riots had the laws written, drafted, and signed into law. Look at what’s happening right now over the death of a certain CEO of a major health insurance company.



  • It’s an effective strategy, up to a point. “Vote for me because I’m not the guy you hate” is one of the oldest political strategies around. And Democrats have even openly said that they’ve been funding the most extremist right-wing candidates on the ballot for years to set up easy wins when people think their opponent is a nutjob. There was a lady who even wrote a book about how she won an election doing this. And then she lost to that same extremist in the very next election. Because what they’ve actually done is push the Overton Window further and further into extremism.


  • The Republicans have bred a cult that makes up the core of their voting block, though. This is how Trump originally got into the primaries and then elected. He pulled the cultists away from their masters and they couldn’t control the new MAGA cult.

    Both my grandfather before he died and my first boss had the same exact reaction if you asked who they were voting for. They’d look at you like you’d grown an extra head and reply, “I’m a Republican. I vote for the nominee.”




  • How long you’ve been taking hormones is the important part. How long you’ve lived as amab only really matters until a certain point, as it’s very difficult to maintain muscle mass from before you started hormones. And afab people have to build up muscle mass even when they start taking testosterone.

    And yes, not every trans person is taking hormones or even will. But I have yet to hear of a single example of a trans person in regulated sports who wasn’t competing in the division of their gender while on HRT. Even the preteen kids were on puberty blockers.