Hunting Season

It’s hunting season up here in Pennsylvania. Usually that means hordes of brutal dipshits wandering around with guns, looking for a place to park and shoot something. Sometimes we get Serious Hunters from Maryland or Virginia, who come up and rent a cabin for a couple of days of serious serious stuff killing. I know they’re serious because I sometimes talk to them, and they find it important for me to understand that they are not stereotypically sitting around their cabins drinking beer, shooting eachother accidentally, and telling jokes about girl cooties and how brutally their wives treat them.

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Monday Meslier: 159 – Refutation of the Argument That the Evils Attributed to Religion Are But the Sad Effects of the Passions of Men

Jean Meslier Portrait

Jean Meslier

When we complain about the violence and evils which generally religion causes upon earth, we are answered at once, that these excesses are not due to religion, but that they are the sad effect of men’s passions. I would ask, however, what unchained these passions? It is evidently religion; it is a zeal which renders inhuman, and which serves to cover the greatest infamy.

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Gear is No Substitute For Competence

Content warning: War, Death, Violent imagery.

The other day I posted about the Iraqi army advance on Mosul, and observed that one of the vehicles in the picture appeared to be a US-made M-1 Abrams main battle tank.

I didn’t think that, at $5 million apiece, and still being fairly high-tech, the US would let gear like that out into the wild. TL;DR: I hadn’t realized how badly the warmongers in Washington have been screwing up.

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