Like everybody else, I have been having thoughts about the attempt to assassinate Donald Trump. It took me a while to gather those thoughts into something like publishable form.The ShotWhen I first heard he'd been hustled off the stage by Secret Service agents, I didn't think much of it. I assumed they were just being cautious after receiving a warning or … [Read more...] about Thoughts on the Trump Assassination Attempt
Biden’s Path to Victory – 2024-07-10
As I mentioned in a previous post, I'm looking at some of the election forecast data to try to figure out how things are going for Biden (and by extension Trump) in the battleground states.The ABC News 538 site has downgraded its probability of a Biden victory from 51% to 49% (with Trump going from 49% to 51%), which is essentially no change. The Silver Bulletin, which has … [Read more...] about Biden’s Path to Victory – 2024-07-10
Biden’s Path to Victory – 2024-07-03
No, this isn't a rumination on whether Biden should be replaced as the Democratic nominee. It's an attempt to display some election modeling data in a useful way.Nate Sillver's old FiveThirtyEight blog used to have a pretty nifty "snake" diagram showing the states in order by likelihood of victory for each of the two major candidates. Each state's segment had a length … [Read more...] about Biden’s Path to Victory – 2024-07-03
Stonehenge: A Modest Proposal
As you may know, a couple of idiotic climate change activists just defaced part of the Stonehenge monument in England with some kind of orange colored substance. This has led to a number of calls for vengeful punishment. I think the performative outrage from the right is especially deranged:The reaction from archeologists and monument lovers has been less extreme, … [Read more...] about Stonehenge: A Modest Proposal
A Brief Bump Stock Explainer
I've been seeing a lot of confused commentary on the Supreme Court's decision in Garland v. Cargill, which ruled that bump stocks did not violate the National Firearms Act (NFA) provision prohibiting machineguns.((Yes, I'm aware that 1934 National Firearms Act doesn't actually prohibit machineguns. But it has the legal definition of a machinegun (or "machine gun"), and it … [Read more...] about A Brief Bump Stock Explainer