You Can't Silence Us

Electrical Work

No post this morning because I was busy yesterday. It was time to fix the tripping breaker problem I was troubleshooting a few days ago. If you will recall, I had a problem with the breaker tripping repeatedly for the receptacles in two of our bedrooms: one was use as a guest room, and one that we use as an office/sitting room. It turned out the wire running from one receptacle to another, even though it was disconnected from everything, was only measuring 2 ohms between the neutral and ground wires. That will trip the breaker (GFI) every time. It was probably caused by a staple, nail, or nail plate rubbing through the insulation on the wire.

I isolated the bad section by cutting it out of the upstream box, which of course orphans the downstream box. The breaker reset once I did that, but now I have a dead receptacle. The dead plug is the one on the left. (I took pictures of my entire house while it was under construction, before they put the drywall, insulation, and vapor barriers in. That really comes in handy. I know where every stud, wire, pipe, and duct is)

There is no way to fix that shorted Romex, the wire must be replaced if we want that plug to ever work again. The bad news is the receptacle before the bad wire is on one wall, and the receptacle after the bad wire is on another: the Romex goes around a corner. That is going to be nearly impossible to do without tearing out a lot of drywall.

The good news is there is a dedicated receptacle on the same wall that I could tap into. You can see it on the right side of the above photo, it’s the one supplied by the yellow Romex. It’s the only receptacle on that 20 amp circuit, so I can just add the orphaned plug to that. Since it’s a 20 amp breaker, I can’t use 14 gauge wire, so I went to Lowe’s and got 25 feet of 12/2 wire bright and early in the morning.

I cut two holes in the drywall, about 8 inches beneath each receptacle. I also had to notch out that furring strip you see on the right. Once I did that, you will note that there is a straight, unobstructed path between those two points and pulled Romex through the intervening space, because the only one of the furring strips goes all the way to the floor.

Now I have a wire running from one to the other, but the boxes are recessed into the concrete blocks. I fixed that with a hammer drill to put a 3/4 inch hole in the concrete block 8 inches below each box. Now it was a simple manner of pulling the ends of the wires through the hole, up through the bottom of the box, and wiring everything in.

I still needed to notch the furring strip in this photo:

A bit of drywall patching. I like using the color changing mud, because it’s so much easier to tell when it’s dry. It leaves a flat looking spot on the wall that clashes with the orange peel finish, so once it dries, I sand it smooth before mixing some of the mud with some water to thin it to about the consistency of waffle batter. Then I roll it on with a foam roller, and it makes a pretty convincing orange peel surface.

Then test the plugs. All done. The entire fix, including a 2 hour trip to Lowe’s ate up my Saturday. The wife will paint the patches, once the mud dries. Painting his her territory.

People who have read this post: 8
By Divemedic, ago

They Who Must Not Be Named

I have spoken of vzyali quite a few times on this blog. I learned the term from my Scoutmaster when I was a boy scout as a teenager. Greg (I used his first name for security reasons) had escaped from the Soviet Union in the 1950’s as a teenager when his parents managed to smuggle him across the border in the trunk of a car. He never saw his parents again, they were vzyali.

He used to tell me stories of what it was like to live in the Soviet Union. How they used to spy on and watch everyone, to the point where you were required to bring your unsealed envelopes for mailing to their post office. The officials would read your mail to ensure it contained nothing disloyal before sealing and passing the envelope on.

Vzyali is one of the most chilling linguistic phenomena of the Soviet era, particularly during Stalin’s Great Terror in the 1930s. In that context, “Vzyali” translates more accurately to “They took [him/her/them]” or “They’ve taken.” It was used as an absolute, terrifying euphemism.

  • The Unspeakable “They”: Everyone knew exactly who “they” were—the NKVD (the Soviet secret police, later the KGB)—but naming them aloud was incredibly dangerous. By omitting the pronoun or noun, citizens avoided speaking the name of the state security apparatus, which could invite suspicion upon themselves.
  • Avoiding Legal Terms: People rarely said “arrestovani” (arrested) because “arrest” implied a legitimate legal process, a charge, and a system of justice. “Vzyali” stripped away any illusion of legality; it meant a person was simply plucked from their life, usually in the dead of night, never to be seen again.
  • The Atmosphere of Fear: The word captured the arbitrary, predator-like nature of the regime. To say someone was “taken” meant they had vanished into the Gulag system or been executed, and their family was left to live in terror of being “taken” next.

This linguistic coping mechanism is famously documented in Soviet dissident literature, including Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn’s The Gulag Archipelago and Anna Akhmatova’s poem Requiem, reflecting how totalitarianism alters language itself to express trauma.

Our scoutmaster was a good man, but he passed away a few months ago. He and his wife became good friends with my own parents. They lived a few miles from us, and I remember they used to visit often. Pat’s specialty was mango pies, Greg’s specialty was teaching me skills like living in the woods, washing dishes without water, and other useful skills. His wife Pat died a few years ago.

No one hated communists more than Greg, and he would let you know why. All you had to do was get to know him. He loved the US with everything he had, and did more to serve this country than most who were born here. He left a lasting impression upon me, and is a huge reason why I am as opposed to the communist movement that the left has become.

People who have read this post: 367
By Divemedic, ago

Oregon School Shooting

Now that the dust is settling and actual facts are coming out, I can post what the cops have released:

At 12:58 p.m. PT yesterday, two vehicles were traveling near Silver Rail Elementary, he said. At that time the suspect approached a fence area of the school from an undeveloped area, crossed the street, threw his weapon over the fence, then climbed the fence onto the school property, Krantz said.

A driver of a red Toyota pickup saw the suspect and“verbally confronted him,” the chief said. The suspect then fired at the pickup, hitting it at least three times.

The driver eventually kept driving and made the initial 911 call.

The driver of a second vehicle — a 36-year-old man whose children attend the school — witnessed the shooting involving the pickup. That man then drove into the school’s parking lot as the suspect was walking along the south side of the school and broke in.

The suspect was identified by police as Griffin J. John II, a 16-year-old Bend resident. He was armed with a long gun and gained entry into the school by shooting through locked doors. He was a special needs student in that school in the past.

The 36-year-old man parked his car, took out a 40-caliber pistol that he had “legally secured in his vehicle,” and went toward the school, Krantz said.

He heard the shooting and saw a teacher involved in a physical altercation with the suspect. He then entered the classroom and fired his weapon, “striking the suspect multiple times.”

People who have read this post: 413
By Divemedic, ago

Canadians, Real Ones

It started with:

Then moved to:

Maybe a troll, but he IS Canadian. I don’t know how a Canadian thinks that plan is going to work:

People who have read this post: 451
By Divemedic, ago

Not Work

I want to illustrate some communist stupidity. These Marxist idiots have a kindergarten level of understanding when it comes to economics.

A circuit breaker for the front of the house kept tripping. I kept losing power to two bedrooms and a bathroom. 6 receptacles, plus the lights for the three rooms. I spent a good part of the day trying to chase down the cause. It took about 3 hours to discover one of the stretches of Romex running between two receptacles on two different walls had a short between the ground and the neutral wires. They measured less than an ohm between them. I was forced to cut the ends of the wire off in both boxes. Now the breaker stays on. I’m glad the wire in question only powers the one plug.

So tomorrow, I will run to Lowes and get a twenty foot piece of 12 gauge Romex and some nail plates. Then I will have to pull the baseboard between that plug and one that is on the same wall, pull the wire behind the drywall, use a hammer drill and masonry bit to drill into the block, pull the wire up in to the boxes through the hole I just drilled, wire it all up, and then repair the wall and replace the baseboards. Call it another 4 or 5 hours of my day MINIMUM. Even doing the work myself is going to take about 20 hours of work and cost about $60 in parts. If I had paid an electrician, probably $1,000 worth of service call. All because of a tripping breaker.

How is this related to communists? Because, according to Communists, owning and maintaining property isn’t work, and landlords shouldn’t be allowed to charge people money for that.

People who have read this post: 293
By Divemedic, ago

Preparing

One of the things about preparing for emergencies is everyone likes the sexy and fun stuff- people imagine scenarios for TEOTWAWKI. Tongue in cheek, we called it the Zombie apocalypse forever, until that term made it so far into mainstream that it became its own gag.

We love to look at guns, security, freeze dried foods, and tons of other things, and in nearly every case, those things aren’t going to be what eventually ends us. TEOTWAWKI is more likely going to be a medical event. Your chances of dying in a Zombie apocalypse end of the world are so close to zero as to be immeasurable. The most likely event, one that most of us are unprepared for, is a personal emergency.

Perhaps you break your leg slipping down the stairs. Maybe you got laid off from work. Or perhaps your spouse was just diagnosed with cancer, or you wake up one morning and she is just… dead, lying in bed next to you, having never woken up. Are you prepared for that? Consider how the following will disrupt all of your well-laid plans:

Are you ready for suddenly having difficulty speaking, the left side of your face drooping, and don’t know where you are? Is that house in the woods, 45 minutes from the nearest hospital, no neighbors within a quarter mile of you, and no way to summon help sill working in your favor? Yeah, having a stroke is FAR more likely an event than the entire collapse of society. More than 750,000 people a year have a stroke, and if you don’t get definitive care within an hour, those deficits start to become permanent. Every minute a stroke goes untreated, the brain loses roughly 1.9 million neurons, accelerating permanent brain damage. So while living in the middle of nowhere seems like a great way to avoid TEOTWAWKI, your world as you know it just ended. Two hours after the onset of symptoms, you may well spend the rest of your life walking with a cane, or being unable to speak.

Or perhaps your job just disappeared, the company you work for was just down-sized. You are now out of work. How are you going to survive with no money? Sure, you have a closet full of guns, a basement filled with freeze-dried food, and you don’t need electricity. How are you going to pay your taxes, and how will you keep your home full of supplies when the bank comes calling, demanding that you repay your loans?

Even if all of society DOES collapse, have you planned for everything? Do you have ways of handling mundane things like trash removal? Sewage? We all know those things aren’t fun. There is a reason why publications on hygiene, trash removal, and wood gasification are on our manuals page.

It always makes me laugh when someone comes on here, bragging about how prepared they are. They will tell you about their years’ worth of freeze dried food in their fortress out in the woods, how they have 100,000 rounds of ammo and over 200 firearms. I promise you, unless you are a billionaire, you have accumulated those guns and ammo at the expense of something else. There is something you should have done, but neglected it at the expense of firearms and ammo, which believe it or not, won’t get you out of every conceivable situation, and having 200 of them isn’t any better in such a scenario than having 3 or 4 of them.

Take a look at your own situation. If you are prepared for one scenario- the complete breakdown of society, I can promise you four things:

  • It probably will not happen in your lifetime
  • Even if it does, you won’t be prepared for it
  • Something more mundane will happen to you
  • and you likely won’t be ready for that, either

Want to be ready for things? Have an emergency fund to get you through small emergencies. Then a second for bigger ones. A third for catastrophic ones.

  • To start, you should have at least $1000 in cash in the house.
  • Then you should have a second fund, accessible within 5 business days that is equal to 90 days’ expenses
  • Then you should have a third fund, accessible within 45 days that is equal to at least a years’ expenses

If you don’t have at least the first two, then having 200 firearms isn’t going to help you a bit when you lose your job and can’t pay your bills.

Live far enough away from a city to be safe from most craziness, but close enough to civilization so that you can get help when needed.

I’ve lived through a few TEOTWAWKI events in my lifetime.

  • Got divorced. Twice.
  • Lost my job a few times.
  • Went bankrupt
  • been homeless because of the three above at various times
  • injured so badly while at work, I was told it was a 50/50 chance I would never walk again

and not one of the above was caused by a riot, flood, hurricane, or collapse of society.

Remember that when you are planning for future disasters. The disaster you are planning for is rarely the one you will experience.

People who have read this post: 221
By Divemedic, ago

This Is Uncanny

I typed a post about conservatives being put on lists and scheduled it for the next morning (yesterday) and today, while looking for Blog fodder, I found this post with the headline: If You Bought a MAGA Hat Between 2021-2025, Jack Smith Has Your Data

Smith wielded the country’s most powerful law enforcement tools to nab data on Trump supporters who purchased MAGA hats, including their shipping addresses.

Smith’s sweep — though ostensibly focused on the events of January 6, 2020 — captured data back to 2005.

The documents suggest that Smith sought to ensnare the information of thousands of everyday Republicans, effectively treating them like parties to a criminal conspiracy due to their party affiliation.

All of that data is still on file somewhere. Your guess is as good as mine when it comes to figuring out what all of that data is going to be used for.

On a side note: Most of my posts are written the night before, and scheduled to post the next day, with the first one of the day posting around 3am, Eastern time. This one is a live post, that is, I posted it as soon as I wrote it.

People who have read this post: 314
By Divemedic, ago

Fatal Funnel

Some serious incompetence here. This video is from a SWAT service of a search warrant June 2, 2026.

A few comments.

So they are approaching a house where they KNOW there is no element of surprise. The armed criminal KNOWS you are there and are about to come knocking.

  • There was a cop who was standing right in front of the window (he was the one with the shield and crossed in front of the cop with the bodycam just before the breach). He should have seen the shooter who was covering the door. What the hell was he doing, if not covering that window and whatever was behind it?
  • They call the doorway a “fatal funnel” for a reason. Both of the two cops who were shot and wounded in this video were standing in the middle of the door.
  • The cop who kicked the door in, did so while the one with the hydraulic ram was still on his knees in the middle of the door. In that position, the entry team can’t enter because the ram guy was in the way, and the outgoing fire is almost guaranteed to hit him. Stupid.

As they approached, you hear cops say: “The front door is open. Oh, he just shut it.”

This is a group of cops who have little experience making entries. “Oooh, we have special tactical uniforms and cool looking guns. That will scare everyone into compliance.”

The best comment was this one:

What happened was every cop there was hyper-focused on the door and breaching activity. No one was watching the backs of the entry team. This is incompetence and complete stupidity. Atlantic City PD has 300 officers for a city with a population of 39,000. Now you know that their SWAT operation is lacking in the training department.

I am beginning to suspect that this is the case for a majority of US police departments. It’s become trendy for police departments to have fully kitted out SWAT teams, but I suspect the vast majority of them don’t have the training to be effective against anything more than grandmothers, soccer moms, and the occasional gang banger whose homes they raid.

I was never on the SWAT team, but I did train with them and did go to the SWAT Round-Up International hosted in Orlando once. As a purely supporting role as a medic. I was never a member of any entry team. Still, I did attend some training, and this team looks like a bunch of amateurs trying to COSPLAY as operators operating operationally in support of operations.

People who have read this post: 269
By Divemedic, ago

Enemy of the People

I want you to read this article. It’s a description of how Democrats used the power of government during the Biden administration to build a registry of everyone who donated to the Trump campaign. Capitol Police, who you will remember have an office in the Tampa area, are conducting surveillance of Republican members of Congress, their contacts, and their donors.

There is a huge effort by Federal agencies to create and maintain a list of Americans who are enemies of the revolution. The post office is keeping a list. All they have to do is see who you get mail from. The NRA? Second Amendment Foundation? Conservative fundraising? Think about the mail you get, and ask if someone could determine your political leanings by looking at your correspondence. It’s basic traffic analysis.

After all, a sitting member of Congress is the one who suggested that the government keep an “enemies list” so they can be confronted. Even the media joined in, including the “conservative blogger” who works for the Washington Post:

1. Lists of people interacting with Trump’s Twitter account—2023.
Smith’s office obtained a warrant requiring Twitter to disclose account interactions from October 2020 through January 2021. It expressly sought lists of users who followed, unfollowed, muted, blocked, or otherwise took specified actions toward Trump’s account. Reporting on the released warrant also identifies demands for lists of people who liked or retweeted his posts. This is a close parallel: investigators sought identifiable groups connected to Trump’s online activity.

2. Bank searches using “Trump” and “MAGA”—January–February 2021.
FinCEN shared methods with banks for reviewing transactions, including payment-message searches containing those political terms. Treasury’s February 2024 response acknowledged the terms but said they were intended to be considered alongside other suspicious-activity indicators.

3. Bank of America’s customer list supplied to the FBI—2021.
According to testimony reproduced in the House report, Bank of America supplied names of customers who used its cards in the Washington region January 5–7, 2021, with firearm-purchase information used to prioritize names. The FBI circulated information to field offices.

Separately, the FEC maintains searchable political-donor records, including Trump donors, under disclosure requirements applying across parties. Those are public campaign-finance records, a different category from investigative collection.

Now combine that with the location data that is being compiled by a nationwide network of Flock cameras.

These lists are going to eventually be used- whether officially, unofficially, or simply abused by those who have access. We’ve already seen some so-called “rogue cops” who are using them to stalk former and current lovers as well as targeting enemies. Make sure that you have robust contact with others who may be on the list. Once prominent people on the list begin to disappear, you will know that the lists are being used.

It is a sure sign of a dictatorship when there are mass arrests and disappearances. The Soviets even had a word for it- “vzyali” meaning “they have taken,” and there was no pronoun or noun needed to indicate who “they” were- “they” were unspeakable. They were feared. It was never “arrestovani” or arrested, because there were no charges and no trial. They simply disappeared. Vzyali was a word that struck fear in the hearts of Soviet citizens.

The people who were vzyali were never put in jail. They weren’t executed, for the most part. No, they were put into camps where they were forced to work themselves to death. Read about the eight most evil gulags at this page, and remember that all communists wind up using their lists for this purpose.

People who have read this post: 302
By Divemedic, ago

We Have To Be In A Simulation

The person running the simulator is just running it on every dystopian novel on their shelf. They were doing George Orwell, now they are using Ayn Rand.

People who have read this post: 230
By Divemedic, ago