Jay Peterson - Blog

Cats can be trained, they just have to see the benefits.

9/22/2020

Mine are bounty hunters.
Living in the south, you get bugs. No matter what you do, they'll show up.
Which makes them instant prey when you've chosen to share your home life with 8lb apex predators.
(Beatrice in particular is a barn cat sadly lacking in a barn)
That said, letting them eat cockroaches is a bit hazardous for their health.
So we started following hunts, taking away the corpses and struggling mortally wounded to be yote into the backyard, then coming back with treats.
And when I'd come home late, I'd start finding bodies left where they'd fallen. They'd be duly collected and treats appeared.
As of this morning, they've learned to go see me instead of bothering Abby when she's working. And sure enough, my routine today was pants, corpse disposal, treats, and then caffeine.
This is the way.

Police reform

9/20/2020

Ultimately, any nationwide reform to police use of force law has to have four components.

One,
It MUST NOT be suicidal.
Nothing in said reform can put the officer at unnecessary risk to their life. You won't find officers you want who will follow it. You'll just find officers that will lie and falsify about it and prosecutors who will nail anyone they catch, not anyone conducting themselves wrong.

Two,
It MUST be consistent.
The ROE of our military during GWOT shifted with the political winds, to a tune called by the 24-hour news cycle. That CANNOT be allowed to happen with whatever statutes we end up in. Any needed changes must be examined, tested, trained, and THEN implemented.
No officer we want with a badge will work under conditions where one political decision will turn the legit action they did yesterday into something that will see them imprisoned tomorrow.

Three,
It MUST stand alongside our scrutiny of self-defense.
Right now as regards to legitimate shootings, there's a massively lopsided law and precedent disparity between the citizenry and the police. The badge should hold an officer to at least an equal standard, if not a higher one, not less stringent scrutiny.

Four,
It MUST be publicized to hell and back.
The proliferation of body cameras proved that having video doesn't mean shit if you don't know what you're watching. The public needs to be informed about the honest truth of deadly encounters to the police and what they entail. And by now we know damned well they're not going to get it from the press. Whatever it is, it needs to be known better than "just say no" or "only you can prevent forest fires. That's the level of publicity that needs to happen here. Nationally funded PSA's and such.
And that doesn't even get into the state and local political reforms that have to be enacted in order to make police reforms even feasible. The use of police as a revenue source is a real big turd in that punchbowl. And floating next to it is the rapidly growing segment of the population that simply cannot afford any encounter with the police.
It keeps on going.

Oh, it's that day again.

9/11/2020

No, I haven't forgotten. I don't think anyone who was alive and grown enough to pay attention can forget, however much they wished to. Almost three thousand souls in a single day, to applied hatred.
Nor am I forgetting now.
Where on average in this country, every day, of every week, for over twenty-five weeks, over a thousand people a day have died.
Alone.
Of a plague we have little inclination to fight but every inclination to use to whatever advantage we can.
A day where everyone from chest-thumping wannabe patriots to hand-wringing professional victims wants to remind us of death and our responses.
And I just want to shake my head. Death? I haven't just flirted with her. She's come out of a crowd to sit in my lap and play with my hair. She's spent the night more than once, and sometimes I made us breakfast.
Death doesn't just come en masse, when it's loud and bright and even sexy in a way you probably won't admit to yourself. She comes in the quiet times, the cold times. She's dressed for comfort and she's come from wherever else she is. She tries to be polite, because it's not often that people like her when she's working.
No, I haven't forgotten at all.
But I also remember how remembrance only takes us so far.

Influence moviemaking in 3 easy steps

9/18/2019

Unfortunately, the easiest way to influence what movies get made is a deceptively simple three-step process:
Step one: Make more money than you know what to do with.
Step two: Find a producer and tell them you're looking to invest.
Step three: Start making artistic contributions before, during, and after signing the checks.

Beto blew it.

9/16/2019

Last week, about an hour after I called out thems who open carry AR's in a piss-poor attempt to educate the populace, Beto forgot his lines.
As Lawdog so eloquently put it, he should've said, "Nobody's coming to take your guns." And said it polite enough that the "you paranoid, cousin-humping redneck" postscript remained unheard.
Instead he let the cat out of the bag on national TV.
None of this is new. Confiscation's been a Dem end goal since the early 90's. I've got a quote collection going back that far of essentially every prominent Democrat since Desert Storm saying so. Beto just did so with the cameras rolling and where nobody can deny it.
I've already pointed out for years that believing "nobody's coming" is a sign of being dense, deluded, or duped. He's just made it easier to point out.
Am I particularly worried about him? No. The man can't take 3% of the Democrat vote, I'm not worried about his ability to forcibly violate the constitution.
Nor do I care about the so-called threat he received.
One, when you're declaring that you'll steal by force, you're the aggressor.
Two, a conditional warning based off said theft by force ain't a threat. Cry me a river.
(current prediction: the fbi at best will give a finger-waving scolding to the Texan cross between Sheriff Joe and Vermin Supreme that made the tweet in the first place, and Twitter will permaban another thousand conservatives, because why not?)
I'm more worried that there's no major party left willing to stand up to this stupidity.
I could point out that Beto's words are going to be a right-wing talking point for years. Not only his words, but the fact that nobody on that stage said a word or lifted a finger to contradict him. And the crowd cheered him on like he scored a fucking touchdown.
There's an ugly, nasty part of me that thinks Trump may have won a second term right there without even being in the room.
Not that Trump is anything resembling a friend of 2A, for all that the crumbling remnants of the NRA's leadership kiss his ass. Where's my universal CCW? Where's my hearing protection act? Why is the ATF being allowed to suddenly change the definition of fully automatic by executive fiat on his watch? Why were bump stocks thrown out with the stroke of a pen and nothing gained?
And now he's apparently got some gun control proposals of his own in the mix, although nobody's sure of what they'll actually be.
At best, he hangs around long enough to nominate another justice liberal enough to throw out the old bathwater but conservative enough not to throw out the entire nursery with it.
At worst... it's too early in the day for me to start drinking, I don't want to contemplate it.

If I was more of a pessimist, I'd say the fuckers won.

9/11/2019

Three thousand dead in the attacks.
Another Two thousand dead of related illnesses.
Seven thousand killed in action in the wars.
Figure a good Fourteen thousand and more killed in action long after they came home; whether wrapping cars around trees, swallowing their sidearms, or making a nightcap cocktail they never woke up from.
And for what?
Iraq and Syria effectively exist only on paper, Afghanistan is still the graveyard of empires, our SOF forces have been cut down from a claymore to a dirk, and on the homefront we have a populace that either sees a jihadi behind every tree or is too terrified of being unwoke to admit that they're looking one in the face.
We got our news from comedians so long, but everyone's surprised that we elected clowns in the process.
The 4th Amendment effectively no longer exists. The 1st and 2nd only do because enough people are still fighting for them tooth and nail on a daily basis.
And those who came home with their shields and didn't become someone else's problem until they punched their own ticket? A good chunk of the grunts became cops.
Only America doesn't hire cops anymore. It hires Sin-eaters. People we can pawn off our dirty, ugly, dangerous work of dealing with humanity in all its wretchedness, then tear them a new one up city hall and down social media when they stand between rocks and hard places and have the audacity to make choices then and there, instead of the impossible we wanted. Then we have the fucking gall to wonder why we can't get good cops. We give them our dirty work then sneer at them while we fear becoming their dirty work all in the same heartbeat.
Nobody owns a truth, just what they can get a mob to agree to. Gods help us on election day of next year, when half the country will suddenly gain a reason to be exponentially more pissed off.
And yet?
There's nowhere else I'd rather be.
No other country on earth or in history that tries harder to live up to the expectations it was founded on.
One of our biggest crises happening now is because so many people the world over think we live in the promised land.
And by comparison to a lot, we do.
I hope we're good enough to keep it that way for generations to come.

Notes to hetero dudes, from another hetero dude.

9/4/2019

Note one:
If you've never been in one before, understand that nothing goes on in a gender-neutral bathroom that doesn't go on in a gendered bathroom.
Or at least it shouldn't.
Close and latch the stall door to the best of your ability.
Give a backblast warning if at all possible.
Don't try to start up idle conversation. If you're bored, scribble on the walls of the stall or check your phone like everyone else.
And most importantly,
DON'T FLIRT!
Seriously, do you not see the disadvantage you're putting yourself at?
Fuck, at least wait until you've washed your hands.
Sweet Daddy Odin, wash your hands.
Note two:
Someone wearing headphones is the closest thing in Western society we have to wearing "LEAVE ME ALONE" t-shirts. In the gym, on the subway, on the street, whatever, they all mean the same thing. Leave the person wearing me be.
Now, out here in the abstract world, we can argue the effectiveness of societal use of personal space bubbles, their effectiveness or lack thereof, and their affect on situational awareness.
That doesn't change the fact that people who intentionally break the unspoken rule of "leave the person wearing headphones in public alone" fall into three categories:
One, vendors trying to make a sale.
Two, dumbasses who think societal rules don't apply to people they're attracted to
Three, fucking predators.
If you don't have a hot dog cart within arm's reach and you're still not leaving the headphoned alone, your options are limited, fuckstick.
Note three:
If being a hetero dude has one universal constant, it's being turned down by a lady.
Often, before you've even had a chance to make your case.
Seriously, it happens to all of us.
ALL of us.
Yep, him too. You probably didn't see it, but it totally happened.
But I can see where you wouldn't believe it.
Because some hetero dudes experience this, get a divide by zero error in their head (not gonna speculate as to which) and suddenly fire off the discourtesy cannon.
Sometimes it's melodramatic disappointment, as if the lady's somehow disappointed all humanity by NOT desiring you.
And sometimes it's truly vile bullshit. Acting like she kicked your messenger down the well, and now you're threatening to conquer her Sparta.
But melodramatic, vile, or both, pulling this only proves one thing:
You fucking suck at being a hetero dude.
Seriously, you can't experience the one universal experience to us without being a sniveling loser or a vicious shit? I'd shoot you down too.
A quick "no worries" and going about your business costs you nothing but a little willpower at most, and makes the world a better place overall.
Try it and you might catch up to the rest of us.

Super Bowl Hotel rooms

1/16/2019

Guys on the radio discussing Super Bowl hotel rooms in downtown ATL make me feel so much better about myself and what I do during Dragoncon...

Armed and Charming snippet

9/13/2018

"When you decide to not only own but carry a weapon, it's vital that you realize that you have taken a measure of relative power and claimed it for yourself.
And it is relative. In an area where most adults are armed at least to a degree, joining in doesn't disturb the local balance absent other factors (being noticeably underage, intoxicated, belligerent, or a combination thereof).
But if you're among the first in your neighborhood to exercise such rights in this way, what is seen instead is an increase of power without the accompanying societal responsibility. To their eyes, there is something wrong with seeing a pistol on the belt but not a badge, a knife in hand without a cook's apron, or an axe over the shoulder without flannel.
Reassurance that this increase in your personal power is not an unrestricted threat to others is now a part of your job."

Sometime this year...

9/11/2018

Sometime within this coming year, an American service member will be interviewed.
I do not know that service member's name nor their branch.
Merely that they will be discovered fighting a war that began before they were born.