Blackcap Blog

Published at 10:12 on 14 December 2024

The Republic of Korea, more commonly known as South Korea, just demonstrated itself to have a much healthier political culture than the so-called leader of the free world. It’s not even remotely a close call.

President Yoon Suk Yeol, frustrated at a National Assembly that refused to do his bidding, declared martial law, accusing his opponents of being “communists” (a frequent screed launched by conservatives at their opponents, whether or not actual communism is at play).

It hasn’t gone so well for Yoon or his government since then. The National Assembly promptly reconvened (challenging soldiers who were attempting to block the entrance to its Proceeding Hall), and unanimously voted to revoke the declaration. Yes, a unanimous vote, including Assembly members who belonged to the same party as the president. None of this falling in line behind Yoon like the US Republicans fall in line behind Trump.

It’s not been a picture perfect response. The logical next step is to impeach the fascist who just tried to destroy democracy. On that, there was foot-dragging, due to opposition from parliamentarians in the president’s own party. But recently, enough of them were persuaded to cross the aisle to get the necessary supermajority for impeachment.

Advocates of martial law within Yoon’s administration are also being dealt with. And by “being dealt with,” I mean being treated like the accused criminals they are: arrested, detained, and charged with crimes in preparation for their trials. Not so much of the endless hand-wringing about whether or not the powerful should be held to account that plagues US political culture. The Republic of Korea is still apparently a nation of laws, not men.

I must point out here that there is no Get Out of Criticism Free card for the USA by virtue of its political polarization. South Korea is also a highly polarized society. Its president and legislature were deadlocked for months; this deadlock was in fact the motive for martial law attempt. Yet, in spite of the polarization, enough Koreans from across that polarized political spectrum have been able to unite in defence of the basic premises of an open and free society.

By contrast, the big news out of the USA is that Biden decided to pardon his own son and that Trump is highly likely to get virtually every last massively unqualified fascist toady he wants on his Cabinet.

That former point handily vindicates my earlier decision to be personally done with the Democratic Party. It is an institution that has proven itself time and again be not an opponent of democratic decline, but instead a willing co-participant in it. Any hope for the USA depends on the emergence of the sort of “none of the above” grassroots movement of which I have written earlier.

So please, spare me any garbage about American exceptionalism. The only things exceptional about today’s America are its low morals and advanced state of political decline.

Published at 09:25 on 8 December 2024

So, former UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson has been put into a forever box courtesy of an as of this time still unknown individual.

The snarky, irreverent tone of the above implies that perhaps I find it hard to be terribly saddened by the news. And that would be a correct implication, thanks to the general nature of the US health insurance industry, and the nature of this insurer in particular.

I am hardly the only one. You can’t swing a dead cat on social media without coming across memes that are much more explicit in their support of the shooting than I will ever be.

The thing is, politically-motivated violence, particularly politically-motivated killing, usually comes with some sort of manifesto on the part of the killer. Those who kill for political motives generally only do so because they care a lot about something, enough to literally kill over it. Such individuals are seldom quiet about their politics. Yet, no manifesto here.

Or maybe there is a manifesto (of sorts) after all?

The other thing I will say is that it all shows how class society values some lives over others. The news media has been talking about the shooting — and the search for the shooter — basically nonstop for days now. So much news coverage for one dead capitalist.

UnitedHealthcare has one of the highest claims denial rates out there, yet you don’t hear much in the news about all the deaths those denials cause.

Because of course you don’t. In any class society, some lives matter more than others.

Update: It was, as surmised above, a politically-motivated act. The suspect has been found, and he had a manifesto on him.

Published at 13:35 on 5 December 2024

Back in 2021, I evaluated different kinds of wire strippers and chose to upgrade my toolchest to contain some better ones. It was in retrospect a good decision that I do not regret.

But I had wondered about automatic strippers, and how well they work. Recently, I had a project that involved stripping a lot of wire, so I bought a set of Irwin No. 2078300 automatic self-adjusting wire strippers. I chose these because they were mid-range: I do not trust cheap Chinese knockoff tools and I do not strip enough wire to justify purchasing expensive German-made ones. Plus, I had heard that the design of the Irwins lent itself well to stripping the jacket off multi-conductor cables, and the latter is a fiddly task that would be nice to automate. (Klein makes a very similar set, but the Irwins were available locally and tend to have a slightly higher user rating.)

My verdict: I have tried them on a number of wires and cables, and their primary best use is to strip the outer jacket off multi-conductor cables.

For wires, it was a crapshoot how well they worked (or if they worked at all). In particularly, they do nothing but fail on Teflon or THHN insulation (but I knew that going in). On other wire types, sometimes they worked quite well, sometimes erratically. There is a tension adjustment one can fiddle with to tailor them for a particular wire type, but why bother? If I use my non-automatic Klein Kurve strippers, they always work precisely as intended, no fiddling with any adjustment necessary. Maybe if I needed to strip a lot of a given kind of wire at once it would be worth the time investment of getting the adjustment just right, but otherwise old-school strippers are a win.

Note: Most Romex these days tends to have THHN-insulated wire inside, so if residential wiring is your thing, these automatic strippers are likely to be a huge disappointment if you are expecting them to strip individual conductors.

For multi-conductor cables, it took the outer jacket off quite nicely, and it did so perfectly the first time, every time I tried it, on every type of cable I tried (Cat 5 cable, audio cable, low-voltage alarm and thermostat cable, round power cord cable, and Romex). No more fiddling with a knife and either not scoring the jacket deeply enough on the first try, scoring it too deeply and damaging the conductors inside, slipping up and cutting myself, etc. That justified their place in my toolbox, but if I had bought them expecting a general-purpose wire-stripping solution, I would have been disappointed.

So if you have wished for a tool to automatically de-jacket multi-conductor cable, buy these, but don’t expect them to be a general-purpose wire stripping solution.