I saw this video from my YouTube recommended videos.

Here is my two-cents on topic of investment in tech.

In a way, the success of digital business has ruined investment for non-digital technology.

I, along with my grad adviser and a couple of other people developed a new technology for medical implants.  We were working on a patent, and we trying to find investors to get this off the ground.

We tried for two years to get someone interested in backing us.  What we were told repeatedly, was that the times frame for medical technology to bear fruit was just too long.

We would meet people who started the conversation with “tell us about your app.”

We didn’t have an app.  We had an implant.  You can’t fix a shattered hip with an app.

We worked with investment consultants and tech incubators and time and again we heard that there was very little interest in investing in non digital tech.

If you want to come up with the next app or dotcom, there is money available.  Figure out how to make your thing into an app and investors will show up.

These investments have a huge return in a short period of time.  Capital can be some office space, a domain name, and a server.  Six months later you have several million downloads.

If you want to make something, actually start with raw materials and make something, you are shit-out-of-luck.  Nobody wants to fund that anymore.

We eventually ran out of money and I got a different job.  One that I love but I know I will eventually move on from.

What I’d like to do is start my own company.  This is where I know I’m going to run into problems again.

Two startups gaining a lot of traction like that are MVMT and Misen.

Misen began on Kickstarter, MVMT started on Indiegogo.

The business models for both companies are the same: design a product, have an existing manufacturer over seas make it, sell it internet direct cutting out the middle man and markup, for a lower competitive cost.

Fine.  Whatever.  That’s a business model good for some.

Not for me.

I don’t want to have other people make stuff for me.  Every day I run into vendors who can’t make shit work the first time.  We get a lot that is out of spec and it is 12 weeks to six months to get the next lot.

I want control over MY processes.  I am a master heat treater.  I want the furnace in my shop.  I want to watch it run and if something isn’t right, I can fix it that day, not wait weeks for a new batch to arrive.  I want to make my stuff in America, not Southeast Asia, because that actually means something to me.

Setting up a shop takes time and money.  Returns on investment can’t be actualized in six months.

If companies and investors actually want to drive innovation, they have to look past apps and dotcoms and invest in meatspace technology.

If only the big existing companies invest in that, the rate of growth will be slow.

You can’t eat and app.  You can’t cure a disease with a dotcom.  You have to do real world, physical science.  Spend money there too.

A while back, Miguel wrote a post about the completely fucked Daniel Shaver shooting in Arizona.

I wasn’t about to pick a fight with him on his post, but I thought that shooting was borderline criminal.

I watched that bodycam footage several times.  The only one reason I don’t think it was murder was the one clear instruction the officer gave the guy was “don’t touch your pants” which is what the guy did.  Other than that, fully sober, I couldn’t’ figure out what the cop wanted the guy to do.  Crawl with his legs crossed?  Crawl on his belly?

This brings up the question: if a cop is saying “follow my orders or I will shoot you” and then gives confusing or impossible orders, what do you do?  To me, that seems like the cop is setting up a justification for a shoot.

“I want you to crawl over to me on your belly, barking like a dog with a thumb in your asshole, or I’ll kill you!”

Sure, it might not be a lawful order, but that only helps your family recover damages because you are already dead.

This may seem absurd, but there have been cases of police giving conflicting or contradictory or confusing orders.  This was at the heart of the Philando Castile case.

There was a case (I saw the dash cam footage, but I can’t find it now, if one of my readers knows the case I’m talking about, leave it in the comments) of a traffic stop that ended  in a fatal shooting.  The passenger (a black man) was given contradictory orders by two cops.  One was yelling “don’t move” the other was yelling “get your hands up” and he was shot for not following orders.

A police officer in a police online magazine even addressed that this type of thing happens.

That evaluation can become unnecessarily complicated in the aftermath of an incident involving multiple officers and a variety of weapons.

In one incident, a distraught woman wielding a weapon said that she was about to surrender to one officer’s instructions when she was shot and wounded by a second officer for failing to comply with his. Given the sometimes conflicting orders one encounters in the field (“Get your hands up!” or “Keep your hands in your pocket!”), it’s a wonder that such things don’t happen more often.

This is why it’s imperative to leave no ambiguity as to which officer is responsible for verbally engaging a subject.

I bring this up now because of a shooting just recently happened in Wichita, Kansas.

One asshole in LA swatted another gamer.  The other gamer gave a false address.  The SWAT team responded to the call at a third part address, unrelated to the two gamers,  The result was the death of a 28 year old man.

The body cam footage from one of the responding officers was terrible.

One officer was yelling “show your hands” another “walk this way,” then in the middle of a repeated command, a third officer fired.  The police were paled across the street, yelling.  No one was using a police car loud speaker.

I found the address of the victim from news about a GoFundMe page.

Here is the top down Google maps image of the neighborhood.

That shot was taken across four lanes of traffic, plus the start of a turning lane, an easement, sidewalk, and front yard.  By my measure from the Google maps scale, that’s 30-35 yards.

You can barely see the victim in the bodycam footage.

Multiple police, taking cover behind vehicles, with rifles, shouting orders, in the dark, and a guy who was told to come out his front door is shot from 30+ yards, to me is no just a bad shoot but a criminal one.

According to the media:

Several officers arrived and surrounded the home, braced for a hostage situation. When Finch went to the door police told him to put his hands up and move slowly.

I didn’t hear “move slowly.”

But Livingston said the man moved a hand toward the area of his waistband — a common place where guns are concealed. An officer, fearing the man was reaching for a gun, fired a single shot. Finch died a few minutes later at a hospital. Livingston said Finch was unarmed.

“Reaching towards his waistband.  Really.  I didn’t see that because I didn’t see anything.  Was it his waistband or a doorknob?  Or just a confused guy wondering why there were a bunch of cops parked across the street from his house yelling at him?

Sure, the department can tell me that this is a breakdown in procedure, but at what point does a breakdown in procedure become criminal?

If a surgeon takes a dump, wipes his ass, and performs surgery without scrubbing or gloving up, that breaks procedure.  If the patient dies of an infection because of it, the surgeon goes to jail.

I believe the only way to end these types of terrible situations is to develop a procedure and make disastrous failure of procedure criminal.

A lawsuit is little compensation to a two year old who will grow up not knowing her father because of a bunch of cops collectively fucking the dog over a 911 call.

Maybe if the cops have it in the backs of their minds that if they fuck up, they end up in prison, they will be more inclined to be follow procedure.

I was tempted to write this post after the acquittal of Jose Ines Garcia Zarate for the manslaughter of Kathryn Steinle.  As much  as the media said that the verdict was fair, I highly doubt it.  Involuntary Manslaughter doesn’t require intent for a conviction, only negligence and guns, generally don’t just “go off.”  Trump made the killing of Kate Steinle a campaign issue in 2016, and I believe that San Francisco took to first chance it had to stick a finger in the eye of Trump and did so.

Just prior to that, California declared itself a sanctuary state in direct rebuke to Trump’s policies.

Transgender activist, gender writer, Social Justice Warrior, and all around hyper-progressive freak show, Zinnia Jones went to Twitter to say that all “undocumented immigrants” charged with crimes should be set free for political reasons (I can’t find the original Tweet, but her response doubles down).

Maga frog redhats got upset at me for saying any undocumented immigrant charged with a crime should go free.

It's called shifting the Overton window, asshats. And in a better direction than you are.

— Zinnia Jones 🐍🔆 (@ZJemptv) December 6, 2017

That was all before Christmas.

The news from the last few days has made all this worse.

First was California Governor Jerry Brown’s pardoning of two illegal immigrants who were facing deportation, to butt heads with Trump.

Not to be outdone, Emperor Governor of New York Andrew Cuomo granted clemency to 61 people including 18 illegal immigrants, specifically to challenge Trump.

What we are seeing among the Progressive-Left is the creation of a super protected class of people to whom the law does not apply because Trump.  No matter what some Illegal does, he will be acquitted, set free, pardoned, or otherwise not suffer any legal consequences because Trump is in the White House.

Let’s talk about Europe.

Muslim migrants have become a protected class in Europe.  Gang rapes in the UK are covered up or ignored so as not to offend Muslims.  Sweden is incapable of prosecuting Muslim rapists.  At best, European nations warn women not to go out after dark.

European governments are so hog tied by political correctness that they can’t protect their own people.

This has given rise to vigilante groups like the Soldiers of Odin.

If the Finnish goverment can’t defend its nation’s women from raping migrants, than the decedents of the men who fought off the Soviets in the Winter War will have no problem going Finnish on the Muslim migrants with axe handles and clubs.

This is spreading across Europe and into Canada.

When the goverment can’t protect the people, the people will protect themselves.  The problem is that frontier is quick and vicious.

When homeowners outside of big Blue cities call the cops to report that that their property has been stolen and are told that it was most likely illegals and they can’t or won’t do anything about it; the next time said homeowner wakes up in the middle of the night to find some illegal pulling the copper wiring out of his pool pump he’s going to beat him with a shovel and leave the body in a ditch.

If the law is not applied equally by the State, people will take the law into their own hand.

Trump Derangement Syndrome – also known as TDS – is serious mental illness that is afflicting many people on the political Left.

It manifests itself in many ways.  One way to tell if someone you know has TDS is if they engage in strange and irrational behaviors related to Trump.  Such as believing that one of the most corrupt and ineffectual members of congress is a hero for screaming nonsensical statements about Trump.

Later stages of TDS include screaming “Auntie Maxine’s” nonsensical statements at an animatronic Trump at Disney World, scaring children.

I protested @realDonaldTrump at the #hallofpresidents cuz I'll never get this close in real life probs. #lockhimup pic.twitter.com/jKOQShIdz8

— Jaydan Heather (@GayMalsky) December 27, 2017

In the case of journalists, it can be total protonic reversal of previously held opinions, causing all credibility to be destroyed at the speed of light.

Newsweek was solidly anti-gun.  Newsweek could always be counted on to portray gun owners in the worst possible light.

That was until Newsweek came down with Trump Derangement Syndrome.

In Trump’s America, armed militias are heroes.

WHAT IS REDNECK REVOLT? THESE LEFT-WING ACTIVISTS PROTECT MINORITIES WITH GUNS.

I’ve covered these douche bags before on Gun Free Zone.

The word redneck is typically used to insult a white person from a poor, rural background, a demographic that tends to be politically conservative. But now a group of far-left activists is reclaiming the word and using it to spark a working-class movement that promotes social justice and protects minorities.

I’m pretty sure that most Newsweek readers know what the word redneck means.  I can just about guarantee that redneck is a Newsweek reader’s favorite word to describe people in the South and Mid West.

Redneck Revolt’s website says it aims to put “the red back in redneck,” a reference to the use of the color red to represent communists and other members of the far left.

They are admitted Communist revolutionaries.  They are Che Guevara LARPers.  In a rational world, people calling themselves communists and running around with guns would be seen a pretty fucking dangerous and shown the same contempt as any White Supremacist Militia.  Perhaps more so, considering that Communist revolutionaries have a body count orders of magnitude greater than the Klan.  But not to people suffering from TDS.

Similar to the grassroots vigilantes who attended the Unite the Right Rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, this past summer, members of Redneck Revolt can often be found at protests armed to the teeth. But instead of protecting far-right white supremacists, members of Redneck Revolt provide protection for minority groups such as Black Lives Matter and other groups fighting for equality and justice.

They are there to “protect” minorities?  Like the same Black Lives Matter activists that Newsweek said wanted to “bring down white capitalism with ‘Black Christmas.'”

So… not so much protecting innocent minorities as being the armed thugs for a bunch of racializing anti-Capitalists.

They are a national network of community defense projects that, unlike many people on the left, advocate for the right to bear arms. Since the group was founded in 2016, around 45 branches of Redneck Revolt have emerged in more than 30 U.S. states, the group says. Their aim is to respond to the upsurge in extremist rhetoric and violence coming from white supremacist groups over the past year.

And see, I thought groups like the Michigan Militia and the (less organized) Bundy Militia were wacky, violent kooks?  If you take up arms because you hate the Federal Government you are a kook, if take up arms because you hate white people (remember: white supremacy is everywhere) you are a hero.

“The current political environment has seen armed militias intimidating people as they go into their mosques to pray, violent white nationalists attacking people in the street, Nazis openly calling for genocide all across the country, and political wavering around whether white nationalism is a defensible political ideology,” the group said in a press release sent to Newsweek.

There was ONE armed protest outside of a Mosque.  I’ve done several posts this year about the seething Lefty Social Justice hatred of Jews and white people.  These assholes are also calling for genocide, just for groups that the Left has no political love for.

It went on, “Redneck Revolt members recognize how real the threats of violence have become because of the friends and loved ones they’ve already lost, and they organize in community defense as both an obligation and a commitment to defend each other.”

Wait, what?  “Friends and loved ones they’ve already lost…”  Was there an anti-Communist street battle in the US and I wasn’t invited?  I didn’t even hear about it on the news.  Or did they mean that their rational friends and family told them to “fuck off” because of their stupid, racist, communism?

“[Redneck Revolt] is a pro-worker, anti-racist organization that focuses on working-class liberation from the oppressive systems which dominate our lives,” the group said.

It also claims to have members representing a variety of political ideologies, including libertarians, anarchists, communists and independents. But the members share the goal of countering the growth of white supremacist movements and building solidarity among diverse members of the working class and the poor.

Democratic Communists, Libertarian Communists, Anarcho-Communists; they are all just variations on a theme.  They all want to kill you and take your stuff, the only difference is the color scheme of their bandannas.

Under any other conditions, a bunch of political extremists carrying AR platform rifles in public would cause Newsweek to clutch their pearls and swoon.

In 2017, as long as those extremists are part of the #Resistance, and claim to stand against Nazis (Remember, all Republicans are Nazis now), marching around with guns is good.

For Newsweek, the Second Amendment has limits… when applied to conservatives.  When it’s radical, racist, Communists AR’s are cool.

Sidney Harman overspent when he bought Newsweek for $1, a takeout Chinese food fortune cookie fortune has more credibility than these worthless fuck-shits.

Once upon a time, having a guy’s night involved hot wings, beer, and a movie that featured both gratuitous nudity and wanton violence.

Now a guy’s night involves chicken nuggets, tater-tots, chocolate milk, and a movie about a talking race car.

I swear, I’m a grown ass man.

I’ll prove it… right after I finish building this thing out of Legos.

I thought my last post about the Alabama special election was the last one that I would make.  I guess not.

The 2017 Alabama special election can’t stop being a color reversal of the 2016 Presidential election.

2016: There was no way a Republican with no political history could win a national election in the US.  Except that Hillary, will all her scandalous history was the worst piece of garbage the Democrats could pick.

2017: There was no way a Democrat with no political history could win an Alabama special election.  Except that Moore, will all his scandalous history was the worst piece of garbage the Democrats could pick.

2016-2017: Totally blown away by the fact that she lost, Hillary had to evoke every half-baked conspiracy theory to explain why Trump won, to the point where everybody but the most die-hard HRC supporters want her to go the fuck away.

2017-2018: Totally blown away by the fact that he lost, Moore is to evoking every half-baked conspiracy theory to explain why Jones won.  Moore is filing a complaint to challenge the results of the special election with the help of a JFK conspiracy theorist.  Everybody but the most die-hard Moore fans want him to go the fuck away.

Hillary: “I can’t just stop proving how much of a piece of shit I am and why I deserved to be defeated.”

Moore: “Hold my beer.”

The next time I hear about Judge Roy Moore, it better be that he has been forced to take the long walk into the cursed earth.

I just watched Bright on Netflix and it is out-fucking-standing.

It’s like a combination of End of Watch (which was the best cop movie I’ve seen in years) meets Lord of the Rings, with a sprinkling of Harry Potter thrown in for good measure.

I know that sounds bad the way I describe it, but it’s really not.  It was great.

Of course the Social Justice Warriors hated it because the “lazy portrayal of racism.”

The official Tomatometer ranks it at 28% but 89% of people enjoyed it.

If you have two hours of your life that you want to spend watching a thoroughly enjoyable action flick with a unique twist, I highly recommend it.