So you've got a rifle, a pile of associated crap, and an objective to hit. Rather than trying to hang all that stuff off your belt, putting all the weight on your hips, you could use a chest rig. Current industry offerings can carry from two to eight magazines worth of ammunition, plus radios, first aid kits, administrative supplies, maps, chemlights, batteries, snacks, and so on. Putting all this stuff into the rig and slinging your rifle, you can get to work.

In the past, load-bearing equipment has generally been belt-based, with suspenders or full vests being seen as weight increased. Interestingly, it was the Chinese communists who developed an alternate solution in the form of the Type 56, or Chicom chest rig. A hexagonal piece of cloth with three magazine pouches in the center and two grenade pouches on each side, it is worn across the chest and secured in place by straps going over the user's shoulders. The Soviet Union would make a modified copy of this and use it…

The Merry Wives of Windsor is one of William Shakespeare's plays, first published in 1602, and believed to have been written some time before that. It is a comedy about Sir John Falstaff, a character first introduced in the historical plays Henry IV Part 1 and Part 2.

In a tangent of the plots of the historical plays, Sir John Falstaff, the self-important and gluttonous character from those plays, visits the country town of…

Everyone admires the monument: no one admires the workers
cursing, swearing, scratching, bitching, cutting hands bloody,
like a reminder: remember, you are mortal.

No one admires the mortal: they admire the sweet, the easy
the beautiful. The mixing of mortar is not a sacrament, the
bloody afterbirth is to be buried. From a distance, we admire
the marketing materials.

With my hair up, in a shining dress, I am lovelier than a monument,…