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For almost a year, the central policy debate in most Western countries has been whether—and for how long—to impose lockdowns. Advocates of stringent lockdowns argue that measures such as stay-at-home orders and forced closures of businesses are necessary to save lives and prevent health-care systems from being overwhelmed. So-called “lockdown sceptics,” on the other hand, argue either that such measures are ineffective, or that their benefits are outweighed by the associated social and economic costs; and that a focussed protection strategy is preferable. (The term “lockdown,” as I am using it, does not encompass all non-pharmaceutical interventions. In particular, I am excluding non-onerous, common-sense measures like asking symptomatic individuals to self-isolate, encouraging vulnerable people to work from home, and restricting large indoor gatherings.)

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A group of Utah parents has prompted a review of an “equity book program” in their local school district after a teacher read a book favorable to transgenderism to a class of third graders.

The book, “Call Me Max,” written by transgender-identified author Kyle Lukoff, follows the story of a girl wanting to be seen as a boy.

The book is a transparent attempt to make children comfortable with the idea of changing gender. According to the book’s description, it is “a sweet and age-appropriate introduction to what it means to be transgender.”

Some parents, however, saw the book as an attempt to indoctrinate their children into a false view of gender and sex.

To their credit, they did something—and their actions have made a difference.

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Note that she’s very very white. The Crust takes care of its own.

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Can’t fault his priorities.

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Why not? He needs a hobby.

Alex Lasry, the 33-year-old son of a billionaire Democratic megadonor with alleged Russian mob ties, launched a Senate campaign in Wisconsin on Wednesday.

“We need a new way of thinking and a new perspective,” the wealthy Milwaukee Bucks executive said in his announcement video. Lasry is running to succeed Republican senator Ron Johnson, who has not revealed whether he will run for reelection.

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How would the US military react if ordered to suppress large-scale civil disobedience? With Washington D.C. still being patrolled by thousands of National Guard troops and Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin ordering the military to observe a 60-day stand down to combat ‘extremism’ in the ranks, it’s a question that certainly deserves closer examination.

If we just summarily executed everybody with visible tattoos, how much would the crime rate plummet?

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Oops.

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Paul Hastings, the law firm hired to conduct a “comprehensive review” of the Lincoln Project’s “operations and culture,” could be hard-pressed to deliver a credible result given several of its senior partners have donated to the scandal-plagued super PAC.

Greg Nitzkowski, the firm’s managing partner of more than two decades, donated $3,000 to the Lincoln Project in 2020, according to federal election records. Elena Baca, who chairs the firm’s employment law department, has donated almost $2,000 to the Lincoln Project.

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Amazon deplatformed the social media site Parler for violent content, but it has no problem providing violent, terrorist or Nazi content to its customers.

A flag from the terrorist group Hamas, a beanie that has the word “lynching” emblazoned across it, and a shirt with the slogan, “All My Heroes Killed Colonizers” are proudly sold on Amazon. In a previous study, the company was found selling a “Kill All Republicans” T-shirt. A shirt with an image of Jesus Christ wearing the crown of thorns had the logo, “Kill Your Idols” across it. Several pieces of jewelry and articles of clothing promoting Nazi symbols are also sold on the platform.

ZMan does some analysis.

Revolt in a normal human society is made easier by the fact that everyone knows who is in charge and the institutions they control. In a despotism, the name of the despot and his supporters is known. The institutions they control and their relative power is also well known. The same is true of a republic when it degrades into oligarchy. Picking sides comes naturally. In the synopticon, this is not so clear, because everyone is an agent of the system, a potential threat to anyone resisting the system.

Steve is disappointed.

Every day, normal people who miss America get a fresh axe handle to the face.

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A “woke” James Bond. It’s like Ellen DeGeneres holding a revival.

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As crazy as the public is, it still wants strong male characters who save attractive female characters. It doesn’t want to see Nancy Pelosi save Richard Simmons, and it never will, because traditional sex roles are hard-wired into human beings.

Why “Trusting the Science” Is Complicated

Tree Remnants Show Greta’s Thunberg’s Northern Sweden Was 3°C Warmer 9300 Years Ago…Trees Where There’s Tundra

Himalayan flood disaster exposes risks of India’s rush for green energy

More trees do not always create a cooler planet, Clark University geographer finds

Where Energy Modeling Goes Wrong

Biden’s climate ‘fix’ is fantastically expensive and perfectly useless-Bjorn Lomborg

Suspect science threatens US farming – again

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A man who had to hire a lobbyist to help him navigate regulatory hurdles to become the first and only licensed Washington, D.C., gun dealer in nearly a year is now seeing business boom.

Shawn Poulin, the owner of D.C. Security Associates, located on K Street in Northwest, said he had to spend thousands of dollars on a lobbyist to help navigate the city’s complex rules and regulations on firearms businesses. “People told me, ‘Be prepared to deal with D.C. government, they’re as corrupt as anyone else,'” he said. “I had to get a lobbyist and I was getting friction from the permit zoning guys.”

Read it.

One of the key members of the World Health Organization (WHO) team looking into where COVID-19 originated has a lengthy history suggesting he may hold a vested interest in determining the virus did not leak from a lab – and the media is hardly talking about it.

Much reporting on the WHO’s recent visit to Wuhan has done little to characterize Dr. Peter Daszak, the sole U.S. citizen on the team, and his background. Daszak has a long financial history with the Wuhan Institute of Virology (WIV), previous reporting shows. He even organized a PR campaign in early 2020 to paint the lab leak hypothesis as a “conspiracy” in order to relieve the lab and Beijing of any potential scrutiny.

Here comes the new generation of climate models: the future of rainfall in the Alps

Review of Biomass Calculations in Achieving Net Zero Emissions Scenario.

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“Somewhere at Google there is a database containing 25 million books and nobody is allowed to read them.”

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Republicans are “radicalizing against democracy” because they rely on our constitutional process when governing. This is the essence of Chris Hayes’ recent Atlantic piece contending that the GOP is descending into authoritarianism.

The MSNBC host notes, without any suggestion of self-awareness, that “the Constitution puts a wind at the backs of Republicans and makes them more competitive than they would be otherwise.”

What does “otherwise” mean here, exactly? A return to the British Empire? Or does it mean functioning as the centralized direct democracy that progressives covet, but that’s never existed in this country? There is no “otherwise.”

ZMan’s weekly podcast. Highly recommended.

This being that dull spot in the calendar, this week the show is about some more contemplative topics. One of the things that is striking is just how open the new ruling regime is about their hatred of white people. Those over the age of fifty, maybe over forty, remember when such talk was used as satire. It was ridiculous to think that white people would be treated like second class citizens. Here we are though, and most people are still struggling to process it.

Read it.

I’d sooner ride in a Tesla than fly on United.

Read it,

Dr Peter Ridd, a professor of physics at JCU, was sacked by the university for serious misconduct for questioning the climate change science in the IPA’s publication Climate Change: The Facts 2017 around the Great Barrier Reef, and for public statements made on the Jones & Co program on Sky News Australia.

“James Cook University has engaged some of the most expensive legal representation in the country to stifle the free speech of one of its own staff, despite crying poor about university funding in the wake of coronavirus. It creates a massive chilling effect for any academic engaging in public debate in Australia,” said Mr Rozner

Climate crisis pushing great white sharks into new waters Pushing!

Guardian Reader: the Ecological Term “Invasive Species” Is Racist

Environmentalism is the New War on the Working Class

Biden & Democrats conceal U.S. CO2 decreases of 3.4 billion tons from natural gas

Major Aussie Refinery Closing, Due to Hostile Government Policy

Progressive Pleased To Discover That Hell Has No Climate Change  Babylon Bee.

Environmentalists Sue EPA to Improve Air-Quality Standards

Scott Alexander.

To what degree are psychiatric conditions more like diseases (always bad) vs. diverse neurotypes (potentially good)?

Zman has an idea.

One reason we have become an outrage culture is outrage is the only way to get attention from others. In a world where people are linked to a constant stream of images and bursts of text, getting noticed means being outlandish of outrageous within those data streams. On the other hand, being glued to the data stream leaves little room for real human interaction and even less room for real emotion. Large swaths of the population only feel human when they are outraged by the stream.

Well, what else is it good for? It’s not as if he’s going to eat it.

John Hinderaker at PowerLine.

How can this be, since wind turbines only produce electricity when the wind is blowing sufficiently, which is around 40% of the time, and solar only works when the sun is shining and the panels are not covered in ice and snow–in a northern climate, something like 18% of the time? Obviously the Greenies have a problem. Today, their problem is solved by building natural gas plants that carry the load when wind and solar are AWOL–which is to say, a large majority of the time. Of course, the natural gas plants are dispatchable, which means they can produce energy reliably, at will, 24/7. Which raises the obvious question: if we have to build fully-capable natural gas plants to make wind and solar sort-of work, some of the time, what the heck to we need the wind and solar for?

Climate “Crisis” Update

Environmentalism Is the New War on the Working Class

Achtung Baby! (It’s Cold Outside) – Germany’s “Green” Energy Fail Rescued By Coal And Gas

INSANITY: NYT’s Ezra Klein Ponders Having to ‘Dim the Sun’ to Fight Climate Change

Could a Nuclear Reactor Actually Last for Hundreds of Years?

Roderic: ‘The More Electric Vehicles We Build, the Worse CO2 Gets’

Chilton Williamson.

I sure am.

What, after all, is a professional politician if he is not a supposed expert, first in the business of getting himself elected to office, and second in the art of statecraft that competent governance requires? Before 2016, expertise in politics was expected and admired by the American electorate, as Americans admired expertness in every other occupation. In electing Trump voters were expressing their distrust — indeed, their contempt and positive dislike — for the professional political wizards who had transformed their country beyond recognition over the past half-century, in the process half-destroying it. But because political expertise has been merged in modern activist-progressive democracies with techno-scientific-bureaucratic expertise, expertise as a concept — even as a word — has been discredited along with expertness of the political kind, to the point where this overworked nine-letter word is close to becoming the popular equivalent of a four-letter one.

Scott Alexander.

Klein calls this “the Democratic party more successfully resisting polarization”, and thinks of this as related to structural differences between the two parties. He says that the Republican Party represents the modal American on various characteristics, eg Christian (the most common religion), white (the most common race), straight (the most common sexual orientation), etc, whereas the Democrats represent everyone else (eg Muslims, Jews, atheists, and every minority religion; blacks, Asians, Hispanics, and every minority race; etc). That means the Republicans are more ideologically uniform – Christians are genuinely similar to other Christians, but Jews are only superficially similar to Muslims by virtue of their non-Christianness. That means ideology can’t really capture the Democratic Party in the same way it captures the Republican Party. One point kind of in support of this – ask Democrats their favorite news source, and you get a long tail of stuff (most popular is CNN at 15%, then NPR at 13%, and so on). But ask conservatives and it’s dominated by FOX (47%). Does this lack of news-source diversity reflect a lack of ideological diversity? Could be.

Freeberg nails it.

Leftists who want to have all the election fraud evidence lined up so they can knock it over item by item by item, are just adorable. It looks like they want to debunk just three to five items — to their own satisfaction, not to anybody else’s — announce their check-mate, and if they don’t get immediate capitulation, announce to everyone in earshot something like “See? Nothing will ever convince this guy.”

They don’t understand. There are five big bundles of evidence.

Massachusetts climate official proposes targeting regular people who heat their homes: ‘We have to break your will’

WVU biologists uncover forests’ unexpected role in climate change

Experts Blame Global Warming for Cold Weather in Thailand and Singapore

Biden to Kill 200,000 More Jobs Because… Climate Change

Read it.

Why don’t they just day ‘Democrats’ and get it over with?

ZMan points a finger.

In the case of the ongoing pogroms against white people, there is not much talk about who is responsible for it. Part of that is due to the prohibitions against white people talking about being white. One of the great ironies of this crisis is that the media is filled with invective about white people, but you will never see a white person start a sentence with “as a white person.” Whiteness is a thing that is only allowed to be a hobgoblin in the minds and mouths of the anti-whites.

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This is why the anti-white pogroms have met so little resistance thus far. On the one hand you have the taboo against white people taking their own side. On the other hand, you have the face of the anti-white program being white or white presenting. If all of the anti-whites were black, then the problem of assigning blame would be simpler, but the leading anti-whites are almost always a pale face. The chief racketeer in the grievance rackets is a white woman named Robin DiAngelo.

Audacious Epigone runs the numbers.

Apropos a discussion in a recent comment thread regarding political orientation, race, and intelligence, let’s take a look at what the GSS offers us.

Claim: Global Warming May have Started in 1825

Researchers Warn Sea Level Rise Worse Than Feared

Green Groups Object to Swedish Climate Geoengineering Experiment

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I suspect that removing the humans from the process is designed to insulate against charges of racism.

If it has the added benefit of selecting intelligent over unintelligent people, that’s gravy.

Climate change may have driven the emergence of SARS-CoV-2  Climate Change – is there anything it can’t do?

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Works for me.

Roger Scruton liked to say the the core of the contemporary left is a “culture of repudiation,” in which the inheritances of our civilization must be denied and rubbished precisely because it is our civilization, rather than the imaginary one of the left’s making.

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“How To” books are a dime a dozen and cover every imaginable topic, or so it seems. But one might think another genre would also be popular, even important: “How Not To” publications. That advice can often prove more valuable. It can at least help one avoid missteps.

Take the role of White House Press Secretary, filled since January 20th by former Obama Administration Communications Director Jennifer Psaki. I’ve never seen so many rookie mistakes in a spokesperson in a relatively short time, even while granting her some grace for being “in the arena” in one of the toughest White House jobs, even while performing before a friendly, even fawning audience.

ZMan nails it.

There are many things that one can point to in the current age as the cause of what we are experiencing. Social crisis is always the result of many factors. There is never one single cause. Even so, examining the individual causes has some utility. It helps provide a little sanity for those living through it. If nothing else, it is like the band playing on the Titanic in that if provides those who are condemned to live through the crisis with a bit of dignity as they sink into the abyss.

Anyway, one of the things that has made modern life such a mess is the vast chorus of nitwits who fill our lives with their voices. They repeat whatever has been placed in their hymnals by people with agendas. One person says something that gets them some attention and then everyone repeats it. The thing is, these people position themselves as authorities on various topics, so when they repeat what they hear, they inevitably lend authority to it. The fact is, they know not what they say

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Few people in any type of media job have ever worked in the dreaded private sector.

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The coming wave of digital regulation may claim to target “Big Tech” but will inevitably end up harming citizen-innovators most because regulators have forgotten to include them in their process.

No government has yet succeeded in writing a law that manages to hit the assholes and miss the heroes.

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Not to mention vulnerability to any jihadist with an airplane. Yeah, it attracts attention, but the military has a technical term for ‘attracting attention’: It’s called ‘drawing fire’ and that’s not a good thing.