Guardian: Could the Covid Lockdown have Helped Save Us from Climate Change?  They won’t be happy until people are stuck using horses again.

Greta Thunberg: “we are not listening to climate scientists”  We’re not listening to Greta Thunberg, either.

Thousands in Colorado without heat after vandals attack gas system

New Evidence That the Ancient Climate Was Warmer than Today’s

Britain’s new climate plan that could make millions of homes unsellable

Read it.

The Minneapolis Police Department released body camera footage of an incident where a felony suspect was fatally shot during a traffic stop Wednesday evening.

The officers repeatedly told the suspect to show his hands as he tried to drive away from officers before he was blocked in by police vehicles, video shows. The suspect was given another warning to put his hands up before he fired a gun through the driver’s side window at officers.

The Usual Suspects are protesting, of course.

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In recent years, San Francisco has seemed to be begging for companies to leave. In addition to familiar failures of governance — widespread homelessness, inadequate transit, soaring property crime — it has also imposed more idiosyncratic hindrances. Far from welcoming experimentation, it has sought to undermine or stamp out home-rental services, food-delivery apps, ride-hailing firms, electric-scooter companies, facial-recognition technology, delivery robots and more, even as the pioneers in each of those fields attempted to set up shop in the city. It tried to ban corporate cafeterias — a major tech-industry perk — on the not-so-sound theory that this would protect local restaurants. It created an “Office of Emerging Technology” that will only grant permission to test new products if they’re deemed, in a city bureaucrat’s view, to provide a “net common good.” Whatever the merits of such meddling, it’s hardly a formula for unbounded inventiveness.

Zman takes a look back.

The Light of Lagos was pretty much a dud last year. The omens got some of the Democrat primary right, but not enough to claim a victory. Biden did struggle and Warren flamed out early. Buttigieg did better in Iowa than most expected, but Sanders was the story until the party rigged the system to install Biden. No one predicted Biden would win the nomination and no one ever imagined that buffoon as president, so the omens can be forgiven for missing that one.

The prediction about Conservative Inc. has been spot on, but that was easy money, so no victory lap there. It will be interesting to see how they try to pump air back into their thing, given the mood of most right-wing whites these days. On the other hand, as long as the money from rich people keeps flowing into their rackets, it probably does not matter all that much. The rich people pay them to play a role and they will play the role, even if the audience has walked out of the theater.

Read it.

The shameless strategy feels counterintuitive, because our first instinct is to want to punish that sort of behavior. And historically, those sanctions have been effective. Punishing outlandish behavior is an important aspect of cooperative governance: it preserves social order by ensuring that we all play by the same rules.

Today, it seems like punishing shamelessness only increases social rewards to the transgressor. What’s changed?

Read it.

George Blake has just died in Moscow at the age of 98. Had he been of any other nationality than British, he would not have been allowed to die peacefully.

Read it.

Indonesian fishermen found an underwater drone on December 20th, local media reported. Analyzing photos of the drone, Naval News concludes that the drone is closely related to the Chinese Sea Wing family.

Wind and solar are losing ground to gas

Newly Discovered Greenland Plume Drives Thermal Activities in the Arctic

Read it.

I guess Bernie is working for Trump now.

Read it.

“Follow the science!”

“What is it this week?”

Read it.

Well, I like spam – slice it thin, fry it up, and you’re good to go.

(Have you noticed that nobody ever tries to make a fake vegetable out of meat?)

Read it.

John Paul Mac, who provided signature evidence that Hunter Biden dropped his laptop off at the Wilmington, Delaware repair shop – subsequently abandoning it, says Twitter’s actions forced him to shut down the ‘Mac Shop’ after Twitter said the New York Post‘s exposé on the laptop violated its “hacked materials” policy – which they initially disallowed from being shared across the network, according to Variety.

“Plaintiff is not a hacker and the information obtained from the computer does not [constitute] hacked materials because Plaintiff lawfully gained access to the computer,” reads Mac’s complaint, adding that thanks to Twitter citing its “hacked materials” policy, he is now “widely considered a hacker,” and has received negative online reviews along with threats against himself and his property – forcing him to ultimately shutter the Mac Shop.

Read it.

I guess metal is junk and wood is not…?

Read it.

Think of it as evolution in action.

LA Times: Children “literally organizing out of climate anxiety”

“Stimulus” Bill Includes Green Giveaways

A Social Conscience Is Nice, But Business Is Business!!

Autumn In United Kingdom, Ireland Has Not Warmed Since 1995 …Cooling Tendency

SCMP: China’s Power to “Marshal” Private Savings into Climate Mega Projects will Leave the West Behind

Newt Gingrich.

Having spent more than four years watching the left #Resist President Donald Trump and focus entirely on undoing and undermining the 2016 election, it took me several days to understand the depth of my own feelings.

As I thought about it, I realized my anger and fear were not narrowly focused on votes. My unwillingness to relax and accept that the election grew out of a level of outrage and alienation unlike anything I had experienced in more than 60 years involvement in public affairs.

Steve lets loose.

Statists aren’t interested in practicality. They’re interested in the messages products send. It’s okay if you smell. If it bothers you, it proves you’re bourgeois. The French don’t bathe much, and they’re better than us. They’re chic.

Statists love shoving half-baked technology down our throats to solve problems we don’t really have. They can never wait for the good technology. You have to have curly fluorescent bulbs that don’t work, NOW (rhymes with “Mao”). You have to have hybrid cars that only work because of subsidies NOW. You have to smell like a slice of green, furry bread NOW.

…

Maytag’s machine is a commercial-style washer, and thankfully, it has very few features. Remember how your old washer had about 5 settings, and it worked great? That’s how the Maytag is. You don’t need a fragile video display and special modes called “Power Fluf” and “Techno Steam” to get clean laundry. Do you think professional launderers buy machines with video displays and stupid features? Of course not. But they get clothes cleaner than you do.

Read it.

Hammer tech.

ZMan is not impressed.

A popular aphorism on this side of the great divide is a line from the poet T. S. Eliot who wrote “Humankind cannot bear very much reality.” Most of the time it is part of a general critique of the age, with regards to the human condition. Our betters, rather than face the reality of the human condition, concoct comfortable sounding fantasies to explain the inequality of man. The reason Johnny can’t read, for example, is because of some flaw in the schools, not the mating decisions of his ancestors.

Reality avoidance is a modern problem. In recent times it seems to have become something of a plague on society. Movies and television have shifted from fantastical tales of human achievement, like space travel, to comic book tales of god-like creatures saving the child-like humans from reality. Mainstream politics is one fantasy camp screaming at the other fantasy camp over their imaginary differences. The mass media makes fantasy literature look like a technical manual.

Read it.

What you need is an Exhale bladeless ceiling fan.

I have four.

Read it.

Back in the days before the Great Awokening, when our rulers would at least put up a logical pretense for why they had to screw us over, we were told immigration was necessary to prop up our old age retirement programs because American citizens weren’t having enough kids to support them on their own. In a world where social programs turn children into financial liabilities for all but the poorest Americans, it almost seems like anti-natalism isn’t an unintended consequence but rather the intention.

Inside The Bayesian Priory

Massachusetts city to post climate change warning stickers at gas stations

EU Turns to Magic to Progress their Clean Energy Agenda

Read it.

President-elect Joe Biden has a pony problem. During the primary, Joe Biden bizarrely responded to a woman who asked why voters should believe that he could win a national election by saying “You’re a lying dog-faced pony soldier.” That encounter came to mind when Biden this week mocked Fox reporter Peter Doocy, who violated the virtual news blackout on the Hunter Biden story. by asking about the scandal. Biden immediately walked off stage and then stopped and said “Yes, yes, yes. God love you, man — you’re a one-horse pony, I tell you.”

Read it.

fau•ci
/?fowCH?/

Noun

A lie intended to protect the image or status of the issuer of the lie usually by express or implied reference to credentials.
“when questioned about the costly failure of his program, Gov. Walz tossed a Fauci at his questioners by calling them unqualified to judge.”

Verb

To lie in order to evade accountability for previous lies.
“Gov. Cuomo faucied us about his handling of nursing home COVID cases.”

Study suggests great earthquakes as cause of Arctic warming

The other side of sea level change

Study: Dangerous Global Warming Could Occur by 2027  President Trump will handle it.

Read it.

In the United States, anyway, it is generally understood, though seldom mentioned in polite society, that the less distinguished one’s academic institution, the more likely one will insist upon the honorific “Dr.” And that’s for Ph.D. degrees. The degree of Ed.D.—officially a “doctor of education”—is, let’s be candid, more a certificate than a degree. Yes, one is entitled to the title “Dr.” But it’s only a short step, or half step, up from those entertainers and purveyors of boutique soaps who style themselves “Dr.” or “Doc”: “Dr. Bronner,” for example, or “Doc Watson.”

In this country, in most situations, “Dr.” is an honorific properly reserved for medical doctors. We understand that there are notable exceptions—“Dr. Henry A. Kissinger” comes to mind—but exceptions do not make the rule.

New York can’t buy its way out of blackouts

Climate Scientists to Request Political Representation on the Arctic Council

CBS Frets Too Much E-MAILING Contributes to Global Warming

Sea-level rise from climate change could exceed the high-end projections, scientists warn  As they have for the last twenty years. Still waiting for land prices in Malibu to start dropping. Still waiting for NYC to be under water.

Victor Davis Hanson.

After Nov. 3, the meaning of some words and concepts abruptly changed. Have you noticed how new realities have replaced old ones?

Media cross-examination of the president is now an out-of-date idea. The time for gotcha questions has come and gone. Why ask a president whether he is a traitor or a crook when you can focus on his favorite flavor of milkshake or compliment him on his socks?

The old pre-election truth was that new vaccines take years to develop. The new postelection truth is that it’s no big deal to bring out new vaccines in nine months.

Impeaching a first-term president after his first midterm election—on a strictly partisan vote, for political reasons other than the Constitution’s “treason, bribery, or other high crimes and misdemeanors”—is now a terrible idea.

Read it.

4. “Where is the good knife?” If you’re looking for your good X, you have bad Xs. Throw those out.

…

8. When buying things, time and money trade-off against each other. If you’re low on money, take more time to find deals. If you’re low on time, stop looking for great deals and just buy things quickly online.

…

13. When googling a recipe, precede it with ‘best’. You’ll find better recipes.

…

27. Discipline is superior to motivation. The former can be trained, the latter is fleeting. You won’t be able to accomplish great things if you’re only relying on motivation.

…

30. If you listen to successful people talk about their methods, remember that all the people who used the same methods and failed did not make videos about it.

Severian looks around.

We’re seeing the intersection of “information velocity” and “fantasies of competence.” It won’t end well.

Read it.

Eventually I’m going to get around to thinking through and writing up my view that while misguided Millennials lean heavily progressive at the moment, the next generation of young people is going to swing sharply to the right out of rebellion against the stifling conformity of the progressive left that went into hyperdrive this year. In part I’m taking in the lessons of M. Stanton Evans’s first book in 1961, The Revolt on Campus, which argued a similar point. It is quite striking how well that old book holds up and applies today.

Jonah Goldberg.

Taken literally, I endorse the phrase “listen to science” wholeheartedly. Scientists have important things to say to policymakers and citizens alike — and let’s not forget that in a democracy, voters are policymakers, too. A well-informed electorate is a useful check on ill-informed politicians.

The problem, however, is that the people who say “listen to science” tend not to mean it literally but figuratively, and worse, intermittently.

China’s Green NGO Climate Propaganda Enablers

Biden Expected to Lean on States in Fight on Climate Change

Read it.

The chairman of China’s Yoozoo Group Lin Qi, an executive producer on Netflix’s upcoming high-profile sci-fi adaption “The Three-Body Problem,” is currently hospitalized in Shanghai after what a police report indicated Wednesday may be a deliberate poisoning carried out by a colleague involved in managing that IP.

Read it.

Canadian prime minister Justin Trudeau has been celebrated in American media as a socialist dreamboat, often compared in progressive sex appeal to our own Barack Obama. This broke out again (to conservative mockery on Twitter) when Politico reviewed the year in Canada with a reflection on how Trudeau’s beard was capital-S “Significant.

Claim: A groggy climate giant: subsea permafrost is still waking up after 12,000 years

Read it.

2020 has been a year-long series of grievances, and TV was no exception. Although COVID ended a lot of business, leftist Hollywood has been in full force shoving its agenda down our throats. In honor of Festivus on December 23, we’ve once again gathered a list of 2020 TV grievances to air as well as feats of strength and Festivus miracles.

Gather ’round the Festivus pole and enjoy a Festivus for the rest of us!

(Another) Climate Warrior Aiming to Bypass Democracy

How carbon bureaucrats lied to get the policies they wanted

ZMan throws down.

There is an old line about how some things are so stupid that only educated people are willing to believe them. Sometimes it is phrased as the smartest are the ones who believe the dumbest things. It is one of those aphorisms that is often used to dismiss arguments or ideas that are unpleasant. Most clichés and sayings are conversation enders, not conversation starters. On the other hand, there is a kernel of truth here and you see it in this gem from a Dr. Rachel Pope.

As we know from the great Doctor Jill Biden, there are a lot of very stupid people walking around with the label “doctor” in their profile. Another good rule is that when confronted by someone insisting you call her doctor or she puts that title in her social media profile, you are most likely dealing with a stupid person. It is not always the case, as there are smart jerks in the world too, but people who wave around their titles like this tend to be narrowminded and remarkably insecure.

Read it.

I wonder how well one would survive an RPG. Asking for a friend.

Read it.

Even before moving its headquarters, Hewlett-Packard had more employees in Houston than any other city. This reflects past trends where Silicon Valley companies kept their highest-paid workers in San Jose but built their factories in other cities where housing was more affordable. Apparently, California taxes and housing prices have now gotten too high even for Silicon Valley executives.

Study: “Venus was once more Earth-like, but climate change made it uninhabitable”  No doubt white people were to blame.

Reef Heresy? And the Importance of Asking Questions

Of Warm Poles and Cold Tropics

Here’s What You Need To Know About Biden’s Climate Team

Study Suggests ‘Brain-Eating’ Amoeba May Be Moving North Due To Climate Change  Maybe Joe Biden is on the vanguard after all.

Climate Change Is The New Fed Mandate

Veganuary: Go Vegan in January to Avoid Future Coronavirus Pandemics The technical term for vegans is ‘prey’.