Read it.

Rare and valuable plants that naturally “mine” large quantities of nickel are thought to be hiding in Indonesia’s forests – but it is a race to discover them before they are wiped out.

This is from the BBC so there’s no guarantee it’s accurate.

Read it.

Well, that’s what happens when your city is run by Democrats.

Read it.

Call me arrogant, but I’d rather optimize my indoor environment than try to spend more time in the capricious outdoors. I think it’s defeatism to give up on improving our indoor spaces and resign ourselves to the fickle weather and seasons.

If I was going to create an ideal environment for a human, I think there are several things I would include that we routinely fail to include in our homes and offices.

I see some good ideas here.

One common piece of advice given by doctors to insomniacs is to only use your bed for sleeping and for sex, and it’s good advice. If you use your bed for reading, studying, and watching TV, then your mind will not form a strong association between the bed and sleep, and you will have a harder time falling asleep.

Many people make this mistake.

Read it.

By prioritising allocation of H-1B visas to highly paid workers, the administration hopes to stop businesses importing workers who are wiling to accept lower wages than American workers, and therefore raise wages for Americans.

Paul Mirengoff at PowerLine.

The Washington Post reports on “the racial undercurrents of city politics” that loom over the upcoming city council election in Washington, D.C. The city is no longer majority Black due to the influx of young Whites and, says the Post, this development threatens the hold of Black establishment politicians.

Read it. And watch the video.

Allie Stuckey makes the case for voting Democrat. Her ad is a parody, and a funny one, but what is scary is how accurately it represents today’s Democratic Party.

‘Sleeping giant’ Arctic methane deposits starting to release, scientists find

A beloved Jamaican beach is succumbing to climate change. It won’t be the last (The Guardian)

CNN Proposes Climate Friendly Battery Powered Military Vehicles

UN: Urgent Climate Action Required to PREVENT the Greening of the Sahara Desert

Aussie PM Defies Pressure to Set a Net Zero 2050 Climate Target

CBS Developing ‘Climate Change Drama’ ‘Antarctica’

Reusable grocery bags aren’t as environmentally friendly as you might think  A low bar….

Read it.

New York Democratic Gov. Andrew Cuomo has done it again. His continued hostility and contempt toward Second Amendment supporters and the lawful firearm industry means another storied New York-based company is taking steps out the door and heading to friendlier and sunnier skies. All this as the industry sees record sales of firearms and a growing diversity among gun owners.

In a move not surprising to industry watchers, Kimber Manufacturing, headquartered in Yonkers, N.Y., announced it will officially move its corporate headquarters to Troy, Ala., continuing its years-long shift away from Gov. Cuomo’s antigun atmosphere.

Gov. Cuomo is likely pleased with the news of these particular jobs leaving his state.

Read it.

In her essay “Stop Being Shocked” published October 14 on Tablet, Bari Weiss listed troubling anti-Semitic trends taking place in the Progressive wing of the Democratic Party. She brings up multiple true-life examples reinforcing her assertion. She then goes on to say that she, like the majority of American Jews, is “disgusted by Trump and Trumpism”; a movement which in her words “normalized bigotry and cruelty in ways that have crippled American society.”

In his book Liberal Fascism: The Secret History of the American Left from Mussolini to the Politics of Meaning, published in 2009, Jonah Goldberg highlights penetrating methods and tools used by progressive Democrats to vilify their opponents. Nevertheless, today, Goldberg is a member of the #NeverTrumper community. He finds members of the American Left like Joe Biden and Kamala Harris less offensive than the intrepid, braggadocious, and proud American patriot Donald J. Trump.

I suppose mainstream media provide many Americans with necessary reasons to generate feelings of “disgust” toward Trump. “The press should be not only a collective propagandist and a collective agitator, but also a collective organizer of the masses,” wrote Vladimir Lenin 100 years ago. He continued: “He who now talks about the freedom of the press goes backward and halts our headlong course toward socialism.” Mainstream media omit Trump’s administration efforts to improve the lives of low and middle-income Americans with newly designed trade agreements; they don’t discuss policies that revived crippled economy. Nor do they highlight the tremendous success of the Trump administration in the Middle East.

Read it.

Before I became a parent, I didn’t have especially strong feelings about the time shifting by an hour twice a year. Like most people I was aware of the downsides — increased car accidents, schedule confusion, etc. — and I figured it would be better to knock it off. But I didn’t feel personally offended by having to mess with the handful of clocks in my life that don’t switch automatically. I’m not sure I even had an opinion as to whether, when we stopped changing, we should go with Standard Time or Daylight Savings.

With kids in the fall, it’s different. The days slowly get shorter, cutting deeper and deeper into the early-evening daylight hours where the young ones can play outside. And then, bam, the time change takes away another hour all at once, just because.

As if anybody spent time outdoors any more, with or without kids.

Read it.

Flippy also helps restaurants facilitate social distancing amidst the coronavirus pandemic, according to ZDNet. With Flippy in a kitchen, there is less crowding, a fact that Miso Robotics has repeated.

Thank you, minimum wage and pandemic panic lockdowns.

Arctic Sea Ice not freezing In October – first time since measurements began

CMIP6 Update

Map Shows Arctic Blast Sweeping Across The US   Gotta love that Global Warming.

Meet the Climate Scientists That Social Media Censors Don’t Want You to Know About

Michael Bloomberg Gives $20M to Down-Ballot Races Focused on Climate

Matt Taibbi weighs in on the latest fashionable fantasy.

How do you call something “Russian disinformation” when you don’t have evidence it is? Let’s count the ways.

We don’t know a whole lot about how the New York Post story about Hunter Biden got into print. There are some reasons to think the material is genuine (including its cache of graphic photos and some apparent limited confirmation from people on the email chains), but in terms of sourcing, anything is possible. This material could have been hacked by any number of actors, and shopped for millions (as Time has reported), and all sorts of insidious characters – including notorious Russian partisans like Andrei Derkach – could have been behind it.

None of these details are known, however, which hasn’t stopped media companies from saying otherwise. Most major outlets began denouncing the story as foreign propaganda right away and haven’t stopped. A quick list of the creative methods seen lately of saying, “We don’t know, but we know!”

Read it.

I love these fantasy maps.

Read it.

Former Soviet Union leader Mikhail Gorbachev apparently blamed “Dallas” for the fall of his country.

“Dallas” was a hit show on CBS that started in the late 1970s, and was one of the most successful television series ever made. Well, it turns out it might have been successful at a lot more things than just entertaining American audiences! It might have helped destroy communism!

Sometimes it is good to be the capitalist.

The Other McCain sums it up.

This is the only political principle you need to guide your election choices. Never vote for a Democrat, nor support any policy endorsed by Democrats. Insofar as it is possible, avoid residing in any community where Democrats are a majority, but if it happens that you find yourself living in a “blue state” (e.g., California) try to find a place to live in that state that is “red” (e.g., Kern County). Apply the same principle to your choices in terms of education and employment. Where should you go to college? Someplace where students care more about football than “social justice.” Where should you work? A private sector company that actually produces goods and services for profit, and not one of these gigantic “woke” conglomerates that embraces “progressive” values.

Democrats always ruin everything. Communities that were once peaceful and prosperous can rapidly be converted into dangerous hellholes, if the people start electing Democrats. Once upon a time — up until the 1960s — Detroit was one of America’s great cities. Then Democrats got in charge of the place and turned it into a desolation, where many acres of residential property were bulldozed into vacant lots. Every law-abiding resident who could afford to get out of Detroit fled the Democrat-controlled city, and a similar process can now be observed in many other places that Democrats have turned into hellholes.

The Joe Biden campaign is about doing to America what Democrats have done to Detroit (and Baltimore, and Chicago, and every other crime-plagued hellhole city in America). If you want the entire country to become violent and dangerous, populated by criminals, drug addicts and sex offenders, then by all means, you should elect Joe Biden president.

And that’s really all you need to know.

Read it.

Of course. Follow the money. If Trump wins, they’re all going to be looking for jobs anyway; and if he doesn’t, they’ll be crowding into Washington with their hands out.

Read it.

Sen. Marsha Blackburn, R-Tenn., wants the College Board to detail its partnership with a Chinese government backed group that has allowed Beijing to try to influence American students.

Read it.

Very impressive woodwork.

Weekly Energy and Climate News Roundup #428

Joe Biden: Climate Change will “actually bake this planet”  Well, I should hope so.

Major Hedge Fund Manager Demands Big Funds Force Companies to Act on Climate Change

Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists: In 20-40 Years, Global Warming will Make Louisiana Uninhabitable  Have you ever been to Louisiana? It’s already uninhabitable.

Read it.

So U.S. maker of military equipment won’t be able to sell stuff to Communist China?

I’m good with that.

Read it.

A “real estate frenzy” has been noted in Connecticut, New Jersey, Westchester County and Long Island, as City residents seek to move to where there is more space and less danger of infection. These areas could become prime attractors of Manhattan employees who want to avoid the crowded offices, crowded transit, crowded elevators and generally overcrowded situations that naturally accompany super-high population and employment densities.

Read it.

It has been long known and increasingly suspect that American colleges and universities accept vast sums from foreign donors, and then, some argue, merrily do their governments’ bidding. Before you say, “There ought to be a law!,” the US Department of Education has reminded us that there is a law. Section 117 of the Higher Education Act of 1965 explicitly requires American institutions of higher education to declare foreign gifts or contracts exceeding a total of $250,000 per year. In Education Secretary Betsy DeVos’s words, “transparency in foreign funding of higher education is not just something I think is a good thing; it’s the law. For too long, enforcement of that law was lax, but not anymore.”

Investigating California’s Rising and Sinking Coast Still waiting for NYC to be under water.

The Plastic Myth and the Misunderstood Triangle

Polar bear research on hold in Western Hudson Bay due to COVID-19 restrictions

How come, as we approach the date of the election, the BLM-AntiFa marches and riots … which were supposedly Bad For Biden … have just – stopped? There used to be reports every day, especially in Portland, of riots Every Fargin Night. And then they just – stopped.

Hmmmm.

Victor Davis Hanson.

What instead counts most are the days after. The debate take-aways, the news clips, the post facto fact checks, and the soundbites to be used in ads over the next ten days all favor Trump. In this regard, Biden did poorly and will suffer continual bleeding in the swing states.

We will know that because by the weekend Biden will be out of his basement and trying to reboot his campaign and actually be forced to campaign.

Nobody Cares about Climate Change. (And Few Care about the Economy, Either.)

Climate Campaigners Horrified Global Shipping Will be Allowed to Grow

“Over My Dead Body”: Louisiana Senator Responds to Joe Biden’s Proposed Climate Shutdown of the US Fossil Fuel Industry

Victorious New Zealand PM Urged to Apply Covid-19 Lessons to the Climate Crisis

The world needs nuclear power and we shouldn’t be afraid of it

Russia’s Laptev Sea Should Have Started to Freeze by Now  (Wired ‘Science’) OHNOWE’REALLGONNADIE!!!

Read it.

The Japanese have been doing this sort of thing by hand for centuries.

Read it.

The choir of panic in the background singing, “Russian disinformation! Disinformation! Disinformation!” is trying to drown out what Rob Long should be developing as a new sitcom, “All in the Biden Family.”

Read it.

This generation’s Paula Jones.

Read it.

The University of Glasgow’s Historical Thesaurus of English is a unique resource charting the development of meaning in the huge and varied vocabulary of English. It consists of almost every recorded word in English from Anglo-Saxon times to the present day, all arranged into detailed hierarchies of meaning.

 

Read it.

In virtually every charity shop across the country, there are an increasing number of sad-looking plastic cases, with a variety of films both beloved and forgotten inside. Once, they would have sold for around £20 apiece, but now most retail for no more than a pound or two. Yet, for the adventurous, there are treasures to be had, at a time when the convenience of streaming services is threatening to kill off home video for good.

It is no exaggeration to say that my cinematic education was immeasurably helped by the rise of the DVD format. Before, I was a keen but undiscerning cinema goer; afterwards, I considered myself a film aficionado. Some would have said fanatic. I bought my first DVD player in 1999, when the format was still in its infancy, but already I had heard excited whispers that this was a proper game-changer for the industry. After years of only being able to watch films at home either on overpriced, poor-quality VHS video tapes or expensive, hard-to-find Laserdiscs, this was a true boon. Not only were the films presented in their proper aspect ratios, rather than the hacked pan-and-scan format on video, and in pristine audio and visual condition, but, most excitingly of all, they came with a cornucopia of extra features.

Paul Mirengoff at PowerLine.

Kimberley Strassel of the Wall Street Journal provides a summary of what Tony Bobulinski, backed up by documents, has to say about the business dealings of Joe and Hunter Biden. Bobulinski, a former Navy officer and past supporter of Democrats, was Hunter Biden’s business partner.

Strassel’s entire article is well worth reading. I want to focus on the portions of it that pertain directly to Joe Biden — aka “the big guy.”

It’s Official: Solar Is the Cheapest Electricity in History (Popular Mechanics)

Exploring The New Vernacular That Will Emerge as a Response to Climate Change

Wrong Again: 50 Years of Failed Eco-Pocalyptic Predictions

CNN’s Bill Weir Endorses: Election an ‘Obvious Choice’ for ‘Anyone That Cares About Land and Water’

Read it.

I’m astonished that anyone is actually willing to discuss this in public.

It’s from a site in the U.K., so that may have something to do with it.

John C Wright

Mmmmmmm… pizza….

Read it.

On Epstein’s island, perhaps?

Popular ‘Science’.

Our very own Arbeitdienst! Where is Baldur von Schirach when you really need him?

Read it.

From 1993, so there’s no guarantee that it’s still available.

The book is well worth reading, though. (Also check out Vinge’s A Deepness in the Sky.)

Shit, just read anything by Vinge. You won’t regret it.

Read it.

Pay no attention to the nondescript woman waving at you from the sidebar. Whatever she wants, it can’t be good.

The excessive supply of PhDs is a result of the conjunction of a number of trends:

1. Everybody has a right to go to college.
2. You can get a doctorate in anything you want to study, no matter how vacuous.
3. Grading standards have sunk so low that all it takes is the willingness to kiss ass for seven years.

This faculty ‘pinch’ is a reminder to those who so desperately need it that markets work even when you don’t want them to.

Trump Gives Tiny Nuclear Reactors a Billion-Dollar Boost

MidAmerican Energy takes 46 wind turbines offline after blades fall in rural Iowa

Green Privilege, by Audacious Epigone

What cold lizards in Miami can tell us about climate change resilience

Read it.

And the hits just keep on  comin’.

Read it.

HUNTINGTON BEACH, Calif., Sept. 25, 2020 /PRNewswire/ — Newlight Technologies, Inc., a biotechnology company based in Southern California dedicated to making materials that improve the environment, has worked with the Carbon Trust, an independent organization with a mission to accelerate the move to a sustainable, low carbon economy, to calculate and certify the cradle-to-gate carbon footprint of Newlight’s AirCarbon product. The footprint analysis reveals that AirCarbon has a carbon negative cradle-to-gate product carbon footprint.