Read it.

Shai Efrati said he has found that when healthy adults over the age of 65 were given a special oxygen therapy, their cognitive function improved along with their brain’s tissue function.

“It reverses aging,” Efrati, a Tel Aviv University associate professor and a senior doctor at the Shamir Medical Center, told The Times of Israel about his treatment. “It improves cognitive function, and doesn’t just slow its decline.”

Doesn’t do anything for wrinkles, though.

Read it.

I’ll bet you didn’t know that.

Read it.

In 2011, he and colleague Gina Riley surveyed 232 parents who unschool their children, which they defined as not following any curriculum, instead letting the children take charge of their own education. The respondents were overwhelmingly positive about their unschooling experience, saying it improved their children’s general well-being as well as their learning, and also enhanced family harmony. Their challenges primarily stemmed from feeling a need to defend their practices to family and friends, and overcoming their own deeply ingrained ways of thinking about education. (The results are discussed at length here.)

 

Read it.

Universal education through schooling is not feasible. It would be no more feasible if it were attempted by means of alternative institutions built on the style of present schools. Neither new attitudes of teachers toward their pupils nor the proliferation of educational hardware or software (in classroom or bedroom), nor finally the attempt to expand the pedagogue’s responsibility until it engulfs his pupils’ lifetimes will deliver universal education. The current search for new educational funnels must be reversed into the search for their institutional inverse: educational webs which heighten the opportunity for each one to transform each moment of his living into one of learning, sharing, and caring. We hope to contribute concepts needed by those who conduct such counterfoil research on education–and also to those who seek alternatives to other established service industries.

Read it.

Last night Harvey Risch — M.D., Ph.D. — professor of epidemiology in the Department of Epidemiology and Public Health at the Yale School of Public Health, joined Mark Levin on Life, Liberty & Levin. Risch is of course the author of the Newsweek essay “The Key to Defeating COVID-19 Already Exists. We Need to Start Using It.”

If it weren’t for President Trump’s advocacy of hydroxychloroquine to treat (early) cases of COVID-19, this would be old hat. However, Trump Derangement Syndrome rules the media. Despite its apparent safety and efficacy, hydroxychloroquine therefore had to be stigmatized and condemned. Professor Risch is himself a prophet without honor at Yale, although the Yale School of Medicine posted this interview with him back in May, around the time his paper on the subject was published in the American Journal of Epidemiology.

ZMan uncovers a contradiction.

The term “partisan” in the way it is used in modern politics was coined by Lenin as a counter to bourgeois objectivity. The Marxists argued that since class interests determine ideology, there is no point in thinking about non-partisans politics. The partisan should fight for the interests of his class, or in the modern sense, his identity group, even if that contradicts the interests of society as a whole. The modern partisan is supposed to care only about winning for the good of his group.

Obviously, the partisan has a personal stake in his politics, in that he is fighting for his class, tribe, identity group and so on. The partisan stands to benefit personally if his class carries the day, but that’s not the point of politics. The union activist, fighting to unionize a shop, benefits from the spread of unions, but his reason for unionizing is it is good for his class. Similarly, the member of a minority group would advocate for his people, because it is good for his tribe.

That is another strange aspect of modern politics. There is a disconnect between the partisan and the cause he champions. Affluent white female liberals, for example, have no practical connection to the issues they champion, other than the nonsensical concept of intersectionality. In the partisan sense, they should be on the side of those defending the cultural hegemony of bourgeois white people. Instead, they champion causes that threaten their lifestyle.

I feel the same way about Global Warming.

Read it.

Gun control activist David Hogg deleted a tweet asking his 1 million followers if they would be interested in hearing his thoughts on the election after 84% responded, “No.”

“Would you be interested in seeing a video post every day from now until election day with my thoughts on what’s going on?” Hogg asked in a Twitter poll. More than 90,000 Twitter users responded to the poll with nearly 80,000 responding with a “no.”

Heh.

Read it.

In a creative—some might say desperate—bid to bolster its amphibious fleet, the U.S. Navy in recent years has been building so-called “expeditionary sea-base ships” that are little more than commercial heavy-load carrier ships with a gray coat of paint and some military radios.

Now the Chinese fleet has demonstrated the same creativity—or desperation. A commercial heavy-load carrier flying a Hong Kong flag recently supported a Chinese naval exercise, functioning as a base for at least two army helicopters.

Gizmodo Blames Natural Gas for California’s Rolling Black Outs

Arctic ocean moorings shed light on winter sea ice loss

The Green New Deal means monumental disruption

Carbon emissions are chilling the atmosphere 90km above Antarctica, at the edge of space

Solar Panels Are Starting to Die, Leaving Behind Toxic Trash  All of this ‘green’ stuff isn’t really very green.

ZMan indulges in a little sociology.

The Scandinavian nationalist, Fróði Midjord, is fond of saying that the way to break a taboo is to break the taboo. The logic is that taboos only work as a crowd control device when the crowd agrees with the taboo. If people stop abiding by a taboo, then it loses its power to enforce behavior. We see this with the social norms that have fallen away since the 1960’s. Things like adultery and divorce were normalized, in part, by people ignoring the taboos against them.

Of course, a good way to have your life destroyed is to go around breaking taboos, especially the ones that matter to the people in charge. Start talking race realism at your office and you not only get fired, you become unemployable. Break the taboo against fighting back against left-wing street thugs and you could end up in prison. Breaking taboos works only when a critical mass of people decides to break the taboo and a larger set of people are ready to join them.

That’s the other problem with taboo breaking. Without popular or institutional support, the taboo breaker ends up enforcing the taboo. He gets hauled out in front of the crowd and is properly punished. The crowd sees it and the point is made. If you don’t want to end up like the guy being made into an example, don’t break the taboo. Rosa Parks would not be known to us without the support of the ruling class. Her taboo breaking was welcomed by the people in charge.

A mass of floating volcanic rock could help revive the Great Barrier Reef

Hempcrete: How Sustainable Construction Could Change the World

Californian Blackout Fury: “It’s Not Just the Heat, It’s Also the Anti-Nuclear Power Stupidity”

If you don’t read Dave Zincavage’s blog NEVER YET MELTED, I recommend it.

Read it.

Most keyboards use one-dimensional buttons or a QWERTY design. According to CharaChorder, this can often cause user error—like typos—caused by hitting letters in the wrong order when “muscle memory” is moving faster than a device can keep up with.

With CharaChorder, these “errors” are highly encouraged. A user can type entire words by pressing all letters simultaneously, in a single motion. CharaChorder’s internal processor will then arrange the letters on-screen in real time, faster than the human eye can perceive.

This kind of technology makes it easy for users to learn “chording” (a way to enter characters or commands formed by pressing several keys together) intuitively over time. According to the team, it’s also a much more powerful method of communicating.

Well, we’ll see.

Steve decides to be a collector.

My reasoning goes like this: if I know I will continue shooting a certain caliber until I croak, I might as well buy enough ammunition to get me as far into the future as possible. It won’t rot. It doesn’t have to be refrigerated. You can buy it today and use it 50 years from now, if you’re still here. If you wait, you’ll end up paying much more in the long run. Also, the Democrats are gradually destroying our rights, so who knows if you’ll be able to buy anything a couple of years from now?

I’m convinced.

Democrats Promise to Bring California-Style Blackouts to Everyone

Study: 1970s Dam Construction Paused Global Warming Sea Level Rise

Global Warming Crop Resilience? Aussie Farmer Helps CSIRO Develop Long Coleoptile Wheat

Fossil leaves show high atmospheric carbon spurred ancient ‘global greening’

Read it.

Time to leave.

ZMan looks at conservatism.

At the end of the Cold War, Progressives pointed out that conservatism no longer had a purpose, so it was probably going to follow communism into the past. Of course, the Left had its own problems in this regard, but conservatism in America had largely been about opposing the Soviets. They had conceded all the important points in the cultural war and the Left was ready to embrace corporate control of the economy, so there was no longer any purpose to conservatism.

This was a fair analysis, but one conservatives could not accept, as it would mean getting real jobs and doing honest work. Instead they tried to define conservatism as green eye-shade bean counting in the 1990’s. That was no fun as they like spending borrowed money as much as the Left. Then they tried to define conservatism to mean dropping high explosives onto Muslims. That worked for a while, but then the public soured on the pointless flag waving and hollow patriotism.

Severian had a response: The Spiritual Exercises

Victor Davis Hanson.

Perhaps 70 percent of Trumpism remains a hodgepodge of Reaganism: strong defense, realist foreign policy, deregulation, smaller government, big deficits, tax cuts, energy growth, and stars-and-stripes traditionalism.

But it is the other unorthodox 30 percent that excited his base, terrified conservative apostates, and won Trump the 2016 election by energizing between 4 million and 6 million voters in swing states who had either given up on Republicans, or on elections altogether. NeverTrumpers talk of Trump’s demise and their own resurrection as Phoenixes to rebirth the GOP. They have no idea that those who despise them had ensured their Beltway-preferred candidates could rarely win; nothing has changed since.

Tyler Cowen.

When it comes to Covid-19, I worry about the problem of “phantom risk.” Right now the risks of Covid-19 are very real, but at some point we still will feel those risks when they are no longer present, much as some amputees may feel a “phantom limb.”

How this might play out?

I think we’ve already hit that point. The current government-mandated ‘protections’ are far out of proportion to the actual danger involved.

The Other McCain.

Something that has been turning over in my mind lately is the way some people reject the entire idea of judgment — or, rather, they say they are against judging people. In reality, such people are often extremely judgmental. “Don’t judge me!” they angrily exclaim, but if you pay attention, you’ll notice these people never hesitate to judge you.

Read it.

“You might not know this, but most of the actual convention events take place during daytime hours,” he said. “The networks don’t cover them. You have no idea that happened. There’s a reason for that, obviously. But what a loss for the viewing public. If you saw what they were saying during the day, you would never tune in to prime time again. In fact, you might flee the country.”

 

Read it.

I’d make that trade. But what would the Danes do with a bunch of Latinx? They’re having enough troubles with the Muslim immigrants.

Climate and extinction crises require urgent change | TheHill

Are tipping points suitable concepts for developing environmental policies?  They’re sure useful for rationalizing why there ain’t nothin’ happening yet.

Cold weather kills more people than hot weather because… global warming.

‘Turn Up Your Damn Thermostat’: Former Gov. Jerry Brown Tells Californians How To Avoid Blackouts During A Heatwave

ZMan does a recap.

Today, the old-style convention looks increasingly like a pointless relic. The only people who need to meet in person these days to talk politics are dissidents and that’s because of the pogroms against white activists. The people in charge can avail themselves to all the modern technology of the day. As far as a television event, the convention looks ridiculous to most modern people. It’s like watching a movie from the 1970’s, where people are using pay phones and wearing suits on airplanes.

…

Another indication of the general detachment from reality is the use of Republican turncoats in this convention. The idea is to use these faithless finks to show undecideds that even the Republicans are abandoning their man. Most people unsure about voting for Trump already hate the GOP. That’s why they tend to sit out elections. Trotting out Colin Powell and John Kasich just reminds them that they hate the same people who hate Donald Trump. It has the opposite of the intended effect.

Read it.

Why does Colorado have color coded ballots? I guess it is because color coding is way quicker than that little R or D under the bar code to know what party the ballot represents.

Steve Sailer.

I’ve been mentioning for awhile a growth in articles about people complaining about the color of various objects, such as blue or green medical scrubs or the little white man who tells you to walk on a traffic light as indicative of systemic racism. It’s like 5-year-olds talking about their favorite color Power Ranger.

Green California Has the Nation’s Worst Power Grid

Transparent Solar Panels for Windows Hit New Efficiency Record – Could Help Enable Skyscrapers to Serve As Power Sources

The excess costs of Weather Dependent Renewable power generation in the USA

The Transit-Industrial Complex

The future may be full of fire tornadoes  Women and minorities hardest hit.

Legal Motion Filed to Stop FOIA Stonewalling on Paris Climate Treaty

Paul Graham runs the numbers.

Some politicians are proposing to introduce wealth taxes in addition to income taxes. Let’s try modeling the effects of various levels of wealth tax to see what they would mean in practice for a startup founder.

Suppose you start a successful startup in your twenties, and then live for another 60 years. How much of your stock will a wealth tax consume?

Suppose the wealth tax is 1%. That means each year you get to keep 99% of your stock. Which means after 60 years the proportion of stock you’ll have left will be .99^60, or .547. So a 1% wealth tax means the government will over the course of your life take 45% of your stock.

Wealth confiscation by drip-drip-drip. Socialism in slow motion.

ZMan sees difficult times ahead.

The latest bout of insanity is over the United States Postal Service conspiracy to subvert the upcoming election. The Left is on their social media platforms warning that Big Stamp is part of a silent coup to award the election to Trump. Fevered lefties are posting pictures of themselves guarding mailboxes. The actress Jaimie Lee Curtis posted this on her Twitter account. The invasion of the mailbox snatchers has become a very real thing for the people on the Left.

How exactly anyone can think the post office is going to rig an election is a lot like the Russian collusion hoax. It is best understood if you don’t think about very much. The ballots go into the mailbox, something magical happens and then Donald Trump steals the election! Instead of the Russians using mind control to alter voter behavior in the voting booth, it is the postmaster using special powers to alter ballots inside the box themselves or perhaps making them disappear.

Scott Adams points out that postal employees are among the most corrupt outside of the Turd World. He had to quit mailing in his Dilbert cartoons because once local postal workers figured out who he was they would all get stolen before they got to his syndicator. He says he knows of a lot of artists who have had the same problem. He also relates a story of postal workers stealing envelopes containing cash addressed to post office boxes, which is why everybody knows not to send cash through the mail.

Of course, given the universality of the Opposite Rule of Liberalism, this means the Left is already hard at work with a plan to spoil ballots in the postal system. Their push for vote by mail is part of an existing scheme to trash votes from Republican areas, while stuffing the mailboxes in Democratic areas. Of course, their street thugs will be justified in burning mailboxes in white areas now. You can be sure Antifa will be staking out the post offices in white areas of the country too.

Yeah, that too. ‘Where’s it from? Scarsdale? Trash it! Harlem? Let it through!’ Anybody who can’t see the plausibility of this scenario has been asleep for a half-century. The fact that the Postal Workers Union has endorsed Biden merely underlines the problem.

Read it.

Democrats have never been comfortable with, you know, actual democracy. They’d much rather buy and steal votes than work for them.

Read it.

A lot of fear and misinformation has been spreading throughout social media the past few days about the post office. People seem to think the sky is falling. But they’re missing a lot of important context.

I am here to tell you that yes, you should be concerned about the future of the United States Postal Service (USPS), but the whole sky isn’t falling quite ye

What does Islam say about climate change and climate action?  And who cares? Al-Jazeera.

New Zealand’s Southern Alps Glacier Melt Has Doubled – Up to 77% of Little Ice Age Glacier Volume Already Lost

WashPost Parrots DNC Climate Council Chair: Virus ‘Inextricably Linked’ to Climate Change

MIT: Five Grand Thermal Challenges to Decarbonise the Global Economy

Read it.

We’re familiar with the designation of places like Somalia as “failed states,” but can’t we equally recognize failed cities when we see them? New York City in the 1970s, when it needed a federal bailout, was one example from our past, and New York’s fiscal woes were closely connected with its larger social problems of crime, welfare dependency, and all the other factors that diminished the shine of the Big Apple.

Today our obviously failed cities are Seattle and Portland, with Minneapolis, Chicago, San Francisco, Los Angeles, and New York (again) trending that direction. (And the entire state of Illinois is on the equivalent of a watch list—I think it is literally on credit watch lists—with California not far behind.)

As mentioned here previously, it appears lots of people are fleeing or preparing to flee these cities, and their economies (and consequent tax bases) may be in free fall even if the COVID-induced economic coma ends in the next few months.

Which raises a frequent worry: what if these dazzling urbanites move to Rock Ridge and vote for the same kind of progressive candidates they foolishly supported where they came from? I think it won’t actually work that way, although I understand the logic behind it.

Check it out.

We have the technology.

Read it.

I’ll bet you didn’t know that.

Read it.

YANK! THAT! CHAIN!

Actuaries are not as appreciated as they deserve.

Read it.

With the left in a collective fit over a conspiracy theory that President Trump is about to steal the election by crippling the US Postal Service, Twitter user @AGHamilton29 has provided a cogent analysis unpacking the latest leftist miasma dominating the news cycle.

Bethany Mandel.

School districts across the country are facing an exodus of students to private schools opening for in-person learning and homeschooling. Corey DeAngelis, the Director of School Choice for the Reason Foundation, has been following the data and it doesn’t look good for public schools. Over the weekend he reported that homeschool filings are up 129% from last year in Loudoun County in Virginia and 128% in the state of Wisconsin. This exodus in students is also an exodus in dollars for a lot of school districts that have their funding directly tied to their enrollment numbers (which is why I suggested pulling out of public schools as a protest if you didn’t like their reopening plan for the Washington Examiner). A little too late in the game, public schools are realizing that their captive audience isn’t so captive when they don’t, you know, actually teach.

In CAISO Emergency Break Glass

Plastic recycling faces setback in California after COVID-19 disruptions

Sea Level Rise a Major Threat to San Francisco

PD Editorial: Time to get serious about rising sea levels

Fight for Planet A: Aussie PM Retreats from Charging Eco-Warrior

Few bears on the ice off Western Hudson Bay at 14 August but will be onshore soon  I thought they were supposed to be extinct by now.

Every Day 10k People Die Due to Air Pollution from Fossil Fuels

Read it.

And barbecue. Don’t forget the barbecue.

Oh, and lower taxes.

UPDATE: Remote work is reshaping San Francisco, as tech workers flee and rents fall

Read it.

The Greek government has secretly expelled more than 1,000 refugees from Europe’s borders in recent months, sailing many of them to the edge of Greek territorial waters and then abandoning them in inflatable and sometimes overburdened life rafts.

…

Illegal under international law, the expulsions are the most direct and sustained attempt by a European country to block maritime migration using its own forces since the height of the migration crisis in 2015, when Greece was the main thoroughfare for migrants and refugees seeking to enter Europe.

Saw that coming.

When one is infested with leeches one focuses on ripping them off as fast as possible and doesn’t worry a lot about where they land.

Read it.

Peggy Noonan joined the crowd turning on George W. Bush in what I thought was (in Noonan’s case) a grossly unfair manner in 2008. It wasn’t just unfair, it was cowardly. I wrote critically about one of Noonan’s weekly Wall Street Journal columns in which she identified with the public disapproval of Bush that April in “Season of the witch.”

Having turned on George W. Bush, Noonan moved on to support the election of Barack Obama later that year. Noonan all but endorsed Obama in her 2008 column “Obama and the runaway train.” The anti-Bush and pro-Obama columns fit neatly together

I’ve been very disappointed in Peggy Noonan ever since. I used to read her stuff religiously but I can’t stomach it any more.

James Altucher.

Now it’s completely dead. “But NYC always always bounces back.” No. Not this time. “But NYC is the center of the financial universe. Opportunities will flourish here again.” Not this time.

“NYC has experienced worse”. No it hasn’t.

A Facebook group formed a few weeks ago that was for people who were planning a move and wanted others to talk to and ask advice from. Within two or three days it had about 10,000 members.