Audacious Epigone runs the numbers.

The inverse correlation between favoring stricter gun laws and Donald Trump’s share of the 2016 presidential vote is a remarkable .95. That is a staggeringly strong relationship for the social sciences. Indeed, it is effectively a perfect correlation after sampling noise is accounted for. More than abortion, immigration, taxation, race relations, war, or any other cultural or political issue, a person’s approach to gun rights is a better predictor of how he’ll vote than anything else is.

Steve Sailer.

Tiny is a 6’6? Samoan.

But obviously a White Samoan. (Although I have to say, just from his picture, that he’s less White than Jambalaya Harris….)

Kamala Harris’ Record: Lawfare Against Climate Skeptics, “A Level of Indifference” to the Violation of Constitutional Rights

Baghdad heat is world’s climate change future  Washington Post.

Air pollution is much worse than we thought. Climate change is far from the only problem with fossil fuels.  Vox. Women and minorities hardest hit.

McIntyre on Kaufman et al 2020

More Solar Cyclomania

Read it.

Steven Donziger, the attorney with connections to the Obama and Cuomo administrations who was at the center of a massive effort to extort billions of dollars out of Chevron, has been disbarred for “corruption of a court expert and ghostwriting his report, obstruction of justice, witness tampering, and judicial coercion and bribery.”

Read it.

America has witnessed months of civil unrest in cities around America following the death of George Floyd in Minneapolis. Many of the protesters decry income and net worth “inequality.”

But the most serious “inequality” is the unequal percentage of fathers in black households, a phenomenon that has been encouraged by government policies that normalize and reward out-of-wedlock births.

In 1965, Daniel Patrick Moynihan, who was assistant secretary of labor to President Lyndon B. Johnson, published “The Negro Family: The Case for National Action.” At that time, 25% of blacks were born outside of wedlock, a number that this former adviser to President John F. Kennedy, future adviser to President Richard Nixon, future U.S. ambassador, and future Democratic senator from New York, said was catastrophic to the black community.

Moynihan wrote: “A community that allows a large number of young men to grow up in broken homes, dominated by women, never acquiring any stable relationship to male authority, never acquiring any rational expectations about the future—that community asks for and gets chaos. Crime, violence, unrest, unrestrained lashing out at the whole social structure—that is not only to be expected, it is very near to inevitable.”

Bethany Mandel.

On social media these days I’ve noticed a funny phenomenon: People will post pictures and videos and make claims that we know on their face are bonkers. Like “we’re enjoying this socially distanced hangout!” and the folks in the picture are inches from each other.

…

But here’s what’s annoying about these bald-faced lies: They always come from folks who spend all of their free time shaming everyone under the sun for the same kind of behavior.

Like the poor, the hypocrites we have always with us.

ZMan looks down the road.

For most people who plan to vote in the upcoming election, the choice is clear and they don’t have to think about it very much. They know their guy is the right choice and the other guy represents the end of the world as we know it. There is nothing anyone could say to them to change their mind. In fact, the number of persuadable people probably rounds to zero. The issue in this election, like most elections, is which side is able to get their partisans to vote, either in person or by mail.

Or by fraud (*cough* Democrats *cough).

Read it.

And the trickle becomes, if not a flood, at least a gush.

The news of Icahn’s relocation comes as New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo has pleaded with wealthy New Yorkers to return to New York City following their exodus during the outbreak of the novel coronavirus.

“A single percent of New York’s population pays half of the state’s taxes,” Cuomo said, “and they’re the most mobile people on the globe.”

Heh.

The world’s growing concrete coasts

The Climate Left Attacks Nobel Laureate William D. Nordhaus

Exact climate data from the past

Insect apocalypse? Not so fast, at least in North America

The Oceans Won’t Suffocate!

Scott Adams has a new theory.

The first puppet is Biden; everybody thinks that Harris is the stronger candidate for President.

The second puppet is Harris; who, in Scott’s phrase, ‘has their hand up her back’.

Read it.

I’ve been tempted to tweak my liberal friends with the mischievous thought that COVID-19 is actually a Trump five-dimensional chess plot to destroy universities, unionized K-12 public education, and Hollywood (since TV and movie production is largely shut down too).

Colleges and universities were already facing mounting financial pressure because enrollment is steadily declining and certain to get much worse in the coming decade (the result of falling birthrates back at the time of the housing crash in 2008-09). Add to this the financial hit they are taking right now because of the virus, on top of the huge loss this year of foreign students who typically pay full tuition rates and subsidize other students, and a large number of colleges and universities face a serious risk of insolvency. (There are many colleges for whom a large foreign student enrollment—especially Chinese students—is a key part of their business model.) This week it is reported that 20 percent of Harvard freshmen are deferring a year; at other colleges, the rate of students saying they aren’t returning runs as high as 40 percent. At places further down the food chain than Harvard, how many students will decide not to go to college at all a year from now?

Victor Davis Hanson.

Nine months ago, New York was a thriving, though poorly governed, metropolis. It was coasting on the more or less good governance of its prior two mayors and on its ancestral role as the global nexus of finance and capital.

The city is now something out of a postmodern apocalyptic movie, reeling from the effects of a neutron bomb. Ditto in varying degrees Minneapolis, Portland, Seattle, and San Francisco — the anti-broken-windows metropolises of America. Walking in San Francisco today reminds me of visiting Old Cairo in 1973, although the latter lacked the needles and feces of the former.

Cascading fallacies in climate risk assessment

The dirty secrets of ‘clean’ electric vehicles

Claim: Past evidence supports complete loss of Arctic sea-ice by 2035

WashPost Owner Bezos ‘Quietly’ Starts Company, Offers Clue to $10B Climate Change Push

Environmentalists: Border Wall Water Use Threatening Endangered Species

Chevron Is Trying to Crush a Prominent Climate Lawyer

Read it.

Scott Adams called it six months ago.

The Trump campaign was primed for Sen. Kamala Harris, D-Calif., being named Joe Biden’s running mate, having attacks ready for her as a “phony” and pointing out her challenging Biden in the Democratic primary for segregationist busing support.

“Not long ago, Kamala Harris called Joe Biden a racist and asked for an apology she never received,” Trump campaign senior adviser Katrina Pierson released in a statement. “Clearly, Phony Kamala will abandon her own morals, as well as try to bury her record as a prosecutor, in order to appease the anti-police extremists controlling the Democrat Party.”

Notably, Pierson, an African American woman who promotes the website youaintblack.com, called Harris a “political living will” for Biden, 77, a shot at his age and the possibility Harris might take over the presidency before Biden could finish his term.

Scott Johnson at PowerLine reviews Minnesota.

In Minnesota the media are flogging an alleged increase in new cases and the Sturgis apocalypse to sustain the epidemic of hysteria. See, for example, Jeremy Olson’s Star Tribune story “625 new Minnesota COVID-19 cases contribute to weekend surge.” Subhead: “COVID-19 deaths have not increased amid rise in infections, but health officials worry that this trend could emerge next.” Or skip to the Star Tribune editorial “‘Utter disaster.’ Allowing Sturgis rally to go on puts nation at risk.” Subhead: “Failure of leadership at multiple levels allows event to go on during pandemic.” Coming soon: World to end tomorrow: Women, minorities hardest hit.

While we wait for the end of the world as we know it, we note that deaths attributed by the authorities continue at a low, low level, contrary to their projections and warnings. Yesterday, to take the example closest to hand, we had three new deaths. One decedent was in his 90’s, one in his 80’s, and one in his 60’s.

Read it.

The problem, Gesell believed, was that money served two roles that often came into conflict: It was a way for people to store wealth, and it was the thing everybody needed to conduct business. The fact that money could store wealth meant its holders had a reason to cling to it, especially in crises like the one he saw in Argentina, when opportunities to safely put that money elsewhere looked grim. It was a typical story. When people got scared, they hoarded cash and brought business to a standstill. It led, Gesell said, to a situation of “poverty amid plenty.”

Gesell wanted to create a new kind of money — a money that would “rot like potatoes” and “rust like iron” so no one would want to hoard it, a money that was “an instrument of exchange and nothing else.” And the crazy part is that he did create it. Through a series of pamphlets, articles and books, Gesell inspired a worldwide movement that introduced a completely new form of money. It’s one of the most fascinating, and largely forgotten, stories in economic history.

Read it.

There are several immediate problems with Fauci’s arguments, including the fact that COVID cases are showing clear signs of a summer resurgence in the same European countries that allegedly tamed the virus through harsh lockdowns in the spring. The American news media however has seized on Fauci’s narrative, and used it to call for renewed lockdowns. The New York Times and the Washington Post both editorialized in favor of a second stricter wave of nationwide lockdowns lasting until October – this despite there being no clear evidence that lockdowns actually work at taming the virus.

So how does the evidence behind this narrative stand up under empirical scrutiny? Let’s consider the claims.

Read it.

I apologize for linking to a site that has white text on a black background. Unfortunately, there are far too many people who can’t be bothered to understand that the purpose of a web site is to be legible rather than just be a monument to Cool and Edgy.

Those of us who use Safari have available a feature called “Use Reader when available’ that convert such masturbatory exercises into actual readable text. I heartily endorse it.

Steve continues in business.

Today two wonderful things happened. I got over the local-pizza-ingredient hump, and I put a new scope on my Thompson Center Venture rifle.

I need to start making my own bread again.

Read it.

And who could blame them?

Read it.

Ilhan Omar’s father was the late Nur Said Elmi. Omar has vehemently denied that Nur Said Elmi was his name because the name reflects the fraternal relationship of Ahmed Nur Said Elmi to her — Ahmed Nur Said Elmi being the younger brother she married for fraudulent purposes in 2009. Even though the marriage had long since served its fraudulent purpose(s), Omar didn’t get around to dissolving the marriage to Elmi until 2017, just in time to marry and divorce the father of her three children before marrying her consultant and fundraiser earlier this year. It’s quite a story for someone who has repeatedly invoked her “faith tradition” as both a shield and a sword.

Weekly Climate and Energy News Roundup #419

Why climate change is about to make your bad commute worse  Washington Post

Cod and monkfish could disappear from British menus due to climate change, warns study

Polar Bears Defy SCIENCE! by Refusing to Die.

How Climate Alarmism Hijacked Environmentalism

Read it.

Heh.

Check it out.

The Roman roads diagram project is a series of maps driven by an unconventional idea: what if we represented Ancient Rome’s famed road network in the style of a modern transit map?

Read it.

Look at the cost increases in higher education, healthcare and childcare and ask yourself if the quality of those services have risen in lockstep with price increases.

…

The capital and managerial expertise required to launch and grow a legal enterprise is significant, which is at least partly why a nation of self-employed farmers, shopkeepers, artisans and traders is now a nation of employees of government and large corporations.

False Alarm by Bjorn Lomborg; Apocalypse Never by Michael Shellenberger – review  The Guardian.

Undeniable Truths

Read it.

Well. There it is.

Read it.

Let that be a lesson to us all.

Read it.

So President Trump has decided to pet the unicorn. He has set himself up to act in the peoples’ best short-term interest and dared the opposition to sue and stop him (and thus them). He is bringing to life the meme that “They are not really after me. They are after You. I am just in their way.” And that is what voters will come to believe if the Democrats try to stop him.

For all of his alleged impulsiveness, ignorance, and stupidity, Trump keeps sinking those baskets.

Read it.

There is a number of online “alternative lifestyle” movements that have been gaining steam among millennials. They are appealing in their leanness: do more with less. At first, they seem cute and liberating. Scores of Instagram influencers and bloggers romanticize these lifestyles, and their subreddits are buzzing with zealots

…

Ultimately, these movements romanticize and hide the true generational poverty of millennials. This is a generation of people who will never retire, who may never even buy real estate of their own. In terms of intergenerational wealth, these people are screwed. And I would like to see that point raised and addressed, instead of making do with solutions of desperation.

Steve Sailer.

Has this Dunbar number theory ever been tested? It’s quite popular, but I mostly see it used in an “As everybody knows” sense.

…

A lot of people can’t deal well with criticism. They feel like they are about to be attacked by a mob and murdered when they get a few dozen tweets making fun of them. I think that’s a better application of this Dunbar Number: If people get 76 negative responses on social media, they worry, “Oh, no, the majority of my tribe of 150 has spoken out against me! I will be made an outcast and forced to wander along in the wilderness.”

Read it.

Cities—especially coastal cities in blue states—are the stronghold of Democratic political power. They’ve been the social base for radical left-wing ideas now breaking into the mainstream. Yet as Mr. Cuomo’s plea highlights, those same states and cities depend immensely on the affluent to fund their hugely expensive government programs.

Mr. Cuomo’s friends with Hamptons homes may donate to liberal causes and willingly pay higher taxes for New York’s amenities in normal times. But they probably don’t support confiscatory taxation, and they’re wary of the revolutionary mood on the left insofar as it is producing crime and disorder where they live. The pandemic may cause some to move permanently, leaving cities like New York with fewer resources to finance progressive policies.

If Democrats win the 2020 elections, they promise to raise taxes. Will they try to spare the liberal rich? If they don’t, progressive governance will come under more strain, and liberal high-earners may take a second look at a GOP offering lower rates all around.

Steve Sailer.

Egg and sperm banks like to open offices near famous colleges in order to conveniently harvest the gametes of students most in-demand by their customers. This may sound like the Pseudoscience of eugenics, but, well, you aren’t supposed to think about that.

Yes, Emissions Have Fallen. That Won’t Fix Climate Change  Wired ‘Science’.

How falling solar costs have renewed clean hydrogen hopes

This worst-case climate scenario might be the most realistic  Popular ‘Science’.

Rising Waters on Lake Michigan Are Threatening Luxury Homes

In Colombia, ‘climate-smart’ villages show how the future of farming could look

Shellenberger’s Optimistic, Viral Take on Climate Future Challenged by Scientists He Cites

Is the EU’s 30% climate budget greenwashing?

Revisiting the global hydrological cycle: is it intensifying?

Steve Sailer.

Homicide statistics in St. Louis, next door to Ferguson, MO, were perhaps the first fairly big city to reflect the Ferguson Effect of rising homicide numbers in the First BLM Era. If you stare closely at this graph of homicides in the city of St. Louis, you can that homicides were notably more frequent from late 2014 through spring of 2020 than in the half decade before BLM debuted at Ferguson (August 2014).

But in St. Louis, the Ferguson Effect is dwarfed by the Floyd Effect in June (33 homicides) and July (54) of 2020.

Read it.

President Trump conducted an impromptu press conference yesterday at his golf club in Bedminster, New Jersey. Those at the club were invited to watch the president meet the press. The American Thinker’s Andrea Widburg notes that one of the reporters opened, not with a question, but with an accusation: “You said that the pandemic is disappearing, but we lost 6,000 Americans this week, and just in this room, you have dozens of people that are not following guidelines in New Jersey, which say we should not have more than 25 people….”

Without cracking a smile, Trump put his preparation on display (video below). Andrea explicates Trump’s response with reference to Alinsky’s rules 4 (“Make the enemy live up to its own book of rules”), 5 (“Ridicule is man’s most potent weapon”), and 6 (“A good tactic is one your people enjoy”).

You know that somebody is trans if ‘he’ watches the Three Stooges and doesn’t laugh.

You keep using that word….

Read it.

Ohhh, never thought of this hypothesis: that the act of getting drunk together might be a social technology that helps us verify the trustworthiness of others by inhibiting their higher cognitive functions and thus making it harder to consciously fake things. That would make sense.

I like it. It has texture, and scope.

To enhance our natural thin-slicing abilities, humans have therefore also developed various cultural practices that make these instant assessments more reliable. These techniques take advantage of the fact that deception is fundamentally a cold-cognition act and relies on cognitive control centers. This means that if we can impair the cognitive control abilities of people we’re trying to judge, we’ll do a better job of sussing them out: they will be less able to confuse our cheater-detection systems.

And it puts those of us who don’t drink in the driver’s seat. I like that a lot.

Steve Sailer.

The NYT won’t call them Antifa yet in the hopes that readers assume these are the terrifying white supremacist wreckers they’ve heard so much about and thus not be offended by this article by not getting the point.

Read it.

Guess there’s a limit to how ‘woke’ women are prepared to be.

Victor Davis Hanson.

We know where to watch in the next few weeks but have no real idea what we will be watching. Yet pundits, the media, and the Left seem giddy that their polls show a Trump slump, as if they have learned nothing and forgotten nothing from 2016. But in truth, the news cycle over the next three months may well favor Trump — a scenario his opponents no doubt deem preposterous in these dog days of August.

Read it.

Our efforts to understand the epidemic in one state are clouded by the efforts of the authorities to sustain one-man rule and the panic on which it is based. They are also clouded by the faithful alliance of the press with the authorities.

Over the past two days in Minnesota the authorities have attributed four (8/4) and 9 (8/5) new deaths to COVID-19. Seventy-six percent of all deaths attributed to the epidemic have occurred among residents of long-term care facilities. Hospitalizations continue at a level that would be indetectable under sane conditions.

“Science Made Stupid” – Carbon Dioxide & Bird Nest Edition“Science Made Stupid” – Carbon Dioxide & Bird Nest Edition

Why “Green” Energy Is Impossible