Read it.

Ahh, it’s that time again: reportedly the most wonderful time of the year. You’re back home, no longer in your drafty dorm room eating lukewarm ramen out of a microwaved Tupperware bowl. You’re with your family. You’re surrounded by sleigh bells, carolers, a warm and glowing Christmas tree, gifts on Christmas day.

Well, forget about all that. That’s all a bunch of cultural hegemony and male patrio-fascism. Christmas is not a good thing. Christmas is not Woke. It must be cancelled and forever banished to the dust-bin of history, along with other hegemonic colonial hatefests such as Thanksgiving and Valentine’s Day.

Australian PM Responds To Greta Thunberg: “We’ll Do What We Think Is Right For Australia”

The scramble for sand is destroying the Mekong

Eco-builders are clutching at straws

Urban Transit Is an Energy Hog

How the U.S. betrayed the Marshall Islands, kindling the next nuclear disaster

Climate Nags are Trying to Ruin Christmas

Read it.

From the vantage point of Positive Evolutionary Psychology, many problems of society today result from a large-scale lack of understanding of evolutionary principles and how they relate to all facets of the human experience. Obesity in the modern world is the result of the food industry not seeing how mismatched modern processed foods are from the ancestral foods that our ancestors evolved to eat, for example (see Cordain et al., 2005; Wolf, 2010).

In “Historic” Ruling, Dutch Supreme Court Says Government Must Reduce Greenhouse Gas Emissions By 25%

Norway Names Controversial Climate Change Skeptic As New Oil Minister

Your Christmas tree is lit, but how hard does it hit the environment?  Popular ‘Science’.

“I don’t want to die!” Climate Exploitation of Children  Never take seriously anybody whose hair has been dyed an unnatural color. Narcissistic personality disorder is the least of their problems.

Why I Am So Critical of Climate ‘Science’?

Democrats Seek To Outlaw Suburban, Single-Family House Zoning, Calling It Racist And Bad For The Environment

Read it.

I have a little list….

Read it.

Heh. This has been perhaps Trump’s greatest accomplishment.

Read it.

California was once depicted as an American promised land where people could escape to. Now an increasing number of residents are escaping from it. Now, according to the Times, fewer children are being born, more of the older population are dying, immigration levels are decreasing and an alarming number of people are opting to leave the state due to skyrocketing taxes and increasing social chaos in urban areas due to rampant homelessness.

Here’s Some Good News on Climate Change: Worst-Case Scenario Looks Unrealistic

Our World is a Work in Progress

Australia’s PM Scott Morrison plays down climate link to bushfire crisis as he visits firefighters

Polar bear cubs play on the thin ice that supposedly threatens them with extinction

https://www.zerohedge.com/political/visualizing-uk-elections-massive-generation-gap

Read it.

West Africa’s monetary union has agreed with France to rename its CFA franc the Eco and cut some of the financial links with Paris that have underpinned the region’s common currency since its creation after the Second World War.

Loserthink – Word-thinking.

Friday Funny – sea level rise is “set to flood UN headquarters as soon as 2100” – another self-immolation by Zoë Schlanger  That’ll leave quite a ring along the Atlantic coast….

Russia’s First Floating Nuclear Power Plant Turns On, Set To Replace Coal’

How Artists And Scientists Are Tackling Miami’s Rising Sea Levels

STUDY: Villagers Built A Monster Wall 7,000 Years Ago To Beat Back Rising Sea Levels — It Didn’t Work  Well, then, I guess that settles it.

CNN’s Kasich Veers Left on Global Warming, Gun Control

Who Is Winning The Climate Wars? (2)

When will the Arctic see its first ice free summer?

German Green Party Urges Allowing 140 Million “Climate Refugees” To Migrate To West

FLASHBACK: Al Roker Decried ‘Sin’ of Not Fighting Climate Change

Sweden’s reindeer herders forced to adapt to climate change

Read it.

Voice of the Crust The New Yorker has, of course, nothing good to say about nationalism.

The Prime Minister’s Hindu-nationalist government has cast two hundred million Muslims as internal enemies.

Which, indeed, they are, as anybody who has been paying attention for the last fifty years knows, whether they will admit it or not. The problem is that one never knows from one minute to the next when some random Muslim will freak out and start killing people, and that makes all Muslims suspect, like it or not. Indians have been coping with random Muslim violence since 1947, and it comes as no surprise that they are getting tired of it, and are starting to take steps for their security disapproved of by the Great and the Good.

Read it.

This is a lament for the landline, a rhapsody for its dial tone, a hymn to the way it connected people. It’s the little things we miss. The landline was a focal point of the home, an antidote to atomization and loneliness, those scourges of our age.

Read it.

I got that microplane from the Williams-Sonoma catalog, by the way. True, I COULD have bought a microplane at your local Pathmark. They have a rack of them hanging above the Pop-Tart shelf for some reason. But why buy one there when I can support my local (international) mom-and-pop (publicly traded) store (merchandising oligarchy) instead? I’m no fool. I know what’s best for America, and what’s best for America is ignoring every horrible thing going on and, instead, assigning two entire months on the calendar to spoiling myself, cutting down precious wildlife, and indulging in retail spending practices so irresponsible that every accountant on the planet cries their eyes out at night just thinking about it all.

Apparently this is an annual tradition.

Read it.

In “Losing the Class,” Ian Marcus Corbin makes a vital point studiously and willfully ignored by those in charge of American society: an enormous generational gap is growing between the ideology of the ruling class and the inner thoughts of the younger generation. In his words, “our students are playing the game like good little Party members, but they don’t believe the doctrine.”

Read it.

Funny thing about that — not everbody seems to be down with the gun-grabber agenda.

UPDATE: New Zealand Gun Buyback Was An ‘Unmitigated Failure’

Politicized veganism

“The UN’s ‘Woke’ Climate Change Propaganda Is An Insult To Science”

Debate Moderator Pushes Relocating Whole Cities from Climate Change

Aussie Government ABC Urges Workers to Join Student Climate Strikes

Depression and suicide linked to air pollution in new global study

Wait, Plastic Can Be Good for the Environment?

Acidifying Oceans Could Eat Away at Sharks’ Skin and Teeth  ‘Could’

Liz Warren Nets Big Endorsement From Key Architect Behind Green New Deal

Climate change could cut fruit production by almost a third, study warns  ‘Could’

Dutch court orders government to increase climate change efforts to protect citizens

The Year Humanity Declared War on Microplastics  Wired ‘Science’.

Read it.

The principal reason that large cities have developed is that they provide large labor (and housing) markets. A labor market is also a housing market, since virtually all who work in the metropolitan area also live there. The metropolitan area is the one location where there is one-to-one balance between jobs and resident workers (see: Alain Bertaud, Order Without Design: How Markets Shape Cities). Labor markets are independent of jurisdictional boundaries (municipality, county, or state), except where international boundaries restrict freedom of labor movement.

Obviously, large labor markets require transportation that permits residents to reach the maximum of jobs in a reasonable period of time (such as 30 minutes, which has historical significance, indicated below). Researchers such as Remy Prud’homme, Chang-Won Lee, David Hartgen, Gregory Fields and Steve Polzin have shown that a metropolitan area is likely to have better economic performance and job creation if a larger number of jobs can be reached by the average worker in a specified period. With the relatively recent development of transportation access measures, the 30-minute one – way work trip (commute) has emerged as an important planning standard (referred to herein as “30-minute commutes”).

2020 set to be latest in series of Earth’s warmest years  Looking forward to it.

It’s time to trash recycling

Transportation Climate Initiative Update

“It Only Produces Clean Energy”—The Unseriousness of Climate Activism

More Evidence That We Shouldn’t Take Advice From Climate Activists

Why Modern Famine Predictions Failed !

Read it.

The Florida resort notified law enforcement to report 56-year-old Jing Lu, according to the arrest report. She entered through the main gate, walked to Mar-a-Lago’s service driveway and entered the property, authorities said. She was captured taking photos of the property.

I’m curious as to what is going on here.

Lu appeared in court Thursday morning and denied knowing the significance of Mar-a-Lago. The incident happened days before Trump is scheduled to visit the location for the Christmas holiday. She is not the first person to gain entry of Mar-a-Largo.

Sounds like part of a bad spy movie.

Read it.

How … convenient.  Has anybody looked in the Clinton White House? Missing stuff tends to magically re-appear there every now and then.

The Atlantic: Investment Bankers Will Save Us from Climate Change

Climate change legislation, media coverage drives oil companies’ ad spending, study finds  My, what a surprise.

When will the Netherlands disappear? (climate change)  Not soon enough.

Geoengineering’s Gender Problem Could Put the Planet at Risk  Wired ‘Science’.

The case against wrapping paper  Popular ‘Science’. Everything normal is Bad For The Planet. Shame on you.

Big Coal Is Not Dead Yet — Report Shows The World Demands More Coal Than Before Paris Deal  The swine.

Read it. And watch the video, obviously.

I’ve always wondered how well that would work. Well, I guess now we know,.

Read it.

Once again the ‘scientific consensus’ gets turned upside down.

I blame it on climate change.

London has spent billions, but no one can escape climate change  CNN.

UN bureaucrats chow down on burgers – while attacking meat

Guardian: Aussie Bushfires are Australia’s Climate Change “Chernobyl Moment”  It’s a crisis, I tell you.

Third World Countries Remain the Losers of Climate Change Activism

Everything that happened at COP25, a potentially world-changing climate conference  Note that ‘change’ is not a synonym for ‘improve’.

California oceans rising in acidity at alarming rate, study finds  Obviously a crisis.

Ocean acidification: yet another wobbly pillar of climate alarmism But it’s a crisis!

Someone get Greenpeace on the line. Boffins clock carbon ‘pollution’ cloud 30,000 light-years wide choking galaxies

Will We Run Out of Helium?  Is it a crisis>

Nature Deserves Legal Rights—and the Power to Fight Back  Wired ‘Science’.

Watch: Climate Activists Are “Nearly Run Over” Trying To Halt Coal-Laden Freight Train

The Grapes of Climate Wrath

Read it.

I’m good with that. Republicans need to start thinking about who their candidate will be after Trump; Trump is going to be a hard act to follow, and Pence really isn’t up to it.

Popular ‘Science’.

Some people (who lurk on Reddit) believe that Japanese toilets should be a basic human right.

I think it ought to be a basic human right to have such people executed whenever found.

Read it.

They could always go back to using mules.

Popular ‘Science’.

Send your woman on a hike so you can stay home in peace and quiet and watch football.

If she should get eaten by a bear, well, life’s full of hardship.

Read it.

That ‘settled science’ just became unsettled again.

But ‘climate change’ is totally a crisis.

Read it.

Uh, perhaps ‘concentrated’ is the wrong word….

David Cole takes a turn laughing at California.

It was October 2003 and L.A. Times columnist Peter King was angry. Mad as hell, in fact, about white Californians and their expectations of happiness.

…

Peter King couldn’t contain his hostility toward the voters who’d just initiated the Fourth Reich, those “sun-drenched men and women in short sleeves, roaring approval as a Hollywood icon recites a line from an old movie: ‘We’re mad as hell, and we aren’t going to take it anymore.’” How dare we be mad, frowned King, at the “new law that permits undocumented field hands, who make up the majority of the state’s farm labor force, to obtain driver’s licenses”:

Read it.

Be the first on your block….

Can You Pass This 9-Question Climate Change Quiz?

Is fragile masculinity the biggest obstacle to climate action?

The Cosmos and Climate

No seat! Climate Brat Greta Thunberg Learns the Hard Way Why Many People Prefer to Fly

‘We survived war in Afghanistan – but Kabul’s pollution could kill us’

Indoor carbon dioxide can make us dumber, and that will get worse with climate change  Popular ‘Science’

Read it.

This is an interesting development.

Sarah Hoyt.

That’s of course before the pronoun mess that Jordan Peterson properly identified as “compelled speech.” And about a dozen other things, some of them completely ridiculous. For instance, does anyone understand why “Asian” is the right word and “Oriental” isn’t? Or why “Native American” is the right designation for Ameridians, when you know, we know for an absolute fact they came from elsewhere, and did not evolve on this continent? No? Why is people of color good but colored people bad? what is the semantic difference, precisely? Why must we call black people “African American” (even if they’re not in fact American, and/or their ancestors haven’t seen Africa for eight generations but white people are white? Even when they’re really not, but really dark tan? Is “black” something to be ashamed of? No? then why is it bad?

Look, I understand when this bullshit is in the name of an ideological point, no matter how brain-dead, but the above isn’t really. The above is in the name of making people jump when you say frog. There is no other reason, no other point, no other purpose to it, than to prove to themselves that they can make people do exactly as they want, on threat of social ostracism if they don’t.

John Derbyshire.

Here’s an anniversary that, even after the Pensacola (and Pearl Harbor) shootings, doesn’t seem to have been mentioned in the Main Stream Media: the Fort Hood massacre, which occurred just over ten years ago, on November 5th, 2009.

My queation is: Why is Hasan still alive? Really, why?

Greta Thunberg apologizes for ‘against the wall’ remark, plans a break from climate activism

The toxic rhetoric of climate change

Anger erupts at U.N. climate summit as major economies resist bold action  ‘Bold action’ is prog-speak for ‘spending your money on what we think is important even if you starve’.

Read it.

If, of course, that’s what you want to do.

I never worry about it, secure in the sure and certain knowledge that if microplastics become a problem for the environment Mother Nature will evolve a creature to eat them, as she always has in the past.

Don Boudreaux, a Real Economist.

Careful observers often and correctly note that, for many of its adherents, environmentalism is a religion.

Too many environmentalists disregard inconvenient truths that would undermine their faith that calamities are percolating just over the horizon. It might well be that humans’ “footprint” on the Earth is larger than ever; it might even be true that this larger footprint creates some health risks for us modern humans that our pre-industrial ancestors never encountered.

But it is undeniably true that we denizens of industrial, market economies live far better and far healthier than did any our pre-industrial ancestors.

…

What we almost never hear from self-proclaimed “environmentalists” is recognition of the upside of contemporary life. The commerce and industry that produce all the things that environmentalists ecstatically despise also produce incredible amounts of wealth, health and cleanliness — not to mention the leisure necessary for modern people to reflect upon and enjoy nature.

Read it.

“Natural Wine” means exactly nothing. A lot of those vineyards would be dead and gone if it weren’t for modern viticultural and wine-making techniques. It’s a marketing tool designed to attract exactly the kind of people who write and read the NYT, and has very little to do with the quality of wine in the bottle. Sure, some “natural” wines are good, just as some mass-market wines are good. But there are plenty of crappy “natural” or “organic” wines that taste like spoiled grape juice filtered through a hobo’s sock, but they command a market and a price premium precisely because pompous asshats at the NYT tout them as something special. They specialize in linking banal, everyday events and products with some heightened sense of the world around us, as if the bottle of wine one drinks or the toilet paper one uses to wipe one’s ass is in some way imbued with special powers to bring one closer to…something. Anything. As long as it isn’t one of us.

I don’t drink wine so I don’t have a sneer in this fight, but the position of the New York Times as a Voice of the Crust is so solid that I assume whatever they like is probably crap, and they haven’t let me down yet.