Read it.

It’s tough out there for a hungry grasshopper on the Kansas prairie. Oh, there’s plenty of grass to eat, but this century’s grass isn’t what it used to be. It’s less nutritious, deficient in minerals like iron, potassium and calcium.

Partly due to that nutrient-deficient diet, there’s been a huge decline in grasshopper numbers of late, by about one-third over two decades, according to a 2020 study. The prairie’s not hoppin’ like it used to — and a major culprit is carbon dioxide, says study author Michael Kaspari, an ecologist at the University of Oklahoma in Norman.

Read it.

Markets work, even when you don’t want them to.

The New Neo.

So much was going on during the Floyd protests that was even worse than blocking traffic that I hadn’t even recalled that blocking transportation was a major part of those disruptive – but Democrat-approved – demonstrations. But it was, and it began even before the Floyd summer of 2020.

…

No consequences means you get more of the same, and that it might even escalate. Here’s another reason it’s escalated in places such as New York – lawfare on behalf of the demonstrators.

Read it.

The world’s fifth richest person, with a fortune worth almost $127 billion – and one-time would be sparring partner of Elon Musk – says his goal is to “create some of the highest quality beef in the world” on the island of Kauai.

“The cattle are Wagyu and Angus, and they’ll grow up eating macadamia meal and drinking beer that we grow and produce here on the ranch,” said the unlikely cowboy-cum-data-wrangler via his Instagram account.

Alex Tabarrok.

Why do today’s dishwashers typically take more than 2 hours to run through a normal cycle when less than a hour was common in the past? The reason is absurd energy and water “conservation” rules. These rules, imposed on dish and clothes washers, have made these products perform worse than in the past, cleaning less well or much more slowly. One of the best things that the Trump administration did (other than Operation Warp Speed, of course) was creating a product class–superwashers!–that cleaned in under an hour and were not subject to energy and water conservation standards. The Biden administration reversed these rules but the 5th circuit just ruled that the reversal was “arbitrary and capricious.”

Unfortunately, he gives no clue as to how to buy one of these marvelous machines.

Read it.

A U.S. appeals court on Jan. 6 allowed a judge’s ruling that blocked California from enforcing a new gun-control law that bans the carrying of firearms in most public places on the grounds that it was unconstitutional.

Which it obviously is.

UPDATE : Ore. Judge Enters Final Order Striking Down Gun Control Law

The Spectator.

The Chinese Communist Party will no doubt throw a militarized tantrum should Saturday’s election in Taiwan be won by Lai Ching-te, the more independence-minded of the candidates. Yet behind these histrionics lies an army in turmoil, with a purge of top generals raising serious doubts as to whether it is up to the task of fighting a war.

The CCP has spent billions of dollars expanding and modernizing its armed forces at a pace rarely seen in peacetime, with the aim of creating a cutting edge force. But the money thrown at the generals and their hunger to acquire shiny new kit has fueled increasingly deep-seated corruption in its rapacious ranks. According to US intelligence assessments, Xi observed that some of the People Liberation Army Rocket Force’s missiles were filled with water instead of fuel and silos in western China had lids that could not properly open. The Rocket Force oversees China’s land-based missiles, including nuclear weapons, and would play a key role in any battle for Taiwan. The US assessments, reported by Bloomberg, suggest that military corruption is so extensive that President Xi Jinping is less likely to contemplate major military action over the coming years than had been assumed.

Read it.

The most frequently cited reason for this ongoing blue-to-red migration is taxes — or, more correctly, the opportunity to pay less and fewer of them. When American Enterprise Institute researcher Mark Perry compared the top ten states people were leaving in 2021 with the top ten they were moving to, the former had an average maximum income tax rate of 8 percent, while the places they were heading for had an average rate of just 3.8 percent. Even when it comes to gas taxes, drivers in red states pay significantly less than those on blue roads.

Job opportunity is also a strong red state lure. Of the seventeen fastest-hiring states, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, fourteen went for Trump in the last election. And of the three that went for Biden, two — Georgia and Nevada — are really more purple than blue. On the other hand, all ten of the slowest-hiring states voted for Biden.

And although it tends to be mentioned less frequently than either taxes or jobs, housing affordability is clearly a third reason why people are leaving blue jurisdictions. Indeed, the median home price in the ten states currently gaining the most people averages 23 percent less than in the ten states losing the most.

By their fruits ye shall know them.

Read it.

In a January 2023 preprint in The Lancet, the New Zealand government released a study showing a 70 percent increased rate of kidney injury following two doses of Pfizer mRNA vaccines. Even more telling of injury was the dose-dependent effect. That is, one dose of Pfizer showed a 60 percent increased rate of injury within three weeks post-injection, while two doses showed a 70 percent increased rate of injury three weeks post-injection. “Acute kidney injury” was not defined by the authors but is understood in a clinical setting to include measurable changes in lab results and/or serious signs and symptoms such as bleeding, pain with urination, kidney stones, nephritis, nephrotic syndrome, or other renal dysfunction.

Read it.

The long-awaited tort action from the family of Ashli Babbitt has now been filed in Southern California. Babbitt was shot and killed on Jan. 6th and her family is seeking $30 million in a wrongful death action.

Equally important, the lawsuit could force additional answers to why Capitol Police Lt. Michael Byrd shot and killed the unarmed protester as she attempted to climb through a window near the House Chamber.

Read it.

Four more heat pump manufacturers have successfully developed cold-climate prototypes as part of the Department of Energy’s (DOE) Residential Cold Climate Heat Pump Challenge.

To take part in the Challenge, manufacturers’ heat pumps must deliver 100% heating capacity without the use of auxiliary heat, with significantly higher efficiencies at 5F (-15C), and ideally operate at -15F (-26C), among other specifications.

In December 2022, Johnson Controls, now officially part of the Challenge, announced that it had developed an air source heat pump prototype that can operate in temperatures below -20F (-29C) as part of the DOE’s challenge.

The American Mind.

Early on in the pandemic, we were told—by government, the media, Big Tech, and Big Pharma—that an equally dangerous contagion was spreading in parallel to the novel coronavirus. An “infodemic” of “misinformation” about the virus, and about the official response to the virus, was putting lives at risk and threatening to prolong the crisis further. Publications like National Geographic drew comparisons with “decades” of climate change “denial,” flying in the face of scientific “consensus,” and noted how experts in and out of government were drawing together sophisticated techniques to ensure people had access to information they could trust, without falling prey to “dangerous” narratives that licensed non-compliance.

Although it was obvious from the start that government, the media, Big Tech, and Big Pharma were working in tandem to control the flow of information and guide public behavior in a way that had no precedent, the depth of this collaboration, and the methods employed, took some time to become clear. Investigations by brave individuals, publications, and organizations like Big Brother Watch provided vital information. They revealed that huge amounts of data, including personal data that should have been off-limits to government, were being collected and monitored, and even how military-grade psychological-warfare techniques were being used on the public through units such as the British Army’s secretive 77th Brigade and the Canadian Joint Operations Command.

As we near the fourth anniversary of the start of the pandemic, none of this is news—or, rather, none of it should be. It should be no surprise, either, to learn that the parties to this brave new world of information control have not surrendered their powers or ceased to collaborate with one another now that the pandemic is officially over.

Read it.

The morale and willingness to fight among Russian troops continues to plummet. One reason for this is the heavy losses, about 350,000 dead, Russia has suffered in Ukraine so far. Since late 2023 Ukrainian troops have increasingly encountered Russian troops who would surrender at the first opportunity and often do it in a dramatic fashion. This included dropping their weapons during their first encounter with Ukrainian soldiers. In other cases, Russian troops were encountered who had already dropped their weapons and were looking for someone to surrender to. While troops can be motivated or compelled to fight, they are often ineffective. That means they suffer a lot of casualties while still unable to gain much ground.

Of all of the things I do with my ‘phone’, making (or receiving) a call is at the bottom of the list.

New York Times.

An interesting story about a ‘journalist’ (working for a Narrative media outlet) who deliberately downscales and then uses that experience as a typical Crustian ‘all about me’ source of ‘content’.

Those of us who avoid ‘social media’ tend not to have smartphone addiction quite this badly; I use my iPhone to make (and, more often, receive) occasional calls and texts, but my ‘phone’ is used primarily as a Kindle reader, calendar, camera, and calculator.

One of the most significant indicators of the world in which a Crustian ‘journalist’ lives comes near the end:

“More and more people are starting to see that these platforms, these products are intentionally designed to be addictive,” said Camille Carlton, a policy manager at the Center for Humane Technology, a nonprofit in California founded by former tech employees to raise awareness about the negative effects of the kinds of products they worked on.

Ms. Carlton compared smartphones and social media apps to junk food and tobacco, and suggested that lawmakers should regulate the design of these products to protect our health. Britain’s rules for tech products aimed at children, discouraging the use of infinite scroll, autoplay and addictive design features such as Snapchat streaks, were “fantastic,” she said. (Similar laws in the United States have been challenged by tech companies as unconstitutional.)

Apparently the first thing a Crustian reaches for is government action to ‘solve’ a perceived ‘problem’ that ought to be left as a matter for individual choice in any rational society. Sad, but there it is.

Read it.

The difficulties in talking about causes in biology have been recognized for over two centuries.1 It’s just that the issues were largely set aside in the era of molecular biology due to the expectation that our rapidly growing powers of minute analysis would bring full causal understanding. Biology would soon be rid of its troublesome language of life in favor of well-behaved molecular mechanisms. And yet today, after several decades of stunning progress in molecular research, the struggle to fit our understanding of living activity into the comfortable garb of familiar causal explanation looks more hopeless than ever.

Business Insider.

“I’m always looking for someone who has a stable career, who is preferably well off,” she said, “not to say that I’m looking for sugar daddies but someone who can take care of themselves.” On LinkedIn, she figured, she could fairly assess whether a romantic prospect’s employment history, education, and career aspirations lined up with the kind of partner she envisioned for herself. At the very least, she would know whether the man had a job.

Can’t argue with that.

Read it.

First I will present the main sources for these recipes, then my actual recipes for these ales, and finally a discussion of the recipes. This discussion starts with a brief summary of ale and ale brewing in medieval England, and then discusses my choices of ingredients, the quantities and proportions involved, and finally the methods used to make the ales. This discussion section is critical to the appreciation of the recipe, since some of the methods differ substantially from modern, or even 16th–17th C. beer brewing methods.

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Well, this is a damning indictment of our society. In a relatively short stretch of time, we’ve gone from wearing cameras to record cool action-sports stunts, to wearing cameras for security purposes. The PhoneCam, by Dutch product design and development company SlimDesign, is billed as “a breakthrough solution for individuals and businesses seeking accessibility to safety.”

…

Pressing it a second time turns the light red, at which point it begins recording, uploading footage to the cloud, and simultaneously sends a request for help to your nearby contacts, along with your location. In other words it goes straight to Call the Cavalry.

Quite useful in California these days, I should think; especially in Compton.

ZMan’s weekly podcast. Highly recommended.

From time to time, I have mentioned that when it comes to politics, most people use their stupid brain rather than their everyday brain. You see it with the Harvard case where conservatives are celebrating over the ouster of the plagiarizing president, as if this will make any difference to them. Harvard will just replace one antiwhite bigot with another antiwhite bigot, probably one even more nasty than Gay.

It is not that conservatives are stupid, although many of them are quite stupid, it is that they slip into political brain when they look at this issue, rather than use their normal brain that they use everywhere else in their life. Even the people protesting pornography in the schools figured out that it was not just the books, it was the people on the school board that was the problem.

Dissidents like to quote Carl Schmitt about politics being about friends and enemies, but in many respects, this is bad for dissidents. Inside conventional politics it is fine to play Cowboys and Indians, but for dissidents this is a danger. It is how weirdos and lunatics turn up in the ranks and how otherwise useless people make themselves into influencers until they are revealed to be nuts.

Watch it.

Musical notation certainly discouraged me from learning how to do music other than at the ‘by ear’ level.

I do love people being dyspeptic, though. And this is a fascinating look at the history of music.

Every clever saying has some asshole who is determined to screw it up.

The Spectator.

The term “parasocial” was coined in a 1956 paper by the sociologists Donald Horton and Richard Wohl, who argued that television offered the potential for a new kind of relationship. “Often [the TV star] faces the spectator,” they observed, “uses the mode of direct address, talks as if he were conversing personally and privately.” In other words, the viewer could easily get the impression that this collection of pixels was talking directly to them and a one-sided relationship could thus develop.

The television of the 1950s had nothing on the podcast for parasocial effect, not least because headphones exaggerate the impression of intimacy due to a phenomenon called “in-head localization” — that is, they make it seem as if the voices are coming from inside your head. The point of the podcast is not to convey information, since text is a far more efficient medium for that purpose. Chris Williamson, host of the wildly successful podcast Modern Wisdom, describes his job as that of a “vibe architect,” a phrase I often think of, both while recording my own podcast and while consuming other people’s. Like most listeners, I turn to my favorite podcasts when I long for a specific vibe: that is, when I want to experience the pleasure of spending time with friends without any of the effort of brushing my hair, leaving my house or being nice.

Read it.

A few weeks ago, we looked at myths to do with ploughing over cities and salting the earth. Today we’re looking at a kind of companion myth. The basic idea is that Roman soldiers were paid in salt, or received an allowance of ‘salt money’.

Read it.

China has spent millennia exploring the culinary possibilities of soybean curds. The West has barely scratched the surface.

I regard that as a feature, not a bug.

Most Turd World Food is poverty food, stuff people eat because they can’t afford better. Part of being W.E.I.R.D. is the we can live high on the hog, so to speak.

If I can go through life never having to eat, say, Mexican food, I will regard myself as a success. Go thou and do likewise.

Read it.

Since time immemorial, men have carried weapons. They have done so—if they were real men—not to pick fights or unnecessarily injure other men, but in response to the heavy burden of walking life’s path in this world as a protector. Only a few centuries ago, a gentleman would wear a smallsword or spadroon just in case the need arose to defend his good name, as well as all those who shared in that name. As the smallsword was increasingly regulated by the law of the land, and gentlemen relied more on the State or, if it came to that, the courts, to settle their affairs, gentlemen nonetheless carried canes—around which sprang the martial art made famous by Sherlock Holmes: Bartitsu.

I have always carried a pocketknife (well, these days, a multitool) and probably always will. Every American male I know does the same.

Read it.

New York City is moving forward with several climate policies which are likely to make everyday life even more costly for the middle class in one of the country’s most expensive cities.

The New Yorker.

Paying extra for service has inspired rebellions, swivelling iPads, and irritation from Trotsky and Larry David. Post-pandemic, the practice has entered a new stage.

Curtis Yarvin (Mencius Moldbug)

Are you a techno-optimist? This is a serious condition—as common as prediabetes. Don’t laugh. You can treat your prediabetes—and your techno-optimism, too.

30% of Americans are prediabetic. All Americans are prediabetic, in a sense—we all have access to hot and cold-running corn syrup. It comes out of the tap. In 50 years as an American, statistics show, I have ingested a literal ton of corn syrup—a long ton. An imperial ton! I believe that major organs of my body, for example the pancreas, are this point primarily made from corn syrup.

It’s just the same with techno-optimism. As Americans—and we are all Americans now; location, even birth location, is just a detail—we are all techno-optimists. The American idea is the idea of techne, man-made order, creating a “city on a hill” in a new wild continent. As John Winthrop, first governor of Massachusetts, said: “a city on a hill cannot be hid.” San Francisco is on a hill, or several, and it cannot be hid. Although sometimes we wish it could. (To be fair, the hills are the best part—“crime don’t climb,” as they say. Try pushing a shopping cart from the Castro to the Haight.) Technical and moral progress have always been equated in the American philosophy.

And how did that work out? How is that working out—for us Americans? Quite well, at first! But of late—well, opinions vary.

Read it.

Parking, quite literally, has a death grip on America: each year a handful of Americans are tragically killed by their fellow citizens over parking spots. But even when we don’t resort to violence, we routinely do ridiculous things for parking, contorting our professional, social, and financial lives to get a spot. In the century since the advent of the car, we have deformed—and in some cases demolished—our homes and our cities in a quest for cheap and convenient car storage. As a result, much of the nation’s most valuable real estate is now devoted exclusively to empty and idle vehicles, even as so many Americans struggle to find affordable housing. Parking determines the design of new buildings and the fate of old ones, patterns of traffic and the viability of transit, neighborhood politics and municipal finance, the quality of public space, and even the course of floodwaters. Can this really be the best use of our finite resources and space? Is parking really more important than anything else?

Yes. Automobiles mean freedom.

Read it.

Non-fungible tokens promised to revolutionise the concept of ownership using the blockchain technology behind bitcoin, but the market seems to have all but collapsed.

So young, and already a Democrat….

Steve Sailer.

So, Canadian colleges get to privatize the handing out of lifelong permanent resident visas, which ought to be the possession of the Canadian citizenry as a whole, for an increment of about $13,000 per year for a few years.

The people making the decisions about who get to be the next generation of Canadian residents are utterly obscure public college bureaucrats trying to fend off budget cuts.

Read it.

The tribe’s fight against Rome-based Enel began in 2011 and is the longest-running legal battle over wind energy in American history.

Read it.

A friend asked me to recommend a book about Whittaker Chambers as a Christmas gift for her smartly conservative daughter several years ago. Chambers stands at the center of an incredible drama and several fantastic books about him. There is still much to be learned from him and his case. Here I revisit and expand the list with a little help from the eminent historian Harvey Klehr:

If you have never read WITNESS, you need to do that.

Read it.

Texas Gov. Greg Abbott continued his controversial practice of having his state pay for migrants to relocate to northern cities by flying about 100 to Chicago this week.

I wish he were in charge of our foreign policy.

Read it.

To summarize Goddek’s list, he noted that the extraction process for vegetable oils like canola, soybean, and corn oil involves unnatural methods such as high heat and chemical solvents, leading to oxidation and trans fats. These oils, a modern dietary phenomenon, have seen tremendous use since the early 1990s, paralleling the increase in chronic health issues.

He pointed out that Omega-6 fatty acids can cause chronic inflammation and are linked to autoimmune diseases due to an imbalance with Omega-3. Studies link diets high in vegetable oils to oxidative stress, mitochondrial dysfunction, genetic damage, and an increased risk of cancer and heart disease.