The revolutionary heart of Communism is not the theatrical appeal: “Workers of the world, unite. You have nothing to lose but your chains. You have a world to gain.” It is a simple statement of Karl Marx, further simplified for handy use: “Philosophers have explained the world; it is necessary to change the world.” Communists are bound together by no secret oath. The tie that binds them across the frontiers of nations, across barriers of language and differences of class and education, in defiance of religion, morality, truth, law, honor, the weakness of the body and the irresolutions of the mind, even unto death, is a simple conviction: It is necessary to change the world. Their power, whose nature baffles the rest of the world, because in a large measure the rest of the world has lost that power, is the power to hold convictions and to act on them. It is the same power that moves mountains; it is also an unfailing power to move men. Communists are that part of mankind which has recovered the power to live or die–to bear witness–for its faith. And it is a simple, rational faith that inspires men to live or die for it.

It is not new. It is, in fact, man’s second oldest faith. Its promise was whispered in the first days of the Creation under the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil: “Ye shall be as gods.” It is the great alternative faith of mankind. Like all great faiths, its force derives from a simple vision. Other ages have had great visions. They have always been different versions of the same vision: the vision of God and Man’s relationship to God. The Communist vision is the vision of Man without God.

— Whittaker Chambers, Witness

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

Personally, I prefer a Trane.

Nassim Nicholas Taleb explains it all to you.

The first is the inequality people tolerate, such as one’s understanding compared to that of people deemed heroes, say Einstein, Michelangelo, or the recluse mathematician Grisha Perelman, in comparison to whom one has no difficulty acknowledging a large surplus. This applies to entrepreneurs, artists, soldiers, heroes, the singer Bob Dylan, Socrates, the current local celebrity chef, some Roman Emperor of good repute, say Marcus Aurelius; in short those for whom one can naturally be a “fan”. You may like to imitate them, you may aspire to be like them; but you don’t resent them.

The second is the inequality people find intolerable because the subject appears to be just a person like you, except that he has been playing the system, and getting himself into rent seeking, acquiring privileges that are not warranted –and although he has something you would not mind having (which may include his Russian girlfriend), he is exactly the type of whom you cannot possibly become a fan. The latter category includes bankers, bureaucrats who get rich, former senators shilling for the evil firm Monsanto, clean-shaven chief executives who wear ties, and talking heads on television making outsized bonuses. You don’t just envy them; you take umbrage at their fame, and the sight of their expensive or even semi-expensive car trigger some feeling of bitterness. They make you feel smaller.

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Not that it will end their whining.

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Disclaimer: This reviewer has never played the video game Assassin’s Creed and has minimal knowledge of the game’s major characters or storylines.

Thus putting the reviewer on the same level as the game’s designers, who have an equivalent ignorance of the Middle Ages.

Gavin McInnes runs down the list.

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This was the month everyone told us they were going to move to Canada if Trump won. None of them did.

Joe Bob Briggs explains it all to you.

Probably the worst thing you can say to Donald Trump is “Mr. President, you have to do it that way because we’ve done it that way for the past fifty years.”

That’s like telling an alcoholic, “Don’t touch this MacAllan single malt I’m leaving on your nightstand over the weekend.”

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In poetic terms, the typewriter means thudding while word processing means deftness. Word processing on one’s own software or computer or special device—on WordPerfect (1980), the Osborne 1 or IBM PC (1981), the Kaypro II (1982), Microsoft Word (1983)—was for many writers special because it is done with light. Andrei Codrescu wrote that the Kaypro “let you write with light on glass, not ink on paper, which was mind-blowing. It felt both godlike and ephemeral.” The word processor is a powerful and empowering tool, far less about dominating the prone typewriter than about feeling humbled in the presence of infinite possibility.

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Before cereal, in the mid 1800s, the American breakfast was not all that different from other meals. Middle- and upper-class Americans ate eggs, pastries, and pancakes, but also oysters, boiled chickens, and beef steaks. 

The rise of cereal established breakfast as a meal with distinct foods and created the model of processed, ready-to-eat breakfast that still largely reigns. And it all depends on advertising and convincing you that breakfast is the most important meal of the day. 

Sometimes the old ways are best.

The first is that any company that convinces you to eat their cereal, pop tarts, or bagels absolutely owns your breakfast, because most people eat the same breakfast every day. Studies have found that consumers have strong brand loyalty to breakfast foods like cereal. Our breakfast choices are likely more habitual because of the strength of morning routines. Ads by the chicken lobby may convince people to eat a bit more chicken. But an avalanche of Tony the Tiger ads can get tens of thousands of children to eat Frosted Flakes every morning for years. 

Another is that while some Americans cook breakfast, people’s desire for a fast, convenient meal means that many breakfast foods are packaged products that rely on advertising. You can glean this from the structure of the cereal industry: cereal is extremely easy to make—a fact that angered Dr. Kellogg, who patented his creation but failed to prevent others from copying it—yet just a few companies dominate the market. 

Rather disturbing.

Try the Breakfast on a Bun by Whataburger. Basically a breakfast cheeseburger.

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Imagine a world in which the font you use is chosen for you, based entirely on your demographic affiliations. All doctors write in Garamond, while designers are mandated Futura Bold. Middle-aged men get Arial; women, Helvetica. Goofy aunts must use Comic Sans.

Seem strange? A few centuries ago, that was just how things worked. In colonial America, “the very style in which one formed letters was determined by one’s place in society,” writes historian Tamara Thornton in Handwriting in America: A Cultural History. Thanks to the rigorous teachings of professionals called “penmen,” merchants wrote strong, loopy logbooks, women’s words were intricate and shaded, and upper-class men did whatever they felt like. So different were the results, says Thornton, that “a fully literate stranger could evaluate the social significance of a letter… simply by noting what hand it had been written in.”

I’m a Palatino man, myself, with occasional forays into Zapf Chancery.

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Unmentioned, of course, is their utility as an Enhanced Interrogation Device. Trust me, it works.

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In 1980, according to the census taken that year, there were 1,500 bookbinders in New York. A great number of them plied the trade in downtown Manhattan, on the Lower East Side, among the garment workers, delicatessens and dive bars. Of that proud and once ample contingency—the binders of the Lower East Side—now there is only Henry. Henry is not his given legal name. It’s the name of the street where he works and has worked for most of his adult life. At some point, the shop became known as Henry Bookbinding, and he as Henry. It’s that kind of pragmatic thinking and come-what-may attitude, perhaps, that keeps business humming.

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But, nevertheless, White People Are To Blame.

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How did that happen? Doesn’t he know that Tiger Woods is Not A White Person?

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How about that Global Warming, eh? Rising sea levels nipping at your toes yet?

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Predictions that bears would die due to a lack of sea ice have continuously not come to pass. A new study by Canadian scientists found “no evidence” polar bears are currently threatened by global warming.

“We see reason for concern, but find no reliable evidence to support the contention that polar bears are currently experiencing a climate crisis,” Canadian scientists wrote in their study, published in Ecology and Evolution.

How about that Global Warming, eh? Rising sea levels nipping at your toes yet?

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Sometimes you eat the snowman, and sometimes….

Will somebody just give Hillary Clinton a Participation Trophy or something so that she will just shut up and go away?

— Rush Limbaugh

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Notorious Sexist Trump names a woman adviser? How the hell did that happen?

Doesn’t she know that he’s the New whatever-the-sexist-equivalent-of-Hitler-is?

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I think this situation explains socialism.

Gavin McInnes reads this stuff so you don’t have to.

MTV News just released a remarkably patronizing New Year’s guide entitled “2017 Resolutions for White Guys,” and boy, are us white guys angry. It’s a video with white beta cucks, ethnically ambiguous minorities, and a black guy in a kitten shirt telling us we need to “be better.” It’s a perfect example of how soft and retarded the alt-left has become, but the ten topics they list serve as a good springboard to tell white guys what they really should be doing.

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First, let’s agree that governments around the world regularly screw indigenous peoples. The most frequent governmental screwing occurs when authorities take their land on the grounds that it has not been not properly registered and titled. Additionally, except for the United States, nearly every other government claims to own all mineral rights within its territory. Consequently, royalties from mining concessions awarded by governments go to, yes, the governments. The upshot is that indigenous communities get screwed again when they have to endure the downsides of mining that takes place where they live while receiving none of the benefits that royalties would provide since those monies are diverted into government agencies headquartered far away.

Why am I going on about this? Because The Washington Post could have usefully made these observations in its story, “Tossed Aside in the ‘White Gold’ Rush: Indigenous people are left poor as tech world takes lithium from under their feet.” The article details how various mining companies are beginning to exploit lithium deposits in Argentina’s far northwestern province of Jujuy. The indigenous folks who dwell and herd llamas and goats in those remote Andean valleys happen to live next to giant salt flats that contain millions of tons of lithium. Lithium, of course, is the main element in the batteries that supply electricity to our mobile phones, computers, and electric cars.

The main complaint of the article is that besides new relatively high paying jobs and some minor financial assistance with community projects, the international mining companies that are making millions mining lithium are not sharing much of the proceeds with local communities. Basically, The Post casts the mining companies and the high tech companies that use Argentinian lithium in their products as the villains. Certainly, some of the local Atacama people are pissed off because they feel insufficiently consulted and rewarded. And that’s fine. But the real villains are the national and provincial governments that take the royalties and taxes and then do not use them to provide adequate services to their citizens who live in the region.

It’s all about the Hating Capitalism Narrative, Larry.

John Hinderaker sums it up.

The Democratic Party has been making a fool of itself ever since Election Day. (Before that too, probably, but that’s a different post.) An utter lack of self-awareness apparently disables Democrats from understanding that 1) they lost the presidential election because they nominated the worst candidate of modern times, 2) they have been losing ground across the large majority of America for a decade or longer, and now are at best a minority party everywhere except California, New York and a few other enclaves, and 3) their party’s leadership is uniformly both geriatric and corrupt.

Yeah, that about covers it.

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Snow last fell in the small Saharan desert town of Ain Sefra Feb. 18, 1979, when the snow storm lasted for less than an hour. Ain Sefra is 3,280 feet above sea level and is nestled between the Atlas Mountains in Africa.

How about that Global Warming, eh? Rising sea levels nipping at your toes yet?

Oh, wait, we’d better look at that list of islands that have disappeared because of rising sea levels — and … that would be … none. Hmm. Well, keep on believing in the face of facts; that’s what religion is all about.

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For those for whom current life isn’t difficult enough.

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A lot of people worry that robots — or more generally, software and automation — will take everyone’s job. One study found that almost half of US jobs are capable of being automated over the next two decades.

But automating routine jobs isn’t something that might happen in the future. To a large extent, it’s something that already happened. Today, just 8 percent of American workers work in the manufacturing sector — less than a third of the share 50 years ago. Another 6 percent work in industries like construction, mining, and agriculture that are involved in producing physical goods.

These are the sorts of jobs people refer to when they whine about ‘shipping our jobs overseas’.

What do the rest of US workers do? They’re in service industries like health care, education, retail, hospitality, and local government. It’s not necessarily that jobs in these industries can’t be automated. Some of them can, as technologies like self-checkout kiosks and exercise videos make clear.

But in most cases, customers don’t want them to be automated, because automated versions of the service aren’t as good. Most of these jobs are automation-proof because people like interacting with other people.

My wife loves using the automated check-out area in stores. I hate it, and will gladly stand in line to work with a Real Person. One of the two Costco stores nearby has a couple of automated check-out lines, and recently I was in line at one with a Real Person when a helpful Costco employee approached me and pointed out that the automated lines were free. ‘I hate those things and will not use them’, I responded, and was started to receive a round of applause from the people standing in line with me.

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Apparently one of the possible reasons for prevalence of obesity where we would least expect to find it, among poor people, is the result of the fact that poor people pig out when food is available, which makes a certain degree of sense, since a key indicator of poverty is never knowing where your next meal is coming from.

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She may have a very good case for this being a violation of her First Amendment right of free speech. If it’s permissible free speech to burn the U.S. flag, I don’t see how it’s not permissible free speech to fly the Confederate flag.

On the other hand, there is also a very good case for charging her with treason. Treason is defined in the Constitution as ‘levying war against them, or in adhering to their enemies, giving them aid and comfort.’ The Confederacy was certainly an enemy of the United States, and it’s difficult to see how flying its flag is anything other than ‘adhering to’ that enemy. U.S. government officials have traditionally been very accommodating to Confederate irredentism, and this might be an appropriate time to remind people that supporting the Confederacy was, and is, treason.

Check it out.

I predict that this will end badly for the assassin and his family and quite possibly anybody with which he shared a friendly word in the last twelve months. The Russians don’t dick around — unlike Barack Obama’s America — and have a very direct way of responding when their people are messed with.

Much like Donald Trump, come to think of it. Hmm.

The gunman is reportedly a member of Turkey’s special operations police force, and shouted islamic terrorist affiliated slogans in his shouts.

I think the Turkish Prime Minister is probably changing his underwear even as we speak.

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In a paper published in the British Journal of Psychology, researchers Norman Li and Satoshi Kanazawa report that highly intelligent people experience lower life satisfaction when they socialize with friends more frequently. These are the Sherlocks and the Newt Scamanders of the world — the very intelligent few who would be happier if they were left alone.

Other people are the problem, not the solution. Whenever something bad happens to you in life, other people are involved. Think about it.

Read it. Refresh to get a new one.

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Sometimes the old ways are best.

At least they didn’t spend all their time being offended.

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Scientists at Virginia Tech report that, in blind tastings, the flavor of milk stored in a standard supermarket-style dairy cooler is significantly degraded by fluorescent light passing through translucent plastic containers. When LED bulbs were used instead, tasters rated the milk about the same as when it was packaged in a lightproof container—which is to say, a lot better.

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Alex Egoshin ran the presidential election returns through GIS software to create new relief maps comparing the United States of Doanld to the United Urban Centers of Hillary. Above, you have the Clinton Archipelago, and below, TrumpLand. Open each in a new tab for the full-size versions.

I suspect that, were the places where ‘income inequality’ is most extreme mapped as well, the map would match pretty closely to the Clinton Archipelago. Democrat preponderance tends to align with dense urban areas, and those are also the places where extremes of wealth and poverty are found.

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Film student Anthony van der Meer had his iPhone stolen and the thought that a stranger had access to all of his personal data really concerned him. What kind of person would steal a phone? Where do these phones end up? These were his biggest questions. To get answers, Anthony had another phone stolen from him on purpose, but this time he followed the thief using a hidden app and made a captivating documentary film about the whole process.

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At the heart of liberal utopianism is the concept that through political exertion you can have a perfect society without tragic outcomes of any kind. This is one reason why liberalism rebels against human nature. (In fact, I think we should routinely refer to liberals as “human nature deniers.” Sauce for the goose and all that.)

It is this ineluctable characteristic that explains why liberals are having trouble making it through the five stages of grief over Hillary’s election face plant. Acceptance? No way.

Hence the bevy of Hollywood heroes who are now imploring members of the electoral college to vote for someone other that Trump is terrific ironic comedy gold. Give them props for saying to Republican electors—we’re not even asking that you vote for Hillary! Just some other qualified Republican. So here’s a fun idea: knowing that the House of Representatives would choose Trump in the case of an electoral college deadlock, how about a bunch of Republican electors say, “Fine: How about Ted Cruz?” And then sit back and watch the Hollywoods liberals choke.

I would find that amusing. Or Dick Cheney. That would be even more amusing.

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That conundrum goes like this: Can you think of three foods where any two of those foods taste good together, but all three combined taste disgusting?

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What exactly does a person with a degree in Russian History do for a living? If the degree is from Harvard, the answer is anything that person wants, even investment banking. But if the degree is from even a slightly lesser school than Harvard (or Princeton/Yale/Stanford), there really aren’t that many employers demanding Russian History majors.

So the workforce of CIA analysts is going to be liberal-leaning SWPL types. I am sure they really liked President Obama, and they nearly all voted for HRC for the same reasons that SWPLs outside of the CIA nearly all voted for HRC. You know, because Trump is racist. And if you work in the government, maybe you are used to the last eight years and you think that President HRC means more of the same that you are used to and that’s exactly what you want.

Joe Bob Briggs points out some inconvenient truth.

As any deer hunter can tell you, the person most likely to preserve the wildlife population is the person who regularly harvests it. All hunters are conservationists. And likewise, all energy extractors are stewards of the environment. Do they screw up from time to time? Two words: Exxon Valdez. Of course they do. Do they wanna suck all the pressure out of the oil fields like Spindletop wildcatters and send dirty fuel to the Northeast so that people die of lung cancer? Of course not.