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I think that one of the things DeSantis has been purposely doing in Florida is to use the state as a demonstration and a general model of how it is that conservatives can improve a state when they come to power. I hope a lot of people in other states are watching. Of course, the Democrats and the MSM have already labeled him as the Demon-In-Waiting.

Can’t say that I blame him.

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The concept of “sanctuary cities” has long been implemented within predominantly leftist states in America. It’s not anything new. Any operations by DHS and ICE (Immigration and Customs Enforcement) within blue states to arrest and deport illegal immigrants are often met with aggressive resistance by Democrat run city governments.

Keep in mind that foreign individuals have no right under the constitution to reside in the US without first gaining citizenship. Leftists say they don’t care and are happy to welcome millions of illegals into the country with open arms in direct violation of laws protecting our borders as well as the stability of our economy and society. They do this NOT because they are naively humanitarian; rather, they see it as a means to import a massive voting block that will give leftists whatever they want because they believe they will get citizenship in exchange.

If they didn’t want millions of illegal votes, then Democrats would not be constantly attempting to block voter ID laws.

ZMan does a deep dive.

One of the consequences of partisanship is that it insulates the partisan from the rest of the world to the extent that their reality is deranged. They only know what the others in their group know and that is limited to what is best for the group. Civic nationalists decry partisanship for this reason. It makes objective truth impossible. Radicals, of course, embrace partisanship because they reject objective truth. It is why modern radicals literally speak of their truth.

The funny thing about partisanship is both sides are correct. Politics is about friends and enemies, which leaves little room for objectivity. In politics you want to advance your interests or the interests of your side. That often means doing so at the expense of those viewed as enemies. If the facts say you should yield in deference to your opponent, then you have no choice but to reject the facts. Otherwise, you lose and that undermines the point of politics.

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We lost China. It is imperative that we not lose India.

By we, I mean the West and liberal democracy broadly speaking. Many of us thought that China would liberalize naturally as the Chinese people grew rich and demand followed Maslow’s hierarchy. Many other countries had followed this path. But China doesn’t have a liberal history, technology provided irresitible tools for social control, and democracy no longer looks to be as important for riches as it once did. With China lost and the United States in relative decline, the liberal world very much needs India as a large, multi-ethnic, and free democracy. Liberal democracy is also India’s best hope and bulwark against being ripped apart by internal divisions. But much remains in the balance.

US announces new military aid, drones for Ukraine (Associated Press)

When hell freezes over: Russia’s Arctic ambitions (The Hill)

Putin’s ‘Deluded’ Ukraine War Approach Shows Autocracies’ Weakness: Expert (Newsweek)

Lawrence Freedman: ‘Autocracies tend to make catastrophic decisions. That’s the case with Putin’ (The Guardian) Not to mention Biden.

Russian Missiles Rain on Ukraine as War Nears Half-Year Mark

Germany To Prioritize Coal Shipments Across Rail Network Over Passenger Trains Amid Worsening Energy Crisis

Biden Has Quietly Ramped Up Drone Strikes In Somalia, Killing At Least 20

US, South Korea Open Biggest Drills in Years Amid North Threats

INFANTRY: Ukraine Trains For The Offensive

MORALE: Managing Moscow Madness

Russia Fires Rockets at Areas Near Nuclear Plant, Kyiv Bans Independence Day Rallies

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I have made the decision to move to Estonia. In this post I’m going to chart out my reasons.

Some background: I’m 27 years old, studied Electrical Engineering at KU Leuven and am currently living in Belgium. Since finishing my studies I have worked at Nokia and then 2 different startups (as an early employee).

I will split up my argument in two parts: why I decided to leave Belgium and why I chose Estonia.

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Smart TVs might have invaded almost every home on the promise of customized and seamless viewing experience, but, in essence, they are not much different from their bulkier and dumber predecessors. Right from the get-go TV vendors have been conditioning their smart brainchildren to collect user data to personalize ads and sometimes directly deliver them to viewers’ screens. To do so, TV manufacturers have been tracking user behavior through a variety of tools, chipping away at their privacy.

My “TV” is nothing more than a vehicle for showing movies from DVD. I quit watching “TV shows” over twenty years ago.

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In just seven decades, America’s conventional (non-organic) farmers increased per-acre corn yields by an incredible 500% – while using steadily less water, fuel, fertilizer and pesticides – feeding millions more people. Among the many reasons for this miracle is their ability to control weeds that would otherwise steal moisture and nutrients from this vital food, animal feed and fuel (ethanol) crop.

Long-lasting herbicides don’t just control weeds. They also promote no-till farming, which helps farmers save costly tractor fuel and avoid breaking up soils – thereby reducing erosion, retaining soil moisture, safeguarding soil organisms, and locking carbon dioxide in the soil (reducing risks of “dangerous manmade climate change,” some say).

In the United States, the second most widely used herbicide after glyphosate (Roundup) is atrazine, which is critical to controlling invasive and hard-to-kill weeds impervious to other herbicides. Atrazine is used on 65 million acres of corn, sorghum and sugarcane. That’s equivalent to Colorado or Oregon, on croplands scattered across a dozen Midwestern states. It’s also used on millions of acres of golf courses, lawns and highway medians nationwide.

The US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has periodically reviewed atrazine science – which now comprises more than 7,000 studies over the past 60 years. It has found the herbicide is safe for people, animals and the environment.

Daughter Of Putin Ally Killed In Car Bombing Outside Moscow

Chang: China Is Preparing To Go To War

Post-Covid excess deaths in Britain

German Electricity Prices Spiraling Out Of Control…Tripling Since 2000… Blackouts, Unrest Loom

Russia’s War at 6 Months: A Global Economy in Growing Danger

As Attacks Mount in Crimea, Kremlin Faces Rising Domestic Pressures (N.Y. Times)

Europe’s Latest Natural Gas Pipeline Plan Won’t Solve Its Current Crisis

China’s drills to change US military assumptions (Asia Times)

Read it.

“McConnell would rather lose the Senate than win with primary candidates he tried to knife. That’s why he’s having a temper tantrum right now instead of doing his job,” tweeted The Federalist CEO Sean Davis.

“The truth is he wants every GOP nominee to be another Liz Cheney rather than someone responsive to GOP voters,” he added.

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We are entering an unanticipated reality—an era of slow population growth and, increasingly, demographic decline that will shape our future in profound and unpredictable ways. Globally, last year’s total population growth was the smallest in a half-century, and by 2050, some 61 countries are expected to see population declines while the world’s population is due to peak sometime later this century.

This kind of long-term global demographic stagnation has not been seen since the Middle Ages. World population has been growing for centuries, but the last century has dwarfed previous rises. About 75 percent of the world’s population growth has occurred in the last hundred years, more than 50 percent since 1970. But now, population growth rates are dropping, especially in more developed nations, according to the United Nations (all subsequent references to UN research in this essay are drawn from these data).

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We are omnivores, not herbivores. Natural selection has formed us to eat both plant and animal foods and to like doing so. Chimpanzees, the primates that are genetically the closest to us, deliberately hunt, kill, and eat small monkeys, wild pigs, and tortoises, annually consuming 4 to 12 kilograms of meat per capita for the entire population and up to 25 kg per adult male; that is more than in many preindustrial farming societies.

It is well to keep this biological fact in mind when considering outlandish claims about the imminent victory of veganism.

The technical term for vegetarians is ‘prey’.

ZMan’s weekly podcast. Highly recommended.

I must admit that I have enjoyed the blow out loss of Liz Cheney much more than I expected to enjoy it. It has been known for a long time that she was going to lose her race, but somehow the Cloud People were not ready for it. They have been carrying on like this is a bolt from the blue. I suspect the midnight miracle of 2020 convinced them that if they wished hard enough, their election dreams will come true.

Read it.

The makeshift labels these people give themselves often have an implicit note of self-satisfaction: “4Runner Environmentalists”, “Green-necks” or “literary Westerners”. The terms denote a mix of cultural and political tendencies that cut across some of America’s great divides. They tend to be pro-gun but pro-environmental regulation, to have deep faith in the American experiment but a deep awareness of its flaws, to be suspicious of both big government and big corporations, and, above all, to hate the twinned power of government and business, which is the force that mostly shapes the West as we know it.

An odd fellow writing an odd article for an odd website. Like most ill-educated people, he doesn’t know what ‘capitalism’ really means, so just uses it for whatever he dislikes about normal economic activity.

China, Russia to Engage in Joint Military Exercise

Ukraine Situation Report: Zelensky Vows Revenge For Kharkiv Missile Strike

Russian Airbase In Crimea Shows No Major Damage After Reported Attack

US must arm Ukraine now, before it’s too late (The Hill)

Russia, China And India To Hold Massive “Vostok” War Games In Two Weeks

Russia Warns UK: Air Force Ordered To Prevent Planned Spy Plane Overflight

‘I don’t see justice in this war’: Russian soldier exposes rot at core of Ukraine invasion (The Guardian)

Crimea attacks point to Ukraine’s newest strategy, official says (Washington Post)

Companies Draw Up Contingency Plans On Chinese Invasion Risk

Europe’s Plan to Wean Itself off Russian Gas Just Might Work

Winter Is Coming For Europe As Stagflation And Energy Crises Are Set To Bite

Ukraine: Fighting ‘Deadlocked’ Ahead of Visit by UN Chief

Top Former Pentagon, National Security Officials Call on Biden to Increase Support for Ukraine

Dozens of Kurdish Civilians Die as Turkish Onslaught Continues

Russia Shows Off Robo-Dog With RPG At Military Convention

Another ‘Mystery’ Ammo Depot Blaze In Russia Near Ukrainian Border

ZMan turns over a rock.

One of the stranger things to come from the collection of sub-cults that make up the modern Left is the concept of stochastic terrorism. In the hands of the believers, it is not so much a concept as an incantation. They chant it online in response to anything that contradicts their beliefs. On Twitter, for example, they believe that if enough believers chant it in response to a tweet they do not like, the gods of on-line moderation will strike down the offending tweet and maybe the tweeter.

Taken literally, it is a meaningless expression. The first dictionary definition of stochastic is random and the second is “involving chance or probability.” The word comes from the Greek word “to guess” and has been used in various fields to describe a range of probabilities within a process. Terrorism, of course, is the use of violence and fear to achieve an ideological aim. Taken together, stochastic terrorism would literally mean random violence to achieve a political aim.

As is often the case, it has two meanings in the cult of the modern Left. One is the purely emotional definition, which is always the primary one. Stochastic terrorism is anything that upsets the user by disconfirming her beliefs. Someone posting crime statistics, for example, is accused of stochastic terrorism because crime statistics contradict left-wing beliefs about society. The phrase is simply a way to mark someone as a heretic or blasphemer.

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What is America? It is the place where the former Navy lieutenant and SEAL advisor in Florida faces off with the former wine retailer and parking commissioner in California. If you know how to unpack that sentence, you probably don’t need anything else to place both men in their respective positions in the American psyche.

 

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A homeowner’s greatest property right is not how many uses a homeowner can use their home, but neighborhood protection from uses not beneficial to single-family homes.

The city of Dallas is losing homeowners while this critical population moves further away. The health of Dallas is at risk as the number of homeowners in the city is declining and city becoming, like many elsewhere, essentially one of renters.

People are leaving the city of Dallas not because they do not like the world-renowned museums, Nasher Sculpture Center, celebrated restaurants or the fabulous people that live here. People leave Dallas for cities, suburbs, and towns that have neighborhoods that are more stable, safer, greener and more homeowner friendly.

Scott Johnson at Power Line.

Project Veritas has an excellent story on Lisa Murkowski’s path to reelection. It follows from the ballot measure narrowly adopted by Alaska voters in 2020. The path combines an open “nonpartisan” primary with 19 candidates. The top four candidates in today’s open primary will proceed from the primary to the November election.

In the November election voters are then to rank their choices among the four candidates on the ballot. If no candidate receives 50 percent plus one of the first-choice votes, the election will be decided by the ranked-choice voting method. Ballotpedia explains the applicable ranked-choice scheme here.

Ranked-choice voting is sometimes called an ‘Australian ballot’. The key here is that if Democrats can’t get their candidate elected (and they can’t), RINO Murkowski will be their second choice.

Nobody does it better.

White House Warns Of Dangers As Congress Members Take Unauthorized Trips To Ukraine  Gotta get that all-important photo-op.

Latvia Designates Russia As Terrorist State, Urges Europe To Follow

U.S. Missiles, Critical in Ukraine’s War

Russia Says It May Sever US Relations If Declared Terrorism Sponsor

Read it.

FARMERS AROUND THE world have turned to tractor hacking so they can bypass the digital locks that manufacturers impose on their vehicles. Like insulin pump “looping” and iPhone jailbreaking, this allows farmers to modify and repair the expensive equipment that’s vital to their work, the way they could with analog tractors. At the DefCon security conference in Las Vegas on Saturday, the hacker known as Sick Codes is presenting a new jailbreak for John Deere & Co. tractors that allows him to take control of multiple models through their touchscreens.

The only way to make money farming with the few people willing to work the land is by using very expensive computerized equipment (a combine will run you the price of a Range Rover), and that locks you into the eco-system of a single manufacturer (watch Apple turn green with envy). Farmers wouldn’t mind that so much if they could only get manufacturers to provide repair services in a timely manner – if there’s a crop to get in and a storm on the horizon, a two-week backlog of parts doesn’t really help a great deal.

“Farmers prefer the older equipment simply because they want reliability. They don’t want stuff to go wrong at the most important part of the year when they have to pull stuff out of the ground,” Sick Codes says. “So that’s what we should all want too. We want farmers to be able to repair their stuff for when things go wrong, and now that means being able to repair or make decisions about the software in their tractors.”

A perfectly reasonable position.

Facing mounting pressure, John Deere announced in March that it would make more of its repair software available to equipment owners. The company also said at the time that it will release an “enhanced customer solution” next year so customers and mechanics can download and apply official software updates for Deere equipment themselves, rather than having John Deere unilaterally apply the patches remotely or force farmers to bring products to authorized dealerships.

An illustration of what frustrated farmers have to put up with.

John Deere did not respond to WIRED’s request for comment about the research.

Gee, I wonder why?

Read it.

Our answer, Just Walk Out technology by Amazon, allows consumers to shop as they normally would but save time and effort by eliminating the checkout—meaning no lines, no scanning products, and no fuss.

San Francisco and Los Angeles already have that, without even bothering about the technology.

Does the Sambar come in a hybrid?

So far as I can determine, the Sambar is available only in Japan.

Babylon Bee.

Stephen King fans have long been perplexed as to how the man who wrote The Shining, the Dark Tower series, and Misery could possibly be the same guy who logs onto Twitter and tweets like a 7-year-old chimpanzee with anger issues.

Often even more.

ZMan looks at the Deep State.

The Russian collusion hoax is a good entry point in understanding the appeal of the deep state concept. Most of the people who hated Trump could not tell you why they hated him so much. The deep state concept filled that whole. Trump was in league with those dark forces that manipulate the world. On the other hand, Trump supporters could rely on the deep state to explain why the system attacked Trump. Both sides of the Trump story could sense the Cancer Man in the room.

John Derbyshire famously said, “The ordinary modes of human thinking are magical, religious, social, and personal. We want our wishes to come true; we want the universe to care about us; we want the approval of those around us; we want to get even with that s.o.b. who insulted us at the last tribal council. For most people, wanting to know the cold truth about the world is way, way down the list.” From that it should be easy to see why the deep state is a popular villain.

Another reason people like the idea of secret actors controlling events is that it is easier to hate a person than a process. Anyone who has worked with big complex systems knows the frustration of not having someone to blame. The people are all doing the right thing, both morally and technically, yet the results are wrong. There is no one to blame but the system and the system is the result of all of those correct and well-intended actions by the people involved.

Read it.

Electric vehicles present a real opportunity to take a step towards better designed, more reliable, and sustainable transport. Instead, electric cars have become nightmarishly complex gadgets whose limited lifespans will make them less sustainable than a diesel pickuptruck running on whale oil.

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The World Economic Forum, assisted by food researchers in academia, wants you to believe that meat is unhealthy compared to soy, tofu, insect and fungus protein diets. Statistical workings of food research are presented here to show this is not true. Food frequency questionnaires (FFQs) are used in studies of population cohorts. Years later, this information together with health outcome observations are combined in statistical analyses. These analyses easily lead to over 20,000 food?disease associations tested in a typical FFQ study – called multiple testing. Researchers can then search thru and select and only report the results they want, but many of these can be false. Red meat is not unhealthy. It is belief of deceptive statistical practices and false claims from academic food researchers that are unhealthy.

Steven Hayward at Power Line.

Even before the hapless Biden Administration decided to make a yuuuge in-kind contribution to the Trump 2024 campaign by raiding his Florida home in search of . . . classified documents?!(yeah, right), everything I have been hearing from people who have spoken with Trump or been close to Trumpworld all say the same thing: he’s running again.

Perhaps it is only a coincidence, but the day after the raid, Trump released this very powerful video about “A Nation in Decline,” which I heard John Podhoretz (no Trump fan) say is the most effective short piece of political communication since Reagan in 1979-80. It’s just three minutes long, and worth watching. See if you notice what’s not said in this spot.

Does Ukraine Have A Stash Of Domestically Developed Ballistic Missiles?

The people of Belarus want democracy — America must stand with them (The Hill) And get in Yet Another War?

Russian disinformation spreading in new ways despite bans (Associated Press)

Crude oil prices rise as Russia suspends exports to Europe through pipeline

EU Members Back Zelensky’s Call To Ban All Russians From Traveling

Oil Slides As Ukraine Readies Resumption Of Russian Crude Flow To Europe

Zelensky Vows Liberation Of Crimea Following Russian Base ‘Mystery’ Blast

Russia Vowing to Destroy Nuke Plant If Ukraine Retakes

Read it.

Dunh-dunh-DUNHHH!

Amazon.com Inc.’s $1.7 billion acquisition of robot vacuum cleaner company iRobot Corp. is a move by the megacorporation to use Roombas to map the interior of homes. This data type is a digital gold mine for Amazon because if marketers know more about what’s inside, they can easily create tailormade ads.

From a market perspective, Amazon’s acquisition of iRobot is to gain deeper insight into customers’ homes via the autonomous robotic vacuum cleaner called “Roomba.”

I can see some guy picking up his Roomba and shouting at it: “Hey, Jeff! Where are my fargin’ granola bars?”

I love the smell of conspiracy in the morning….

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Ten companies exist on the planet today that were founded before 1000 AD. Seven of those are Japanese, the oldest being Kong? Gumi, a construction firm founded by three craftsmen from Korea who took a commission from Prince Sh?toku in 578 AD. Sh?toku was the great early patron of Japanese Buddhism and was responsible for constructing the Shitenn?-ji temple, Japan’s oldest Buddhist house of worship (still in operation, image above). The Kong? clan continued to operate their family firm for centuries, contributing for example to the construction of Osaka Castle in the 1500’s. In the early 2000’s, a scion of this business dynasty, Masakazu Kong?, was still Kong? Gumi’s CEO. But his poor business decisions finally led to its acquisition by a larger firm in 2006. No pressure, Masakazu-san.

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Look for ‘Soylent Green’ on the label.

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The saying goes that there is nothing that celebrities can’t make about themselves. As it turns out, that includes a war in Ukraine caused by an invasion of Russia that’s already seen thousands of casualties.

It’s almost as though there are two wars happening at once: one on social media, where guerrilla clips from the front lines show bodies, shelling, and damage to homes, and one playing out in the pages of Vogue magazine.

This week, it was revealed that Oscar-winning actress Jessica Chastain had visited with Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky. The photo was posted to his official Telegram account and was taken from his presidential palace. There were also several shots of Chastain seated at a table with Zelensky having a discussion of some sort.

ZMan explains it all to you.

We seem to be seeing the same dynamic form up in present day America as the ruling class operates by motives that baffle those outside. The raid on former president Trump by the FBI is the latest event without an obvious explanation. A feature proudly celebrated by the American political class for a long time is that Americans do not criminalize politics like other countries. The losers of elections are not jailed and former officer holders are not persecuted.

For two years the political class has been waging a war against the former president and his supporters for reasons that continue to baffle. There must be a reason as there is a reason for everything, but no logical reasons make sense. Again, we look at our political class and see a black box at the center of their actions. It is what motivates them but what is going on inside is a mystery. As a result, we are left to speculate as to their motivations and that always leads to dark motives.

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In a search for novel forms of longevity medicine, a biotech company based in Israel says it intends to create embryo-stage versions of people in order to harvest tissues for use in transplant treatments.

The company, Renewal Bio, is pursuing recent advances in stem-cell technology and artificial wombs demonstrated by Jacob Hanna, a biologist at the Weizmann Institute of Science in Rehovot. Earlier this week, Hanna showed that starting with mouse stem cells, his lab could form highly realistic-looking mouse embryos and keep them growing in a mechanical womb for several days until they developed beating hearts, flowing blood, and cranial folds.

You’re just a clump of cells, right? So it’s back to the factory for you.

ZMan looks at the Big Picture.

One of the great problems Enlightenment thinkers tried to solve is why it is that human beings live in ordered societies. Further, why are some people in charge of those societies and others subject to the will of those people. What explains this and more important, what is the correct system of organization? The recently rediscovered Greeks offered some insights. Scripture offered understanding of man’s nature but offered little to explain social hierarchy.

It is fair to say that Western intellectual life has been dominated by the search for the right answer as to how best to organize society. The utilitarian school gave us the claim that the goal of any social policy it to maximize total happiness. The Marxists gave us the argument that the goal of social policy is reducing exploitation. By exploitation they meant compulsion. Social contract theory gave us the general will, the idea that policy should be supported by the majority of the people.

The modern age fumbles around looking for a new answer to the great questions, having decided that the prior answers are not quite right. Restorative justice borrows a bit from all three schools. It starts with the assumption that everyone should benefit equally from society. This is an assumption that is never justified or even explained, but simply assumed as an axiom of the universe. It is the motivation to act and the authority to do just about anything to restore equal outcomes.