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I’m sure you are somewhat familiar with the self-driving cars levels of automation, perhaps following Tesla’s claims of offering “full self-driving” capabilities, later downgraded to level 2 (out of 5) of autonomy. These automation standards, published in 2014 by automotive standardization body SAE International as “Taxonomy and Definitions for Terms Related to On-Road Motor Vehicle Automated Driving Systems”, are useful to quickly address what we mean by self-driving capabilities. But cars are not the only thing that is getting automated, kitchens are being automated too!

The Antiplanner speaks truth to Narrative.

In both cases, the homes were built close to one another so that, if one house caught fire, the radiant heat from that fire would ignite its neighbors. For years, state and local fire officials have encouraged people who own homes near public lands to make their homes firewise, meaning the roof and certain other parts of the houses are nonflammable and vegetation and other materials that could generate enough radiant heat to ignite the wooden walls of the homes are kept more than 100 feet away.

Firewise principles only work when homes and other structures are at least 100 feet apart. Otherwise, if one ignites, its neighbors are likely to catch fire as well. To protect against wildfire, I told the Independence Institute, cities should surround themselves with low-density development. Unfortunately, the anti-sprawl zoning codes in California and other cities do not allow for such low-density development. In guarding against sprawl, a problem I don’t even think is real, planners have made their cities more vulnerable to the very real problem of wildfire.

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The jab is a vaccine, or at least that’s what it’s called, but it really isn’t. It is not a vaccine as vaccines were once understood. It is an invasive genetic delivery therapy and consists of an injected mixture containing nanocarbon fibers, lipids, and strands of mRNA designed specifically to reprogram a cell’s DNA, its genes, and its purpose. Instead of say, assembling within a scaffold of proteins designed to contract on command (example: muscle cell), the formerd muscle cell is reprogrammed by the mRNA to give up its duties and madly make COVID spike proteins until it burns out.

…

Historically, vaccines for viral infections have been incredibly effective.  Small pox?  Eradicated.  Polio?  Virtually eliminated.  Chickenpox, the mumps, the measles, rubella, whooping cough?  Gone.  In the public mind, viral vaccinations are miraculous.  So, when this new mRNA technology was elevated to “vaccine” status, the CDC and NIH effectively tapped into the public’s vaccine goodwill.  But this new “vaccine” wasn’t a vaccine at all.  It was gene therapy, both unproven and unapproved.  The definition change is an old-fashioned bait and switch.

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Well. There it is. Go get a cat and do your bit for Climate Change.

My answer is always ‘Yes. I’m calling you a liar. I’m also calling you an ignorant moron.’  They never have a response to that.

Tyler Cowen.

I was two days ago at Hereticon, and wondering which views actually should be considered heretical. It seems there are some distinct categories, for instance here are a few categories of the “partially heretical”.

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Smart guns, or firearms that can identify the correct user, sound an awful lot like the solution to a lot of problems. It’s something anti-gun forces have wanted to see a long time and, frankly, it seems like something a lot of pro-gun people should be all about, too.

However, we’re not.

Don’t get me wrong, most of us like the idea of guns that really can’t be used if they’re stolen. The issue is…well, there are a ton of issues, really.

Check it out.

A site full of suggested explanations for words that don’t exactly translate into other languages.

I like verschlimmbessern·To make something worse in an attempt to improve it.

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Virtually every generation spawns a new crop of young people who believe that Socialism is a really good idea. The vast majority of those historically-ignorant young people eventually grow up and their Utopian ideas are dashed on the Hard Rocks of Reality. Or as the brilliant Thomas Sowell replied when asked what made him abandon the Marxism of his youth: “Facts.”

Most of them – at least in my generation of socialist advocates – were not even close to “working class,” and even further from “oppressed.” Many were spoiled children of the very rich, so they already were accustomed to getting everything free without the inconvenience of having to work for it. They were big-hearted and small-brained enough to think that all we had to do was substitute Big Daddy Government’s beneficence for their own Daddies’ generosity in a seamless transition from spoiled brat to grownup layabout.

ZMan’s weekly podcast. Highly recommended.

When people hear the word “Marxism” or “communism” they immediately think of a set of economic arrangements. They may not know much about Marx or Marxism, but they know that it means the end of property and the rule by a party of ideologues. It is a simple and effective label. The same is true of communism or socialism. These words have connotations that make for effective shorthand. Even capitalism, a thing that may not actually exist, carries meaning for people.

We don’t have a label like that for the current political regime. Liberal democracy is probably accurate, but it has positive connotations. Democracy is supposed to be a good thing and liberal government is peaceful and accommodating. There are examples of things that are good separately but horrible together, like fish ice cream, but that is not really the same thing. When people in the public square use the term liberal democracy, they tend to use it in a positive way.

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The Solar System floats in the middle of a peculiarly empty region of space.

This region of low-density, high-temperature plasma, about 1,000 light-years across, is surrounded by a shell of cooler, denser neutral gas and dust. It’s called the Local Bubble, and precisely how and why it came to exist, with the Solar System floating in the middle, has been a challenge to explain.

A team of astronomers led by the Harvard & Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics (CfA) has now mapped the Local Bubble with the highest precision yet – and found that the Local Bubble was likely carved out of the interstellar medium by a series of supernova explosions millions of years ago.

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New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman (not to be confused with the NYTimes columnist who wants to be Governor of Oregon because he thinks the current governor isn’t left-wing enough) thinks Biden should pick Liz Cheney as his running mate in 2024.

His rationale … I am not making this up… is because Israel is a parliamentary democracy and Orange Man Bad, and therefore, combining a president with a 28% approval rating with a vice president so consumed with hatred for the previous president that her own party has rejected her will unite the country and save democracy.

It might.

ZMan takes a long view.

It speaks to the bankruptcy of the political class that they keep indulging in these weird walks down memory lane. Within living memory politicians would run on specific agendas, tied closely to things that were important to people. Biden ran on not being Trump and now Hillary plans to run on not being Trump or Biden. Elections have always been beauty contents, but now they have been stripped of their talent portion, leaving us with the terrifying image of geezers in swimsuits.

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Sometimes life comes at you fast. ­Such was the case this week for Glenn Kessler, the so-called fact-checker for Jeff Bezos’ publication, The Washington Post. Kessler himself was inadvertently fact-checked by the U.S. Department of Justice, and yet this reporter who spends his career allegedly seeking the truth and correcting others was unwilling to admit his own mistake.

Kessler’s full-time job is to perform public relations work for the Biden regime by often issuing fake “fact checks” of conservatives when they make points that run counter to the regime’s narrative. More often than not, these fact checks require some serious spinning, or even inventing of “facts,” in order to find objectionable grounds.

Tom Veal.

Two items caught my eye today, reminders that American liberalism used to be far different from its current progressive incarnation. That it vanished so completely after the 1970’s, having dominated the country’s politics for about forty years, is an odd, under-analyzed historical phenomenon.

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I’ll vote for him if he runs.

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Sports Illustrated swimsuit model Brooks Nader was tracked for five hours while bar hopping on Wednesday night after a stranger apparently slipped an Apple AirTag into her coat pocket.

Bar-hopping. Uh-huh.

I have a suggestion….

ZMan’s weekly podcast. Highly recommended.

Charlottesville and now January 6 are legends that can be told around the campfires as reminders of the struggle. They both have the same elements. The cause was the good people were not vigilant, which allowed the bad guys to form up. Both stories have a point where things could go either way. Both have the point when the righteous swept the villains from the field and triumphed over evil. Both have their martyrs, although the January 6 martyrs are imaginary.

Of course, the more you examine it the more you see that the overlap between ideological zeal and insanity is quite large. These people cannot exist in the world as it is, so they have created a fantasy world. This world of imaginary villains is one where they can pretend to be on the side of angels in the great struggle. By itself it would be harmless, but this madness comes with a fanatical drive to control society. These people are crazy and highly motivated to take over society.

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I doubt that it would work, because in the modern world nobody believes in that level of commitment.

Trump would actually do it, so he could threaten to do it and people would believe him. But I doubt that it would work for the current government of Taiwan. (It would be different if they were Japanese, of course.)

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China has “standardized” the names of 15 places in Arunachal Pradesh, an Indian state on the border with Bhutan and Burma that the Chinese regime has attempted to claim and aggressively intruded upon for the past few decades. However, Indian Foreign Ministry spokesperson Arindam Bagchi said that assigning invented Chinese names to locations in the state won’t alter the fact that Arunachal Pradesh is and always will be an “integral part” of India.

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The Biden administration appears to be heading in the direction of waging a two-front Cold War over Ukraine in Eastern Europe and Taiwan in East Asia, both of which could turn “hot” any day. The imprudence of such an approach should be obvious, but the great danger is that such “crises” could get out of hand before the leaders involved step back from the brink.

The problem with Trump no longer being President is that the ‘invade the world, invite the world’ people are back in charge. If for no other reason, this inclines me to vote for him again (if he runs).

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The European Union has led the way in transitioning from fossil fuels to “green” energy, i.e. wind and solar. But that effort has hit a snag: wind and solar don’t work, and energy costs in the EU are skyrocketing. Now a Reuters report suggests that the EU may be thinking about jumping ship.

Joel Kotkin is not afraid to ask the interesting questions.

Over the past several decades, the progressive Left has successfully fulfilled Antonio Gramsci’s famed admonition of a “long march through the institutions”. In almost every Western country, its adherents now dominate the education system, media, cultural institutions, and financial behemoths.

But what do they have to show for it? Not as much as they might have expected. Rather than a Bolshevik-style assumption of power, there’s every chance this institutional triumph will not produce an enduring political victory, let alone substantially change public opinion.

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WHAT DO THE chief executives of Adobe, Alphabet, IBM, Match Group (which owns Tinder), Microsoft, OnlyFans (a subscription service featuring content creators in various stages of undress) and Twitter have in common? All seven happen to be of Indian origin. That is not surprising considering the abundance of subcontinental talent drifting into Western companies: in recent years Indians have been granted well over two-thirds of America’s H-1B visas for highly skilled workers.

But these particular bosses share something else, too. They are all top-caste Hindus. Four are Brahmins. Traditionally associated with the priesthood and learning, this pinnacle of the caste pyramid’s 25,000-plus sub-groups makes up just 50m or so of India’s 1.4bn people. The other three CEOs come from castes traditionally associated with commerce or “scribal” professions such as book-keeping. These groups account for a similarly slim section of the pyramid’s capstone: the 30% of Hindus that the government classes as “forward” castes, as opposed to the 70% who fall among such categories as “backward” or “scheduled” castes (Dalits, formerly known as untouchables) and “scheduled tribes”.

And that is surprising, because across India’s own boardrooms it is not Brahmins who predominate. Members of the former priestly caste tend to excel less in business than in fields such as academia, science and the law. A quarter of Supreme Court judges in the past 15 years have been Brahmins, and three of India’s four Nobel prizes in science have been won not just by Brahmins, but by a smaller subset of Tamil Brahmins.

Funny how nobody talks about ‘systemic racisn’ and mentions India.

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Warren Buffett may feel inclined to pen the occasional NYT editorial professing his earnest desire to pay more taxes to the federal government. But when it comes to the businesses he controls, the billionaire checks his progressive politic at the door.

Warren Buffet has no ‘progressive politics’. His advocation of high income tax rates is purely predicated on keeping would-be rich people off of his lawn.

Scott Johnson at Power Line.

At the end of last year I formulated predictions for 2021 in the spirit of George Eliot’s narrator in Middlemarch: “Among all forms of mistake, prophecy is the most gratuitous.” I think it likely that the evils of 2022 will exceed those of 2021. For the moment, I’m sticking with my 2021 predictions for the coming year.

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A tiny grain of millet may have given birth to one of the most mysterious—and widespread—language families on Earth, according to the largest study yet of linguistic, archaeological, and genetic evidence from about a dozen countries across Asia. The Transeurasian languages, sometimes known as Altaic, include the languages of Siberia, Mongolia, Central Asia, and possibly Japan and the Korean Peninsula. The new study suggests the language family arose in northeastern China 9000 years ago, expanding with the spread of agriculture.

“It’s convincing,” says Peter Bellwood, an archaeologist at Australian National University who wasn’t involved with the work. “Languages don’t just go wandering off by themselves; they expand because the people who speak those languages spread.” Farming, he adds, is a strong reason for such an expansion.

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Jeans are arguably the most popular and versatile fashion item. They can be dressed up or dressed down, and they’re in style for years and years. And the more worn they get, the better they look.

But look deeper, and you’ll find hidden environmental consequences — like toxic chemicals, hazardous waste, and excessive water consumption. Even the indigo dye is problematic because it is derived from petroleum. But a new startup, Huue, has a solution. They are cultivating bacteria that generate the same iconic blue, without the need for hazardous chemicals.

I think the Cistercians had the right idea.

ZMan peers ahead.

A clever way to make smart predictions is to start with the assumption that the near future is not going to be much different from the present. Current trends will extend out over the near term. On the other hand, if you want to get a lot of attention for yourself, you can make bold crazy predications that confirm deeply held suspicions. “Next year we see hyperinflation!” will get the gold bugs and Fed watchers excited. Everyone likes to hear that their dreams will come true in the coming year.

The trouble with either of those approaches is they are not motivated by the desire to figure out what may be coming in the new year. Sure, most things will probably be the same as last year, but so what? What matters is what will be different. Similarly, pretending the Great Pumpkin will rise from the pumpkin patch and finally deliver on his promises is just cheap theater. So, with that in mind, let us cut open the goat and read what the entrails tell us about the coming year.

Paul Mirengoff at Power Line.

I wrote here about the war on grades and homework in some of California’s largest school district. Inevitably, that war is spreading. It has come to Arlington County, Virginia, for example.

Naturally, there is pushback in Arlington. Surprising, perhaps, some of the pushers are liberal.

ZMan peeks behind the curtain.

A popular topic on this side of the great divide is how much of what we see from the ruling class is directed and how much is emergent. Put another way, how much of it is the result of conscious coordination from some central source and how much is just the mentality of the swarm. Those who like conspiracy theories and simple answers prefer the coordination model, while those with experience in complex human systems prefer the emergent behavior approach.

Of course, both can be true. Elites in the anglosphere have been enamored by what is called nudge theory for a while now. the 2008 book Nudge: Improving Decisions About Health, Wealth, and Happiness was a big hit with the managerial class, as it suggested a feminine way to compel social behavior. Instead of ordering people around, elites would use their power over the institutions to “nudge” people in the preferred direction with positive incentives, rather than force.

Cheese is good.