A Red Rebound

This map shows the percentage point change in 2024 results from 2020 in counties where votes are nearly all counted. At least 2,630 shifted more Republican and 301 turned more Democratic.

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EcoHealth Alliance, the nonprofit that Dr. Anthony Fauci used to offshore risky gain-of-function research 6 months before the Obama administration banned it, has finally been cut off by the US Government – along with its former president, Peter Daszak, for a period of five years following scrutiny over its work in Wuhan, China ahead of the Covid-19 pandemic.

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How about that Sustainable Green Energy? Doesn’t it make you want to go out and buy an Electric Vehicle? Or maybe a Tesla Wall?

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Underscoring the depths of these degenerate modern times.

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By 2022, Yuval Noah Harari would announce its dark fulfillment:

“Humans are now hackable animals. The whole idea of free will… that’s over. Today we have the technology to hack human beings on a massive scale. Everything is being digitized, everything is being monitored. In this time of crisis, you have to follow science. It’s often said you should never allow a good crisis to go to waste, because a crisis is an opportunity to also do ‘good’ reforms that in normal times people would never agree to. But in a crisis, you have no chance, so you better do what we – the people who understand – tell you to do.”

Like Truman Burbank in ‘The Truman Show,’ we inhabit a world where reality itself is increasingly engineered. And like Truman, most remain unaware of the extent of this engineering until shown the patterns. But unlike Truman’s physical dome with its obvious cameras and artificial sets, our manufactured environment operates through sophisticated technological systems and invisible digital constraints. The mechanics of this reality engineering – from media manipulation to social programming – were explored in detail in our previous analysis. Now we turn to the driving force behind this manufactured world: technocracy, the system of control that makes such reality engineering possible on a global scale.

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Over the past half-century, tens of millions of Americans have poured into sunny states like Florida and California that are catastrophically unsuited for large populations. Specifically, the former is in hurricane alley and is guaranteed a direct hit from a Cat-5 one of these days, while the latter is a desert prone to droughts and raging wildfires (see today’s news).

While this ill-fated mass migration was happening, the federal government was inflating away the dollar, causing the prices of financial assets like homes — especially in popular coastal cities — to soar to stratospheric highs.

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Texas A&M University is in legal and political trouble.

It faces threats of civil rights liability, the loss of federal funding, and the firing of its president, Mark Welsh III, all because its general counsel, Ray Bonilla, gave the university legal advice that he should have known was unsound.

Journalist-activist Chris Rufo revealed on X that Texas A&M University is sponsoring employees’ travel to a racially segregated diversity, equity, and inclusion conference on March 20 and 21 in Chicago. The conference lists Texas A&M among its “university partners” and excludes Asian and white people from attending.

Even in red states, the rot is everywhere.

The Foundry.

It’s time to make Washington, D.C., safe again. Washington is one of the most dangerous capital cities in the civilized world. Tourists, diplomats, members of Congress and their staffs, and residents—especially in minority neighborhoods—have all been victims of crime.

If Washington, D.C., was a state, it would have the highest per capita homicide rate of any state in the United States.

It’s a disgrace.

As are all other Democrat-ruled urban areas.

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A high-ranking military appointee of California Gov. Gavin Newsom diminished the state’s emergency response volunteer firefighting units, according to Maj. Gen. Jay Coggan, retired commanding general of the California State Guard.

California is now struggling to contain destructive wildfires, which have killed 25 people and displaced more than 80,000 in the Los Angeles area.

Newsom appointed Matthew Beevers to serve as adjutant general of the California Military Department in May 2023. Beevers has a history of marching in LGBTQ pride parades and was investigated for alleged antisemitism against a subordinate, the Washington Free Beacon reported. Beevers denied making the antisemitic comment.

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America’s first gender-deluded congressman apparently believes it’s his job as a public representative to make his sexual dysphoria the problem of impressionable young children.

A viral video shows “transgender” Rep. Tim “Sarah” McBride (D-Del.) telling elementary school kids it’s “society’s” fault that people considered him a boy when he “knew” he was “really a girl.”

The problem ain’t what you know, it’s what you ‘know’ that ain’t so. Biology picks whether you are a boy or a girl. If you want to be something else, well, why not wish for a pony while you’re at it?

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How about that government-provided health care! Don’t you wish we had a system like that in the U.S.?

Well, it’s coming….

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And why is that?

Well, this may have something to do with it:

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revoke Swedish citizenship for dual nationals involved in gang-related crimes. The move comes in response to rising organised crime and security concerns, which Justice Minister Gunnar Strömmer has described as threats to democracy.

The reforms will enable parliament to strip dual citizens of their Swedish nationality if they are found guilty of crimes threatening state security or linked to organised criminal networks. This aligns with similar policies in Denmark, where citizenship can already be revoked for actions harmful to state interests. By targeting gang leaders orchestrating violent crimes from abroad, the government aims to disrupt networks responsible for a dramatic rise in shootings and bombings.

The centre-right government, supported by the right-wing Sweden Democrats, points to alarming statistics of 363 shootings and numerous bombings in 2024 as evidence of the need for reform. Migration Minister Johan Forssell said it was “far too easy” to become Swedish.

Gothamist.

Police are searching for an unidentified man accused of setting multiple fires across the city last week, including inside two subway stations and a police car.

The NYPD said the man set a police car on fire shortly after 2 a.m. Friday before igniting a second fire that damaged a vehicle in front of 14 Murray St., near City Hall. The suspect then reportedly traveled to the Brooklyn Bridge-City Hall subway station, where he set a paper cup on fire and tossed it into a garbage can around 2:55 a.m., police said. The spree concluded around 3:40 a.m. when the man set fire to a pile of garbage next to a sleeping passenger aboard a northbound J train at the Woodhaven Avenue station in Queens, according to officials.

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Was one of them named Climate Change?

UPDATE: Blowtorch-Wielding Illegal Immigrant Has at Least Three Prior Los Angeles Arrests—and a History of Violence

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We had an inexpensive life-saving solution both before and during the pandemic…

The inconvenient truth is that even at the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic, a very simple, inexpensive and effective treatment was available that could have saved the majority of lives lost (1-3). All that the WHO and public health bureaucracy had to do was to recommend and support people taking sufficient Vitamin D3.

I took D3 throughout the Pandemic Panic, didn’t wear a mask unless forced to, and still have never had COVID (though my  wife, whom I smooch whenever I have an excuse, has had it twice).

This failure to act traces back to the unscientific bias and pro-vaccine obsession of Dr. Anthony Fauci. And once again the legacy media, while being paid by the US government and the pharmaceutical industry to promote vaccination, acted by censoring, defaming and suppressing the ability of physicians to inform people of scientific truth. The disease you suffered, the loss of life among your family and friends, could have been greatly reduced by simply getting enough Vitamin D3. This is another example of what happens when unelected bureaucrats are allowed to control free speech. Crimes against humanity.

Still waiting for some justice-obsessed individual to Do The Right Thing re Fauci. I’d do it myself but it would be Too Much Like Work.

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For the latest proof that we’re all living in a black comedy about the leftist-led destruction of the West, cast your eyes on a woke theater in “gay Paree.”

In December, the Gaîté Lyrique theater held a conference titled, “Reinventing The Welcome For Refugees In France.” Fittingly, more than 250 African migrants showed up, were welcomed — and then refused to leave. Five weeks later, they’re still there, along with 50 more who’ve piled inside.

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Why does nobody care about anything? The world is full of stuff that could be excellent with just 1% more effort. But people don’t care.

Have you been to the DMV? It sucked? There is a human being whose job it is to be in charge of the DMV. They do not care that it sucks.

Ever used a piece of software that’s buggy as hell, looks bad, but still costs money, presumably because the company behind it has found some regulatory capture to justify their existence? The programmer who wrote it probably doesn’t care. Their manager definitely doesn’t care. The regulators don’t care.

You might think “something something incentive systems”. No. At my big tech job I had the pleasure of interviewing a few programmers who worked for a large healthcare company that engages in regulatory capture. Let me assure you: They. Do. Not Care.

I’ve met a few people that work for municipal governments. Not politicians, just career bureaucrats deep in the system. I ask them what their favorite part of the job is. They all say “stability” or “job security” as their #1. It takes 18 months to get the city to permit your shed? They. Do. Not. Care.

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Is your home on fire because your local fire department is run by three lesbians named Kirsten and there’s no water because that department is also being run by a diversity hire?

Sorry, maybe you should have bought diversity insurance.

Biden Races to Cement His Legacy Through a Series of Actions (New York Times)

Certification of Rescission of Cuba’s Designation as a State Sponsor of Terrorism (The White House)

Biden moves to lift state sponsor of terrorism designation for Cuba, part of deal to free prisoners (Associated Press)

Biden Administration to Lift Cuba’s State Sponsor of Terrorism Designation (NewsMax)

Biden Throws Cuban Curve Ball Days Before Trump Enters White House

Florida Dems: Mistake to Remove Cuba as Terrorist State (NewsMax)

Sen. Cruz Rips Move to Lift Cuba Terror Designation (NewsMax)

Biden Solidifies Anti-Oil Legacy With Flurry of Lame-Duck Attacks on Drilling and Mining

No One Wants A Biden Presidential Library (The Federalist)

‘Sinking the Democratic Party’: Florida Dems Rip Biden for Delisting Cuba as Terrorism Sponsor

Larry Correia.

Listen, epic fantasy readers, real talk time. I know you had a good thing going with George. At the beginning of your relationship there seemed like there was so much potential there, like he really cared, and he’d provide a satisfactory end to your relationship. Only George is fat and lazy, and once he got that sweet sweet HBO money, he didn’t need you anymore. So then you turned to Pat, only he was even sleazier, gas lighting you, promising you a new chapter if you paid his rent, stringing you along for a decade.

The swine.

George R.R. Martin and Patrick Rothfuss have totally fucked over an entire generation of new authors. That will be their real legacy. They wrote some books that got super popular. These books dominated their genres for a lot of years, and hundreds of thousands of readers were glued to them, waiting for the next installment. Only because they are both apathetic sacks of shit with zero work ethic, their fans have been left waiting for over a decade for them to fulfill their promises.

Only this post ain’t about them. I don’t know what makes up the assortment of their particular bag of nuts, or why they suck at doing their jobs now. As a writer who has retained his dairy farmer roots interpretation of what it means to have a work ethic, fuck those guys.

I second that emotion.

ZMan:

Anyone who has had anything to do with the American healthcare system knows that it is both amazingly good and amazingly insane. If you have a treatable form of cancer, you can be cured of something that within living memory killed people. On the other hand, if they find some trivial ailment during your physical, you can be subjected to endless hustles to pump you full of prescription medications.

From my limited experience with the system, it appears to be a system created by organized crime, but some of the members found Jesus and wanted to help people, so the compromise was gangsterism mixed with altruism. The frustrating part of it is you are never sure which end you are experiencing. Often it feels like it is both at the same time, which should be impossible.

One reason for this is we do not treat medicine as a business. The medical professions, even the bullshit administrative stuff, are full of people who have nailed themselves to the cross as a sacrifice to the rest of us. Any suggestion that they are acting from anything other than the your best interests is treated as blasphemy. They are “care givers” who sacrifice for the rest of us.

Popular culture does not help, as it is full of movies and television shows that portray these people as altruistic angels, sent here to serve humanity. This took a massive hit during Covid, when we learned that the chubby nurses were making TikTok videos in empty hospitals when they claimed to be saving lives. This change in public perception had no impact on their view of themselves.

…

This confusion about the reality of the medical business lies at the heart of the debate of health care reform. The “universal medicine” people are sure that the problem is the profit motive, so they want to remove it. They think this will turn everyone into angels who live to serve us. Instead, it will turn them into the sorts of people who will never be fired for the Los Angeles wildfires.

Alex Tabarrok, a Real Economist.

It’s well known that the voting methods we use are highly defective, as they fail to meet fundamental criteria like positive responsiveness, the Pareto principle, and stability. Positive responsiveness (monotonicity) means that if a candidate improves on some voters’ ballots, this should not reduce the candidate’s chances of winning. Yet, many voting methods, including runoffs and ranked-choice voting, fail positive responsiveness. In other words, candidates who became more preferred by voters can end up losing when they would have won when they were less preferred! It’s even more shocking that some voting systems can fail the Pareto principle, which simply says that if every voter prefers x to y then the voting system should not rank y above x. Everyone knows that in a democracy a candidate may be elected that the minority ranks below another possible candidate but how many know that there are democratic voting procedures where a candidate may be elected that the majority ranks below another possible candidate or even that democratic voting procedures may elect a candidate that everyone ranks below another possible candidate! That is the failure of the Pareto principle and the chaos results of McKelvey–Schofield show that this kind of outcome should be expected.

Almost all researchers in social choice understand the defects of common voting systems and indeed tend to agree that the most common system, first past the post voting, is probably the most defective! But, as no system is perfect, there has been less consensus on which methods are best. Ranked choice voting, approval voting and the Borda Count all have their proponents. In recent years, however, there has been a swing towards the Borda Count.

UnHerd.

Vaccination rates against childhood diseases have been on a downward slide for the past few years in the United States. Nationally, for example, the share of kindergarteners with completed records for the measles vaccine dropped to 93 percent last year, down from 95 percent in 2019, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Polio, whooping cough, and chickenpox vaccination rates have likewise slumped since the pandemic.

Vaccines are one of the marvels of modern science, allowing our species to overcome some of our oldest microscopic adversaries. The erosion of public support for childhood immunisation is thus lamentable, not to mention dangerous. Yet public-health and government authorities looking for someone to blame for growing vaccine scepticism might wish to look in the mirror: Their Covid and gender excesses have done a great deal to sow distrust among parents.

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For a change, we get to see producer prices first this month (before tomorrow’s CPI extravaganza). While central bankers are sure this resurgence is a blip – a transitory rebound on the way to 2% – analysts are far less convinced with expectations signaling a big jump in inflation in December data.

Analysts were right on direction but not on magnitude as headline PPI rose 0.2% MoM (+0.4% exp), pulling the YoY PPI up to +3.3% from +3.0% prior (but below the 3.5% exp) – the highest since Feb 2023.

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The underlying strength of economics is that (when approached honestly and with respect to the data) it can give us a relatively accurate measure of progress versus cost. If the rewards outweigh the costs after careful calculation then that economic endeavor will bear fruit. The ability to gauge production, innovation and prosperity with an unbiased eye is essential to true economics.

The problem is that economics is not only a mathematical science, it is also, for lack of a better term, a social science. One has to understand individual psychology and mass psychology. You have to be knowledgeable in the inconsistencies of human emotion and desire as much as you are knowledgeable in the hard realities of supply and demand. Furthermore, not all people that engage in economic study do so for the benefit of humanity.

There is a contingent of financial elitists that seek to use their understanding of the psychological side of economics to socially engineer political outcomes. We’ve heard it said that nuclear science or genetic science offer a power so terrible that they could wipe out civilization if exploited by the wrong hands. I would argue that economic science in the wrong hands outdoes every other competitor because it can be used to enslave humanity forever.

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Last week, the captain and first mate of a Mexican fishing boat are in federal custody after brawling with U.S. Coast Guard members attempting to board their vessel, according to Border Report.

The clash occurred last Sunday off San Diego’s Mission Bay after a federal Joint Operations Center in Imperial Beach flagged the boat as suspicious.

The boat, with six occupants and an “excessive number” of fishing poles, was under surveillance by U.S. Border Patrol near Dana Launch. Agents observed four passengers disembarking, later identified as Mexican migrants. They were instructed to sit on the pier while agents searched for the boat’s operators.

The Border Report article says agents spotted two individuals hiding near public restrooms, but the pair fled back to the boat, quickly unmooring and escaping before they could be apprehended.

New York Post.

The homeless man tackled and zip-tied by onlookers who say he was trying to start fires with a blowtorch near a Los Angeles wildfire is an illegal immigrant who will likely be protected by California’s sanctuary city status, according to sources.

The suspect is Juan Manuel Sierra-Leyva, a Mexican national who is in the United States illegally, sources told The Post.

He was chased and taken down by residents of Woodland Hills after they allegedly saw him torching old Christmas trees and debris on fire with what one resident described as a “flamethrower” soon after the massive wildfire began Thursday.

Victor Davis Hansen.

The Los Angeles apocalypse was a multisystem, green-woke collapse—and a disastrous reminder that when Soviet-style, anti-meritocratic ideology permeates all aspects of modern life in California, disaster is inevitable.

First, note that the culprit of the catastrophe is not climate change; it is not Donald Trump. Those are excuses for arrogant incompetency and disdain for the public. And it is not racism or homophobia to fault those who paraded and virtue signaled their tribal identities so extraneous to their actual responsibilities for public safety.

Note that all California statewide officeholders are left-wing. The California left holds supermajorities in both houses of the state legislature. Only 17 percent of California’s huge congressional delegation of 52 seats is Republican. California’s judiciary is the most left-wing in the country. There is not a single Republican on the 15-member Los Angeles City Council.

Add it all up, and the woke socialist state has been eagerly deindustrializing, decivilizing, and retribalizing its way into what is now a veritable peacetime Dresden on the Pacific.

Time to leave.

“O beautiful, for spacious skies, for amber waves of grain, has there ever been another place on earth where so many people of wealth and power have paid for and put up with so much architecture they detested as within thy blessed borders today? I doubt it seriously. Every child goes to school in a building that looks like a duplicating-machine replacement-parts wholesale distribution warehouse. Not even the school commissioners, who commissioned it and approved the plans, can figure out how it happened. The main thing is to try to avoid having to explain it to the parents.”

Wolfe, Tom. From Bauhaus to Our House (p. 1). Farrar, Straus and Giroux. Kindle Edition.

ZMan is delightfully dyspeptic today.

“A dog who will bring a bone will carry a bone” is an old-time expression that usually is meant to say that someone who will steal for you will steal from you. More generally it means that an immoral person on your side will eventually let you down or go over on the other side. The underlying assumption is that even in an adversarial environment, there are rules. The person who violates those rules can never be trusted, even when their rule breaking favors you.

This “lack of a code” lies at the heart of the traitor in wartime. The person who makes a deal with the enemy is harshly punished, usually executed, not because of the practical aspects of their crime. It is not that they gave the enemy an advantage or useful information. It is that they violated the code that holds everyone together in the fight. They have excluded themselves from the company of men who can be trusted to uphold the code when no one is looking.

Quillette.

Alexis de Tocqueville (1805­–1869), the great French diplomat, essayist and political thinker, did not live to see the age of identity politics, social media, grade inflation, concept creep, safetyism, the mental health crisis, mass rewritings of history and a public culture increasingly preoccupied with grievances, moral outrage, sanctified victimhood and bottom-up modes of censorship. But, though he never names them in those terms, all these related symptoms are already apparent and crystallising into something of a cultural syndrome in his study of American democracy in the 1830s, and his analysis of the changing historical conditions that led to the French revolution of 1789. Tocqueville’s work traces the roots of grievance culture to human nature itself, and to the pre-modern cascade of social transformations that culminated in novel, American forms of tyranny: a tyranny of the entitled masses, of the kind that contemporary Tocquevillians and postcolonial theorists alike might recognise as stemming from the elite ethos of North American campuses, via the infrastructure of social media. But this story is much older, and points to a timeless, universal human dilemma.

OffGuardian.

Wondering what to expect from the government in 2025?

So far, it looks like it will be more of the same ill-advised, costly, greedy, taxpayer-funded, dunderheaded power grabs, saber-rattling, graft, corruption, and make-works programming that leaves us no better off than where we started.

Indeed, we’ve been down this road so many times before that there should be no surprise when, no matter who occupies the White House, we find ourselves subjected to more of the same when it comes to the erosion of civil liberties and the increasing power of the government and its corporate partners-in-crime.

Read it.

Just in case you were wondering. I know I was.

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You might not be able to rely on your firefighters to save you from a burning building, but at least they look like you!

Having a queer female fire chief will apparently “give” you “a little bit more ease” as you watch California’s wildfires burn your family and pets alive.

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The historical significance of food security cannot be overstated. After the devastation of World War II, European nations understood the fragility of their food supplies. Hunger, shortages, and economic instability plagued the continent, prompting the creation of the European Economic Community (EEC). A key component of this new cooperative effort was the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP), established in 1962. Its purpose was clear: to ensure stable, sufficient food production, reduce dependence on imports, and protect citizens from the specter of future shortages. It succeeded in turning Europe into a self-sufficient agricultural powerhouse while upholding high standards of food safety and quality.

Fast forward to today, and the situation could not be more different. The European Union (EU), driven by unelected bureaucrats in the European Commission, has turned its back on its founding principles. Under the guise of environmental sustainability and climate policy, the EU has declared war on its farmers, implementing measures that force them off the land. These policies, varying by country but united in their destructive outcomes, are choking the life out of European agriculture. In the Netherlands, nitrogen emissions are the scapegoat; in Germany, farmers are being taxed into oblivion. The result is the same: despair, financial ruin, and a troubling rise in farmer suicides.

I guarantee you that ADM and Cargill aren’t feeling any pinch.

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A resident of Charleroi, Pennsylvania, who was among the first to draw national attention to the massive influx of Haitian migrants into his small town, is now locked in a legal battle with a local food packaging plant that employs primarily migrants from the third world. Eyes on Charleroi first appeared when President-elect Donald Trump highlighted the town’s staggering 2,000% surge in its migrant population before the presidential elections. The resident is also planning a class-action lawsuit on behalf of hundreds of residents, demanding accountability from those responsible for the migrant invasion.

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Time to leave.

UPDATE: Nation Gets Preview Of Gavin Newsom Presidency (Babylon Bee)

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“February was the wettest month in downtown Los Angeles since 1998. With over 12 inches of rain drenching the city, it was the fourth-wettest February — and the seventh-wettest month overall — in the city’s nearly 150-year recorded history,” said Judson Jones’ report on Los Angeles’ weather on March 2, 2024, in The New York Times. Just under a year later, Los Angeles is on fire and the fire hydrants have run dry from a lack of water.

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Quantum mechanics has long classified particles into just two distinct types: fermions and bosons.

Now physicists from Rice University in the US have found a third type might be possible after all, at least mathematically speaking. Known as a paraparticles, their behavior could imply the existence of elementary particles nobody has ever considered.

“We determined that new types of particles we never knew of before are possible,” says Kaden Hazzard, who with co-author Zhiyuan Wang formulated a theory to demonstrate how objects that weren’t fermions or bosons could exist in physical reality without breaking any known laws.

Fermions encompass fundamental particles that ‘build’ atoms, such as electrons and quarks. In more precise terms, they have a property that prevents them from occupying identical quantum states, effectively ensuring no two matching fermions can fill the same space.

Gothamist.

A rash of burglaries targeting New York City bodegas has led the United Bodegas of America to offer a $5,000 reward for information leading to the capture of the perpetrators.

The crime spree, which the NYPD attributes to a group that bodega owners have dubbed “The Midnight Smashers,” has struck 49 locations across more than two dozen precincts in the Bronx, Brooklyn and Queens between Sept. 19 and Dec. 26, according to authorities.

Police said the thieves have been using stolen vehicles to break into businesses and remove ATMs, among other property. One such incident, captured on video on Dec. 23, involved the group forcibly entering a commercial property at 75-10 31 Ave. in Queens and fleeing with an ATM in an unknown direction. There have been no injuries reported in the incidents.

The UBA, representing the city’s bodega owners, held a press conference on Thursday to demand stronger action.

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drone’s collision with a water-dropping aircraft fighting the Palisades fire in Los Angeles caused the temporary grounding of all aircraft working that fire and took out one of just the two amphibous planes capable of repeatedly scooping 1,600 gallons of water from the ocean and delivering it onto nearby flames, Cal Fire told The War Zone.

A Canadair CL-415 Super Scooper turboprop plane smashed into a drone around 10 a.m. local time, Cal Fire spokesman Chris Thomas told The War Zone.

The world would be a better place if we didn’t have stupid people. (But, hey, it’s California….)

Read it.

Five people have died, more than 2,000 building structures have been destroyed, and 29,000 acres have been scorched as wildfires rage out of control across Los Angeles County. With over 130,000 residents under evacuation orders, concerns are growing about the very real possibility of arsonists intentionally starting some of the fires.

According to an LA County fire chief earlier this week, the Palisades Fire began “as a very small fire in a backyard,” then spread up a ridge, was carried by high winds, and created an ember cast that ignited fires throughout the Palisades.

Apparently the homeless of L.A. figure that if they’re homeless everybody else ought to be homeless as well, certainly the rich people who live downwind.

Time to leave….

Read it.

This is how Germany got Hitler.

Steve Graham.

I saw some interesting stuff today, related to the California fires that are destroying the homes of entertainment people and other wealthy individuals. It looks like I was right to think leftism is the fundamental cause of the destruction.

Prager University posted a very interesting video. They say California has forced one of its big power companies to waste a huge amount of money on “renewable” boondoggle projects while failing to improve existing infrastructure. According to the video, failing power lines cause a lot of the fires, and one of the worst fires was caused by a power line built in 1921. So around 104 years ago.

I’ll embed the video, and you can judge for yourself.

Politico, a Voice of the Crust.

Wednesday’s firestorm in a wealthy area of Los Angeles could be the final straw that breaks California’s insurance market.

The state’s insurance market has been teetering on the edge of insolvency for years thanks to catastrophic wildfires that have driven many insurers to stop writing new policies and drop existing ones. Wednesday’s wind-driven wildfires in a part of Los Angeles packed with multimillion-dollar homes could accelerate its collapse.

“It’s obviously going to be bad,” said Rep. Brad Sherman, the Democrat who represents the neighborhood between Malibu and Santa Monica where the Palisades Fire — one of six burning uncontained across the region — had destroyed more than 1,000 buildings as of Wednesday afternoon. “We’ve already seen big increases. And we’ve seen these increases not only in houses that are close to the brush, but in areas where you’re surrounded by other homes.”

Ane why is that: How long does it take to get approval for prescribed burns in California?

UPDATE: Los Angeles Fire Budget Cut, Hundreds of Hydrants Stolen for Scrap Before Fires

“These fire hydrant thefts are yet another sign of how crime is out of control in Los Angeles County,” said Los Angeles District Attorney Nathan Hochman to The Center Square before his November election. “Thieves know they’ll face little or no consequences if they are caught, so they’re willing to risk the public’s safety for a small profit.”

Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass, who has been away on a taxpayer-funded trip to Africa as a member of a Biden administration delegation, recently cut the fire department’s budget by $17.6 million.

ZMan points the finger.

One example of this is the digital grifter. These are people who have many of the qualities we associate with conmen, but they also have qualities unique to the digital age and therefore could not exist before it. The analog grifters did not seek unrestricted attention, because they feared getting exposed. The digital grifter lives on attention and has no fear of being caught. In some cases, being labeled a grifter is viewed as an asset to the overall grift.

The difference between the digital grifter and the old fashioned grifter who may ply his trade online is that the money aspect of the grift is secondary. The old fashioned grift is all about separating the mark from his money. The digital grifter is not directly trying to scam people out of money. Instead, he wants a crowd that will operate as social proof for others who may buy something from him or sign up for a service like his YouTube channel, which is heavily monetized.

…

The professional troll is a genuinely new thing made possible by the novelty of the internet, which makes it possible for a man and his phone to irritate millions of people with the push of a few buttons. While the public nuisance is not new, his elevation to a public figure is a novelty. In the analog age, Nick Fuentes was selling used cars and James Lindsay was that guy in accounting who talked about model trains. In this age they are getting rich as annoying weirdos.

This is leading to another novelty. The digital platforms that made these people possible are now transforming to encourage them. The Twitter monetization scheme is based on the number of people who engage with your post. The monetized users get paid for getting your attention and the best way to get attention is to be controversial, so it is not hard to see where this is heading. It is why Musk reinstated Fuentes. He may not get monetized, but his opponents do get paid to make noise.

Read it.

Fortunately, the existence of Barack Obama and (especially) Joe Biden will keep Jimmuh from going down in history as America’s worst President.

Read it.

The United States is a nation built on the principle of law and order. But today, we face an urgent threat from illegal alien criminal gangs infiltrating our communities and undermining the safety and security we hold dear. The rise of transnational criminal organizations like Tren de Aragua, originally from Venezuela, highlights the chaotic border situation and the urgent need for decisive action.

Reports of human trafficking, drug smuggling, and violence linked to these gangs are becoming all too common. In Colorado, the Tren de Aragua gang has already been implicated in crimes ranging from jewelry store heists to shootings. Disturbingly, over 60 gang members were identified by U.S. Customs and Border Protection between 2023 and this summer. These are only those caught; many more have likely entered unchecked due to the Biden administration’s ineffective border policies.

A task force was set up in Aurora, Colorado, to identify if the gang had criminally taken over apartment complexes within the city. It’s a fact that criminal illegal alien gangs and organizations prey on migrant communities. As the illegal immigrant community grows, there has been a spike in crime by the criminal element that exists within it.