Read it.

How triggering (pun intended).

Don’t you remember all those guys in black hoods beating people up on the streets of the Left Coast?

Oh, wait, that was AntiFa….

Read it.

The perils of harping on a scary name include trying to define it for the purpose of legislation.

Perhaps they could conduct a seance and ask the ghost of Hitler, who coined the term ‘assault rifle’.

Read it.

Honestly, I’ve never heard of a judge telling a prosecutor “You have to prosecute this.”

This is what it’s come to — District Attorneys are now essentially Antifa themselves, and judges have to overrule their decisions that lily-white upper middle class Antifa thugs shouldn’t have their records so much as blemished.

Well, there’s justice, and there’s National Socialist Justice. Never the twain shall meet.

Read it.

The NTSB released its final report today on a crash involving a Tesla Model S smashing into the back of a fire truck that took place in Culver City, CA, on January 22, 2018.

Read it.

…a chemist at the University of California, Berkeley, reported that he and his colleagues have created a solar-powered device that could provide water for millions in water-stressed regions. At its heart is a porous crystalline material, known as a metal-organic framework (MOF), that acts like a sponge: It sucks water vapor out of air, even in the desert, and then releases it as liquid water.

Severian does a deep dive.

The history of medicine highlights the deepest, most dangerous irony of “Progressivism:”  They must assume that what’s now is forever.  Progressivism is, at bottom, just organized envy.  If anyone, anywhere, possesses X, then there can never be justice until everyone, everywhere, possesses X.  That X might just be an accident, a historical hiccup, a blip of static on Time’s radar screen, never occurs to them.  It can’t.  Otherwise, they’d be praising the Gilded Age’s “universal access to healthcare,” since John D. Rockefeller’s kid was just as likely to die of some horrible infection as the poorest immigrant’s.  Same for Rockefeller himself — burst appendixes are no respecters of rank.

This locks “Progressives” into their categories, such that they can’t see the runaway freight train heading right at them.  Bernie Sanders is still on the campaign trail sounding like a refugee from the Wobblies, talking about poverty.  Poverty, fer chrissakes!  As if America’s “poor” people didn’t keel over from heart disease while fiddling with their Obamaphones in front of their HD TVs.  The real driver of social change isn’t poverty, it’s idleness.

Read it.

Censorship is in direct opposition to the ideal of free speech and  the First Amendment. However, it seems to be a priority for those who espouse a liberal ideology, as shown by a new study from Marietta College. The research found that liberals were more likely to censor a statement if it disagreed with their values than moderates and conservatives. Liberals were more interested in censoring statements that criticized women, African Americans, and Islam than conservatives and moderates.

ZMan is disenchanted.

One of the features of the current year is the regular reminder that western style democracy is a complete fraud. According to the political class, democracy allows for public policy to reflect the will of the people. The parties put forward candidates offering various policy proposals and the public signals their preferences by voting for one or the other candidates. The winners then set about trying to implement the policies they proposed. That’s how we’re told representative democracy works.

In reality, nothing like this happens. Instead, the parties put on a show for the voters, rarely intending to actually do what they claim. Instead, they manufacture differences between one another, so they can pretend the choice before the voters is stark. Once the election is over, the politicians go back to living their lives of leisure, waiting for instructions from the people who actually run things. The politicians are like robot actors, brought out for elections, then put back in storage.

Read it.

My, what a surprise.

Steve Sailer.

It’s widely assumed in thriller movies that if ever the truth is allowed to leak out about a powerful institution’s fundamental corruption, then its reputation must come crashing down once and for all.

But in real life, multiple disgraces can have negligible impact on an organization’s reputation in the prestige press as long as it continues to serve its function in furthering The Narrative.

Read it.

Actors Eric McCormack and Debra Messing are longing for the days of Hollywood blacklists, only this time they want the names of conservatives. The “Will & Grace” stars embarrassed themselves on social media, first calling for a list of Trump supporters so they can refuse to work with them, then by trying to walk it back by denying what they said wasn’t really what they meant. Whoopi Goldberg, of all people, ripped them a new one over it.

Read it.

A U.S. attorney clarified the status of the illegal alien who fatally shot Kate Steinle in San Francisco in 2015, saying he “has no right to possess a firearm under federal law, even if California extends him sanctuary.”

David Anderson, the U.S. attorney in San Francisco, issued the scathing statement in response to a California appeals court’s decision Friday to overturn a gun possession conviction against Jose Inez Garcia-Zarate, a 48-year-old Mexican national who admitted to holding the gun that killed Steinle.

Garcia-Zarate was convicted on state charges Nov. 28, 2017, on one count of felony possession of a firearm in connection with Steinle’s July 1, 2015, death. He was acquitted on first-degree murder, second-degree murder and manslaughter charges at the trial.

Steve Sailer reads this stuff so that you don’t have to.

I didn’t even know that ‘caucacity’ was a real word. Apparently black people are entitled to invent new words in order to plug their racist views about white people.

And get paid money for it. That’s the important part.

Read it.

To build the prototype, the researchers installed a water distiller on the back of a solar cell. When in sunlight, the cell produces electricity and releases heat like a typical solar panel. But instead of sending that heat back into the atmosphere, the device directs it to the distiller, which uses the heat as an energy source to power the desalination process.

Very clever.

Read it.

Researchers at the University of Göttingen have developed a new method that takes advantage of the unusual properties of graphene to electromagnetically interact with fluorescing (light-emitting) molecules. This method allows scientists to optically measure extremely small distances, in the order of 1 ångström (one ten-billionth of a meter) with high accuracy and reproducibility for the first time. This enabled researchers to optically measure the thickness of lipid bilayers, the stuff that makes the membranes of all living cells. The results were published in Nature Photonics.

Hurricane Hype And Climate Change Hysterics

A Teacher-Friendly Guide to Climate Alarmism.

We, the peoples of the Amazon, are full of fear. Soon you will be too

Big Tech Offers Paid Leave to Climate Protest “Volunteers”

Sen. Booker Reveals $3 Trillion Climate Plan  Let the bidding begin!

Debunking the Fake Farmland Crisis  If we were short on farmland, the government wouldn’t be paying people not to grow crops.

Climate change protesters admit using a diesel generator to power their stage  Just can’t shake it.

Four Of The Top POTUS Candidates Are Planning To Spend A Grand Total Of Nearly $26 Trillion On Fighting Climate Change  And why not? It’s not as if it were their money.

Alaska’s Sea Ice Completely Melted for First Time in Recorded

Pope Francis Providing His Climate Change Expertise Again

Ex-Trump Aide Expresses Alarm at 90-Percent Negative Trump Coverage, McCurry Mocks Him

House Democrats Planning Inquiry Into Trump’s Alleged Attempts To Silence Affair Rumors

Surprise: Bloomberg “Reporter” Misreports a Trump Official’s Sarcastic Post Attacking White Supremacist Paul Nehlen to Falsely Cast It As an Endorsement of Antisemitism  Forget what he said; we know what he meant.

CBS Skips Mattis EXCORIATING Obama and Biden, Demands He Hammer Trump

Morning Joe Seeks Cure for Trump ‘Virus’ of Calling Out Media Bias  They can dish it out, but they can’t take it.

News Outlets Say Trump Neglected Dorian News While Golfing. WH Says He Was Getting Hourly Updates

Ari Fleischer Hammers PBS Reporter Calling Out Trump ‘Lie’ About Obama at the G-7

Read it.

‘Activists’ lie at the blink of an eye because their cause is just.

Read it.

Once government employees were allowed to unionize, the natural result of unions giving Democrats a solid block of votes in return form super-sweet pay and benefit deals was inevitable.

Read it.

Democrat Senator demonstrates that progressive totalitarian impulses are never far below the surface.

Read it.

No, things aren’t getting better.

Check it out.

Classic styles, handcrafted in the USA.

Not excessively expensive compared to the crap you see in the stores these days.

They know the difference between an Oxford and a Blucher, which goes a long with way me.

Ace of Spades blows the whistle.

Bias will out.

Scott Adams explains.

Read it.

People who live in glass houses shouldn’t stow phones.

I guess they don’t have glass-break sensors and alarm systems in Australia.

Read it.

Don’t wander around where there are mountain lions.

That was easy.

Babylon Bee.

Can’t be too careful, after all. These tragedies must be STOPPED.

Read it.

The death toll from sweeping anti-immigrant riots in Johannesburg suburbs rose to five on Tuesday as police attempted to restore order with rubber bullets.

Large sections of Africa’s largest and wealthiest city were deserted as tens of thousands of workers, commuters and school children stayed home to avoid violence directed at ‘foreigners’ from other parts of Africa.

Rocks, bricks and rubber bullets lay strewn across the empty streets of Alexandra after mobs plundered the township overnight, burning and looting shops in their path.

Police presence remained heavy last night after officers fired rubber bullets to disperse the last of the crowds.

Many shops owned by ‘foreigners’ were looted on a second night of urban rioting where hundreds of people marched through the streets on Monday in an unusually large expression of anti-foreigner sentiment.

Boy, it’s a good think that white people no longer run that country; who knows what kind of hell-hole it would be.

Read it.

Q. How can you tell a vegan?

A. You don’t tell a vegan, the vegan tells you.

Babylon Bee.

It had to happen.

Read it.

Yeah — all those black guys doing the drive-bys? Republicans, obviously!

Read it.

acebook chose a side in the abortion debate and is actively working to suppress pro-life content. Live Action, a pro-life nonprofit organization run by activist Lila Rose, was notified August 30 that two of the company’s videos were marked as “false” by fact-checkers.

Read it.

Of all the scandals in which Ilhan Omar is enmeshed, one might think the Daily Mail’s revelation this past July of her affair with political consultant Tim Mynett would be the least of them. The news last week of Beth Mynett’s divorce filing, however, has begun to disillusion a Somali community that has taken Omar at face value. Not cool — not cool at all, and it has thrown Omar off her game.

Omar’s denial of the affair is a lie that is both obvious and bald-faced. She has therefore run from the tabloid newspapers and the local media as they have sought to report on the scandal. See, for example, Emily Bowden’s New York Post article and accompanying video “Ilhan Omar dodges questions from The Post about alleged affair.”

For Omar, offense has always proved the best defense. In this scandal she has run out of plays.

As with all corrupt Democrat politicians, it will catch up with her.

Read it.

Apparently the plastic erasers that curators ordinarily use to clean manuscripts can non-destructively remove enough DNA-containing material for analysis.

Ace of Spades has some fun with this one.

Is anyone else made really uncomfortable these days by anyone wearing any kind of red baseball cap? Like, I see one and my heart does weird shit and then I finally realize it only says Titleist or whatever. Maybe don’t wear red caps anymore, normal people? Also, for the love of God: The clever folks wearing “Make America Read Again” or whatever caps — NO. You’re making everyone scared. Don’t do it.

Like wearing a T-shirt that says ‘Button. Push here.’

Read it.

And who could blame them?

Clifford A. Brown: No One, Other Than Trump Supporters, Is Going to Jail: Change My Mind

Debra Messing Loves Racist Church Sign Calling Black Voters for Trump, ‘Mentally Ill’

Ex-CNN Reporter BEGS Media to Skip Biden’s Gaffes, Stop ‘Elevating Trump’

USF-led team deciphers sea level rise from the last time Earth’s CO2 set record highs

Extinction Rebellion Demands a “Citizens Assembly” to Oversee Climate Policy

Weekly Climate and Energy News Roundup #374

The Thermageddonites are “studying” us. Be afraid – be very afraid

The lazy assertion that Hurricane Dorian is caused by climate change

For a lower climate footprint, vegetarian diet beats local  Take whatever action you think appropriate. I’m going to order some meat from ButcherBox. (Use the offer code RICOCHET.)

Extinction Rebellion co-founder reveals she was inspired to begin the climate change protest movement after taking ‘psychedelic medicines’

Slate Editor on CNN: Trump Makes Us ‘Physically Ill,’ Constantly Does Impeachable Things  Brian Stelter always reminds me of somebody they got at the last minute to fill in for someone more worthwhile.

Read it.

Think of it as evolution in action.

Read it.

Okay, I’ll bite: Why is that a bad thing?

Sure, I dislike seeing useful things go to waste as much as anybody. But I don’t become a ‘campaigner’ about it. In my experience, people who can be described as ‘campaigners’ specialize in hectoring other people about how they ought to live their lives, always in favor of what the ‘campaigner’ would prefer. I have a name for such people and it isn’t ‘campaigner’.

We live in glorious times, in which prosperity is sufficiently widespread that more and more people can throw clothes away rather than pinch and scrimp and save and make do the way that poor people do. Of course, to Certain People that’s unfortunate. They’d rather all of us live like poor people, even if we’re not.

Cars are too convenient; we need to use bicycles and trains. Airplanes are too convenient; we need to use trains and … wishful thinking, I suppose. (I’m waiting for Tesla to come out with an Electric Horse. The Left Coast will go crazy.)

Babylon Bee.

Well. There it is.

Vice, a reliable Voice of the Crust, descends into self-parody.

But economic justice groups in the UK are campaigning hard to fix a broken system.

‘Broken system’? How is this a ‘broken system’? It appears that it works pretty well; all the efforts of ‘economic justice groups’ (and they weren’t just born yesterday) haven’t succeeded in eliminating it. That’s certainly my definition of a robust unbroken system.

The fact that the system doesn’t lead to the outcomes that Certain People would like is, of course, another question. But let’s not pretend that it’s a ‘ broken system’.

Sweeping education reforms have done very little to change the fact that in the UK, being born well is by far the surest route to prosperity.

The assumption here is that ‘education reforms’ are somehow supposed to make sure that those who are ‘born well’ don’t get a sure route to prosperity. Just how is that supposed to work, exactly? If Ringo has rich parents who never sent him to school for even a day but who gave him a potload of money, then Ringo’s prosperity is pretty much guaranteed even in the face of a total lack of education. It would seem, therefore, that ‘education reforms’, no matter how ‘sweeping’ their nature, aren’t going to do what they’re expected to. The obvious conclusion that suggests itself is that Certain People are leaning on the wrong tools, tools that will never achieve their Desired Outcome.

Since the 1980s, the degree of social fluidity in Britain has plummeted with more people experiencing descent than ascent.

Perhaps it’s the fault of ‘sweeping education reforms’. If you change a condition, and the outcome is worse than it was, I kinda think that it might be the change in the condition that caused it.

“Decades of educational policy have completely overlooked that younger generations of men and women now face less favorable mobility prospects than did their parents—or their grandparents despite having earned higher qualifications,” Dr. John Goldthorpe – a leading sociologist at the University of Oxford and author of the study Social Class Mobility in Modern Britain: Changing Structure, Constant Process – told VICE Impact. “That is, they are less likely to experience upward mobility and more likely to experience downward mobility,’

This again suggests that ‘decades of educational policy’ are the culprit, rather than a possible cure. I rather suspect that we’re going to be presented with a scheme to double down on what hasn’t worked before. ‘This time for sure!’ Uh, no.

His work shows that investments in education at the national level have very little impact on social mobility because rich families are using their economic, cultural and social capital to ensure that their children stay ahead.

I guess ‘investments in education’ didn’t screw rich people as effectively as they were supposed to. I’ll bet you didn’t know that the object of education policy was to increase social mobility rather than, say, make people educated. I know it came as a surprise to me.

I could continue this fisking exercise, but I’m sure you get the drift. It’s not enough that Certain People get educated, the Wrong People have to get screwed in the process.

Read it.

Making lemonade when NIMBYs hand you lemons.

If I were ever elected President I would put a McDonalds in the basement of the West Wing. I bet it would make a mint.

Read it.

How about taking them back to Turkey, where they came from, pushing them into the water just offshore and telling them to swim for it?

That would perhaps put the problem back where it belongs and possibly even discourage people from trying to invade Europe.

Read it.

Vox writer Aaron Rupar scolded “The Ellen DeGeneres Show” producer Andy Lassner for talking about guns with former NRA spokeswoman Dana Loesch.

Apparently he ought to have been talking to Aaron Rupar.

Following the most recent shootings in Odessa and Midland, Texas, Lassner took to Twitter to voice his frustration with the seemingly repetitive nature of such tragedies, especially lately. Conceding that he did not have the answers himself, he made an appeal for a bipartisan conversation that could lead to some solutions.

I’d like an explanation of how that differs from what is actually going on. (I wish I had a dime for every time some wingnut on the Left appealed for a bipartisan conversation of some subject of Vital National Interest.) I suspect that a ‘bipartisan conversation’ these days would consist of endless repetitions of ‘You suck! ‘No, YOU suck!’, which doesn’t strike me as being calculated to ‘lead to some solutions’, other than perhaps confiscating all the guns and using them to wipe out the other side.

“Here’s the truth. I don’t have the answer to the gun problem. The mass shootings. I don’t want to take guns away from law abiding citizens. Many people in my life own guns. But, we have a serious problem and we MUST start talking about gun violence solutions in a bipartisan way,” Lassner tweeted.

Whenever somebody says that we MUST start doing something, it’s a guarantee that such a thing won’t ever get done. Trust me.

Rupar fired back at Lassner then, arguing that there was no point in having a discussion with anyone who had ever been associated with the NRA. “It’s silly to earnestly engage with a former paid NRA gun shill on the topic of preventing gun violence,” he claimed.

I guess he missed the part about ‘bipartisan conversation’ … which suggests a reason why ‘bipartisan conversations’ don’t happen; there are too many partisan loud-mouths out there.

My local public library has, at any one time, over 300 books that occupy its list of New Adult Non-Fiction. Over 95% of them have a colon in the title. I find that mildly disturbing.

In general, books with titles of the form ‘What the Bible Really Teaches About …’ will tell you a lot about what the author wishes the Bible would teach but very little about what the Bible really teaches.

This is a good time for Japanese authors, from Zen monks wishing to share the secrets of life to knitters wishing to share patterns to Japanese housewives wanting to teach you how to be Japanese housewives.

Have you ever heard of Ludwig Bemelmans? Apparently his biography is of interest to suburban Republicans in north Texas.

Apparently the best way to get published is to write 400 pages explaining why you’re a victim and how it’s everybody’s fault but your own.

Apparently you can become a Hero merely by cooking and eating the correct ecologically-sound and nutritious food. Who knew?

Apparently, being rich (not becoming, but being) is something that can be taught. Color me surprised. I would have thought that a winning lottery ticket would somehow be involved but I guess not.

Evidently you can become a beekeeper with no actual effort on your part — which sort of makes sense, since really the bees are doing all of the work. Presumably there is some way to convince the honey to just walk itself into the jar.

It would seem that unlocking the minds of serial killers and predators is something that a lot of people are eager to do. I would not have guessed that.

The moon is very popular, both as an object and as a metaphor.

It would also appear that just being Black is sufficient to get a book published. Go for it.

Read it.

The Israeli military faked injuries to its soldiers to trick Hizbollah into believing it caused casualties during Sunday’s round of fighting on the Lebanese border.

Minutes after Hizbollah militants fired anti-tank missiles at an Israeli base, the military staged a helicopter evacuation of “wounded” troops wrapped in bandages and covered in fake blood.

The trickery appears to have achieved its goal of convincing Hizbollah that it wounded Israeli troops and therefore did not need to launch any further attacks. The Lebanese militant group released a statement claiming to have “killed and wounded” several Israeli soldiers.

Benjamin Netanyahu, Israel’s prime minister, only revealed several hours later that there were, in fact, no Israeli casualties. “Not even a scratch,” he said.

Which side is playing F-Troop?

The Atlantic, reliable Voice of the Crust, prepares the ground for the new elite.

Meritocracy prizes achievement above all else, making everyone—even the rich—miserable. Maybe there’s a way out.

Uh, sure, assign everybody a rank at birth and assign them jobs equal to their rank that they can never leave. That ought to do it. ‘Achievement’ not required, so nobody has to worry.