Archive for October, 2019
24th October 2019
Steve Sailer.
And just wait until the public realizes that this brouhaha is about the President delaying foreign aid payments to Ukraine. There’s nothing more sacred in the eyes of American voters than our national duty to pay foreign aid promptly.
Posted in Think about it. | Comments Off on NYT: Well, Technically Speaking, the Deep State IS Trying to Overthrow the Elected President. But That’s a Good Thing!
24th October 2019
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But despite Simon’s efforts to discuss the topic from a loving, biblically informed perspective, local LGBT activists immediately cried foul, launching a petition and demanding local businesses cut ties with the church.
Last Thursday, Sager Braudis Gallery, a local art gallery, was the first to cave to activist pressure. Although the church had financially sponsored the gallery for five years, the gallery said it was severing ties to show “solidarity with the LGBTQ+ community” and to register its protest “against institutions who perpetuate and use their powerful platforms for content of this nature.”
Great. Use that money to support places that align with reality.
Posted in Dystopia Watch | Comments Off on LGBT Activists Demand Businesses Cut Ties With Church After Sermon on Transgender Issues
24th October 2019
Posted in Think about it. | Comments Off on Thought for the Day
23rd October 2019
Posted in Think about it. | Comments Off on Today in Global Warming Hysteria
23rd October 2019
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The door handles on the Tesla Model S are being blamed for the death of a 48 year old man who was involved in a fiery crash earlier this year, according to Bloomberg. A police officer was unable to pull the man to safety from his burning vehicle.
Oman Awan was driving his leased Tesla in February when he lost control of the vehicle on a South Florida parkway and slammed into a palm tree. A police officer who responded to the scene was unable to open the doors to free Awan because the handles were retracted and bystanders were forced to watch “helplessly” as the car filled with smoke and flames, according to a wrongful death lawsuit filed in state court in Broward County.
Hammer tech.
Posted in Dystopia Watch | Comments Off on Tesla’s “Futuristic” Door-Handles Blamed for Killing 48-Year-Old Man Trapped in Burning Wreck
23rd October 2019
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But you have to bear in mind that Trump has accomplished ABSOLUTELY NOTHING during his time in office.
Just remember that.
Absolutely nothing.
Posted in Dystopia Watch | Comments Off on Trump Announces “Permanent” Ceasefire Agreement Between Turks and Kurds Along Syrian Border; Kurdish Leader Says Ceasefire Wouldn’t Have Been Possible Without Trump
23rd October 2019
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The always hyperbolic presidential historian Jon Meacham made an appearance on MSNBC’s Hardball Tuesday, where he weighed in on President Trump’s description of his treatment throughout the impeachment inquiry as a “lynching.” After trashing President Trump as a racist, Meacham proceeded to trash the entire country as racist dating all the way back to its founding.
Posted in Axis of Drivel -- Adventures in Narrative Media | Comments Off on Jon Meacham Smears: America Was Founded to ‘Protect Slavery’
23rd October 2019
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Democratic California Governor Gavin Newsom threatened possible legal action against oil companies in a Tuesday tweet complaining about the high cost of gas in his state.
“CA drivers have paid an average of 30 cents more per gallon. There’s no identifiable evidence to justify that. I’m demanding an investigation. If oil companies are engaging in false advertising or price fixing — legal action should be taken,” Newsom tweeted.
Clueless in Sacramento.
Posted in Your tax dollars at work - and play. | 1 Comment »
23rd October 2019
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Of couree we all take our moral lessons in foreign policy from the Russians.
Posted in Axis of Drivel -- Adventures in Narrative Media | Comments Off on Russia Says US Has ‘Betrayed the Kurds’; Suggests They Scram to Avoid Turkish Death
23rd October 2019
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Well, actually, they just stood outside and pouted, but still.
Posted in Your tax dollars at work - and play. | Comments Off on Republicans Storm Closed Impeachment Proceeding
23rd October 2019
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With thanks to Debby Witt, a kindred soul.
Posted in Think about it. | Comments Off on Lord Chesterfield’s Letters to His Son – Toilet Paper Advice
23rd October 2019
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As you might expect, it did not go well.
I doubt that Maxine Waters could balance her own checkbook, much less grasp digital currencies.
Posted in Your tax dollars at work - and play. | Comments Off on Watch Live: Facebook CEO Tries to Explain Digital Currencies to Maxine Waters & Her Committee
23rd October 2019
Posted in Think about it. | Comments Off on Thought for the Day
23rd October 2019
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California may end a decades-old ban on members of the Communist Party working in its government, after the state Assembly approved a bill that would delete references to the party from its employment requirements.
Yeah, they already allow Democrats, so it’s kind of a dead letter.
Posted in Think about it. | Comments Off on California’s Assembly Votes to Allow Communists to Hold State Jobs
23rd October 2019
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The pedestrian bridge that collapsed over a busy Miami street last year, killing six people, was doomed by a fatal design flaw, federal authorities concluded in a scathing review on Tuesday. The errors led to unusually severe cracking in the concrete that should have worried engineers and prompted the closure of the roadway below for safety.
Instead, Southwest Eighth Street, an eight-lane thoroughfare adjacent to Florida International University, remained open. The $14 million bridge, which was under construction by the university to connect students to the neighboring city of Sweetwater, fell on top of motorists waiting at a red light, crushing their cars under 950 tons of concrete and metal.
“The bridge was talking to them,” Robert L. Sumwalt, chairman of the National Transportation Safety Board, said with evident exasperation at a board meeting in Washington. “It wasn’t just talking — it was screaming that there was something definitely wrong with this bridge. Yet no one was listening.”
I know, let’s put these people in charge of our health care.
Posted in Your tax dollars at work - and play. | Comments Off on Flawed Design, Lax Oversight Led to ‘Astounding’ Miami Bridge Collapse
23rd October 2019
Steve Sailer.
In 2019, two books demanding more censorship have each devoted a chapter to portraying me as a historic villain.
…
Both authors are convinced that I helped hijack something big, although they disagree about whether it was science or politics. (I’ve been busy, apparently.)
Posted in Axis of Drivel -- Adventures in Narrative Media | Comments Off on The Reviled Right
23rd October 2019
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Democrat Daniel J. Hunt (whose last name was surely a playground favorite) introduced “An Act regarding the use of offensive words,” which would fine individuals $150 for a first offense, while repeat offenders would face a $200 fine, up to six months’ imprisonment, or both.
Problems? What problems?
Cambridge civil rights attorney Harvey Silvergate says Hunt’s bill isn’t legal.
“If it’s challenged in court, it will take minutes for a judge to see through it,” said Silvergate. “It doesn’t have a prayer of surviving, so why should the Legislature even burden us — the citizens, the press and the courts — why would they burden us with this nonsense? Surely they must have more important things to do.”
More important than Democrat virtue-signaling? I think NOT.
UPDATE: Twitter Mentions Of State Rep. Who Wants To Outlaw The Word ‘Bitch’ Predictably Filled With People Calling Him A Bitch
Posted in Your tax dollars at work - and play. | Comments Off on Bi*ch Please: Democrat’s Bill Would Punish Curse Word With Jail
23rd October 2019
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A petition currently circulating by a student group on campus called “Act On A Dream” aims to condemn the Harvard Crimson student newspaper for asking Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) for comment on an article published in September relating to an event held on campus that called for abolishing ICE.
The latest assault on free speech.
Marion Davis, director of communications for the Massachusetts Immigrant and Refugee Advocacy Coalition, said “getting both sides isn’t always what is fair, especially when one side has already made its views well known through the megaphones of government.”
Posted in Dystopia Watch | Comments Off on Student Petition Asks Harvard Paper to Apologize After Asking ICE for Comment
23rd October 2019
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Michal Solowow’s Synthos SA, the second-largest European maker of synthetic rubber, signed a memorandum with GE Hitachi Nuclear Energy to build a small 300-megawatt reactor next to the company’s factory in southern Poland, which could be completed as early as 2027. That’s six years earlier than the government expects to build its first plant in a plan to construct at least 6 gigawatts of nuclear and cut the nation’s reliance on coal for electricity generation.
Posted in News You Can Use. | Comments Off on As Poland Exits Coal, a Billionaire Offers First Nuclear Plant
22nd October 2019
Posted in Axis of Drivel -- Adventures in Narrative Media | Comments Off on Today in Trump Derangement Syndrome
22nd October 2019
Posted in Think about it. | Comments Off on Today in Global Warming Hysteria
22nd October 2019
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The tools you need to be hip & trendy.
Posted in News You Can Use. | Comments Off on 7 Leftist Words in a Dictionary Near You
22nd October 2019
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I guess these people just can’t read, or perhaps they believe that they can just wish the First Amendment away.
Posted in Your tax dollars at work - and play. | Comments Off on Mass. Dem’s Bill Would Impose $200 Fines, 6 Months in Jail For Using the Word ‘Bitch’
22nd October 2019
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Apparently there are still a few sensible Canadians left.
Posted in Think about it. | Comments Off on Court Rules Salon Workers Do Not Have to Wax Transgender Activist’s Balls
22nd October 2019
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Black Privilege comes a cropper.
Posted in News You Can Use. | Comments Off on Judge Blocks Dismissal of Chicago’s Lawsuit Against Jussie Smollett
22nd October 2019
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It is a measure of how far our culture had degenerated that even the loons to do this stuff have some hope that this might actually happen.
Posted in Axis of Drivel -- Adventures in Narrative Media | 1 Comment »
22nd October 2019
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Hint: No.
North of the border, Justin Trudeau’s Liberal party will form a new government despite being a minority that captured not even one-third of the nation’s votes (33.1 percent). Conservative leader Andrew Scheer must concede defeat despite his party having won 34.4 per cent of the vote, or 240,000 votes more than Trudeau.
Posted in Think about it. | Comments Off on Justin Trudeau Lost the Popular Vote, Will Outrage Ensue?
22nd October 2019
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The New York Times devoted three full pages of valuable Sunday Review real estate (the full front page and two full inside pages) to a left-wing, ageist, anti-Trump voter lament disguised as a call for the political empowerment of youth via a lowering of the voting age: “They’ve Got The Whole World In Their Hands.” “Old people have the money and the power. Young people have been left out. But for how long?”
As long as the rich old powerful people choose. That’s the way the world works, popular mythology to the contrary notwithstanding. The New York Times, as the propaganda wing of the Coastal Crust, has to tell these bedtime stories constantly in hope that they will be believed.
It’s written by Astra Taylor, a Puffin Foundation/Economic Hardship Reporting Project fellow.
I am not making this up.
Posted in Axis of Drivel -- Adventures in Narrative Media | Comments Off on Shorter NY Times: Too Many Old Candidates! Bring on the Young Liberals!
22nd October 2019
ZMan looks behind the curtain.
The one universal quality of left-wing politics that is true in every time and place is the need for an external enemy. It is onto this enemy the movement focuses its attention, making it a rallying point and a rallying cry. Ideally, the enemy is mysterious, maybe even a bit supernatural. A supernatural enemy supports the idea of the movement being in a decisive battle for the future of humanity. An important element of left-wing politics is a sense of urgency. There’s no time to wait, as the final battle is at hand.
Orwell, of course, understood this well and created two the great left-wing bogeymen in English literature. Emmanuel Goldstein is the “enemy of the people” during the two minutes of hate at the beginning of the novel 1984. In Animal Farm, Snowball is the blame for all the farm’s troubles, after he disappear. In both cases, the bogeyman is a traitor, who willingly turned on the cause. In both cases, the bogeyman is mysteriously absent, thus can be amplified as an almost supernatural villain.
Progressivism is a classic millenarian cult that seeks to bring about Heaven on Earth and Perfection for humanity.
It is the desperate need for bogeymen that must be the focus of any successful dissident movement, because it is the spirit of the ruling class. The reason the Left advertises those lists of “hate symbols” is to encourage stupid people to adopt them as some form of rebellion. Again, the Left needs enemies to exist, so when none exist, it manufactures them. As the saying goes, the demand for Nazis long ago exhausted the supply, so the business of the Left is in creating new Nazis to meet demand.
Posted in Think about it. | Comments Off on Better Beliefs
22nd October 2019
With thanks to Bluebird of Bitterness. (No, I don’t know where she finds this stuff.)
Posted in Think about it. | 1 Comment »
22nd October 2019
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A generation ago, the immediate question when the lights went out was whether a fuse had blown or lightning had struck. But today, when a blackout strikes, time stops, plans fall apart, and fears fill the sudden void.
Posted in Dystopia Watch | Comments Off on When the Lights Went Out: On Blackouts and Terrorism
22nd October 2019
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“Late adolescents and college students love themselves more today than ever before,” Dr. DeWall, a psychologist at the University of Kentucky, says. His study covered song lyrics from 1980 to 2007 and controlled for genre to prevent the results from being skewed by the growing popularity of, say, rap and hip-hop.
Posted in Dystopia Watch | Comments Off on A Generation’s Vanity, Heard Through Lyrics
22nd October 2019
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The reason big new things sneak by incumbents is that the next big thing always starts out being dismissed as a “toy.” This is one of the main insights of Clay Christensen’s “disruptive technology” theory. This theory starts with the observation that technologies tend to get better at a faster rate than users’ needs increase. From this simple insight follows all kinds of interesting conclusions about how markets and products change over time.
Posted in Think about it. | Comments Off on The Next Big Thing Will Start Out Looking Like a Toy
22nd October 2019
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A UK police force created a video which portrayed a white toddler being racist towards another toddler in kindergarten as part of “hate crime awareness week.”
Yes, really.
Posted in Dystopia Watch | Comments Off on UK Police Force Highlights Problem Of Racist Toddlers
22nd October 2019
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There’s a certain kind of liberal who likes to tell conservatives what they should think about this or that matter in order to be true to conservatism. He has no counterpart on the other side of the political divide. I know of no conservative who gets off on telling liberals what they should think about anything. We tend to confine ourselves to pointing out liberal hypocrisy.
What explains this difference between liberals and conservatives? Perhaps it’s just that conservatives are less inclined to waste time telling people who don’t share our perspective what they should think. Maybe liberals are more sanctimonious than conservatives. It might have something to do with conservatives getting into heads of liberals more than the other way around.
Posted in Think about it. | 2 Comments »
22nd October 2019
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The Seattle Public Schools Ethnic Studies Advisory Committee (ESAC) released a rough draft of notes for its Math Ethnic Studies framework in late September, which attempts to connects math to a history of oppression.
Posted in Your tax dollars at work - and play. | Comments Off on Seattle Public Schools Say Math Is Racist
22nd October 2019
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Because politics gets boring all the time.
Posted in Think about it. | Comments Off on Etymologies of All the Old-Timey Synonyms For “Whore” Found in the Dungeon Masters Guide “Random Harlot Encounters” Table
22nd October 2019
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CRISPR, an extraordinarily powerful genome-editing tool invented in 2012, can still be clumsy. It sometimes changes genes it shouldn’t, and it edits by hacking through both strands of DNA’s double helix, leaving the cell to clean up the mess—shortcomings that limit its use in basic research and agriculture and pose safety risks in medicine. But a new entrant in the race to refine CRISPR promises to steer around some of its biggest faults. “It’s a huge step in the right direction,” chemist George Church, a CRISPR pioneer at Harvard University, says about the work, which appears online today in Nature.
Posted in News You Can Use. | Comments Off on New ‘Prime’ Genome Editor Could Surpass CRISPR
22nd October 2019
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A widely-used gas that is currently produced from fossil fuels can instead be made by an ‘artificial leaf’ that uses only sunlight, carbon dioxide, and water, and which could eventually be used to develop a sustainable liquid fuel alternative to petrol.
The carbon-neutral device sets a new benchmark in the field of solar fuels, after researchers at the University of Cambridge demonstrated that it can directly produce the gas — called syngas — in a sustainable and simple way.
Posted in News You Can Use. | 1 Comment »
22nd October 2019
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By sifting through pig faeces, scientists in Japan have discovered a new type of virus that could challenge the already complicated notions of how we categorise what viruses are, and what they can do.
Hey, tenure doesn’t grow on trees, you know.
Posted in News You Can Use. | Comments Off on Strange New Virus Could Represent ‘Entirely New System of Viral Evolution’
22nd October 2019
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The leading edges of aircraft wings have to meet a very demanding set of characteristics. New research shows that a combination of steel composite metal foam (CMF) and epoxy resin has more desirable characteristics for use as a leading-edge material than the aluminum currently in widespread use.
“We call our hybrid material ‘infused CMF,’” says Afsaneh Rabiei, corresponding author of a paper on the work and a professor of mechanical and aerospace engineering at NC State. “And while infused CMF is about the same weight as aluminum, it is tougher and has other characteristics that make it more appealing from a flight performance, safety and fuel efficiency standpoint.”
Posted in News You Can Use. | Comments Off on Remarkable Composite Metal Foam Outperforms Aluminum for Use in Aircraft Wings
21st October 2019
Ace of Spades has the skinny.
I always had my suspicions about Canadians.
Posted in Think about it. | Comments Off on Air Canada Will No Longer Address Passengers as “Ladies and Gentlemen,” In Order to Respect the 0.1% of Mentally Unwell People Who Say They’re Both, or Neither, or Maybe Unicorns
21st October 2019
Posted in Think about it. | Comments Off on Today in Global Warming Hysteria
21st October 2019
Steve Sailer.
There’s a fun example brewing in the State of Washington (won by Hillary 54-38) that demonstrates once again how the Democrats’ Coalition of the Margins requires constant drumming up of fear and loathing of the White Male Menace to keep their diverse coalition from being at each other’s throats. This time, blacks and Chinese are fighting over affirmative action in state college admissions.
Posted in Think about it. | Comments Off on Professional People of Color Square Off vs. White-Adjacent Tigers Mothers Over Affirmative Action, by Steve Sailer
21st October 2019
A few points:
- Trump did not “betray our allies the Kurds”. The Kurds are not our allies. We have no alliance with the Kurds. Kurd forces cooperate with American and other forces because we have a common enemy, just as American forces cooperate with Russian forces against common enemies, like ISIS, but the Kurds aren’t our allies any more than the Russians are our allies.
- Kurdish forces worked hand-in-glove with the PKK, a harcdore communist terrorist organization that has been committing atrocities against Turkish civilians for as long as I’ve been alive. Needless to say, the Turks don’t like this, and I can’t say that I blame them.
- Trump didn’t “pull our forces out of Syria.” He shifted 50 people from in the way of the Turkish operation to further west in Syria, troops that were in the way of the Turkish operation and were totally incapable of stopping said operation even if we’d wanted to.
- We have no commitment to the Kurds beyond our commitment to everybody else in the Middle East to promote peace and discourage terrorism and atrocities.
So all this hot air from the Democrats( and their poodles Conservatism Inc.) is just more anti-Trump hot air.
Posted in Dystopia Watch | Comments Off on Syria and the Kurds
21st October 2019
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For the first time, a US Marine Corps F-35B squadron will deploy aboard the UKs new aircraft carrier on its maiden voyage in 2021, a milestone hailed as “unprecedented” — even among close allies.
“We’re not talking about interoperability anymore; we’re talking about proper integration to a level we’ve never seen,” British Fleet Commander Vice Adm. Jerry Kyd told me on the deck of the carrier as it launched and recovered aircraft during an exercise in the Atlantic.
The integration of Marines into the British carrier’s operations from Day One is “unprecedented,” he said. “It would be hard to think of another two countries on the planet who can do that right now.”
Posted in News You Can Use. | Comments Off on UK, US Enter New Era: ‘Unprecedented’ Carrier-Sharing Plan
21st October 2019
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A tree stump would be my choice.
Posted in News You Can Use. | Comments Off on CarolJoy, Above Top Secret: Recall Effort on CA Gov. Newsom Underway; Who Should Replace Him?
21st October 2019
Posted in Think about it. | Comments Off on BARR: Democrats Are Street Fighting While the GOP Plays (Except for Trump)
21st October 2019
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The research notes that the fearsome fish, which are omnivores, are able to regenerate rows of teeth simultaneously. The teeth are also interlocked, which makes them act as a single unit, researchers discovered.
I’ll bet you didn’t know that.
Posted in News You Can Use. | Comments Off on Piranha Teeth Stun Researchers After Amazing Discovery
21st October 2019
Babylon Bee.
What’s the first thing you do when meeting someone new? Exchange pronouns, of course, to make sure you refer to each other accurately. But what if you didn’t have to do that?
Posted in Think about it. | Comments Off on Amazing: This Mind-Reader Can Instantly Guess People’s Pronouns With 99.9% Accuracy