Archive for February, 2020
15th February 2020
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Scott Adams has a bug up his butt pretty constantly about this issue.
Posted in Think about it. | Comments Off on How China Flooded the U.S. With Lethal Fentanyl, Fueling the Opioid Crisis
15th February 2020
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OK, if you’re a naïve rube like me you might ask yourself what is a “throuple?” It turns out it’s a relatively new word formed by the blending of “three” and “couple” and it means “a long-term sexual relationship between three people” per a new entry into the Macmillan Dictionary. They must be ahead of the cultural curve from Webster’s.
Posted in Dystopia Watch | Comments Off on Manny: The Next Cultural Innovation: Throuples
15th February 2020
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‘Rashaun Weaver’ tells you everything you need to know.
Posted in Dystopia Watch | Comments Off on 14-Year-Old Charged With NYC College Student Death
15th February 2020
Severian lays out some wisdom.
The incorrigible ye have always with you, as somebody must’ve said. Social science types slice it different ways, call it different things — the free rider problem, the tragedy of the commons, etc. — but they all amount to the easily-observed fact that some folks just can’t play well with others. Not “won’t play well with others;” can’t play well with others. Any given population of sufficient size is going to have its unmanageable knuckleheads who are always working at cross-purposes against everyone else, who seem to just get off on causing chaos.
Posted in Think about it. | Comments Off on The Scientific Management of Populations
15th February 2020
Posted in Think about it. | Comments Off on Thought for the Day
14th February 2020
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You can be forgiven for thinking the left’s fetish over “intersectionality”—the deliberate attempt to keep all designated victim groups in good standing with one another through a unified matrix of oppression—resembles a Bingo game run amok because no one ever actually wins a round. The best example right now are the identitarians attacking Pete Buttigieg because . . . he’s not gay enough, or something.
Posted in Whose turn is it to be the victim? | Comments Off on The Latest in Intersectional Bingo: Queers Against Pete?
14th February 2020
Posted in Axis of Drivel -- Adventures in Narrative Media | Comments Off on Today in Trump Derangement Syndrome
14th February 2020
Posted in Think about it. | Comments Off on Today in Global Warming Hysteria
14th February 2020
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Something funny has happened since the rise of New Urbanism as an architecture and design movement in the 1980s and 1990s. The New Urbanists’ resurrection of traditional pre-WWII American built forms—the walkable neighborhood main street with shops along the sidewalk and apartments above; the narrow, shady residential streets; the foursquare home with a quaint front porch—proved popular with the public. People gravitate to traditional design, not only for nostalgic reasons but because it follows principles evolved to meet humans’ basic psychological needs.
What hasn’t proven so popular among developers is actually challenging the basic spatial logic of suburbia, in which different land uses are strictly separated and everyone drives everywhere, on wide stroads that connect one pod-like “development” to another. This logic is wired into our zoning codes through things like parking minimums and subdivision regulations.
And so, the look and superficial feel of New Urbanism is increasingly just co-opted by developers of run-of-the-mill suburbia to make consumers feel like they’re being sold something other than run-of-the-mill suburbia. Call it Movie Set Urbanism.
Sometimes the old ways are best.
Posted in Think about it. | Comments Off on Life Imitates Hollywood: The Rise of “Movie-Set Urbanism”
14th February 2020
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The New York Times posted a preposterous headline over Paul Krugman’s latest column: “Bernie Sanders Isn’t a Socialist.” But he describes himself as a socialist. Our own Dan Gainor underlined the humor of this sentence with this joke on Twitter: “Paul Krugman isn’t a columnist.” Krugman admits Bernie identifies as a socialist, but he claims socialists really mean they’re social democrats, so don’t smear them with the S-word.
Posted in Axis of Drivel -- Adventures in Narrative Media | Comments Off on PANTS ON FIRE Paul Krugman Headline: ‘Bernie Sanders Isn’t a Socialist’
14th February 2020
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With the recent federal lawsuits filed against California, New Jersey and Kings County, Washington, the Trump administration has finally launched a fierce counterattack against the sanctuary movement. States and local jurisdictions that provide a safe haven for dangerous criminal aliens and obstruct federal immigration enforcement are on notice.
Posted in News You Can Use. | Comments Off on Trump Begins Counterattack on Sanctuary Cities
14th February 2020
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I watched the Democrats in New Hampshire so you didn’t have to. It was painful: hours of angry folks painfully reciting leftist talking points. It was like watching the Oscars except with old ugly people.
…
If you have not watched any of these sad displays called the “Democrat primaries,” let me sum them up for you. All the candidates try to top each other in identifying various victim classes. They tell the “victims” how much government money they will give them if elected, and whom they will get back at for them.
Posted in Think about it. | Comments Off on New Hampshire Primary, “Live Free — On Free Stuff”
14th February 2020
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Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez introduced a nationwide fracking ban Wednesday as Democratic presidential candidates work to paint themselves as moderates ahead of the 2020 election.
She is obviously offended by U.S. energy independence and low gas prices. The Trump booming economy might also have something to do with it.
Posted in Your tax dollars at work - and play. | Comments Off on Ocasio-Cortez Explains Why She’s Sponsoring a Bill to Ban Fracking Across the US
14th February 2020
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My, what a surprise. Aren’t you surprised? I’m sure surprised.
After decades of Democrats and their fellow travellers complaining about rich Republicans of trying to ‘buy an election’, a guy is actually trying to buy an election — and it’s a Democrat.
Posted in Think about it. | Comments Off on Bloomberg Using Fortune to “Fundamentally Alter & Manipulate US Politics”
14th February 2020
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14th February 2020
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Tentative title Days of Whine and Poses.
Posted in News You Can Use. | Comments Off on Colin Kaepernick Starts His Own Publishing Company, Will Release a Book About His Life in 2020
14th February 2020
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Say’s Law, as explicated by the great liberal political economist Jean-Baptiste Say (1767-1832), is the principle that supply constitutes demand, with the corollary that aggregate supply always equals aggregate demand. There’s no more important principle in political economy to get perfectly right – and assiduously avoid getting wrong – than Say’s Law.
Innovation always comes from the supply side, not the demand side. As Henry Ford famously said, ‘If I had asked customers what they wanted, they’d have said a faster horse.’ Have you ever walked into a store looking for the thing you don’t know you need until you see it? Hardware stores are like that, as well as places like The Container Store.
Posted in Think about it. | Comments Off on Say’s Law versus Keynesian Economics
14th February 2020
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It always strikes me when I run into a friend who is amused that I am a Costco member. For someone who grew up in a suburban area, even with the nearest Costco being a 45-minute drive from our house, shopping there was a no-brainer for my family. The reasons why Costco made sense for us are probably not dissimilar from the reasons of its ~100 million other members. Since its founding in 1983, the store has consistently delivered on providing value by selling almost any kind of product at competitive prices (among other things). In a ‘late-stage-capitalist’ landscape riddled with examples of, at worst, blatant greed, scams, and ripoffs, and at best, inadvertent marginalization from platforms, shopping at Costco is one of the few places that, according to its loyal customers, “feels like winning.”
If it has what you’re looking for (never guaranteed), Costco can’t be beat.
Posted in Think about it. | Comments Off on Costco Capitalism
14th February 2020
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At the turn of the twentieth century, the surgeon Dr. John H. Girdner started to notice something peculiar about his Manhattan patients. Girdner had left his home state of Tennessee to study at New York University and worked his way up the medical ranks, even attending to President James A. Garfield when he was shot. After twenty-five years of treating patients in the big city, Girdner decided to write his findings in a book. “A very large percentage [of people] lead an artificial life here,” he warned. “This manner of life has brought about a condition of mind, body, and soul, which I have endeavored to describe under the title of Newyorkitis.”
Posted in Dystopia Watch | Comments Off on An Inflammation of Place
14th February 2020
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“They do exist,” says Michael Alexiades, an orthopedic surgeon at the Hospital for Special Surgery in New York, “and they don’t necessarily need to be 3D-printed.” Instead, medical-device companies like Zimmer or Stryker manufacture full replacements or sections of a femur, and surgeons can adjust the size of the implant to fit the patient. An artificial humerus, the big bone in the upper arm, also exists.
Posted in News You Can Use. | Comments Off on Titanium Femurs Are Real, But So Are Their Risks
14th February 2020
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DoNotPay, the family of consumer advocacy services meant to protect people from corporate exploitation, is launching a new app aimed at helping end our long national nightmare surrounding robocalls by giving you a burner credit card to get their contact details then giving you a chatbot lawyer to automatically sue them.
I like it. It has texture, and scope.
Posted in News You Can Use. | Comments Off on This App Automatically Cancels and Sues Robocallers
14th February 2020
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Iran’s latest attempt to launch a satellite into orbit marked the fourth recent space launch operation in a row ending in failure, and yet Iran’s space program and Defense Ministry still praised the launch as “remarkable” and vowed to continue to program.
This elicited a response from US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, who on Tuesday repeated Washington’s longtime charge that Tehran is using the satellite launch program as cover to hone technology related to its ballistic missile capability. Pompeo said technological elements to the launch were “virtually identical” to those necessary a long-range ballistic missile.
Posted in News You Can Use. | Comments Off on US Says Iran’s Satellite Launch Program ‘Cover’ For Nuclear Weapons Delivery
14th February 2020
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Nothing to see here, move along, move along….
Posted in Axis of Drivel -- Adventures in Narrative Media | Comments Off on Political Bias of Lead Stone Juror EXPOSED, Nets Respond With Blackout
14th February 2020
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Sidewalk Labs, the architecture and urbanism arm of Google parent company Alphabet, has unveiled a digital model for what would be the world’s tallest mass-timber building, reaching 35 storeys.
Posted in Think about it. | Comments Off on Sidewalk Labs Tests Possibilities for Timber Construction With 35-Storey Proto-Model
13th February 2020
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Beset by high housing costs, crippling taxes, astronomical gas prices, wildfires, and rolling blackouts, Californians are heading for the exits. That’s sparking anxiety in places where these Golden State migrants are relocating. A mayoral candidate in Boise, Idaho, recently suggested building a wall to keep out Californians, who account for 60 percent of domestic migration into the growing state. The election of increasingly progressive candidates in Colorado sparked talk there of the “Californication” of the Centennial State.
Early last year, the Dallas News described the “California-ing” of North Texas, citing a study showing that 8,300 Californians move to the area yearly. Texas governor Greg Abbott launched a petition titled “Don’t California My Texas.”
We don’t mind them coming here so long as they leave their crazy ideas back on the Left Coast.
Posted in Dystopia Watch | Comments Off on Calculating the Californication
13th February 2020
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Guess Iran is still determined to make mischief.
Posted in Living with Islam: The world's most intolerant—and intolerable—religion | Comments Off on US Navy Intercepts Advanced Iranian Weapons Bound for Yemen in Arabian Sea
13th February 2020
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That’s what happens when Democrats run your city.
Posted in Your tax dollars at work - and play. | Comments Off on Federal Prosecutors Recommend 5-Year Jail Term for Corrupt Former Baltimore Mayor
13th February 2020
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I guess some cultures are more equal than others.
Posted in Whose turn is it to be the victim? | Comments Off on Woman at University of Virginia Announces There’s Too Many White People in Multicultural Student Center
13th February 2020
Posted in Think about it. | Comments Off on Today in Global Warming Hysteria
13th February 2020
Posted in Axis of Drivel -- Adventures in Narrative Media | Comments Off on Today in Trump Derangement Syndrome
13th February 2020
Victor Davis Hanson.
Genius is often defined in myriad ways. One trusted criterion is the ability to do something extraordinary in a field where others could not — and doing something that perhaps will never be done again by anyone else.
Posted in Think about it. | Comments Off on Limbaugh: A Genius at Radio
13th February 2020
Veronique de Rugy.
The New York Times published this excellent argument why we shouldn’t break up Amazon. It boils down to this: Amazon is a genius at giving consumers what they want, and because it faces a ton of competition, the company innovates like crazy. All that’s missing from this piece is the argument that government’s ineptitude at running Amtrak and the postal service, along with a great deal of other evidence of political operatives’ failure to achieve their goals, should make us skeptical of the ability of bureaucrats to break up Big Tech.
Posted in Dystopia Watch | Comments Off on The Best Case Against Breaking Up Amazon
13th February 2020
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In keeping with our storied history of presenting readers with plausible theories and allowing them to make their own decisions often times weeks, months or years in advance of the mainstream media figuring them out and/or having the courage to finally touch on them, we’re not surprised to see some of the critical questions we raised about the coronavirus origins weeks ago finally bleed into the mainstream media this morning.
ZeroHedge is a great site, and very entertaining — and that’s about all you can really expect fromthe ‘news’ these days.
Posted in News You Can Use. | Comments Off on “Maybe This Was Man Made” – CNBC Questions Coronavirus Origins As ZeroHedge Remains Banned On Twitter
13th February 2020
Scott Johnson at Power Line has an adventure.
I have a pen and I have notes, to borrow a phrase. I have notes of comments made by President Trump at the White House reception for conservative media on April 24, 2017 on the occasion of his first hundred days in office. I used my notes to write up my account of the reception for Power Line readers in “At the White House with Trump.”
In a scenario out of Twilight Zone or The Outer Limits, I was served at home with a subpoena by lawyers for plaintiffs in one of the “travel ban” lawsuits from the early days of the Trump administration. The subpoena would have taken my notes away from me. They were going to let me keep my pen.
Posted in Think about it. | Comments Off on Don’t subpoena me, bro: The sequel
13th February 2020
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The Associated Press reported Wednesday afternoon that three high school girls in Connecticut had filed a federal lawsuit to prevent transgender athletes — read muscle-bound boys — from competing in girls sports. The D.C.-based gay magazine Metro Weekly reported the story in total LGBT-ese.
AP’s story ran on ESPN W, Time and numerous other media websites.
Scorecards! Getcher scorecards here! Ya can’t tell the victims without a scorecard!
Posted in Whose turn is it to be the victim? | Comments Off on ADF Sues Against Trans Athlete Policy; LGBT Media Allies Go on Attack
13th February 2020
Posted in Think about it. | Comments Off on Thought for the Day
13th February 2020
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Apparently the people who are addicted to government benefits elected people like themselves to Congress to make sure that they goodies kept flowing.
Your tax dollars at work.
Posted in Your tax dollars at work - and play. | Comments Off on Lawmakers to Trump: Don’t Slash Food Stamps, We Used Them
13th February 2020
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I love these things.
Posted in News You Can Use. | Comments Off on Explore Ancient Athens Online in 3D Models Created by One Animator over 12 Years
13th February 2020
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The Third Circuit Court of Appeals has finally decided — after more than four years — that the government can’t keep someone locked up indefinitely for contempt of court charges.
Former Philadelphia policeman Francis Rawls has been locked up since 2015 for refusing to decrypt external hard drives the government claims contain child porn images. The government’s claims are based on Rawls’ sister’s statements. She said Rawls showed her “hundreds” of child porn images that were located on these drives.
The government obtained an All Writs Order demanding Rawls decrypt the devices. This was challenged by Rawls, but unfortunately he did not preserve a Fifth Amendment challenge, so the Appeals Court let the government have its victory. It was a limited victory. It still had two locked drives Rawls claimed he could not remember the passwords for. But it also had Rawls jailed on civil contempt charges.
Rawls will be a free man again, but probably not for long. He challenged the indefinite incarceration, asserting that the law only provides for a maximum of 18 months in jail for civil contempt charges.
Posted in News You Can Use. | Comments Off on Appeals Court Rules That People Can’t Be Locked Up Indefinitely For Refusing To Decrypt Devices
13th February 2020
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An interesting new development.
Posted in News You Can Use. | Comments Off on You Can Now Scan Your Restaurant Receipt and Pay With Apple Pay
13th February 2020
Freeberg points out some inconvenient truth.
A scandal about Vindman would necessarily depend on this weird “job-as-property” viewpoint. The idea that once you have a job, it belongs to you, kind of like land. And if you ever lose it then that means someone committed some sort of crime against you. This is the weirdness that is America. Labor unions have indoctrinated us over the course of several generations that whether you’re legitimately fired or not, is up to some “for cause” verbiage in a rule book, not your boss. We’ve accepted it as normal that if the verbiage can be twisted and teased and interpreted the right way, then like Arthur pulling the sword from the stone you become the rightful sovereign, and possessor of that ultimate coveted prize: A regular paycheck provided by someone who really doesn’t want to give it to you.
We definitely need to have some kind of conversation about this.
Posted in Think about it. | Comments Off on That Vindman Guy
12th February 2020
Posted in Think about it. | Comments Off on Today in Global Warming Hysteria
12th February 2020
Posted in Axis of Drivel -- Adventures in Narrative Media | Comments Off on Today in Trump Derangement Syndrome
12th February 2020
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Find the ‘black’ man in this picture:

For reference, here is a picture of an actual black man:

Posted in Axis of Drivel -- Adventures in Narrative Media | Comments Off on Deval Patrick, Last Black Candidate in 2020 Race, Drops out
12th February 2020
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Radical ESPN Senior Writer Howard Bryant has released another book of political essays indicting American sports as overtly political, one where African Americans must navigate a sharp edge of whiteness. Released late last month, Full Dissidence: Notes From An Uneven Playing Field follows Bryant’s 2019 book, The Heritage: Black Athletes, a Divided America, and the Politics of Patriotism, by a year.
Not surprisingly, Bryant’s latest race-baiting condemnation of American sports is attracting attention from media who speak his left-wing language. NPR, MSNBC’s Chris Hayes and The Nation magazine all gave the book fawning attention.
Posted in Axis of Drivel -- Adventures in Narrative Media | Comments Off on ESPN Senior Writer Stokes Race Issues in New Book
12th February 2020

According to Predictit, per Audacious Epigone.
Posted in Think about it. | Comments Off on Thought for the Day
12th February 2020
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With CRISPR sucking up all the attention, Stafforst says, people reacted to his paper with indifference. They asked, “Why do we need this when there’s DNA editing?”
But CRISPR editing — at least as a therapeutic technique in people — has turned out to be more difficult than initially thought. Researchers have documented ways that Cas9, one of the enzymes used in CRISPR gene editing, could trigger immune responses, or cause accidental changes to the genome that would be permanent. RNA editing, by contrast, could allow clinicians to make temporary fixes that eliminate mutations in proteins, halt their production or change the way that they work in specific organs and tissues. Because cells quickly degrade unused RNAs, any errors introduced by a therapy would be washed out, rather than staying with a person forever.
I see great potential for bio-weapons like this latest coronavirus.
Posted in News You Can Use. | Comments Off on Step Aside CRISPR, RNA Editing Is Taking Off
12th February 2020
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A completely passive solar-powered desalination system developed by researchers at MIT and in China could provide more than 1.5 gallons of fresh drinking water per hour for every square meter of solar collecting area. Such systems could potentially serve off-grid arid coastal areas to provide an efficient, low-cost water source.
This could be huge.
Unlike some desalination systems, there is no accumulation of salt or concentrated brines to be disposed of. In a free-floating configuration, any salt that accumulates during the day would simply be carried back out at night through the wicking material and back into the seawater, according to the researchers.
That’s key.
Posted in News You Can Use. | Comments Off on Harnessing Sunlight to Efficiently Make Fresh Drinkable Water From Seawater
12th February 2020
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The Republican Party has earned a reputation as the anti-science, anti-fact party — understandably, perhaps, given the GOP’s policy of ignoring the evidence for global climate change and insisting on the efficacy of supply-side economics, despite all the research to the contrary. Yet ironically, it is now the Democratic Party that is wantonly ignoring mounds of social science data that suggests that promoting centrist candidates is a bad, losing strategy when it comes to winning elections. As the Democratic establishment and its pundit class starts to line up behind the centrist nominees for president — like Joe Biden and Pete Buttigieg — the party’s head-in-the-sand attitude is especially troubling.
This is Voice of the Crust Salon so it’s undoubtedly biased. But you might find it interesting.
Posted in Think about it. | Comments Off on There Is Hard Data That Shows That a Centrist Democrat Would Be a Losing Candidate
12th February 2020
Steve Sailer does a review.
The energetic media tycoon Ezra Klein has a book out titled Why We’re Polarized. Spoiler alert: One reason is because too many people watch Fox News instead of reading Klein’s properties like Vox. Another cause is because somebody imprudently spilled the beans to “white Christians” that they are being demographically doomed to defeat while they still have a chance to do something about it.
Posted in Think about it. | Comments Off on The Anti–Larry David