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Curiouser and curiouser.

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The New York Times published a rather shocking article for Saturday’s newspaper. Online, the headline was an attention-grabber:

Black Workers’ Wages Are Finally Rising
Their pay is increasing after a decade of stagnation. One man’s story shows the hope — and limitations — with that shift.

Wait. So black workers’ wages stagnated….all through the Obama presidency. This is a rather stunning headline. This is NOT the headline that made the Saturday paper, published on page B-1. Instead, it was “He’s Gained A Foothold, But Worries About Falling.”

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US Vice Admiral Andrew Lewis, the head of the Navy’s 2nd Fleet, raised eyebrows this week with alarming comments made at a Center for Strategic and International Studies event.

He told the think tank audience that a recent uptick of Russian submarine presence of the US East Coast means that the coastal area should no longer be considered “uncontested” nor should any longer be deemed a “safe haven” for US ships or submarines.

Perhaps they could arrange for marine biologists to tag them, the way they tag sharks. I’m always reading about sharks that have appeared off the east coast because they picked up the tags. Maybe the Navy ought to get on that.

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Assuming, of course, that you survive the experience.

Physicist and television presenter Brian Cox and musician Ed Sheeran have both admitted they can get a bit over-emotional when watching movies on aircraft. A survey by Gatwick Airport in London found 15 percent of men and 6 percent of women said they were more likely to cry when watching a film on a flight than they would if seeing it at home.

Perhaps the prospect of sudden death has something to do with it.

The reduced air pressure on airline flights can reduce the amount of oxygen in passengers’ blood between 6 and 25 percent, a drop that in hospital would lead many doctors to administer supplementary oxygen. For healthy passengers, this shouldn’t pose many issues, although in the elderly and people with breathing difficulties, the impact can be higher.

For none of which, of course, the passengers have expressed informed consent. Interesting how airline passengers are treated in ways that under other circumstances would justify a lawsuit.

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Louisiana’s continual land loss has created a monumental legal headache: When privately owned land vanishes under the water, who does it belong to?

A task force created in the summer of 2018 to come up with policy recommendations sent its list of possible solutions to state lawmakers Friday, ahead of their regular session.

The problem is a result of the state’s rapidly changing landscape. About 80 percent of Louisiana’s coast is privately owned. But, under an old law, as coastal erosion and sea level rise turn the land into open water the area becomes property of the state, including the mineral rights underneath.

ZMan underlines the changes.

What we may be seeing in the Democratic primary is the pushing aside of the old ideal that still rattles on in the form of Sanders and Biden. Both men are artifacts of the late New Deal period that came to a close in the 1980’s. Sanders still talks about politics as if most men work in factories and coal mines. Joe Biden is running like the friend of the working class, even though his party now hates the working class. These are men of the bygone era, not men of today.

…

Like all managerial types, Buttigieg is a box ticker. He is not a man who actually does things in the world. Rather, he participates in things, gains a credential for having participated in them and uses the credential to advance his career. He was valedictorian of his high school and “won first prize in the John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum’s Profiles in Courageessay contest.” Then it was off to Harvard and then Oxford for a Rhodes scholarship in Philosophy.

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As the 2020 Democratic presidential field dwindled, so did their apparent prospects at winning the election come November. Friday was witness to the latest installment in banal Democratic Presidential debates and even their greatest allies in the media could not help but take note of its dull nature. So much so, that ABC (the network who hosted the event) shifted into worrisome mode once the debate concluded.

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Democrat love for government-sanctioned racism comes back from the depths.

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In the UK a Muslim man is being prosecuted for removing his son from LGBT lessons, which he claims risk the safety of his child.

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‘Donald Trump is not the cause of all of our problems and we’re making a mistake when we act like he is’.

A sensible Democrat! No chance of winning, naturally.

Steve Sailer keeps tracking down the crazies.

Karin Louise Hermes feels aggrieved; as does Cynthia Leung,

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Around 45% of plastic waste is recycled annually in the UK and is on the increase. However, one of the problems with current plastic recycling methods is that you end up with a lower-quality plastic with worse properties than the original.

This means that plastic drinks bottles cannot simply be recycled into new drink bottles continuously, but instead are used for other lower-grade products such as park benches and traffic cones.

Now, scientists from the Universities of Bath and Birmingham have developed a new way of chemical recycling—converting plastics back into their constituent chemical molecules—so that they can be used to make new plastics of the same quality as the original.

Will it persuade the plastic-bag nannies to shut up? Don’t bet on it.

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Viruses are some of the most mysterious organisms on Earth. They’re among the world’s tiniest lifeforms, and because none can survive and reproduce without a host, some scientists have questioned whether they should even be considered living things. Now, scientists have discovered one that has no recognizable genes, making it among the strangest of all known viruses. But how many viruses do we really know? Another group has just discovered thousands of new viruses hiding out in the tissues of dozens of animals.

Steve Sailer keeps up on this stuff so that you don’t have to.

One of my more random predictions was that Trump and the new leftist president of Mexico, AMLO, were going to get along constructively. So far, they are, and it’s driving Conquistador-American Spanish language newscaster Jorge Ramos crazy.

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We’re often told that Illinois is not losing its highly taxed residents. For example, a Chicago Magazine article last week had a headline saying exactly that. Don’t worry about lost income from the rich leaving, we’re supposed to believe. It’s just poorer folks fleeing.

It’s simply not true. There’s recent, hard data directly refuting that claim. If you want the best evidence, the Internal Revenue Service released its latest state-to-state migration numbers last month. Wirepoints analyzed the number of people moving into and out of Illinois and their net impact by income groups.

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Well, that’s what happens when Democrats run your city.

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A week ago, we published details that raised questions about the source of the Wuhan novel coronavirus, specifically questioning the official theory for the spread of the Coronavirus epidemic, namely because someone ate bat soup at a Wuhan seafood and animal market as a fabricated farce.

The real reason behind the viral spread, we suggested, was that a weaponized version of the coronavirus (one which may have originally been obtained from Canada), was released by Wuhan’s Institute of Virology (presumably accidentally ), China’s only top, level-4 biohazard lab, which was studying “the world’s most dangerous pathogens.”

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Trump is not the pushover that the Bushes were. You mess with the bull, you get the horns every time.

Time Magazine: Climate Change Will Make Lethal Coronavirus Epidemics More Likely

China and Russia taking advantage of global warming to elbow US aside in the Arctic

Satellites Are Helping the Municipal-Bond Market Assess Climate Risk

Sugar ants’ preference for pee may reduce greenhouse gas emissions

Friday Funny: Manntastic claims require Manntastic evidence

Plastic-Bag Bans Are Bad for the Environment

Activist Explains Why Climate Change Movement’s ‘Whiteness’ Drove Her To Stop Saving The Earth

Read it. And watch the video.

Nature vs. Nurture is a constant theme in the Manosphere. Yes, it’s a constant theme throughout most natural sciences, but it’s a paradox that’s going to always pervade intersexual dynamics. And mostly because people’s belief sets are rooted more in one or the other. Personal responsibility versus biological determinism is an issue that defines what our perspectives are on a great many things; not just intersexual dynamics. This isn’t an issue of politics or even worldview. There are plenty of believers in our human capacity to rise above our personal circumstances and evolutionary dictates on both sides of the political spectrum. For every hardline Trad-Con espousing the virtues of the human spirit and freewill superseding our physical conditions there is a left-leaning humanist who’ll conveniently agree that humans aren’t beholden to what some inconvenient science says if it aligns with their belief set.

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New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo said Friday that the state will file a lawsuit challenging the Department of Homeland Security’s decision to block New Yorkers from participating “trusted traveler programs” in retribution for a new state law that could hinder federal immigration enforcement.

New York can spit in the face of DHS but they have to kiss New York’s ass in response.

Not under Tramp.

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Before getting into that, the Department of Labor released January’s jobs report.

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If you were a billionaire, you could do the same too.

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Here are the details.

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Sen. Mitt Romney was the sole Republican to vote to impeach Donald Trump, and the New York Times front page on Thursday demonstrated its strange new respect for the Utah Republican — the same candidate it spent 2012 vilifying for standing between Barack Obama and a second term — in Mark Leibovich’s “An Act of Defiance Against a Party He’d Personified.” A text box on the jump page cast Romney as making a brave stand: “Recognizing that breaking ranks may bring ‘unimaginable’ consequences.”

Eric S Raymond continues his discussion of the Chinese coronavirus.

Yikes. Despite the withdrawal of the Indian paper arguing that the Wuhan virus showed signs of engineering, the hypothesis that that it’s an escaped bioweapon looks stronger than ever.

Why do I say this? Because it looks like my previous inclination to believe the rough correctness of the official statistics – as conveyed by the Johns Hopkins tracker – was wrong. I now think the Chinese are in way deeper shit than they’re admitting.

My willingness to believe the official line didn’t stem from any credulity about what the Chinese government would do if it believed the truth wouldn’t serve. As Communists they are lying evil scum pretty much by definition, and denial would have been politically attractive for as long as they thought they could nip the pandemic in the bud. I thought their incentives had flipped and they would now be honest as a way of assisting their own countermeasures and seeking international help.

…

The evidence that this virus likes to eat Han Chinese and almost ignores everybody else is mounting. That’s bioweapon-like selectivity.

Read it.

Trump’s comments came in a Friday tweet after Fox News host Tucker Carlson had posted:

“Lawmakers are trying to make life worse for people across America. The New Way Forward Act protects serious felons from deportation and gives previously deported criminals a ‘right to come home’ at your expense. And that’s not all.”

Trump, replying to Carlson’s tweet, wrote: “Don’t worry, it won’t happen!”

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If, of course, that’s what you want to do.

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I’ll bet you didn’t know that.

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What?! He hasn’t been fired yet!? I thought Trump was Hitler! Hitler would have put this guy in an unmarked grave by now.

Steve Sailer keeps you up with the latest fashions.

It’s almost as if it’s fashionable to racistly insult whites for being white these days.

From ‘robber barons’ to ‘black market’ to ‘price gouging’, the first step in a hate campaign is to think up a catchy smear-name for the target. If academics pick it up and embed it in the culture, so much the better.

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The audit found the reason so few taxpayers use the Free File program, a public-private partnership between the IRS and companies such as Intuit and H&R Block, is because of the confusing design and complexity of the program — and lax oversight by the IRS, Pro Publica reported.

Imagine how fine your life will be when the government is running your health care.

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Thursday evening President Trump announced the death of al-Qaeda’s chief in Yemen by a US drone strike. The New York Times first reported last week the likely death of Qasim al-Rimi, the founder and leader of al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP) in a US airstrike, which the president has now confirmed. Days ago Saudi media also began reporting his death.

And another one bites the dust.

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Hammer tech.

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Pebble-bed high-temperature reactors get their name from the fact that the nuclear fuel is packed in tennis-ball sized spheres (“pebbles”), rather than in the conventional fuel rods. Each fuel ball consists of thousands of tiny fuel particles, each encapsulated in multiple layers of temperature-resistent ceramic material, embedded in a sphere of graphite.

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Long Island authorities on Wednesday implied that a man set to testify against MS-13 gang members was killed as a result of criminal-justice reforms requiring prosecutors share witnesses’ identities with defendants.

Nassau County officials, including the police commissioner and county executive, announced the death of 36-year-old Wilmer Maldonado on Wednesday — while also decrying the discovery laws that took effect Jan. 1.

Well, that’s what happens when Democrats run your state.

Steve Sailer comments:

Witness-murdering is a major cause of low closure rates for homicides in areas with gangs. LA Times homicide reporter Jill Leovy estimated about a dozen witnesses per year were murdered in South-Central L.A. in the first decade of this century, more than enough to discourage the other witnesses from cooperating too much with the cops.

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Wendy’s has been out to lunch (so to speak) on the fast-food-breakfast field so far. This is a welcome arrival. I’ll check it out and report back.

‘Double Jeopardy Does Not Apply’: CNN Looks For More Impeachment Charges

CNN’s ‘New Day’ Has No Pro-Trump Guests to Discuss State of the Union

CNN’s ‘Fact Checkers’ Rush to Give Obama Credit For Good Economy  The Magic Negro! Is there anything he can’t do?

Iowa Dems Blame Trump Supporters for Caucus Fiasco

CNN’s Harwood: Romney, Pelosi Have ‘Deep Faith,’ Care About Right vs. Wrong, Unlike Trump

‘Clearly Guilty’: Fox News’ Judge Andrew Napolitano Says Trump Could Be Impeached Again

With Friends Like These! Ellen & Hillary Gush Over Mitt Romney, Bash Acquittal

Tim Scott: Trump Helping Minorities Frustrates Dems

Wind Turbine Blades Can’t Be Recycled, So They’re Piling Up in Landfills

Rapid Permafrost Collapse Is Underway, Disintegrating Landscapes And Our Predictions

The world’s oceans are speeding up — another mega-scale consequence of climate change Washington Post.

Global warming is speeding up Earth’s massive ocean currents

A climate activist swam under the Antarctic ice sheet to prove how quickly glaciers are melting  Uh, okay….

The Insignificance of Greenland’s Ice Mass Loss in Five Easy Charts…

Aussie ABC: “Are economists globally understating or overstating the cost of climate change?”

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The State of the Union address has been described as kabuki theater; an elaborate, carefully orchestrated, melodramatic spectacle heavy on showmanship and light on content. President Trump is good at this, he has built a very successful career in business and entertainment by excelling in theater, in one form or another. His production of, and performance in, yesterday’s State of the Union address was aptly masterful. Nothing that happened there was an accident. The whole show was carefully, and brilliantly, planned and executed. And I think that’s fine; play to your strengths. This is one of his strengths.

My problem was the other side of the show. The behavior of Nancy Pelosi and other Democrats in attendance was absurd. What makes that absurdity particularly noteworthy is that it was just as carefully planned and executed as President Trump’s address. They had months to prepare for this. They knew exactly what President Trump was going to do. And the best they could come up with was wearing white, expressing disapproval at America’s successes, and tearing up his speech after he gave it. The Democrats were essentially filming Republican campaign ads for them, making themselves look ridiculous, clueless, and meanspirited, and this was after months of careful planning. This was exactly what they intended to do. I just don’t get it.

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How very … Republican.

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An event exclusive to black queer, trans, and intersex students, staff, and faculty at the publicly-funded Claremont University Consortium has changed their event to include “allies” of these groups. The switch appears to be after a student newspaper questioned whether the previously closed event violated federal laws on discrimination.

The Queer Resource Center (QRC) funded by the Consortium — which includes liberal art colleges Pomona, Harvey Mudd, Claremont McKenna, Pitzer, and Scripps — is hosting a “BlaQ Mixer” event Feb. 6 that had only permitted attendance by “black queer, trans, & intersex students, staff, and faculty.”

Scott Johnson at Power Line connects the dots.

The New York Times is nothing if not predictable. In the age of Trump, it has become even more so. Having pioneered the “strange new respect” profile genre — i.e., the laudatory profiles of Republicans or conservatives who “get above their raisin’” to join the sanctified line of the Democratic Party — the Times owed Romney, and the Times has now delivered.

ZMan has a dream.

A good rule that no one anywhere follows, is to contemplate the consequences of being wrong before doing something. For example, if legislatures had to post a wrongness analysis for every bill before they could be voted on, at least some of the terrible ideas would get stopped before becoming law. Of course, that is probably why such a thing can never happen, at least in a democracy. New ideas are about hope and nothing is worse than dashing the reformer’s hope for the future.

Scott Adams calls such loserthink ‘one-sided thinking’.

Freeberg puts the boot in.

The thing we really can’t have, the thing that does more damage than even the deliberate lying, is this sunup-to-sundown, all-year-every-year, “Omigaw this cannot stand” state of being aggrieved…about…whatever. This it’s-always-something thing. We have all these people taking to social media or to the weekday or Sunday morning talk shows, with their various trifling complaints, demanding attention for the trifling complaints over & above what’s appropriate for trifling complaints. Ocasio-Cortez objects to the President of the United States awarding a medal that, in his place, she would not have awarded…well…that’s why we have an executive in this country, who goes around doing things that wouldn’t get done if we had to wait for everyone in our shores with a heartbeat to go along & not object. Sometimes that guy is going to do things that some people don’t like, and that’s okay. I survived Obama, you’ll survive Trump.

And the democrat party has declined to become just that and little else. “Hold up there, I have a complaint.” Don’t buy that gas, don’t build that business, don’t hire that guy, don’t don’t don’t. I’m aggrieved. You have to stop everything and hear my complaint. Carbon emissions, objectifying women, not enough blacks on Seinfeld…whatevs…

Read it.

Math is hard!

Especially for Democrats.

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If they were getting better value for their money (or if government employees weren’t the dregs of the gene pool), they wouldn’t need such high rates.

And that’s not including what Democrats actually steal.