Archive for August, 2020
24th August 2020
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More than a dozen people have been arrested for looting or planning on looting California homes that have been vacated by those fleeing wildfires, according to a Sunday report.
A total of 13 people have been apprehended as Californians continue to report looting cases, Sheriff Jim Hart told the Associated Press. Thousands have fled their homes in anticipation of wildfires spreading from south San Francisco, AP reported.
California is degenerating into a Turd World failed state.
Posted in Dystopia Watch | Comments Off on Arrests Made After Looters Targeted Evacuated California Homes During Wildfires
24th August 2020
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Last night Harvey Risch — M.D., Ph.D. — professor of epidemiology in the Department of Epidemiology and Public Health at the Yale School of Public Health, joined Mark Levin on Life, Liberty & Levin. Risch is of course the author of the Newsweek essay “The Key to Defeating COVID-19 Already Exists. We Need to Start Using It.”
If it weren’t for President Trump’s advocacy of hydroxychloroquine to treat (early) cases of COVID-19, this would be old hat. However, Trump Derangement Syndrome rules the media. Despite its apparent safety and efficacy, hydroxychloroquine therefore had to be stigmatized and condemned. Professor Risch is himself a prophet without honor at Yale, although the Yale School of Medicine posted this interview with him back in May, around the time his paper on the subject was published in the American Journal of Epidemiology.
Posted in Think about it. | Comments Off on The Case for HCQ
24th August 2020
ZMan uncovers a contradiction.
The term “partisan” in the way it is used in modern politics was coined by Lenin as a counter to bourgeois objectivity. The Marxists argued that since class interests determine ideology, there is no point in thinking about non-partisans politics. The partisan should fight for the interests of his class, or in the modern sense, his identity group, even if that contradicts the interests of society as a whole. The modern partisan is supposed to care only about winning for the good of his group.
Obviously, the partisan has a personal stake in his politics, in that he is fighting for his class, tribe, identity group and so on. The partisan stands to benefit personally if his class carries the day, but that’s not the point of politics. The union activist, fighting to unionize a shop, benefits from the spread of unions, but his reason for unionizing is it is good for his class. Similarly, the member of a minority group would advocate for his people, because it is good for his tribe.
That is another strange aspect of modern politics. There is a disconnect between the partisan and the cause he champions. Affluent white female liberals, for example, have no practical connection to the issues they champion, other than the nonsensical concept of intersectionality. In the partisan sense, they should be on the side of those defending the cultural hegemony of bourgeois white people. Instead, they champion causes that threaten their lifestyle.
Posted in Think about it. | Comments Off on The Impersonal Partisan
24th August 2020
I feel the same way about Global Warming.
Posted in Think about it. | Comments Off on Thought for the Day
24th August 2020
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A California fire commander had his wallet stolen and bank account drained over the weekend while helping to combat the massive CZU Lightning Complex Fire, according to a report.
Looters invading an evacuation zone established in the Santa Cruz Mountains area in Northern California were blamed for the crime, said officials with Cal Fire (California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection), KRON-TV of San Francisco reported.
Posted in Dystopia Watch | Comments Off on California looters snatch firefighter’s wallet, drain bank account during massive CZU blaze
24th August 2020
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Seems appropriate.
Posted in News You Can Use. | Comments Off on Danbury, Connecticut Will Name Sewage Plant After John Oliver
23rd August 2020
Posted in Whose turn is it to be the victim? | Comments Off on Today in Black Privilege
23rd August 2020
Michigan College Unleashes “Mandatory” App To Track Students At All Times
‘Footloose’ Comes To Life In New York: Governor Cuomo Bans Dancing
Portland Police Order Protesters to Disperse Which was about as effective as you might imagine.
At Least 13 Killed In Peru Nightclub Stampede Triggered By Police ‘Social Distancing’ Raid
Biden Quotes Mao to ABC’s Roberts, She Refuses to Push Back or Question
Portland BLM ‘Revolutionaries’ Bring Guillotine Into Suburbs Where They Burn American Flags, Fling Poo And Demand Shelter
De Blasio’s ‘Utopia’? Quarter-Mile Food-Bank Line Spotted In Queens
Posted in Dystopia Watch | Comments Off on Today in Progressive Totalitarianism
23rd August 2020
Posted in Axis of Drivel -- Adventures in Narrative Media | Comments Off on Today in Trump Derangement Syndrome
23rd August 2020
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Now if they can just get them to focus sunlight in order to start forest fires, California will be early adopters.
Posted in News You Can Use. | Comments Off on Semi-Transparent Solar Panels Allow Concurrent Production of Crops and Power
23rd August 2020
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If, of course, that’s what you want to do.
Posted in News You Can Use. | Comments Off on How to Figure Out What’s Wrong With Your Toilet—and Then Fix It
23rd August 2020
Posted in Think about it. | Comments Off on Thought for the Day
23rd August 2020
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Gun control activist David Hogg deleted a tweet asking his 1 million followers if they would be interested in hearing his thoughts on the election after 84% responded, “No.”
“Would you be interested in seeing a video post every day from now until election day with my thoughts on what’s going on?” Hogg asked in a Twitter poll. More than 90,000 Twitter users responded to the poll with nearly 80,000 responding with a “no.”
Heh.
Posted in Think about it. | Comments Off on David [‘Camera’] Hogg Deletes Twitter Poll After Majority Respond ‘No’ to Hearing His 2020 Election ‘Thoughts’
23rd August 2020
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In a creative—some might say desperate—bid to bolster its amphibious fleet, the U.S. Navy in recent years has been building so-called “expeditionary sea-base ships” that are little more than commercial heavy-load carrier ships with a gray coat of paint and some military radios.
Now the Chinese fleet has demonstrated the same creativity—or desperation. A commercial heavy-load carrier flying a Hong Kong flag recently supported a Chinese naval exercise, functioning as a base for at least two army helicopters.
Posted in Think about it. | Comments Off on Surprise! The Chinese Navy Just Transformed This Cargo Ship Into an Instant Helicopter Carrier
23rd August 2020
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“It’s ridiculous. It’s so hypocritical because they’ve been data mining our children for years, compliments of common core,” Laurie Cardoza-Moore, founder of Proclaiming Justice to the Nations, said on “Fox & Friends Weekend” Saturday.
“What are they trying to hide? What is the problem? Why won’t they let us sit in?” the homeschool mom of five asked.
“Obviously, because they are teaching our children propaganda that they should not be teaching,” she said. “They are trying to socialize our children.”
Posted in Your tax dollars at work - and play. | Comments Off on Tennessee Mom Says Parents Asked to Sign ‘Ridiculous’ Waiver They Will Not Eavesdrop on Kids’ Online Lessons
22nd August 2020
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Presumably the HOAX in the title doesn’t refer to the Charlottesville ‘fine people’ hoax that Biden is pushing as the cornerstone of his campaign.
Posted in Axis of Drivel -- Adventures in Narrative Media | Comments Off on Tag Team of Hate: Maddow Touts Stelter and His New Fox-Trashing Book ‘HOAX’
22nd August 2020
Posted in Axis of Drivel -- Adventures in Narrative Media | Comments Off on Today in Trump Derangement Syndrome
22nd August 2020
Posted in Whose turn is it to be the victim? | Comments Off on Today in Black Privilege
22nd August 2020
How San Francisco’s Progressive Policies Made the Homelessness Crisis Worse
UK Officials Exposed For Inflating COVID Hospital Numbers At Height Of “Pandemic”
House Holding Rare Saturday Vote on Postal Changes, Funds Not surprising, since the Postal Workers Union is a Democrat core constituency, which is why they rushed back to D.C. to take up their cause when they couldn’t be bothered to work on a stimulus package for the rest of us.
Social Distancing Sign Says: “Look Away When Passing Other People”
Top British Medical Says Coronavirus Will be Around ‘Forever in Some Form or Another’ Certainly as long as the Deep State lasts.
Posted in Dystopia Watch | Comments Off on Today in Progressive Totalitarianism
22nd August 2020
Posted in Think about it. | Comments Off on Today in Global Warming Hysteria
22nd August 2020
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“When people estimate risk, they overestimate it massively,” says King College London’s Professor Neil Greenberg, who works with Public Health England as part of the Health Protection Research Unit for Emergency Preparedness and Response. “We are very poor as a public at estimating what risk really means.”
That does not mean the threat posed by Covid-19 can be summarily dismissed, but experts are keen for a sense of proportion.
Posted in Dystopia Watch | Comments Off on Hysteria is the Most Dangerous Coronavirus Symptom
22nd August 2020
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The epidemic of homelessness that continues to plague California cities hasn’t abated with the Wuhan bat flu. Downtown LA increasingly looks like a George Romero film: a ruined landscape of wrecked and deserted hotels, bars, restaurants, and stores that had just recently been filled with life before being ransacked, boarded-up, and abandoned to a hollow remnant of humanity with no other purpose than the quotidian shambling from place to place as it wallows in its own effluence.
On the West Coast, in cities from Seattle to San Diego, they have become the ne plus ultra of protected classes: I have heard from friends of LAPD officers that police are regularly paid overtime to protect the homeless and their right to homestead public spaces for their own crapulence. (I somehow suspect this is a part of policing that the Left won’t find their way to defunding.)
Posted in Dystopia Watch | Comments Off on The Elephant in the Room: The California Homeless Urban Brushfire Fire Season Begins
22nd August 2020
ZMan indulges in a little sociology.
The Scandinavian nationalist, Fróði Midjord, is fond of saying that the way to break a taboo is to break the taboo. The logic is that taboos only work as a crowd control device when the crowd agrees with the taboo. If people stop abiding by a taboo, then it loses its power to enforce behavior. We see this with the social norms that have fallen away since the 1960’s. Things like adultery and divorce were normalized, in part, by people ignoring the taboos against them.
Of course, a good way to have your life destroyed is to go around breaking taboos, especially the ones that matter to the people in charge. Start talking race realism at your office and you not only get fired, you become unemployable. Break the taboo against fighting back against left-wing street thugs and you could end up in prison. Breaking taboos works only when a critical mass of people decides to break the taboo and a larger set of people are ready to join them.
That’s the other problem with taboo breaking. Without popular or institutional support, the taboo breaker ends up enforcing the taboo. He gets hauled out in front of the crowd and is properly punished. The crowd sees it and the point is made. If you don’t want to end up like the guy being made into an example, don’t break the taboo. Rosa Parks would not be known to us without the support of the ruling class. Her taboo breaking was welcomed by the people in charge.
Posted in Think about it. | Comments Off on Taboo Breaking
22nd August 2020
Posted in Think about it. | Comments Off on Thought for the Day
22nd August 2020
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Must be a Latinx bear.
Posted in Is this a great country, or what? | Comments Off on Bear Wanders Into California Grocery Store, Leaves With Bag of Tortilla Chips, Video Shows
21st August 2020
Watch: Biden Supporters Steal 7-Year-Old Boy’s MAGA Hat, Attack His Mother
Posted in Axis of Drivel -- Adventures in Narrative Media | Comments Off on Today in Trump Derangement Syndrome
21st August 2020
Posted in Axis of Drivel -- Adventures in Narrative Media | Comments Off on Today in Trump Derangement Syndrome
21st August 2020
Posted in Dystopia Watch | Comments Off on Today in Progressive Totalitarianism
21st August 2020
Posted in Whose turn is it to be the victim? | Comments Off on Today in Black Privilege
21st August 2020
Posted in Think about it. | Comments Off on Today in Global Warming Hysteria
21st August 2020
If you don’t read Dave Zincavage’s blog NEVER YET MELTED, I recommend it.
Posted in Think about it. | Comments Off on Thought for the Day
21st August 2020
Posted in Living with Islam. | Comments Off on ISLAMOCOPIA FRIDAY: What’s New in the Religion of Peace
21st August 2020
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Most keyboards use one-dimensional buttons or a QWERTY design. According to CharaChorder, this can often cause user error—like typos—caused by hitting letters in the wrong order when “muscle memory” is moving faster than a device can keep up with.
With CharaChorder, these “errors” are highly encouraged. A user can type entire words by pressing all letters simultaneously, in a single motion. CharaChorder’s internal processor will then arrange the letters on-screen in real time, faster than the human eye can perceive.
This kind of technology makes it easy for users to learn “chording” (a way to enter characters or commands formed by pressing several keys together) intuitively over time. According to the team, it’s also a much more powerful method of communicating.
Well, we’ll see.
Posted in Think about it. | Comments Off on #killQWERTY: Why Plano-Based CharaChorder Reinvented the Keyboard for a Digital Age
21st August 2020
Steve decides to be a collector.
My reasoning goes like this: if I know I will continue shooting a certain caliber until I croak, I might as well buy enough ammunition to get me as far into the future as possible. It won’t rot. It doesn’t have to be refrigerated. You can buy it today and use it 50 years from now, if you’re still here. If you wait, you’ll end up paying much more in the long run. Also, the Democrats are gradually destroying our rights, so who knows if you’ll be able to buy anything a couple of years from now?
I’m convinced.
Posted in Think about it. | Comments Off on The Cartridge Family
21st August 2020
Joel Kotkin.
For roughly the past half century, the middle swath of America has been widely written off as reactionary, backward, and destined for unceasing decline. CNBC recently ranked the “worst states” to live in, and almost all were in what is typically defined as the Heartland.1 Paul Krugman of the New York Times sees the region populated by “jobless men in their prime working years, with many suffering ‘deaths of despair’ by drugs, alcohol or suicide.”
Another Times article describes much of the small-town and rural areas as home to “the left behind”—Trumpian knuckle-draggers at war with modernity. This coastal contempt for the interior is nothing new, going back to celebrated figures such as Sinclair Lewis and H. L. Mencken, who dismissed it as hopelessly “backward if not reactionary.”2 Two New Jersey academics have even proposed, with the approval of much of the national media, that large parts of the Great Plains be evacuated to make way for an expansive “Buffalo Commons.”3 One progressive publication suggested that the country should send “reparations” to the region, as if it were incapable of devising its own recovery.
Yet in reality, the Heartland—a region of twenty states between the Appalachians and the Rockies—has remained a critical part of our country. In 2016, this area generated nearly $5 trillion in goods and services.4 As of 2015, it was also home to nearly 60 percent of the U.S. population,5 a percentage that is likely to increase as both the Northeast and coastal California are projected to grow less than the national average between 2010 and 2030.6
Posted in Is this a great country, or what? | Comments Off on The Heartland’s Revival
20th August 2020
Posted in Think about it. | Comments Off on Todaly in Global Warming Hysteria
20th August 2020
Posted in Whose turn is it to be the victim? | Comments Off on Today in Black Privilege
20th August 2020
Posted in Dystopia Watch | Comments Off on Today in Progressive Totalitarianism
20th August 2020
Posted in Axis of Drivel -- Adventures in Narrative Media | Comments Off on Today in Trump Derangement Syndrome
20th August 2020
Posted in Think about it. | Comments Off on As Pandemic Persists, New York City Movers Busier Than Ever
20th August 2020
ZMan looks at conservatism.
At the end of the Cold War, Progressives pointed out that conservatism no longer had a purpose, so it was probably going to follow communism into the past. Of course, the Left had its own problems in this regard, but conservatism in America had largely been about opposing the Soviets. They had conceded all the important points in the cultural war and the Left was ready to embrace corporate control of the economy, so there was no longer any purpose to conservatism.
This was a fair analysis, but one conservatives could not accept, as it would mean getting real jobs and doing honest work. Instead they tried to define conservatism as green eye-shade bean counting in the 1990’s. That was no fun as they like spending borrowed money as much as the Left. Then they tried to define conservatism to mean dropping high explosives onto Muslims. That worked for a while, but then the public soured on the pointless flag waving and hollow patriotism.
Severian had a response: The Spiritual Exercises
Posted in Think about it. | Comments Off on The Failed Experiment Problem
20th August 2020
Victor Davis Hanson.
Perhaps 70 percent of Trumpism remains a hodgepodge of Reaganism: strong defense, realist foreign policy, deregulation, smaller government, big deficits, tax cuts, energy growth, and stars-and-stripes traditionalism.
But it is the other unorthodox 30 percent that excited his base, terrified conservative apostates, and won Trump the 2016 election by energizing between 4 million and 6 million voters in swing states who had either given up on Republicans, or on elections altogether. NeverTrumpers talk of Trump’s demise and their own resurrection as Phoenixes to rebirth the GOP. They have no idea that those who despise them had ensured their Beltway-preferred candidates could rarely win; nothing has changed since.
Posted in Think about it. | Comments Off on Trumpism—A Look Backward and Forward to November
20th August 2020
Posted in Think about it. | Comments Off on Thought for the Day
20th August 2020
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The Airship 2.0 is certainly a different beast from the zeppelin of 100 years ago. The latest generation relies on non-combustible helium, and bulletproof materials that like vectran, mylar and kevlar to make the balloon both lightweight and durable.
Me want.
Posted in News You Can Use. | Comments Off on These New Luxury Blimps Hope to Become the Superyachts of the Skies
20th August 2020
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A series of errors by contractors and consultants on the California bullet train venture caused support cables to fail on a massive bridge, triggering an order to stop work that further delayed a project already years behind schedule,the Los Angeles Times has learned.
The bridge is longer than two football fields and is needed to shuttle vehicles over the future bullet train right of way and existing BNSF freight tracks in Madera County.
Authorities have yet to finalize a plan to repair the bridge. Late last year, crews installed temporary steel supports to prevent it from collapsing.
Hundreds of pages of documents obtained by The Times under a public records request show the steel supports snapped as a result of neglect, work damage, miscommunications and possible design problems.
High-speed rail, the Future of America.
Posted in Your tax dollars at work - and play. | Comments Off on How California Bullet Train Contractors Botched Bridge Project
20th August 2020
Tyler Cowen.
When it comes to Covid-19, I worry about the problem of “phantom risk.” Right now the risks of Covid-19 are very real, but at some point we still will feel those risks when they are no longer present, much as some amputees may feel a “phantom limb.”
How this might play out?
I think we’ve already hit that point. The current government-mandated ‘protections’ are far out of proportion to the actual danger involved.
Posted in Think about it. | Comments Off on The Phantom Risk of Covid-19
20th August 2020
The Other McCain.
Something that has been turning over in my mind lately is the way some people reject the entire idea of judgment — or, rather, they say they are against judging people. In reality, such people are often extremely judgmental. “Don’t judge me!” they angrily exclaim, but if you pay attention, you’ll notice these people never hesitate to judge you.
Posted in Think about it. | Comments Off on The War Against Judgment
20th August 2020
Steve Sailer.
Over the last half decade a vast amount of in-depth prestige press coverage has been devoted to the so-called “alt-right” while almost none has been devoted to “Antifa,” despite the latter being vastly larger and more favored by government officials, as we’ve seen this year in unfortunate cities such as Minneapolis, Madison, Seattle, and Portland.
Posted in Axis of Drivel -- Adventures in Narrative Media | Comments Off on Alt-Right vs. Antifa
20th August 2020
Steve Sailer.
One of the more striking phenomena of recent years is the trend toward making certain news articles duller, vaguer, and more insignificant sounding. Stories used to be written to begin with the five W’s — Who, What, Where, When, and Why — as close to the top as human verbal ingenuity could manage. But lately, many stories are constructed to bore the casual reader into moving on to the next story before he has much of a clue what this one is about.
Posted in Axis of Drivel -- Adventures in Narrative Media | Comments Off on Washington Post: Small News from Portland
19th August 2020
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“You might not know this, but most of the actual convention events take place during daytime hours,” he said. “The networks don’t cover them. You have no idea that happened. There’s a reason for that, obviously. But what a loss for the viewing public. If you saw what they were saying during the day, you would never tune in to prime time again. In fact, you might flee the country.”
Posted in Think about it. | Comments Off on ‘What a Loss for the Viewing Public’: Tucker Reveals DNC Daytime Activities the Networks Don’t Cover