Read it.

Researchers have demonstrated that they can make a working 3D-printed copy of a key just by listening to how the key sounds when inserted into a lock. And you don’t need a fancy mic — a smartphone or smart doorbell will do nicely if you can get it close enough to the lock.

Steve Sailer.

I’ve been mentioning for awhile a growth in articles about people complaining about the color of various objects, such as blue or green medical scrubs or the little white man who tells you to walk on a traffic light as indicative of systemic racism. It’s like 5-year-olds talking about their favorite color Power Ranger.

Read it.

Time to leave.

Green California Has the Nation’s Worst Power Grid

Transparent Solar Panels for Windows Hit New Efficiency Record – Could Help Enable Skyscrapers to Serve As Power Sources

The excess costs of Weather Dependent Renewable power generation in the USA

The Transit-Industrial Complex

The future may be full of fire tornadoes  Women and minorities hardest hit.

Legal Motion Filed to Stop FOIA Stonewalling on Paris Climate Treaty

Merkel Freezes Germany’s COVID-19 Reopening As New Cases Surge, WHO Warns Against “Vaccine Nationalism”: Live Updates  Oooooh! Nationalism!

Pro-Trump Radio Host Bill Mitchell Banned by Twitter

Babylon Bee Returns after Bogus Twitter Suspension

Judge Blocks Idaho Law That Prevents Transgender Women From Participating In Female Athletics

6 Officers Injured, 18 Demonstrators Arrested After Seattle Rioters Hurl Explosives At Police

Virginia State Sen. Louise Lucas Faces Charges After Allegedly Damaging Statue During Protests

New Law In California Requires College Students Take Ethnic Studies Course To Graduate

Democrat Mailer Promoting Mail-In Voting Gets Lost In Mail  Babylon Bee.

German Schoolchildren Expelled For Not Wearing Masks

Pushback: Minneapolis Residents Sue City Council And Mayor For Failing To Staff Police Amid Crime Surge

Democratic Convention Viewer Wishing They Would Just Get To The Part About All The Free Stuff  Babylon Bee.

EXCLUSIVE: University Of Minnesota Medical School Application Features Question About George Floyd, Rayshard Brooks

‘Would It Be Okay If The Colors Were Reversed?’: Tucker Calls Out DOJ’s Civil Rights Division Over Violent Protests

Murder Offenders Per Capita: Ratio of Blacks to Nonblacks Is Even Larger Than Men to Women

NYC Tops Chicago in Murders But Not in Woundings

Democratic Convention Reassures White Baby Boomers That Gay Blacks Love Buffalo Springfield

Our BLM Jihadis

Slate Reveals ‘Sinister Side’ of Coloring Books: ‘Dark, Forgotten History’

Prosecutors Working For Kamala-Mentored DA Committed “Substantial Abuses” During Smollett Investigation

Serious Business: Biden Seeks Policy Points From Former Robber/Stripper Cardi B

Do Black Lives Matter in Baltimore?

‘Giant Warning’: Iowa State University Instructor Warns Anti-BLM, Pro-Life Views Are ‘Grounds For Dismissal’

What a Joke: Colbert Invites Benghazi Liar Susan Rice to Scare Americans Into Voting Biden With Crazy Conspiracy Theory

“Black People Don’t Have To Vote Democrat” – Baltimore Republican Unveils Viral Campaign Ad

Portland Police: Man Viciously Beaten By BLM Protesters Was Trying To Help Transgender Victim Of Robbery

Two men indicted over 2002 killing of Run-DMC’s Jam Master Jay

Chicago, DC Mayors Speak at DNC Despite Unrest, Riots

PANICKED MSNBC: Trump Is Being Directed by Authoritarian Leaders to Steal the Election

New Zealand PM hits back at Donald Trump’s ‘patently wrong’ virus claims

Former HP CEO and Republican Meg Whitman – who split HP with mixed success – says Donald Trump can’t run a business  That must be why she has more money than he does. Oh, wait…. They ought to form a new PAC with Kasich: RINOs For Biden.

With Biden Ahead, The Left Goes Full-Tilt On Election Conspiracy Theory

MELTDOWN: Journos LOSE IT Over Trump Admin Approving Oil Drilling in ANWR  YANK! THAT! CHAIN!

MSNBC Cues Historian: Trump’s Post Office Moves Show Hatred of the Constitution

CNN’s Jake Tapper Allows Atlanta Mayor To Push USPS Conspiracy Theory Without Pushback

‘What War Has Trump Started?’: Greg Gutfeld Challenges Juan Williams To Name Just One

NY Times Meltdown:‘Not Normal for a President to Employ…Racist and Sexist Attacks’

Read it,

Lest we forget that Bill Clinton was #METOO before it was cool.

Read it.

It continues to astonish me that Lon Horiuchi is still alive. Somebody ought to have punched his ticket long ago.

Paul Graham runs the numbers.

Some politicians are proposing to introduce wealth taxes in addition to income taxes. Let’s try modeling the effects of various levels of wealth tax to see what they would mean in practice for a startup founder.

Suppose you start a successful startup in your twenties, and then live for another 60 years. How much of your stock will a wealth tax consume?

Suppose the wealth tax is 1%. That means each year you get to keep 99% of your stock. Which means after 60 years the proportion of stock you’ll have left will be .99^60, or .547. So a 1% wealth tax means the government will over the course of your life take 45% of your stock.

Wealth confiscation by drip-drip-drip. Socialism in slow motion.

Read it.

I’m surprised that they have any left.

Read it.

In a Monday interview with Radio Free Asia, Hasiyet Abdulla discussed her 15 years working in Xinjiang hospitals as a Uighur doctor, Business Insider reports. China passed a 2017 law ordering Uighurs and other minorities not to have more than three children in rural areas and two children in urban areas, Insider reports.

Read it.

Outraged reactions from Islamist, Arab American, and Palestinian organizations have emerged since the May 30 arrest of Urooj Rahman and Colinford Mattis during a violent protest in New York City.

A picture included in court papers shows Rahman brandishing a Molotov cocktail in one hand while using a Palestinian keffiyeh to cover the lower part of her face with the other hand .

Rahman and Mattis were arrested after a Molotov cocktail was thrown through the broken window of a police car. Rahman was seen throwing the incendiary device, police say, while Mattis drove away from the scene. Other charges involve gathering gasoline and other materials required to construct Molotov cocktails, and encouraging others to do so. This took place at what was supposed to be a peaceful protest in response to the Minneapolis police killing of George Floyd.

The organizations’ defense of the pair claims that the charges against Rahman and Mattis are motivated by racism and “structural Islamophobia.”

Yeah, objecting to terrorists with firebombs is SO ‘Islamophobic’….

Read it.

Democrats have never been comfortable with, you know, actual democracy. They’d much rather buy and steal votes than work for them.

Read it.

Hmmm. That backseat driver sure looks like Big Brother….

Read it.

Four cities in Indiana are suing Netflix and other video companies, claiming that online video providers and satellite-TV operators should have to pay the same franchise fees that cable companies pay for using local rights of way.

The lawsuit was filed against Netflix, Disney, Hulu, DirecTV, and Dish Network on August 4 in Indiana Commercial Court in Marion County. The cities of Indianapolis, Evansville, Valparaiso, and Fishers want the companies to pay the cable-franchise fees established in Indiana’s Video Service Franchises (VSF) Act, which requires payments of 5 percent of gross revenue in each city.

The lawsuit is based on an unusual legal argument and doesn’t seem likely to succeed. Essentially, the cities are claiming that Netflix and similar providers use the public rights of way simply by offering video streaming services over the Internet….

Read it.

As part of a sweeping, five-year defense plan costing $250 billion, Seoul plans to develop a new class of attack submarine carrying non-nuclear ballistic missiles.

Conventional ballistic missiles are a rarity on submarines. For land-attack missions, most navies arm their undersea boats with cruise missiles, as cruise missiles are more accurate—albeit slower and less powerful—than ballistic missiles are.

But Seoul has some, ahem, unique defense needs owing to the presence on its border of a heavily-armed and belligerent nuclear state. South Korea’s submarines and their hard-hitting ballistic missiles give the country some ability to prevent a North Korean attack.

Read it.

A lot of fear and misinformation has been spreading throughout social media the past few days about the post office. People seem to think the sky is falling. But they’re missing a lot of important context.

I am here to tell you that yes, you should be concerned about the future of the United States Postal Service (USPS), but the whole sky isn’t falling quite ye

NYT: Murder Rate Rose 31% More from May to June vs. Last Year, But Only Trump Thinks That Had Anything to Do with the Peaceful Protests, by Steve Sailer

For The First Time In Over A Year, CNN’s Poll Has Trump Neck And Neck With Biden — Both Nationally And In Battleground States

Trump’s finger-pointing on USPS is latest attempt to rewrite history in real time  There appears to be a rule that the DemLegHump Media have to accuse someone else of doing what they’re actually doing themselves.

STUDY: 150 TIMES More Negative News on Trump than Biden

The USPS Panic of 2020

Sharon Stone Appears To Call Trump A ‘Killer’ As She Reveals Sister Is ‘Fighting For Her Life’ After Getting COVID-19  I guess Trump snuck into her house and injected her with the virus.

‘Biden/Harris Should Start Running The Country Now’: Michael Moore Lays Out His Plan For Stopping Trump

Trump Drives Around Playing Mailbox Baseball In Latest Voter Suppression Scheme  Babylon Bee.

Video: Man Unconscious, Kicked in Head by Antifa ‘Security’ Thug in Portland

Activists Surround Postmaster General’s Homes In Weekend Protests

‘The Beach Is Closed’: Woman Interrupts Wedding Over Coronavirus Restrictions  Time for your swim, Karen.

Universities Ask Students To Play ‘Corona-Cops: Report Peers Who ‘Might’ Have COVID-19  If you see something, SQUEAL LIKE A LITTLE PIGGY!

‘I Was Trying To Get Out The Way’: Portland Protesters Attacked A Man And Woman After Truck Crashed

What does Islam say about climate change and climate action?  And who cares? Al-Jazeera.

New Zealand’s Southern Alps Glacier Melt Has Doubled – Up to 77% of Little Ice Age Glacier Volume Already Lost

WashPost Parrots DNC Climate Council Chair: Virus ‘Inextricably Linked’ to Climate Change

MIT: Five Grand Thermal Challenges to Decarbonise the Global Economy

Read it.

We’re familiar with the designation of places like Somalia as “failed states,” but can’t we equally recognize failed cities when we see them? New York City in the 1970s, when it needed a federal bailout, was one example from our past, and New York’s fiscal woes were closely connected with its larger social problems of crime, welfare dependency, and all the other factors that diminished the shine of the Big Apple.

Today our obviously failed cities are Seattle and Portland, with Minneapolis, Chicago, San Francisco, Los Angeles, and New York (again) trending that direction. (And the entire state of Illinois is on the equivalent of a watch list—I think it is literally on credit watch lists—with California not far behind.)

As mentioned here previously, it appears lots of people are fleeing or preparing to flee these cities, and their economies (and consequent tax bases) may be in free fall even if the COVID-induced economic coma ends in the next few months.

Which raises a frequent worry: what if these dazzling urbanites move to Rock Ridge and vote for the same kind of progressive candidates they foolishly supported where they came from? I think it won’t actually work that way, although I understand the logic behind it.

Read it.

I’ll bet you didn’t know that.

Read it.

YANK! THAT! CHAIN!

Actuaries are not as appreciated as they deserve.

Read it.

Three propositions on California’s November ballot would violate our constitutional right to private property; a fourth would violate the individual’s right to nondiscrimination.

Read it.

With the left in a collective fit over a conspiracy theory that President Trump is about to steal the election by crippling the US Postal Service, Twitter user @AGHamilton29 has provided a cogent analysis unpacking the latest leftist miasma dominating the news cycle.

Bethany Mandel.

School districts across the country are facing an exodus of students to private schools opening for in-person learning and homeschooling. Corey DeAngelis, the Director of School Choice for the Reason Foundation, has been following the data and it doesn’t look good for public schools. Over the weekend he reported that homeschool filings are up 129% from last year in Loudoun County in Virginia and 128% in the state of Wisconsin. This exodus in students is also an exodus in dollars for a lot of school districts that have their funding directly tied to their enrollment numbers (which is why I suggested pulling out of public schools as a protest if you didn’t like their reopening plan for the Washington Examiner). A little too late in the game, public schools are realizing that their captive audience isn’t so captive when they don’t, you know, actually teach.

Russiagate-Obsessed Networks Skip or Dismiss First Guilty Plea in Durham Probe

Concerns Raised As President Xi Seen Wearing Biden-Harris 2020 Shirt  Babylon Bee.

Ordeal by Title IX

Amazon Liable for Defective Third-Party Products Rules CA Appellate Court  This is, of course, Californicating bullshit.

Stelter Plays Stupid About CNN’s Bias In YouTube Interview with Teenager

Mark Meadows And CNN’s Jake Tapper Clash In Heated Debate Over Mail-In Voting

New Jersey Gov. Phil Murphy Says National Mask Mandate, Including Outside, ‘Would Be A Game-Changer’  Sure. The U.S. would become the largest Turd World country on the planet.

Minnesota Democrat Running For State House Asks Crowd If ‘We Give A F**k About Burning’ Town Down  I guess not. (Your tax dollars at work….) It would appear that you don’t always have to be insane to be a Democrat candidate but it’s expected.

Navarro: Dems Want USPS to Be ‘Ballot-Harvesting Service’

Chris Wallace On Potential Mail-In Voting Fraud: ‘Isn’t It Possible That The President Really Has A Point Here?’  Uh, yes.

Seattle BLM protesters demand white people ‘give up’ their homes

NYT: 43% White San Mateo, CA Is Segregated

‘This Shooting Is Being Buried’: Jesse Watters Blasts ‘Corrupt’ Media For Downplaying Cannon Hinnant Murder

Police: At Least 18 Shot, With 4 Dead, Across Cincinnati

Chicago: ‘Find Some Place to Loot’

The NYT Scrubs Anti-Blackness From Jorge Ramos’ Op-Ed

In CAISO Emergency Break Glass

Plastic recycling faces setback in California after COVID-19 disruptions

Sea Level Rise a Major Threat to San Francisco

PD Editorial: Time to get serious about rising sea levels

Fight for Planet A: Aussie PM Retreats from Charging Eco-Warrior

Few bears on the ice off Western Hudson Bay at 14 August but will be onshore soon  I thought they were supposed to be extinct by now.

Every Day 10k People Die Due to Air Pollution from Fossil Fuels

Journalist Praised For Asking Trump Hard-Hitting Question ‘What’s It Like Being Such A Big Poopy Pants Buttface?’  Babylon Bee – but you have to look closely.

Down the Rabbit Hole: CBS Suggests Trump Readying to ‘Suspend’ Constitution  And these guys hyperventilate about ‘right-wing conspiracy theories’….

MSNBC Guest Host Asks Loretta Lynch What Would Happen If Trump ‘Refused To Go,’ Suggests Bill Barr May Help Create ‘Dictatorship’  I guess they’re just tired of reporting actual news.

‘I Think You Have An Urgent Phone Call’: Bernie Sanders Ignores Interruption And Keeps Bashing Trump  What could possibly be more important than bashing Trump? Let’s get real.

Read it.

And barbecue. Don’t forget the barbecue.

Oh, and lower taxes.

UPDATE: Remote work is reshaping San Francisco, as tech workers flee and rents fall

Read it.

The Greek government has secretly expelled more than 1,000 refugees from Europe’s borders in recent months, sailing many of them to the edge of Greek territorial waters and then abandoning them in inflatable and sometimes overburdened life rafts.

…

Illegal under international law, the expulsions are the most direct and sustained attempt by a European country to block maritime migration using its own forces since the height of the migration crisis in 2015, when Greece was the main thoroughfare for migrants and refugees seeking to enter Europe.

Saw that coming.

When one is infested with leeches one focuses on ripping them off as fast as possible and doesn’t worry a lot about where they land.

Read it.

It was about about nine years ago when consulting company BCG first suggested that in a time of out of control spending and soaring debt loads, the only fiscally sustainable “solution” was to implement a wealth tax (see “There May Be Only Painful Ways Out Of The Crisis”).

While the idea was well ahead of its time in 2011, and was quickly shut down in the court of public opinion, several years later none other than the IMF resurrected the idea of a wealth tax, which has only gained momentum in recent months, and despite widespread grassroots pushback, the concept of a “wealth tax” has moved front and center and most recently the chairman of Capital Economics, Roger Bootle, said that the world’s wealthiest could be subjected to higher tax rates as governments scramble to fund spending and repair their economies amid the coronavirus crisis.

Fast forward to today when the ultra-liberal state of California is now ready to take this “socialist” idea from concept to the implementation phase, with the SF Chronicle reporting that a group of CA state lawmakers on Thursday proposed a first-in-the-nation state wealth tax that would hit about 30,400 California residents and raise an estimated $7.5 billion for the general fund.

The proposed tax rate would be 0.4% of net worth (most likely ended up far higher), excluding directly held real estate, that exceeds $30 million for single and joint filers and $15 million for married filing separately.

That will clear out the tech companies that California depends on for its budget toute de suite. It’s amazing how reliably statists always shoot themselves in the wallet with such policies.

Ah, well. Couldn’t happen to a nicer group of people.

Read it.

Dozens of people were injured and 14 were killed in 62 shootings in New York City over the last week.

According to the New York Post, the number of shootings was an increase of 26 from the same week in 2019. And the number of murders was 10 more year-over-year.

Seventy-six people were wounded.

My, what a surprise.

Read it.

According to online real estate company Zillow, there is a mass exodus of people looking to get out of San Francisco real estate – as the housing market is on fire in the Bay Area suburbs, all the way to Lake Tahoe.

According to the company’s “2020 Urban-Suburban Market Report,” home prices in the city have fallen 4.9% year-over-year, while inventory has jumped 96% during the same period, as a flood of new listings hit the market.

I believe that the relevant technical term here is ‘voting with their feet’.

Read it.

Peggy Noonan joined the crowd turning on George W. Bush in what I thought was (in Noonan’s case) a grossly unfair manner in 2008. It wasn’t just unfair, it was cowardly. I wrote critically about one of Noonan’s weekly Wall Street Journal columns in which she identified with the public disapproval of Bush that April in “Season of the witch.”

Having turned on George W. Bush, Noonan moved on to support the election of Barack Obama later that year. Noonan all but endorsed Obama in her 2008 column “Obama and the runaway train.” The anti-Bush and pro-Obama columns fit neatly together

I’ve been very disappointed in Peggy Noonan ever since. I used to read her stuff religiously but I can’t stomach it any more.

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But you knew that.

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The key thing about America is, every disaster fits somebody’s business model.

James Altucher.

Now it’s completely dead. “But NYC always always bounces back.” No. Not this time. “But NYC is the center of the financial universe. Opportunities will flourish here again.” Not this time.

“NYC has experienced worse”. No it hasn’t.

A Facebook group formed a few weeks ago that was for people who were planning a move and wanted others to talk to and ask advice from. Within two or three days it had about 10,000 members.

Read it.

Rich and famous used to flock to beautiful beaches, Malibu, Hollywood, and Los Angeles. Now, they are getting out, citing homelessness, overcrowding, violence, drug abuse, safety, and untenable politics.

Among the next might be Tesla and SpaceX billionaire Elon Musk, who has already announced a $1 billion Tesla factory in Texas and sold his four-home compound in Bel Air for $62 million.

Read it.

Tech industry millionaires are moving the Democratic Party to the left on almost every issue except government regulation. Unions beware.

The Other McCain keeps up with this crap so that you don’t have to.

There is no “crisis.” What there is, apparently, is a paranoid delusion that ORANGE MAN BAD is trying to “steal” the election.

Democrat hopes for stealing the election focus on extensive mail-in ballots, which can’t require photo ID, and that can be manipulated in various ways. The Post Office is key (Don’t laugh. I’m serious.) in this scheme.

You will note that there is no ‘UPS crisis’ or ‘FedEx crisis’. Why? Because those companies exist to provide a service for the public, rather than as a featherbedding enterprise for Democrat-voting public sector union employees, and actual have to be effective and efficient, something that the Post Office is notorious for not being.

Read it.

The Chicago police arrested 43 people who participated in the looting spree along the city’s Mag Mile earlier this week. Who were these looters?

According to the Chicago Tribune, they were “an odd mix of peer-pressured college students, out-of-work parents, and convicted felons.” It would be interesting to know how much time the convicted felons had served, and for what crimes. Their looting could be another product of America’s under-incarceration problem.

Ostensibly, the looting was a response to a police shooting in the Englewood neighborhood. Yet, according to the Tribune, none of arrested looters was from Englewood.

In fact, no one who made a statement in court upon being arraigned even mentioned the incident. Not only was the police shooting a pretext for the looting, it was so far from the looters’ consciousness that they forgot to mention it.

The prevailing motive of this “odd mix” wasn’t “police brutality,” it was the desire to snatch free stuff and, at least some cases, to smash things. In other words, envy and resentment, not “social justice.”

Read it.

It is always amazing to see just how virulent is the liberal media’s addiction to hypocrisy.

This current obsession with race surfaced, but of course, with the selection of California Senator Kamala Harris to be Joe Biden’s vice presidential running mate. As journalists were cheering the Democrat — her mother is from India, her father from Jamaica — a legal scholar raised the question of whether Harris was eligible under the Constitution as a “natural born citizen.” She was born in Oakland, California, which should resolve the question.

This issue has been used against 1964 GOP nominee Senator Barry Goldwater. Why? Because Goldwater was born in Arizona – when it was a territory and not yet a state. In 1968 it was used against GOP Michigan Governor George Romney — father of Mitt — when he ran for the GOP nomination. Why?

Because Romney was the son of Mormon missionaries -who were living in Mexico when Romney was born. Then of course, there was Senator John McCain, said to be ineligible because he was born in Panama when his father was stationed there early in his military career in the US Navy.

Joy Behar declared herself a “Cruz birther.” In 2016, ABC had little outrage about the citizenship attacks on the conservative senator. The New York Times raised the birther issue against McCain.

MSNBC’s Velshi to Booker: Trump Only Attacks You Because You’re Black

Who’s ‘Nasty’? NYTimes ‘News’ Pages Smear Trump, GOP as Sexist, Racist To Kamala  Talk about your hate speech….

Andrew Cuomo Claims Trump Has ‘Some Liability’ For Spike In NYC Crime  Uh, what, exactly?

Kook Alert: PBS Pundit Claims Trump Post Office Moves ‘Nothing Less Than Bull Connor’

‘You Earned This Endorsement’: New York City Police Union Backs Trump

Reliance on Wind and Solar Will Lead to Blackouts

Trump EPA Rescinds Burdensome Obama Climate Change Methane Leak Regulations

Greenland Ice Sheet has melted to the point of no return  Women and minorities no doubt hardest hit.