Archive for October, 2020
18th October 2020
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The person currently in charge of Facebook’s election integrity program is Anna Makanju. That name probably doesn’t mean a lot to you, but it should mean a lot – and in a comforting way — to Joe Biden.
Before ending up at Facebook, Makanju was a nonresident Senior Fellow at the Atlantic Council. The Atlantic Council is an ostensibly non-partisan think tank that deals with international affairs. In fact, it’s a decidedly partisan organization.
In 2009, James L. Jones, the Atlantic Council’s chairman left the organization to be President Obama’s National Security Advisor. Susan Rice, Richard Holbrooke, Eric Shinseki, Anne-Marie Slaughter, Chuck Hagel, and Brent Scowcroft also were all affiliated with the Atlantic Council before they ended up in the Obama administration.
The Atlantic Council has received massive amounts of foreign funding over the years. Here’s one that should interest everyone: Burisma Holdings donated $300,000 dollars to the Atlantic Council, over the course of three consecutive years, beginning in 2016. The information below may explain why it began paying that money to the Council.
Posted in Think about it. | Comments Off on Does This Explain Why Facebook Suppressed Hunter Biden Revelations?
18th October 2020
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The mujahid decapitator of Paris has now been identified as an 18-year-old Russian Chechen named Abdoullakh A., and his schoolteacher victim as Samuel Paty. Both of them are dead — why is it that we only get an initial for the killer’s surname, but are given the full name of his victim?
I noticed in the photo accompanying the article that the Parisian Eloi have heaped up the usual saccharine “memorial” materiel outside the school where Mr. Paty taught. Savvy investors who bought teddy bear futures or stock in candle companies must be making a killing — so to speak.
Posted in Living with Islam: The world's most intolerant—and intolerable—religion | Comments Off on An Outpouring of Saccharinity in France
18th October 2020
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Will Florida become a Progressive paradise?
Finn Farms is going to be sustainable, innovative, and clean. “There are no emissions, we are using all organic materials, ” said Finn Farms founder Oskari Kariste.
This new way of farming is the first of its kind in the United States and it’s coming right to Southwest Florida.
“It requires 95% less water than outside farming,” said Kariste. “This two-and-a-half acre facility equals 60 acres of an outdoor farm.”
Modern farms are essentially food factories, using capital-intensive robotic machinery and computerized chemical processes, in which the only difference between corn and Volkswagen Jettas is the fact that the corn is subject to random acts of weather. This system appears to be connecting the final dots and taking God out of the process entirely. If this means that somebody can take 2 1/2 acres of blighted downtown Detroit slum and turn it into a source of food, well and good. Unfortunately these attempts to immanentize the eschaton rarely work out (yeah, I’m looking at you, Justin Hammer Elon Musk).
Posted in Think about it. | Comments Off on First-of-Its-Kind Farm Set to Call Babcock Ranch home
18th October 2020
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Outside of academia, you might follow one writer’s account to learn about SaaS pricing, another to understand the intricacies of the electoral college, and yet another to understand personal finance. In economic terms, content disaggregation enabled by digital platforms ought to create efficiencies through intellectual hyper-specialization.
Instead, we have the endless hellscape of the casual polymath. A newsletter about venture capital will find time to opine on herd immunity. The tech blog you visit to learn about data science is also your source of financial strategies for early retirement. The Twitter account you followed to understand politics now seems more focused on their mindfulness practice. We have maxed out variety of interests within people, at the cost of diversity across them.
Apparently JFK was the original Hunter Biden.
Posted in Dystopia Watch | Comments Off on Beware the Casual Polymath
18th October 2020
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The author, judging by where her stuff gets published, is a garden-variety proglodyte, but manages to keep her bias pretty well tamped down — except in the headline, where somehow the American Dream has turned into the Red State Dream. Of course, it doesn’t occur to her to wonder why that change happened.
Posted in Dystopia Watch | Comments Off on California Exodus: An Online Industry Seizes COVID-19 to Sell the Red State Dream
18th October 2020
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As these get better and I get older, I may eventually need to get one.
Posted in News You Can Use. | Comments Off on Six Health Conditions a Smartwatch Can Detect Before You Can
18th October 2020
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Clarity allows you to see the distinct differences between things you may not have noticed before. Winemakers (before fine filtration) used to use clarifying agents to clear up their wine. Some homemade winemakers do so now.
In my lifetime I have been blessed to witness two spectacular Republican Presidents, Ronald Reagan (The Great Communicator) and Donald Trump (The Great Clarifier).
…
The news media, “we are not biased” and this past Thursday we have Savannah Guthrie doing a lion taming routine with President Trump while George Snuffelupagus acted as Joe Biden’s masseuse and nanny at the same time. George only forgot to give Joe a glass of warm milk and a blankie before he sent him home.
As President Trump says, “Fake news is the enemy of the people” – Clarity.
Posted in Think about it. | Comments Off on Clarity Versus Agreement
18th October 2020
Posted in Think about it. | Comments Off on Thought for the Day
18th October 2020
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Janine Benyus is co-founder of the Biomimicry Institute. “I think people are going to biomimicry for the ‘sustainability win’ but they stay because of the novelty, because what they’ve found is category-disrupting platform technologies,” she told CNBC’s Sustainable Energy.
Posted in Think about it. | Comments Off on From Trains to Desalination Plants, Nature Is Inspiring Radical Designs
18th October 2020
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The Make It Right Foundation is a nonprofit that was created by Pitt to provide affordable housing for displaced residents after Hurricane Katrina hit the city in 2005. However, many of the houses built by the Make It Right Foundation experienced construction problems that later made them uninhabitable, including leaks and rotting wood.
Homebuyers in 2018 filed a class-action lawsuit against foundation, which has sued at least one of the construction companies and others for defective work. The nonprofit has since closed its New Orleans office and shuttered its website.
Posted in Think about it. | Comments Off on David Adjaye-Designed House Built by Brad Pitt’s Make It Right Foundation to Be Torn Down
17th October 2020
Posted in Think about it. | Comments Off on Today in Global Warming Hysteria
17th October 2020
Posted in Axis of Drivel -- Adventures in Narrative Media | Comments Off on Today in Trump Derangement Syndrome
17th October 2020
Posted in Dystopia Watch | Comments Off on Today in Progressive Totalitarianism
17th October 2020
‘Don’t Forget Your Place In Black America’: John James Fires Back After Biden Calls Him A Disaster
Ice Cube Responds To Being Called A ‘Sellout’ For Working With Trump Administration
The Catch-22 of Woke Racism… And Other Absurdities
Brown University Researcher Says Trump Signs, American Flags “Scare” & “Traumatize” Black People More than living in neighborhoods where kids are innocent victims of drive-bys? I’m not buying it.
Posted in Whose turn is it to be the victim? | Comments Off on Today in Black Privilege
17th October 2020
Read it. New York Times, so I’d look for a second source.
“A Frankenstein material” is teeming with — and ultimately made by — photosynthetic microbes. And it can reproduce.
Posted in News You Can Use. | Comments Off on Bricks Alive! Scientists Create Living Concrete
17th October 2020
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Variety magazine was in a state of full gush on Wednesday over the “flood” of liberal movies that are being released in the weeks just before the election. Of course, no discussion about any profits that will be earned by these films since it is all too obvious that the main goal is not to earn money but to try to influence the outcome of the election.
That might be a threat if people were still allowed to go to movies.
Posted in Think about it. | Comments Off on Variety: Flood of Liberal Movies Will Attempt to Sway Election
17th October 2020
Posted in Think about it. | Comments Off on Thought for the Day
17th October 2020
Steve Sailer.
For years, we’ve been wondering if any authorities will ever officially document exactly who is on top in terms of diversity Pokemon Points. Clearly, cisgender straight white males are at the bottom, but among the privileged, who outranks whom?

Posted in Whose turn is it to be the victim? | Comments Off on The Intersectional Totem Pole of Pokemon Points Is Finally Documented
17th October 2020
Steve Sailer.
Back in the liberal 1960s-1970s, the most important judge in the United States not on the Supreme Court was David L. Bazelon, chief judge of the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit from 1962-1980 and best friend of William Brennan, the Svengali of the Warren Court. Bazelon and Brennan would frequently collaborate on how to tee up cases for the Warren Court to issue landmark rulings upon.
Posted in Axis of Drivel -- Adventures in Narrative Media | Comments Off on NYT: the First Amendment Is History
17th October 2020
Steve Sailer does the reveal.
Despite its vast wealth, San Francisco has notoriously awful public schools with low test scores. But don’t worry, the school board has a plan to fix the badness of its schools: the rectification of names.
Posted in Your tax dollars at work - and play. | Comments Off on San Francisco School Board Has a Plan to Exorcise the Badness Out of Its Schools
17th October 2020
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Sure, let everybody vote by mail! What could possibly go wrong?
Posted in Dystopia Watch | Comments Off on More Than 100 Undelivered Absentee Ballots Found in Kentucky Dumpster
17th October 2020
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Hammer tech.

Posted in Dystopia Watch | Comments Off on Watch This Tesla Model Y Window Shatter on Its Own While Parked in Garage
17th October 2020
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How historian Fred Siegel came to appreciate the president’s defense of ‘bourgeois values’ against the ‘clerisy.’
Posted in Think about it. | Comments Off on An Ex-Liberal Reluctantly Supports Trump
16th October 2020
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Are you worried about the extent to which voter fraud could affect the 2020 election? Do you puzzle over how tens of millions of mail-in ballots can be processed in a manner that ensures that each voter only votes once? Are you concerned that if states mail out millions of mail-in ballot applications to people who are dead, moved to a different state, fictitious, or ineligible to vote, quite a few will be filled out by someone else and sent back in? Are you unable to understand how ballot harvesting can fail to lead to voter fraud? Are you concerned that your vote may be canceled out by one that is cast illegally?
Posted in Dystopia Watch | Comments Off on The Facts About Voter Fraud
16th October 2020
Posted in Axis of Drivel -- Adventures in Narrative Media | Comments Off on Today in Trump Derangement Syndrome
16th October 2020
Posted in Your tax dollars at work - and play. | Comments Off on Pandemic Panic – It’s Titanic
16th October 2020
Posted in Think about it. | Comments Off on Today in Global Warming Hysteria
16th October 2020
Posted in Dystopia Watch | Comments Off on Today in Progressive Totalitarianism
16th October 2020
Posted in Whose turn is it to be the victim? | Comments Off on Today in Black Privilege
16th October 2020
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It’s nice work if you can get it,
And you can get it if you try….
I’ll bet that’s the way they do it in Somalia. Cultural appropriation?
Posted in Your tax dollars at work - and play. | Comments Off on Democrat Ilhan Omar Paid Husband’s Firm More Than $1 Million In Fees Over 4 Months
16th October 2020
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You’ve probably noticed things no longer work as well as they once did. For example, the store’s online inventory says something is in stock and when you get to the store, it’s not on the shelf. A small issue, but telling nonetheless.
Or you might call a local government agency to get an explanation of how a new fee is calculated, and nobody’s ever available to explain it–or sort out your punitive late fee even though you paid on time.
Posted in Think about it. | Comments Off on How We Institutionalized Incompetence
16th October 2020
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The reason people who work in Massachusetts live in New Hamprshire to begin with is that nobody in their right mind wants to live in Taxachusetts.
Posted in Your tax dollars at work - and play. | Comments Off on New Hampshire’s Sununu to Sue Massachusetts Over Taxes on Commuters
16th October 2020
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Emails from a former Hunter Biden business associate serving time in prison for a 2016 investment scheme reveal that Hunter and his colleagues used their access to the Obama administration to peddle influence to potential Chinese clients and investors – including securing a private, off-the-books meeting with the former Vice President.
Posted in Your tax dollars at work - and play. | Comments Off on Hunter Biden Business Associate Flips From Prison, Releases Emails Detailing China Influence-Peddling Operation
16th October 2020
The Other McCain.
Our education system, and the elite culture that this system influences, is now organized around a concept of “diversity” that is explicitly anti-white and anti-male.” To be a white male in America is to be persona non grata at Yale, Harvard, Stanford, etc. No one in our education system expends any effort to encourage young white males in their dreams or ambitions. Everything taught in the classroom stigmatizes white males, and administrative policy is to hinder (if they cannot actually prohibit) white males from academic achievement. The result of this discrimination is that there are great number of talented and intelligent young white men who have turned their backs on the education system….
Posted in Dystopia Watch | Comments Off on A Blue-Collar Philosopher
16th October 2020
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File this among ‘Things You Won’t Read In The DemLegHump Media’.
Posted in News You Can Use. | Comments Off on Trump Administration Strikes Deal With CVS, Walgreens for Free COVID Vaccines for Residents of Long-Term Care Facilities
16th October 2020
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Integrity is apparently a myth with the journalists at NBC News. The network’s insufferable Business Correspondent Stephanie Ruhle was just exposed for filming promotional videos for a bank she covers.
The Washington Post, which broke the story, wrote that Ruhle “doesn’t promote banks when she’s anchoring for the cable network. But on the Internet, it may be a different story.” In a September 22 clip produced and sponsored by JPMorgan Chase, Ruhle said: “‘Hey, this is Stephanie Ruhle, and I’m looking forward to my conversation with Chase, where we talk about life’s unpredictable moments and how important it is to save and plan for them.’” The Post concluded that “Ruhle isn’t a paid endorser for Chase, but her association with the bank raises questions about potential conflicts of interest.”
Posted in Axis of Drivel -- Adventures in Narrative Media | Comments Off on WashPost: NBC’s Stephanie Ruhle Filmed Promo Spots for Bank She Covers as Journalist
16th October 2020
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Many federal district court judges have an expansive view of their authority—which far too often ignores Supreme Court precedent.
Judge William Conley, a federal district court judge who was appointed by President Barack Obama, certainly seems to have an expansive view of his, as made evident by some election-related orders he gave that clearly surpass the appropriate power of a district court judge.
Fortunately for the voters of Wisconsin and their interests in the integrity of the election process, some members of the 7th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals were having none of it, and stayed all of Conley’s election-related orders on Oct. 8.
Posted in Your tax dollars at work - and play. | Comments Off on 7th Circuit Court Stays District Judge’s Order and Provides a Civics Lesson on the Proper Role of Judges
16th October 2020
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Minneapolis’s Star Tribune dominates the news in our region and yet it something beyond a pitiful excuse for a newspaper. It has the resources and material to be great, but it is a thoroughgoing partisan rag.
Over the past few days the paper has unfurled its endorsements to great fanfare. The suspense is great for all those around the state who are slow on the uptake or blind to unvarying patterns. This just in: Democrat rag supports Democrat candidates, except in an uncompetitive race where it can further the pretense that it is anything other than a partisan rag.
Posted in Axis of Drivel -- Adventures in Narrative Media | Comments Off on Endorsing Dems and Suppressing News
16th October 2020
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On MSNBC’s Morning Joe on Wednesday, co-host Mika Brzezinski dug up a clip of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi strategizing her next move should President Trump refuse to acknowledge the loss she and her henchmen have planned for him on Election Day. The clip of Pelosi was from September 30th, but Brzezinski decided to revisit the idea and have some guests on the show to discuss their plan of attack.
Posted in Think about it. | Comments Off on Morning Joe’s Brzezinski Plots Post-Election Conspiracy
16th October 2020
Charles C.W. Cooke.
I suppose it represents a minor victory that even the most committed of judicial consequentialists feels obliged to disclaim their consequentialism. But it sure makes reading them difficult. At Slate, Dahlia Lithwick begins her most recent essay by insisting that she is not arguing that Supreme Court justices should make up the law in order to yield outcomes they prefer. By the end of it, however, she is arguing exactly that. Any reader who makes it that far is likely to come out with whiplash.
Posted in Axis of Drivel -- Adventures in Narrative Media | Comments Off on Another Incoherent Critique of Judge Barrett
16th October 2020
Posted in Think about it. | Comments Off on Thought for the Day
16th October 2020
Zman has … well, questions. (And a weekly podcast.)
A defect of the conventional Right is that is deeply believes they will one day find the combination of words that unlocks the secret of the Progressive mind, making it amenable to reason. One day, some bright conservative will say something so profound that the Left will stop, throw down their weapons and twirl their mustaches in astonishment. Then they will embrace their conservative brothers in a fellowship of reason and republican virtue.
The current year should put that to rest. Look around and it is hard to find any evidence of rational self-interest at work. We have a legitimate drug crisis in America and the people in charge refuse to even discuss it. It’s not because they have good reason to ignore it or they are afraid to address it. Trump mentioned the subject and they began to his like demons being shown a crucifix. It was if he violated some sacred taboo by pointing out the very obvious problems we have with drugs.
Posted in Think about it. | Comments Off on ‘I Have Questions’
16th October 2020
Armenia Accuses Azerbaijan Of Intentionally Bombing Historic Cathedral In Karabakh
Chased from Three Platforms, Leila Khaled Still Finds a Way to Call for Terrorism
Armenian President Says Turkey’s Erdogan Creating “Another Syria In The Caucasus”
Sweden is a Haven for the Muslim Brotherhood in Europe
Hooray for Chirectomy! Let’s Hear it for Lapidation!
International Students Quit: “This Isn’t Sweden”
US Air Strikes Target Taliban Fighters Advancing on Key Afghan City
In “Major Escalation” Turkey Renews Gas Exploration Off Greece, Vows Military Escort
Turkey Dispatches Syrian Jihadists in the Caucasus to Aid Azerbaijan
US Air Force Targets Taliban With Airstrikes For Violating Recent Peace Deal Saw that comin’. Anybody who expects Muslims to keep a deal when it’s in their interest to break it (or even when they get the odd hair up their asses and decide they want to have some fun) is not paying attention.
The Rockets’ Red Glare Over Champigny-sur-Marne
How Iranian Belligerence May Be Driving Middle East Recognition of Israel
Turkey Threatens Armenia With Direct Military Intervention In Karabakh War
SOMALIA: The Phantom Terror
The changing culture that is Norway?
Iran Creates an Anti-Regime Martyr by Executing Popular Wrestler
The Exploitation of Turkish Nationalism in the Armenian-“Azerbaijani” War
Brand Pulls Ad Featuring Muslim Man And Hindu Wife After Complaints Of ‘Love Jihad’
The significance of Macron’s war on Islamism
Nearly 4,000 Syrian & Libyan Militants Are Fighting With Azerbaijan: Armenian Official
Posted in Living with Islam: The world's most intolerant—and intolerable—religion | Comments Off on ISLAMOCOPIA FRIDAY: What’s New in the Religion of Peace
16th October 2020
‘Scientific’ American, so take it with a grain of salt.
How would you feel about a new therapy for your chronic pain, which—although far more effective than any available alternative—might also change your religious beliefs? Or a treatment for lymphoma that brings one in three patients into remission, but also made them more likely to vote for your least preferred political party?
These seem like idle hypothetical questions about impossible side effects. After all, this is not how medicine works. But a new mental health treatment, set to be licensed next year, poses just this sort of problem. Psychotherapy assisted by psilocybin, the psychedelic compound in “magic mushrooms,” seems to be remarkably effective in treating a wide range of psychopathologies, but also causes a raft of unusual nonclinical changes not seen elsewhere in medicine.
Posted in Think about it. | Comments Off on What if a Pill Can Change Your Politics or Religious Beliefs?
16th October 2020
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Between 2008 and 2019, total newsroom employment in the United States declined by 23 percent. At newspapers, the drop has been more than 50 percent. Journalists are hardly to blame for the underlying causes of this contraction (which include the long-term shift from physical to digital media, and the growing ad-market share controlled by Google and Facebook). But they can be blamed for the gratuitous acts of self-sabotage that are exacerbating the industry’s woes. Many journalists—and even their unions—now seem more preoccupied with denouncing heresies among colleagues than with maintaining their audience and livelihoods.
Posted in Think about it. | Comments Off on Slack Wars: Corporate America’s Woke Insurgency
15th October 2020
Posted in Whose turn is it to be the victim? | Comments Off on Today in Black Privilege
15th October 2020
Posted in Axis of Drivel -- Adventures in Narrative Media | Comments Off on Today in Trump Derangement Syndrome, With a Side of ACB
15th October 2020
Posted in Dystopia Watch | Comments Off on Today in Progressive Totalitarianism
15th October 2020
Posted in Think about it. | Comments Off on Today in Global Warming Hysteria
15th October 2020

New Evidence of Link Between Blood Type & COVID-19 Susceptibility
Risk of Dying From COVID-19 Double, Triple With These Pre-Existing Conditions
Las Vegas’ Largest Casino Cuts Hours As COVID Keeps Customers At Bay
France Starts New Curfews as Cases Soar Guess they don’t listen to the CDC.
US Army Wants To Make COVID Social Distancing ‘Permanent’ Even After Pandemic Ends
China Had COVID-Like Patients Months Before Official Timeline
Here’s Where Sweden Stands After Refusing To Require Strict Coronavirus Lockdowns
Head Of Oxford University Vaccine Team Says Face Masks, Social Distancing Will Continue Until Next Summer
WHO Europe Director Says Governments Should Stop Enforcing Lockdowns
Gun Sales Soar Amid Pandemic, Social Unrest, Election Fears
Dr. Fauci: Families Should Rethink Large Thanksgiving Dinners
London Latest To Revive COVID-19 Restrictions As Record Numbers Reported Across Europe: Live Updates The point being whitewashed is that these are cases, not deaths or even hospitalizations. If the number of cases of the common cold increased dramatically, would the government lock down the economy?
“Temporary” Layoffs Turning Into Permanent Job Losses
Oxford Scientists Say They Created Test That Detects COVID In Under 5 Minutes Guess how long it will take to get to you — three months? Six months? A year?
Lockdowns Should Be ‘Very, Very Last Resort,’ WHO Says We must Listen To The Science, unless The Science disagrees with The Narrative, in which case forgetaboutit.
COVID-19 security tips: Ensure you sack your staff without leaving their IT access enabled, says Secureworks
Don’t worry. Your dentist probably won’t catch COVID-19
Here’s How Coronavirus Actually Stacks Up Against The Flu
Why can’t we talk about the Great Barrington Declaration?
COVID’s second wave is hitting the Czech Republic hard
Europe, US Reel as Virus Infections Surge at Record Pace
A Journal of the Plague Year
The True Cost Of Coronavirus Lockdowns
COVID Is Not A “Categorically Different Danger”
Posted in Your tax dollars at work - and play. | Comments Off on Pandemic Panic – It’s Titanic