Read it.

It seems that many of the Ukrainians in German refugee accommodations are actually “Ukrainians”, the same way Somalis in Malmö are “Swedes”.

Read it.

An attempt by CNN to promote its new streaming service by selling NFTs of the opening moments of its programming has backfired, with a large majority of the product still available more than 24 hours after the initial broadcast.

How are we still subsidizing climate change? (The Hill)

Trends in Europe storm surge extremes match the rate of sea-level rise (Nature)

World delegates appear to kick deal to halt nature loss into long grass (Reuters)

Energy agency: ‘Radical action’ needed to hit climate goals (Associated Press)

Renewable energy agency head says only ‘radical action’ will accomplish transition (The Hill)

Extraordinary Antarctica heatwave, 70 degrees above normal, would likely set a world record (CNN)

Ellie Goulding trivializes Will Smith slapping Chris Rock at The Oscars as she draws attention to climate change (Daily Mail)

Canada lays out C$9.1 bln roadmap to meet 2030 climate targets

Waging War On Fossil Fuels Enflames Inflation

Part 5 of the series Australia’s Broken Temperature Record – All 224 Homogenised Temperature Series – Including the Bombing of Darwin

EXCLUSIVE: Climate Critics Rip Tom Friedman for Imbecilic Attack on U.S. ‘Oil Addiction’

Russian oil tankers are vanishing off the map

Gazprom shuts down pipeline, suspends gas exports to China

Russia says it’s building a new “democratic world order” with China

Second European country refusing to sanction Russia — a challenge to democracy

Ukraine has split the far-Right  There is no Right but the Far-Right.

Putin’s brutal war shows why we still need NATO

Lavrov: Russia, China Moving Towards Multipolar ‘Fair World Order’

Half Of Russia’s 20 Richest Men Haven’t Been Targeted By Western Sanctions  C’mon, let’s get with the program.

Will We See Drone Dogfights?

Biden’s Gaffe About Putin Could Have Serious Consequences for Ukraine

“Nuclear Catastrophe”: Ukraine Calls On UN To Force Russia Away From Chernobyl

INFORMATION WARFARE: Psyops In Ukraine

Putin Just Revealed Democracy’s Superpower

The Media Is The Number One Cause Of War Since 1898

India Mulls Russian Offer Of SWIFT Alternative For Ruble Payments As Lavrov Visits

Samsung Changes Name Of Smartphones After Ukraine Called For Letter ‘Z’ To Be “Criminalized”

Missing wheat from the war is less than 1% of global wheat crop

 I’ve Never Heard So Many Lies

As Putin’s New Iron Curtain Falls, Here’s How US Can Help Part It

Editorial: There’s a solid case for cutting sentences. But few trust Kim Foxx.

Phil Magness on the Latest 1619 Project Absurdity

More Video Anecdata That Rates of Blacks Behaving Badly Are Up During the Racial Reckoning

California Task Force Votes to Give $336,000 to Each Descendant of American Slaves, But Zip to Black Immigrants

Documentarian Accuses Chris Rock of Racially Defaming Him

How Raphael Warnock Used Millions in Fed Cash to Dismantle an Atlanta Jail

NYT: A Sense of Historical Victimhood Is Good Among Blacks, But Bad Among Serbs

Pro-Crime Party Nominates a Justice

TheRightNurse: This Is What Negligent Homicide Looks Lik

MSNBC Sees Racism in Accepting Ukrainian Refugees, But Not Other Migrants

Whoopi Bitter When Confronted with Hollywood’s Elitism, Moral Hypocrisy

Biden’s plan to ‘tax the rich’ unlikely to stop with billionaires (The Hill)

AGAIN: Univision BURIES Hunter Biden Laptop Scandal Within A Report About Trump

Biden Labor Secretary Grins for Trucker Photo-Op While Pushing Nominee Opposed by Truckers

Late to the Party: WashPost Publishes Bombshells Confirming Hunter Biden Laptop

ABC Defends Hunter, NBC COMPLETELY IGNORES WashPost Confirmations

Biden’s “New World Order”

They Claimed Russia Stole His E-Mails, CBS Now Admits Hunter’s Scandal Is Real

Foolish Vengeance on Woke Billionaires

Rep. Kevin Hern Offers GOP Alternative to Biden’s Tax-and-Spend Budget

Two Hunter Biden Associates Testified Before Grand Jury About PLA-Linked Chinese Company

Biden Administration Will Add ‘X Gender Marker’ to US Passports

How Democrats Made America Dependent on Russian Uranium

Biden Admin Scrapped China Counterspy Program Under Activist Pressure, Republicans Say

Biden Invokes the Defense Production Act to Fix the Lithium Shortage

Jackson Asks Biden Official What WH Is Doing to Combat Anti-Trans GOP

Researchers find an eye-opening COVID-19 symptom you can’t ignore (Deseret News)

Why Delta Air Lines’ health chief thinks the airplane mask mandate will soon be lifted (CNBC)

When Will the Airline Mask Mandate End? 21 States Challenging the Requirement (CNET)

Long COVID symptoms might depend on the COVID variant (Deseret News)

Most Americans don’t want mask mandates to return – but Democrats do, poll shows

We are so over Covid-19 (CNN)

How the pandemic created a new generation of stoners (The Guardian)

Rand Paul says Fauci still stonewalling him on gain-of-function questions

The CDC has lifted its risk advisory for cruise travel

Can Utah cure the incivility sparked by COVID-19? (Deseret News)

Pandemic Lessons Learned: CDC Versus Natural Immunity

Vaccine Malpractice?

Shanghai Authorities Extend COVID Lockdown As Cases Continue To Surge

Fifth COVID-19 Vaccine Shot May Be Needed In Fall: FDA Officia

How CDC Colluded With Teachers’ Unions to Devastate America’s Children

Goldman Bankers Threaten To Quit Over Requirement They Report To Office 5 Days A Week

Navy Halts Discharges of Sailors With COVID-19 Religious Exemption Requests

‘100 Percent’ Vaccinated Cruise Ship Hit With COVID-19 Outbreak  Fine ‘vaccine’ ya got there, bubba.

Frustrations with Garland grow among Jan. 6 committee members (Washington Post)

Buttigieg: Greene’s remarks on his marriage show plan to ‘divide and demonize and demoralize’ (The Hill)

This Marjorie Taylor Greene rant makes no sense (CNN)

The FEC wants to know why Ron Watkins failed to disclose 40% of his campaign’s money (Arizona Mirror)

QAnon Linked Candidate in FEC Crosshairs After Failing to Disclose Funds (Newsweek) Linked!

1803 Justice Chase impeachment shows Dems may be able to pressure Thomas with political threats: Expert

When asked about Ukraine, Trump ranted about windmills (CNN)

‘Treachery’—Donald Trump Faces Backlash for Asking Vladimir Putin a Favor (Newsweek)

A 7-hour gap in Trump’s calls evokes a missing spot on Nixon’s tapes (Washington Post) Apparently Trump is not only the New Hitler but also the New Nixon.

Justice Dept. expands Jan. 6 probe to look at rally prep, financing (Washington Post)

NYT Painted Matt Gaetz as a Child Sex Trafficker. One Year Later, He Has Not Been Charged.

“[We All] Hope Clarence Thomas Dies”: UCLA Faces New Free Speech Controversy Over Social Media Posting

Read it.

When I read the headline this morning about two people being shot dead in a McDonald’s restaurant in the Netherlands, I suspected the involvement of cultural enrichment in the crime. Multiple murder victims of an attack with firearms — in the Netherlands, that’s almost certain to involve persons with a migration background.

When I delved into the details, sure enough, the victims were “Turkish-Dutch”.

If that had happened in Texas (for example), there’s a very good chance that a bystander with a CCL would have put the shooter down in short order.

The problem with disarming your population, as almost all EU countries have done, is that you make the natives a shopping cart full of victims for those who are willing to ignore the law – like all criminals.

Read it.

Conspiracy theories aren’t dangerous when they get things wrong: they’re dangerous when they get things right.

QAnon—the online game of interdimensional chess in which Donald Trump does covert battle with a hyper-powerful cabal of monied pedophiles—is factually false in almost every particular. Justin Bieber is not sending a coded message about being sex trafficked because he touched his hat on Instagram. Donald Trump was not reinstated as president on August 13. And Comet Ping Pong pizza parlor does not have children locked up in its basement awaiting molestation by Hillary Clinton, for the simple reason that it does not have a basement.

But there are still people out there who believe, and this, according to CNN’s Oliver Darcy, has helped “to mainline the notion…that elites are sexual deviants seeking to exploit kids.” So the real threat of the Q mythos is its portrayal of American high society as a corrupt network of deranged predators. This is a problem, because it’s basically true.

Read it.

Opponents of occupational licensing secured a victory this week in their battle against excessive state regulations that erect barriers to competition in various fields.

One of those opponents, who knows full well the burdensome effects of occupational licensing, is Will McLemore. In 2006, he started McLemore Auction Co as one of the first online auction houses in America.

At that time, most auctioneers practiced only in live auctions, but as the internet has done for so many things, auctioneering began to change. The growth of online shopping resulted in tremendous opportunities for auctioneers.

However, in 2019, the Tennessee General Assembly passed legislation requiring all auctioneers to be licensed. To get a license, auctioneers had to meet requirements so onerous that they kept interested and otherwise qualified entrepreneurs out of the business altogether.

That year, McLemore and other members of the Interstate Auction Association filed an initial complaint against the state of Tennessee.

Nothing is more common that the use by existing businesses to exclude entrants by means of crony-fied regulations.

Read it.

It is now apparent that the oligarchy has authorized the truth about Hunter Biden, and hence “the Big Guy”, to come out. One can see the end game: no re-election campaign for sure, but resignation a real possibility.

The key is timing. Is there any reason why the MSM acknowledgement of the truth that they buried could not remain buried? They still haven’t done an expose on the Russia hoax and various other slanders. Even the Durham investigation isn’t stampeding them. So it doesn’t seem that the timing is designed to get out in front of something momentous. It just seems that somebody has a plan that has been put into effect.

Read it.

Recently Victor created a post titled “What Republican do you most regret voting for?“. I did not respond for a few reasons, I was tired, busy, and frustrated. There were so many equally foul Republicans that I voted for in a “lessor of two evil” options that I only scanned the post, and read none of the responses. But was reminded of it today when I read this article about Mitt Romney, and ask, was he ever a Republican?

He’s as much of a Republican as Michael Bloomberg.

Read it.

A gene-laced topical gel can heal the wounds of children with “butterfly disease” — a painful, potentially deadly disorder that makes the skin so fragile, even touching it can cause tears to form.

That makes me hurt just thinking about it.

Stanford University-led team has now developed an easy-to-apply topical gel to treat recessive dystrophic EB (RDEB), a form of butterfly disease that prevents the production of the skin-binding protein collagen VII.

The gel is a kind of gene therapy, which delivers working copies of the gene right to the site of a wound, allowing the skin to hold together as it heals.

ZMan does a deep dive.

Regime-ology is a new field of study so the practitioners are still working out the tools and methods for interpreting regime activity. Unlike Kremlinology, on which regime-ology is modeled, the focus is not on a hierarchical structure. The Soviet empire was run by a vertical organization that operated like a corporation. The American empire is a horizontal organization modeled on the Mafia. It is a collection of elite gangster organizations jostling for power within the elite.

Read it.

Ukrainian forces have captured a lot of modern Russian weapons and military equipment and made these discoveries available to Western countries that are supplying Ukraine with modern weapons and economic and diplomatic pressure on Russia.

This loot includes largely intact Iskander short range ballistic missiles, new EW (Electronic Warfare) equipment that had proven effective in Syria and Ukraine and new Azart combat radios and associated equipment. Some defective Islander missiles were recovered largely intact, which allowed close inspection of the missile design and the countermeasures Russia often spoke of but never provided details of. The countermeasures were, as expected, small decoys deployed as the Iskander came within range of the targets, as well as Western ABM (anti-ballistic missile) systems like Patriot, Thaad or the naval Standard missile defense system. Now that there were undamaged examples of these decoys available, Western ABM systems can be modified to defeat them.

Read it.

Seattle-area residents have got themselves into a real fix. They voted to impose numerous taxes on themselves to spend tens of billions of dollars building new light-rail lines to downtown Seattle. Now, cost have increased, Seattle transit ridership is down by 54 percent, and Amazon is moving workers out of downtown Seattle.

Now a group called SkyLink has proposed a solution: replace light rail with aerial gondolas. These would supposedly be higher in capacity, less expensive, and would require less displacement of homes and businesses.

Read it.

Salah Abdeslam is the soul surviving member of the group of Islamic terrorists who carried out the deadly attacks in Paris in November of 2015, including the bloody massacre at the Bataclan café.

The trial of Mr. Abdeslam is ongoing in Paris. It was previously discussed here, here, and here. The trial is expected to continue until May.

Avoid religions that make a virtue of killing innocent people.

Joel Kotkin.

Twenty-first-century America may be dominated by oligarchic elites, but arguably the biggest threat to our economic and political system might be located further down the food chain. This most dangerous class comes from the growing number of underemployed, overeducated people. They’re what has been described in Britain as the lumpenintelligensia: alienated, angry, and potentially agents of our social and political deconstruction.

Read it.

American readers of a certain age will remember when Z stood for “Zorro”. Some years after that it stood for “He lives”, at least in Greece. In Germany today, however, Z represents something so doubleplus ungood that the letter must be completely extirpated, and those who use it must be prosecuted.

Read it.

Psychedelics catalyze the invention of better forms of life, imaginary and real. That was not just the hope of the 1960s counterculture but also of the scientists and activists who have paved the way for the current renaissance of hallucinogen research. But what counts as a better form of life?

Today, the classmate who gave me my first LSD trip for my eighteenth birthday does what he can to limit social inclusion of immigrants in Germany. He came to represent the far-right populist party Alternative für Deutschland in the parliament of North Rhine-Westphalia. Consciousness expansion and rightist thought have never been mutually exclusive and they are currently reconnecting.

Biden’s Gaffes: A Postscript

Biden pitches largest tax hike in history as part of $5.8T budget request

Hunter Biden laptop material entered into Congressional Record

Sens. Grassley, Johnson allege $100,000 payment from Chinese oligarchs to Hunter Biden, provide receipt

US Top Commander In Europe Forced To Rebut Latest Biden Remarks

Biden’s ‘Equity’ Budget Mentions Term Over 100 Times

Austin Airport Warns It May Run Out Of Jet Fuel

Thanks for clearing that up

‘It Sucks’: House Dem Unleashes on Biden’s Budget

Biden Wants Blank Check to Fund Open Borders Immigration Priorities

Biden’s Budget Lies

Jan. 6 White House logs given to House show 7-hour gap in Trump calls (Washington Post)

Gerald Ford tried to impeach a Supreme Court justice — and failed (Washington Post) This is in relation to the current witch-hunt against Clarence Thomas.

‘Do your job’: Jan. 6 committee presses DOJ as push for Meadows contempt charge languishes (Politico)

Democrats push Garland to come down on uncooperative Trump allies (Axios) Can’t have a witch-hunt without actually hunting the witches.

Pelosi: ‘I fear for our democracy’ if Republicans win House (The Hill) In the Narrative, ‘democracy’ means ‘Democrat vote fraud’.

Donald Trump just released the most Donald Trump statement ever (Washington Post) Yanking their chains since 2014.

CIA Officer Who Signed Hunter Biden Laptop Letter Claims Credit For Trump Loss

Jake Tapper Raises Hunter Biden — as Trump’s Crazy Request to Vicious Vladimir Putin

Idiots Ruhle: MSNBC Lies About FL Anti-Grooming Law, Smear DeSantis Spox

Kimmel Laments Florida Teachers Can’t Explain ‘Their Governor is a D**khead’

Toobin Blames GOP For Increased SCOTUS Confirmation Partisanship  Tell that to Robert Bork.

FEC Fines Clinton, Dems for Debunked Dossier

FEC Fines Hillary Clinton, DNC Over Steele Dossier Hoax

Finnish Court Clears Christian Politician, Bishop of ‘Hate Speech’ Charges

Putin Loyalist Threatens Nuclear Strike on Europe If NATO Force Deploys

NFL Orders Teams To Hire Minority Or Female Offensive Assistant Coaches For 2022 Season

Joe Biden signs anti-lynching bill in historic first (BBC) Virtue-signaling at the Federal level. (What part of ‘interstate commerce’ is lynching?)

Mayor Lightfoot Assigned 70 Chicago Cops To Personal Security Detail Created In 2020  BRAAAAAAAINS!

America Favors Will Smith Over Chris Rock 52-48

NYT:  Jada Pinkett Smith Shouldn’t Have to ‘Take a Joke.’ Neither Should You.

White Males Need Not Apply? ‘Colorblind’ Group Accuses American Express of Racist Policies

Pressure Mounts on Sheldon Whitehouse To Resign in Shame Over Ties to Racist Beach Club

NFL Unsure of How (If at All) it will Punish Deshaun Watson

How Freaked Out Should We Be About That Antarctica Ice-Shelf Collapse? (Daily Beast)

Climate change: Heatwave temperature threshold raised in England by Met Office (BBC)

Climate groups say a change in coding can reduce bitcoin energy consumption by 99% (The Guardian) I guess that’s important?

Bitcoin’s massive energy use faces $5M shame campaign from environmental groups (Ars Technica)

Climate change: Wind and solar reach milestone as demand surges (BBC)

Science Fiction Guide To Keeping Doomsday Glacier Hanging On May Be Within Our Technological Capabilities

Sorry, WaPo, There Is No Evidence Bleaching Threatens a Great Barrier Reef “Tipping Point”

Climate Past Far From Settled: 7 Major Temperature Reconstructions Find No Agreement

At UN Commission on Status of Women, Far Left Ties Gender Ideology, Abortion to Climate Change

Check it out.

Uchronia: The Alternate History List is a bibliography of more than 3400 novels, stories, essays, collections, and other printed material involving the “what ifs” of history. The genre has a variety of names, but it is best known as alternate history.

In an alternate history, one or more past events are changed and the subsequent effects on history somehow described. This description may comprise the entire plotline of a novel, or it may just provide a brief background to a short story. Perhaps the most common themes in alternate history are “What if the Nazis won World War II?” and “What if the Confederacy won the American Civil War?”

Read it.

The concept of a smart contact lens has been around for many years, but one company working on the tech says that its device is now feature-complete, but will require FDA clearance.

Read it.

Always avoid a religion that makes a virtue of killing innocent people.

UPDATE: Arab Gunman Kills 5 in Tel Aviv, the Third Deadly Attack in Israel This Week

Read it.

Woodrow Wilson was not only the Worst American President Ever but also the worst person ever to be the American President.

Read it.

Companies are scrambling to turn the greenhouse gas into useful products — but will that slow climate change?

…

Industrial CO2 emissions are warming the climate, and many countries are working on capturing the gas and storing it underground. But why not recycle it into products that are both virtuous and profitable? As long as the recycling process avoids creating more carbon emissions — by using renewable energy, or excess resources that would otherwise be wasted — it can reduce the CO2 that industry pumps into the atmosphere and lower the demand for fossil fuels used in manufacturing. That’s a double climate win, proponents say.

Read it.

Restaurant employees are under more pressure than ever in a competitive market with razor-thin margins, Struck said. “You also have a massive sort of restaurant labor shortage. So people are trying to use core technology innovation to just streamline operations.”

In an industry where many kitchens run on paper orders and recipes printed from Word documents, restaurant tech companies are seeing more opportunities in the back of the house. By digitizing the kitchen, a restaurant can not only store recipes, track orders and manage inventory, but also reduce food waste, cut costs and tap new revenue streams.

In our favorite restaurant, the Red Truck Café, servers take orders on an electronic device that transmits the details of the order, identified by table, back to the kitchen automatically. When the food is ready, whoever is on hand brings it out to your table. It’s very efficient.

Trump likely committed felony obstruction, federal judge rules (Politico)

January 6 Committee will seek interview with Ginni Thomas, sources say (CNN)

Judiciary chair calls on Justice Thomas to recuse himself from Jan. 6 cases (The Hill)

Federalist Editor Locked Out of Twitter For Levine Comments

Big Tech Let SEVEN Dictators Post, Including Vladimir Putin — Still Ban Donald Trump

Sex Harassment Allegations Upend Los Angeles Mayor’s Bid for Ambassador to India

NBC’s Brokaw Blames Fox News, ‘Poisonous Right-Wing’ for Putin Invading Ukraine

The View: Did ‘Insane’ GOP Prove How Racist They Are With Jackson Questions?

All You Need To Know About The Starstreak Missiles Now In The Hands Of Ukrainian Troops

Ukraine’s Military Intelligence Chief Says “Total Guerrilla Warfare” Coming Next

Chinese drone-maker DJI denies aiding Russia’s Ukraine invasion

“Going Dark” Is How Russian Ships Evade Sanctions   As an old Gunnery Sergeant once explained to me, ‘If they can’t find you, they can’t hurt you’.

Nuclear War Survival Skills

Kaspersky is declared a US national security threat and is banned by the FCC

Biden Reveals The US Is Training Ukrainian Troops In Poland

So Why Is it Called “The Ukraine”?

Kremlin Warns Biden’s ‘Emotional’ Rhetoric Could Lead To “Something Irreparable & Dangerous” For Whole World

As Sanctions Bite, Average Russians Turn To Gold

Ukraine’s Inescapable Trade-Offs?

Taiwan Will Defend Differently Than Ukraine In Event Of Chinese Invasion: Expert

Letters of Marque and Reprisal  Emphasis on the ‘reprisal’.

COVID cases up almost 70% as new variant arrives in Monroe County

State health department now ‘closely monitoring’ Central NY’s surge of Covid-19 cases

‘Cost of Unmasking’ NYC Toddlers Too High for Neurotic New York Times Writer

Mild respiratory SARS-CoV-2 infection can cause myelin loss in the brain

UCLA’s race, equity director appears to wish for Justice Thomas to die: ‘no one wants to openly admit’

Chris Rock Smooths Things Over With Will Smith By Sleeping With His Wife  Babylon Bee. (zing….)

Val Demings Distances Herself From Anti-Drilling Policies She Once Championed  Yet another crazy black female politician.

Biden keeping his promise to ‘end fossil fuel’ increased gas prices, RSC memo shows

Democrats Need a Better Message Than ‘Putin’s Gas Hike’

Hunter Biden’s $142K Fisker sports car scrutinized in tax probe: report  Fortunate son….

Prosecutors gathering evidence about Hunter Biden’s foreign income: report (The Hill)

Shutting Canadian Pipeline Would Cost US Consumers $23.7 Billion More In Fuel Costs: Report

Nets Skip Biden Claiming Gaffes Didn’t Happen, ABC Props Up Outbursts

MSNBC’s Ruhle: Why Isn’t Biden Getting Credit for His ‘Big Wins’?

‘He Only Gets Better’: Morning Joe’s Ongoing Tongue-Bath of Biden’s Regime-Change Gaffe

Joe Scarborough’s 2020 Hunter Biden Rant Aged Like a Carton of Milk

Psaki Reminds Reporters That Biden Doesn’t Speak For The President Of The United States  Babylon Bee.

Biden Still Falling

Gas Tax Rebates, Suspensions Are Gimmicky ‘Solutions’ to Problem Government Caused

Biden’s Dumbest Idea Yet?

Sorry, rooftop solar supporters, California incentives really do punish the poor (L.A. Times)

Environmental organizations unveil ‘Green New Deal pledge’ for 2022 candidates (The Hill) When you reflect on the fact that the original New Deal prolonged the Great Depression, it’s easy to see where they’re going with this.

Energy efficiency guru Amory Lovins: ‘It’s the largest, cheapest, safest, cleanest way to address the crisis’ (The Guardian)

Natural gas ‘large part’ of solution to climate goals, industry leader says

In Sri Lanka, Organic Farming Went Catastrophically Wrong

Madness of Our Worship of Wind: Matt Ridley

34 Years of Flawed, Failed & Grossly Misrepresented Global Sea Level Rise Speculation

Yale Mob Illustrates Larger Free Speech Problem at America’s Universities (Newsweek)

Hunter Biden’s laptop shows mainstream media’s own information problem Megan McArdle.

DeSantis signs controversial bill restricting certain LGBTQ topics in the classroom (CNN)

Gender Ideologues’ Alarming Campaign to Get Kids While They’re Young

California State University Drops SAT Test As ‘Too Stressful’

Nets Find ‘Controversy’ in Banning Sex Talk With Kindergarteners

How One Progressive Prosecutor Paved the Way for an East Coast Shooting Spree

I no longer grade my students’ work, and I wish I had stopped sooner

A Million Big Agendas: ABC Primetime Drama Annoys Viewers with Excessively Political Propaganda

Paul Krugman Still Doesn’t ‘Understand What the Hell Has Been Going on’ With Inflation

MSNBC Rips Florida’s ‘Unadulterated Bigotry’ on Sexual Orientation, Gender

Dean Gerken’s gabble

Teachers Who Insist They’re Not Teaching Your Kid About Sex Also Weirdly Outraged By Ban On Teaching Your Kid About Sex  Babylon Bee.

Diversity Overkill: NFL Teams Must Hire Ethnic Minorities Or Women

Adam Schiff Says “Kremlin” A Lot

Statistical Analysis Suggests 2020 Election May Not Have Been the Cleanest and Fairest in History

Illinois Governor Invested In Company With $2.6 Billion In State Contracts  Yet another rich Democrat crook.

Read it.

Just because we encounter new problems doesn’t mean that the old problems aren’t still haning around and causing problems.

Avoid any religion that makes a virtue out of killing innocent people.

Another reminder that Islam is an oppressive totalitarian ideology with which no co-existence is possible.

Read it.

White Castle – the world’s first fast-food hamburger chain – announced plans to further expand its work with Miso Robotics and install Flippy 2 in 100 standalone locations. The announcement is the latest milestone for the partnership, which began in September 2020 with the deployment of the original Flippy to a White Castle in the Chicagoland area. Following an upgrade to Flippy 2 in November 2021, White Castle’s commitment to Miso’s technology was cemented after seeing an immediate positive impact on daily operations and the productivity of its team members.

Couldn’t hurt.

Read it.

I have been writing for years about how progressive policies championed by the Democratic Party and served up under the guise of caring about low-income Americans wind up hurting these very communities.

The latest chapter in this saga is the newly unleashed round of inflation, the worst our country has seen in 40 years.

Two important points here are that first, we can lay responsibility for this inflation directly at the doorstep of the Biden administration, and second, those being hurt most by this inflation are the very low-income Americans that this administration claims to care so much about.

Read it.

Democrats love to propose wealth taxes.

California Democrats have done it, congressional Democrats have done it many times, and now it looks as though President Joe Biden wants to get in on the game. If only they’d pause for a moment to consider—or care—whether wealth taxes are constitutional.

Biden’s proposed wealth tax, styled as a minimum income tax on households worth more than $100 million, will claim least 20% of both income and “unrealized capital gains.” If that phrase sounds familiar, that’s because taxing whatever those are was the key feature of congressional Democrats’ short-lived proposal last year.

Unrealized capital gains don’t exist. You can no more tax them directly, as congressional Democrats tried to do, than reclassify them as “income,” as Biden wants to do.

A capital gain is the profit you get when you sell an investment for more than you paid for it. When the sale is complete and the money in your hand, a tax lawyer would call it a “realized” capital gain.

If, on the other hand, you choose not to sell an investment that has increased in value since you bought it, your capital gain is “unrealized,” which means it exists only on paper. That’s because its value could just as easily go down tomorrow, and the only way to lock in, or realize, that gain is by selling the investment.

The congressional Democrats’ proposal would have taxed those gains even though they didn’t exist. That, as I’ve written previously, is likely unconstitutional.

Democrats love to tax people, not on what they have, but on what Democrats think they have. “Billionaires” don’t have shit until they sell the stuff the estimated value of which excites the envy of the greedy. Jeff Bezos is considered a billionaire because he owns a lot of stock in Amazon; such estimates are based on taking the recent price of a share of Amazon stock and multiplying it by his stock holdings. Of course, anyone who knows elementary economics knows that you won’t get that price for all of those shares. But Democrats daily demonstrate that they know nothing about economics. They see the world as just chock-full of piles of cash that they would just love to steal and spend.

Read it.

William F. Buckley was famous for saying, among other things, that he would rather be governed by the first 2,000 names in the Boston phone book than by the faculty of Harvard. This was an understandable thing to say given the intransigent ideologues who tend to inhabit Ivy League faculties. A random collection of Americans are likely to be far more congenial.

I was sitting at my desk this morning pondering the weekend events, which amounted to a continuous stream of Biden faux pas culminating in an ad-lib announcement of his view that Putin had to go. This set off a flurry of nervous disavowals from all across Europe, the US State Department, and eventually from the White House itself. It should be obvious by now, to anyone who is paying even a modicum of attention, that the President of the United States is a buffoon. He may be an inveterate grifter. He may even have dementia. But he is definitely as dumb as a bag of hair.

It’s a weird world we live in, where any random person plucked off the street of any town in America, would almost certainly be more intelligent and more competent to perform the actual presidential duties than the man who was voted for by millions of those same Americans. I offer no opinion about whether he actually won the election. I just marvel at how stupid he is, and the irrelevance of his manifest stupidity to the voting behavior of millions of his constituents.

Read it.

1. Prioritization(1): Ordering a todo list. You make a giant list of things you could do, things you should do, things you’d like to do… and then you put a unique number next to each item. Now it’s an ordered list.
2. Prioritization(2): Only doing the top item on the list. You already have a giant todo list. Which thing are you actually going to finish?

ZMan.

Broadly speaking, a crisis comes in two forms. There is the internal crisis driven by irreconcilable contradictions. Then there is the external crisis that is driven by some unusual occurrence like a natural disaster. The latter tests mostly the ability of the system to weather the storm and recover. The former tests the ability of the system to radically alter itself in order to address the contradiction. This is the most dangerous crisis and the one that few systems survive.

Of course, the internal crisis can be papered over for a long time until some external crisis comes along and makes that impossible. The external crisis puts pressure on the system, forcing it to respond under duress. The internal problems are then made obvious as the system responds poorly. Efforts to quickly resolve those issues in order to address the immediate problems just create new problems. This was the process that led to the French Revolution.

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A new study from researchers at the University of California, San Francisco (UCSF) has found that cells carrying oncogenic KRAS mutations harbor elevated levels of a specific kind of iron. This iron could be used to activate drugs that target cancer cells, avoiding harm to normal, healthy cells.

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FROM THE BIZARRE creatures in the depths of the oceans to the bacteria inside our bodies, all life on Earth consists of cells. But we have only a very rough idea of how even the simplest of those cells function.

Now, as described recently in Cell, a team at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign and their colleagues have created the most complete computer simulation ever of a living cell. With this digital model, biologists can burst through nature’s constraints and accelerate their exploration of how the most basic unit of life ticks—and what would happen if it ticked differently.