6th October 2023
The Foundry.
There is no worse example of a biased, tendentious mainstream media with ulterior motives than the castigation of Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas during the past half year.
The latest example stems from flyspecking Thomas’ amended financial disclosure reports, repeating what has never been disputed and attempting to cast a dark shadow on otherwise innocent, normal conduct—that the man has affluent friends and these friends engage in activities with their friends, which is typical of those with wealth.
Apart from the shameless and intentional misinterpretation of this reality, what is omitted from the reporting truly speaks volumes. There are neither accusations nor even circumstantial evidence that the 700-plus opinions Thomas has written over his career, the 2,800-plus cases he has voted on, and the millions of words he has authored have been compromised in any way to benefit his friends.
Posted in The Hunt for Heretics and Sinners | Comments Off on Justice Thomas and the Uneven Scales of Scrutiny
6th October 2023
Computer World.
Forced back into the office, many employees have admitted to showing up for just a few hours — enough time to swipe in with their employee badge, have a cup of coffee, and be seen in the workplace — then heading back home to do their work, according to a new study.
Coined as “coffee badging,” the trend showed up on a new survey of 2,000 full-time US workers conducted by videoconferencing tech vendor Owl Labs.
Owl Labs said its seventh annual State of Hybrid Work report revealed that more than half (58%) of hybrid workers said they are coffee badging to meet the minimum in-office requirement each week. Another 8% of respondents said they haven’t been coffee badging but would like to try it.
Posted in News You Can Use. | Comments Off on Faced With Back-to-Office Mandates, Employees Are ‘Coffee Badging’ Office Visits
5th October 2023
Posted in The Hunt for Heretics and Sinners | Comments Off on Today in Witch-Hunt Culture
5th October 2023
Posted in Whose turn is it to be the victim? | Comments Off on Today in BIPOC Privilege
5th October 2023
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5th October 2023
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We have the technology.
Takes care of the tailgater problem.
Posted in Is this a great country, or what? | Comments Off on Ron Patrick’s Street-Legal Jet Powered Volkswagen Beetle
5th October 2023
Posted in Think about it. | Comments Off on Thought for the Day
5th October 2023
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The Guardia Civil, Spain’s national police force, has arrested nine illegal immigrants who stand accused of threatening at knife-point sailors of a Dutch tugboat who had just rescued them from two boats in the Atlantic, forcing them to change course for the Spanish Canary Islands, sources from the interior ministry said.
The nine mutinous migrants had been a part of a larger group of 78 people who on the morning of Monday, October 2nd, departed from the North African coast in two separate boats in an attempt to reach the Canary Islands. The incident began after the Dutch ship “Vose Pace”—after realizing the precariousness of the two ships—rescued both, only to have some of those on board the second one threatening them with deadly weapons, El Debate reports.
The threat of violence came, apparently, because the Dutch ship, having rescued the two boats in waters under Moroccan rescue responsibility, received directions from Rabat to return the boats to the southern Moroccan port of Tan-Tan.
Posted in Dystopia Watch | Comments Off on Spain: Illegal Migrants Arrested for Piracy
5th October 2023
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Teachers’ union leader Randi Weingarten, who presided over a disastrous nationwide shutdown of schools during the coronavirus pandemic, is joining the board of one of the country’s most prominent anti-Israel groups.
J Street, a far-left group that works to undermine the Jewish state, announced on Wednesday that Weingarten will join its board of directors.
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4th October 2023
Posted in Your tax dollars at work - and play. | Comments Off on Today in the Biden-Harris Slow-Motion Train Wreck
4th October 2023
Posted in Axis of Drivel -- Adventures in Narrative Media | Comments Off on Today in Global Warming Hysteria
4th October 2023
Posted in Whose turn is it to be the victim? | Comments Off on Today in BIPOC Privilege
4th October 2023
Posted in Dystopia Watch | Comments Off on Today in Progressive Totalitarianism
4th October 2023
Posted in Dystopia Watch, The Hunt for Heretics and Sinners | Comments Off on Today in Trump Derangement Syndrome
4th October 2023
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4th October 2023
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4th October 2023
“Imagine the people of Portland taking over the whole country and that was Russia after the revolution.” — ZMan
Posted in Think about it. | Comments Off on Quotation of the Day
4th October 2023
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Though there’s a long history of scandal in the olive oil world, the problem in the U.S. for consumers is less about oil that isn’t made from olives, and more about olive oil that doesn’t meet the quality standards declared on its label. But since most people in the U.S. can’t tell fusty and musty from pungent and fruity, low-quality olive oil masquerading as extra virgin is a hard problem to fix.
Posted in Dystopia Watch | Comments Off on Most of Us Are Blissfully Ignorant About How Much Rancid Olive Oil We Use
4th October 2023
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Some of the policies and actions that make the Republic of Turkey different from other nations are not only its proud and aggressive denial of the many crimes it has committed over the decades, but also its physical and verbal attacks—on an international scale—against the descendants of the survivors of those crimes.
These attacks include vandalism against genocide memorials outside of Turkey, diplomatic pressure on governments that recognize the genocide, as well as on those who erect monuments to commemorate the victims and carry out other commemorative activities.
The Turkish nation’s greatest crime is the 1913-1923 genocide committed against Assyrian, Armenian, and Greek Christians in Ottoman Turkey. Approximately 3.5 million Christians were killed in this ‘jihad genocide,’ which targeted them because of their religion and ethnicity in an attempt to create “Turkey for the Turks.”
Posted in Living with Islam: The world's most intolerant—and intolerable—religion | Comments Off on Turkey’s Denial of Christian Genocide
4th October 2023
Posted in Think about it. | Comments Off on Thought for the Day
4th October 2023
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A Chinese nuclear submarine crew is believed to be dead after its vessel was ensnared in a trap in the Yellow Sea that was reportedly intended for British sub-surface vessels.
Citing a highly-classified United Kingdom report, the Daily Mail reported that the death of the 55 Chinese sailors was the result of a catastrophic failure of the submarine’s oxygen systems.
“Intelligence reports that on 21st of August there was an onboard accident whilst carrying out a mission in the Yellow Sea,” the U.K. report reads, according to the Mail. “Incident happened at 08.12 local resulting in the death of 55 crew members: 22 officers, 7 officer cadets, 9 petty officers, 17 sailors. Dead include the captain Colonel Xue Yong-Peng.”
Posted in News You Can Use. | Comments Off on Chinese Nuclear Sub Crew Feared Dead After Equipment Failure
4th October 2023
BBC.
Nomad Cruise is the first mobile conference for digital nomads. It combines skill-sharing, networking and celebration while travelling through breathtaking corners of the globe. And German-born Voelkner, 40, says it’s achieving his aim.
“Once we arrive at the new destination, many people end up travelling together, and we organize reunions in beautiful destinations to build and foster this community,” he says. Tickets for the company’s upcoming 12th sailing – a 10-day transatlantic crossing from Spain to Brazil in December – start at around €1,000 ($1,073; £860). To date, upwards of 2,500 remote professionals from more than 80 countries have joined Nomad Cruise for work and wanderlust.
Beyond solving a problem, Voelkner is making money. His revenue comes from negotiating deals with cruise companies and adding travel experiences and onboard programming for new and established remote workers. A record 600 participants are expected on the upcoming transatlantic cruise, and his revenue to date nears €2m ($2.13m; £1.72m).
Posted in Think about it. | Comments Off on Digital Nomads Have Billions to Spend. Entrepreneurs Are Cashing In.
3rd October 2023
Steve Graham has an Adventure in Modern America.
In the past, you could call the UPS number and yell “AGENT!” over and over until the phone tree wilted and gave you a person. Now you go to the site, get a bunch of prompts that don’t apply to your situation, and then receive instructions to get lost. If you call and yell “AGENT!”, the system tells you you can’t have one, and it hangs up.
None of the web prompts matched my problem, and that was deliberate on the part of UPS. I had a driver who would not put boxes where they were supposed to be, and probably three million people had the same problem today, so obviously, they do not want people with poorly-placed boxes calling them. They would be inundated.
You can’t just go to the local UPS hub and ask for help, because they will shoot you when you try to scale the fence. UPS doesn’t like riff raff any more than I do. Okay, perhaps they won’t shoot you, but you can’t complain in person. That’s my point.
I tried to use the site in spite of the lack of relevant options. I picked a prompt which was not very appropriate, figuring some human being might read it and decide to do something even though I had responded to the wrong prompt. Unbelievably, UPS contacted me. A guy named Bill at the local hub seemed to be very upset that my boxes were being rained on, and I think he really tried to help.
He thought I hadn’t entered my code on their site. I told him I had. He said he couldn’t see it, and that meant his drivers couldn’t see it. He was convinced this was the issue. He gave me a number for UPS tech support.
I called and got one of the Indian guys.
Posted in Is this a great country, or what? | Comments Off on The Gate of Heck
3rd October 2023
New COVID vaccine push is ‘anti-human,’ says Florida surgeon general: ‘Major safety concern’ (Fox News)
5 Things Doctors Never, Ever Do During Cold And Flu Season (Huffington Post)
Nobel Prize Awarded to Covid Vaccine Pioneers (N.Y. Times)
Posted in Axis of Drivel -- Adventures in Narrative Media | Comments Off on Pandemic Panic – It’s Titanic
3rd October 2023
Posted in The Hunt for Heretics and Sinners | Comments Off on Today in Witch-Hunt Culture
3rd October 2023
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3rd October 2023
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3rd October 2023
Civil rights leader criticizes ‘divisive protests,’ ‘rioting’ in the name of social justice (Fox News)
Capitol Police deliver new update on Bowman fire alarm incident (The Hill)
Dem Rep Jamaal Bowman’s Office: Yes, He Pulled Capitol Fire Alarm, But Republicans Are Nazis
Bowman disavows talking points attacking ‘Nazi members’ of GOP in office’s fire alarm messaging guidance (Fox News)
‘I Am Embarrassed To Admit That I Activated The Fire Alarm,’ Bowman
Rep. Jamaal Bowman pulled a fire alarm in Congress. Should he face jail time? (Fox News)
Did This ‘Squad’ Member Really Think There Would Be No Consequences to Pulling an Alarm as Congress Voted? Well, yes.
Capitol Police Corroborate Part of Rep. Bowman’s Story
Rep. Bowman Backtracks on Memo Calling Republicans Nazis
Nets Gush Over ‘Historic’ New CA Senator, Ignore Key Details
Laphonza Butler Once Backed Abolishing Bail in Calif.
ABC & NBC Drop Bowman Fire Alarm Coverage, CBS Runs Excuses
Fmr Detroit Police Chief Craig Joins Michigan Senate Race
What to Know About Laphonza Butler, Newsom’s Appointee to the Senate (N.Y. Times) Laying down the Narrative so you all will know what to think.
The Atlantic Monthly Is All Over World War Hair, by Steve Sailer
Rep. Bowman Explains
Howard Men
The lonesome death of Tyesha Edwards
The compleat Democrat
Nigeria: 8 killed on independence day in latest round of Plateau attacks
Media Desperately Try To Spin Rep Bowman’s Fire Alarm Stunt
DNC Officials Warn Delegates Could Be Too White
Newsom’s Diversity Pick for Senate Could Backfire, Create Awkward Showdown Between Two Black Female Dems
Justin Jones alleges Tennessee House Speaker violated Constitution with ‘disparate racial treatment’ (The Hill)
Posted in Whose turn is it to be the victim? | Comments Off on Today in BIPOC Privilege
3rd October 2023
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It’s a stiff competition. Democratic Party prosecutors who have brought frivolous charges against Donald Trump are certainly in the mix. Nevertheless, I would award that title to Mary Moriarty, the County Attorney for Hennepin County, Minnesota. Hennepin is the state’s most populous county, and it includes Minneapolis along with a number of other high-crime towns. Nevertheless, Moriarty ran for office on a platform of not prosecuting criminals, and she is the rare politician who has kept her campaign promises.
The situation is so bad that it is now drawing national (the New York Post) and even international (the Daily Mail) attention. The Post headlines: “Fury as Minneapolis’ ‘woke’ DA Mary Moriarty allows accused rapists and killers to stay free.” The Daily Mail headlines: “Is this America’s wokest DA? Democrat Minneapolis prosecutor sparks fury by giving probation to murderers, pedophile and killer drug dealer, with even Soros-backed Minnesota AG blasting her.”
Posted in Democrats: Party of Fake and Gay | Comments Off on America’s Worst Prosecutor
3rd October 2023
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We’ve had many meetings with NAR execs to explore compromises on the policies that would let us continue our support. Since a Redfin-wide initiative to join NAR in 2017, we’ve paid more than $13 million in dues, in an effort to influence NAR to advocate for an open, technology-driven marketplace that would benefit consumers. We’ll now explore other ways to advance those goals.
…
In the many marketplaces governed by its policies, NAR still blocks sellers from listing homes that don’t pay a commission to the buyer’s agent, and it blocks websites like Redfin.com from showing for-sale-by-owner listings alongside agent-listed homes. Removing these blocks would be easy, and it would make our industry more consumer-friendly and competitive.
‘Professional associations’, no matter what they claim, are all about protecting the financial interest of existing members rather than anything having to do with either the ‘profession’ or their customers.
Posted in Think about it. | Comments Off on Redfin is Leaving National Association of Realtors
3rd October 2023
OffGuardian.
Here’s a story destined for urgent dispatch down the Memory Hole. In fact, if you listen closely, you can already hear it being sucked down through the ducts of the GloboCap Ministry of Truth toward the enormous mnemonic incinerator where all official “unstories” go to die.
Yesterday, it was an embarrassment. Tomorrow, it will no longer be of interest. By next week, it will have never happened.
So, let’s review it before that happens … and perhaps try to understand why it happened.
Posted in Dystopia Watch | Comments Off on The GloboCap Nazi Follies
3rd October 2023
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Junpeng Mi and his colleagues working at Donghua University, China, used CRISPR gene-editing technology to recode the silk-creating properties of a silkworm. First, they took genes from Araneus ventricosus, an East Asian orb-weaving spider known for its strong silk. Then they placed these complex genes – genes that involve more than 100 amino acids – into silkworm egg cells. (This description fails to capture how time-consuming, technical, and laborious this was; it’s a procedure that requires hundreds of thousands of microinjections.)
This had all been done before, and this had failed before. Where Mi and his team succeeded was using a concept called “localization.” Localization involves narrowing in on a very specific location in a genome. For this experiment, the team from Donghua University developed a “minimal basic structure model” of silkworm silk, which guided the genetic modifications. They wanted to make sure they had the exactly right transgenic spider silk proteins. Mi said that combining localization with this basic structure model “represents a significant departure from previous research.” And, judging only from the results, he might be right. They successfully synthesized “fibers exhibited impressive tensile strength (1,299 MPa) and toughness (319 MJ/m3), surpassing Kevlar’s toughness 6-fold.”
Posted in News You Can Use. | Comments Off on Adding Spider DNA to Silkworms Creates Silk Stronger Than Kevlar
3rd October 2023
Posted in Think about it. | Comments Off on Thought for the Day
3rd October 2023
Washington Free Beacon.
What happened: AnaYelsi Velasco-Sanchez, a radical left-wing IndoLatinx artist whose work focuses on “justice” and “liberation,” was living the dream at her first solo exhibition in Washington, D.C., until a thief ran off with two of her paintings.
“I feel violated, and I’m grieving the lost art, but mostly I’m feeling shocked at the boldness and thoughtlessness of entering a community space, and stealing art that is all about justice and liberation,” Velasco-Sanchez wrote in an Instagram post announcing the theft.
One of the stolen paintings, valued at $200 each, was titled Bountiful: The Land of Thoughts and Prayers. It dealt with “gun violence and state sanctioned violence in the United States,” the artist said on TikTok, a Chinese spyware app and social media platform.
And oh, was it ever ugly….
Posted in Whose turn is it to be the victim? | Comments Off on This Lib Artist Won’t Call the Police if You Steal Her Paintings
3rd October 2023
ScienceAlert.
The animal footprint carvings you can find in the Doro Nawas Mountains of western Namibia are quite something: the artists have captured the tracks so accurately, they can reveal plenty of useful information about the animals they represent.
A team from the Heinrich Barth Institute and the University of Erlangen-Nuremberg in Germany, and the Nyae Nyae Conservancy in Namibia, worked with Indigenous tracking experts from the Kalahari region to look at a total of 513 carvings.
For more than 90 percent of them, Indigenous experts could identify the species, sex, age group, and even which leg the carving was from. It’s like a wildlife compendium, written in rock.
Posted in Think about it. | Comments Off on Prehistoric Carvings Are So Accurate, Animals’ Sex, Age, and Species Can Be Determined
2nd October 2023
Posted in Axis of Drivel -- Adventures in Narrative Media | Comments Off on Today in Global Warming Hysteria
2nd October 2023
Posted in The Hunt for Heretics and Sinners | Comments Off on Today in Trump Derangement Syndrome
2nd October 2023
Posted in The Hunt for Heretics and Sinners | Comments Off on Today in Witch-Hunt Culture
2nd October 2023
COVID vaccine poll finds more than half of adults are likely to say ‘no thanks’ to the vax (Fox News)
Why Did People Comply?
Why It’s Too Soon to Call It Covid Season (Wired ‘Science’)
Posted in Axis of Drivel -- Adventures in Narrative Media | Comments Off on Pandemic Panic – It’s Titanic
2nd October 2023
Posted in Dystopia Watch | Comments Off on Today in Progressive Totalitarianism
2nd October 2023
Posted in Whose turn is it to be the victim? | Comments Off on Today in BIPOC Privilege
2nd October 2023
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Sayyed Issa Tabatabai’s comments marked the first public acknowledgment of Iran’s involvement in the bombings: at the U.S. Embassy in Beirut in April 1983, in which 63 people, including 17 Americans, were killed; and the barracks of American and French members of the Multinational Force in October 1983, in which 242 U.S. Marines and 58 French troops were killed.
The Middle East Media Research Institute (MEMRI) first located and translated the Islamic Republic News Agency (IRNA) interview with Tabatabai, who represents Iranian Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei in Lebanon.
MEMRI reported that the part of the interview in which Tabatabai acknowledged receiving then-Iranian leader Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini’s fatwa ordering attacks on American and Israeli targets in Lebanon was removed by IRNA from its website shortly after publication.
My, what a surprise.
Wherever you go,
Whatever you do,
A Muslim waits there
To try to kill you.
Posted in Living with Islam: The world's most intolerant—and intolerable—religion | Comments Off on Iran Official Admits Role in 1983 Beirut Bombings
2nd October 2023
Posted in Think about it. | 1 Comment »
2nd October 2023
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It took firms decades to adjust to electricity by redesigning factories, products, and workflows to take full advantage of the new possibilities. Similarly, the benefits of work from home start to come most profoundly when expensive offices can be shrunk, employers can draw from a much larger pool of workers and workers can adjust when and where they work, including the location of their homes. It’s not surprising, therefore, that with little time for either the workers or the firms to adjust and with few options to choose how much to work from home, productivity fell when COVID sent workers home. But, with more time to plan and more options for hybrid but extensive work (e.g. work from home Mondays and Fridays), work from home has large benefits. We are also seeing management redesign to take advantage of work from home in the same way we saw factory redesign to take advantage of electricity. Management, for example, is shifting from input metrics–do you show up?–to output metrics–did the work get done? Designing and validating new metrics takes time, but these changes are helping to increase the benefits of work from home.
Posted in Think about it. | Comments Off on Work From Home Works
2nd October 2023
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It has become painfully clear in recent decades that, more and more, the major stumbling block in weapon acquisition programs is software, rather than hardware.
The F-35, for example, has failed on the software side of things rather than the hardware. The all-encompassing, mission planning, parts inventory controlling, maintenance regulating, aircraft health assessing ALIS software has been a colossal, and to date, unrecoverable, failure. Further, the F-35 was planned to be fully combat capable only with the advent of the Block 4 software upgrade which is now hopelessly behind schedule and has had many of its planned features deleted or deferred to some undetermined future time.
Posted in Your tax dollars at work - and play. | Comments Off on The Heartbreak of Software
2nd October 2023
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Donald Trump’s “Make America Great Again” was a slogan of genius. While his supporters (and most Americans) instantly knew what it meant, Democrats hated it. They didn’t know whether to respond, “America is still great,” or “America was never great,” which is what most of them believe. It was a painful dilemma.
But times have changed. Now Democrats embrace Trump’s slogan, or at least its acronym. They constantly refer derisively to “MAGA Republicans.” A Google search for “MAGA Republicans” returns over 58 million hits.
MAGA is the New Nigger.
Posted in The Hunt for Heretics and Sinners | Comments Off on Who’s Your MAGA?
1st October 2023
Posted in Axis of Drivel -- Adventures in Narrative Media | Comments Off on Pandemic Panic – It’s Titanic
