Archive for May, 2024
16th May 2024
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Silica glass, known for its brittleness, weight, and non-biodegradable nature, faces challenges in finding suitable alternatives. Transparent wood, made by infusing polymers into wood, shows promise but is hindered by limited availability of wood in China and fire risks associated with its use. This study explores the potential of utilizing bamboo, which has a shorter growth cycle, as a valuable resource for developing flame-retardant, smoke-suppressing, and superhydrophobic transparent bamboo. A 3-layered flame-retardant barrier, composed of a top silane layer, an intermediate layer of SiO2 formed through hydrolysis-condensation of Na2SiO3 on the surface, and an inner layer of Na2SiO3, has been confirmed to be effective in reducing heat release, slowing flame spread, and inhibiting the release of combustible volatiles, toxic smoke, and CO. Compared to natural bamboo and other congeneric transparent products, the transparent bamboo displays remarkable superiority, with the majority of parameters being notably lower by an entire order of magnitude. It achieves a long ignition time of 116 s, low total heat release (0.7 MJ/m2), low total smoke production (0.063 m2), and low peak CO concentration (0.008 kg/kg). Moreover, when used as a substrate for perovskite solar cells, the transparent bamboo displays the potential to act as a light management layer, leading to a marked efficiency enhancement of 15.29%. The excellent features of transparent bamboo make it an enticing choice for future advancements in flame-retardant glasses and optical devices.
Posted in News You Can Use. | Comments Off on A Novel Flame-Retardant, Smoke-Suppressing, and Superhydrophobic Transparent Bamboo
16th May 2024
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The largest pyramid field in Egypt is clustered along a narrow desert strip, yet no convincing explanation as to why these pyramids are concentrated in this specific locality has been given so far. Here we use radar satellite imagery, in conjunction with geophysical data and deep soil coring, to investigate the subsurface structure and sedimentology in the Nile Valley next to these pyramids. We identify segments of a major extinct Nile branch, which we name The Ahramat Branch, running at the foothills of the Western Desert Plateau, where the majority of the pyramids lie. Many of the pyramids, dating to the Old and Middle Kingdoms, have causeways that lead to the branch and terminate with Valley Temples which may have acted as river harbors along it in the past. We suggest that The Ahramat Branch played a role in the monuments’ construction and that it was simultaneously active and used as a transportation waterway for workmen and building materials to the pyramids’ sites.
UPDATE: Found at last: long-lost branch of the Nile that ran by the pyramids
Posted in News You Can Use. | Comments Off on The Egyptian Pyramid Chain Was Built Along the Now Abandoned Ahramat Nile Branch
16th May 2024
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During my many years of teaching at different universities, nearly all my colleagues insisted that Lee Harvey Oswald alone assassinated President Kennedy, even while the general public questioned such a conclusion. This disparity between gown and town always amused and informed me that something in the “higher education” world was low indeed.
Despite the fact that we agreed on many political matters, my academic colleagues laughed at all my writing and courses that presented overwhelming evidence that there was a conspiracy to kill JFK, led by the Central Intelligence Agency. They reveled in their certitude, good humored as it was, but refused to research the matter. They were smug.
Here is an excellent book that, if they would read it with open minds, would, as its subtitle says – inescapably prove that there was a conspiracy – and if Jack Ruby had not killed Oswald and he had been given a fair trial, Oswald would have been acquitted. Written by James DiEugenio, Paul Bleau, Matt Crumpton, Andrew Iler, and Mark Adamczyk, The JFK Assassination Chokeholds lives up to its claim and then some.
Posted in Dystopia Watch | Comments Off on REVIEW: The JFK Assassination Chokeholds
16th May 2024
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An expert on Islamism has highlighted the dangers to Europe of the Muslim Brotherhood through its emphasis on legal rather than ‘terrorist’ methods. Dr. Lorenzo Vidino told a recent European conference how the Brotherhood is a “social network,” united by ideological and economic ties, and heavily financed by Qatar.
It facilitates Islamist radicalisation while impacting the discussion of human rights and democracy—which it wishes to abolish in favour of establishing a global caliphate: i.e. theocratic rule by a caliph, the recognised successor to the prophet Muhammad.
Le Journal du Dimanche reported how the conference—organised by the Défense des servants de la République association—brought together a wide range of Islamism experts in the French commune of Saint-Ouen-sur-Seine on Wednesday, May 15th.
Posted in Living with Islam: The world's most intolerant—and intolerable—religion | Comments Off on Experts: Muslim Brotherhood Pursues Caliphate in Europe Using Soft Power
16th May 2024
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A prominent Belgian artist and his partner were found stabbed to death on Tuesday. The primary suspect is reportedly a 34-year-old homeless migrant they were sheltering at their home in the northern Brussels district of Molenbeek, understood to have been residing in the country illegally for an unknown amount of time.
Paul Buyse, a 63-year-old artist, and his partner and local teacher Muriel Borré died at an address in Avenue Henri Hollevoet in the north of the Belgian capital on Tuesday in what police are describing as a “domestic incident”.
Think of it as evolution in action.
Posted in Living with Islam: The world's most intolerant—and intolerable—religion | Comments Off on Brussels Couple Stabbed to Death by Illegal Migrant
16th May 2024
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And rightly so.
“Diversity, equity, inclusion? Yeah, of course, they [military colleagues] think it’s a waste of time. Except my boss, I mean, Lisa, the admiral, she doesn’t think it is. She likes it. But secretly, everybody else is like eh,” said Riggs. “You know what’s going to happen when the first missile hits the first side of the first DEG [Guided Missile Escort Ship]? What’s it going to matter? It won’t. Diversity, equity, inclusion. It’ll just be out the window.”
Posted in Your tax dollars at work - and play. | Comments Off on Watch: Senior Navy DEI Chief Admits Wokeness Would Be ‘Out the Window’ If China-Taiwan War Broke Out
16th May 2024
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The Slovak interior minister said Thursday that a “lone wolf” has been charged in the shooting that seriously wounded Prime Minister Robert Fico and prompted soul-searching among leaders in the deeply divided society.
If he had been ‘rightist’, the hand-wringing and pearl-clutching would be never-ending.
Posted in Dystopia Watch | Comments Off on Slovakia: Leftist ‘Lone Wolf’ Charged With Shooting PM Fico
16th May 2024
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The Chinese-owned video app TikTok is a major element of what the Chinese military calls “cognitive warfare,” according to a national security expert.
Ian Oxnevad, senior fellow in national security at the National Association of Scholars, stated in a recent report that TikTok serves as “one of [China’s] foremost cognitive weapons.”
The military defines cognitive warfare as activities to alter the attitudes and behaviors of people and populations for political purposes by degrading rationality and changing perceptions of reality.
Posted in Dystopia Watch | Comments Off on Analyst Sees TikTok’s role in Chinese Cognitive Warfare
16th May 2024
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Democrats are deeply divided over President Joe Biden’s handling of both the war in Gaza and the U.S. campus protests against it, a new Reuters/Ipsos poll found, fraying the coalition that he relied on four years ago to defeat Republican Donald Trump.
Posted in News You Can Use. | Comments Off on Ipsos Poll: War on Hamas Costing Biden Votes ‘Left, Right, and Center’
16th May 2024
Posted in Think about it. | Comments Off on Bonus Thought for the Day
16th May 2024
Posted in Think about it. | Comments Off on Thought for the Day
16th May 2024
OffGuardian.
Between 2008 and 2022, land prices nearly doubled throughout the world and tripled in Central-Eastern Europe. In the UK, an influx of investment from pension funds and private wealth contributed to a doubling of farmland prices from 2010-2015. Land prices in the US agricultural heartlands of Iowa quadrupled between 2002 and 2020.
Agricultural investment funds rose ten-fold between 2005 and 2018 and now regularly include farmland as a stand-alone asset class, with US investors having doubled their stakes in farmland since 2020.
Meanwhile, agricultural commodity traders are speculating on farmland through their own private equity subsidiaries, while new financial derivatives are allowing speculators to accrue land parcels and lease them back to struggling farmers, driving steep and sustained land price inflation.
Posted in Dystopia Watch | Comments Off on Menace on the Menu: The Financialisation of Farmland and the War on Food and Farming
16th May 2024
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With Michigan Attorney General Dana Nessel filing the “climate” lawsuit that campaign supporter Michigan LCV had lobbied her to file against energy companies, and the UM law school faculty putting the shoulder to the wheel as well, GAO recalls the recently unearthed record of just how occupied Michigan’s government is with donor-financed “climate staff”.
Posted in Your tax dollars at work - and play. | Comments Off on Michigan Government: Stacked Top to Bottom with Donor-provided Climate Activist “Staff”
16th May 2024
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There is a time and place to be critical of a political leader if you are a news organization. However, the time to be critical of such a person is most definitely NOT just hours after an assassination attempt in which such a person lies in a hospital in critical condition from multiple bullet wounds. And yet the BBC, with the soul of a ghoul, went ahead on Wednesday and did just that hours after the Prime Minister of Slovakia Robert Fico was shot multiple times.
BBC Prague correspondent Rob Cameron somehow thought the very day of Fico being the gravely wounded victim of an assassination attempt would be a good time to write up this hit piece, “How Robert Fico rose to dominate Slovak politics.”
First came the smear in Cameron’s story followed by a medical description of the one he just smeared just a sentence earlier.
Posted in Axis of Drivel -- Adventures in Narrative Media | Comments Off on BBC Runs Hit Piece on Slovakian Prime Minister Hours After He’s SHOT in Assassination Attempt
16th May 2024
New York Post.
An Australian doctor who was diagnosed with a terminal brain tumor last year is cancer-free thanks to a first-of-its-kind treatment that he helped to develop.
Richard Scolyer, a professor at the University of Sydney, revealed Monday that the incurable stage 4 glioblastoma discovered in his head has not recurred after receiving the heartbreaking diagnosis last June.
“I had brain #MRI scan last Thursday looking for recurrent #glioblastoma (&/or treatment complications). I found out yesterday that there is still no sign of recurrence. I couldn’t be happier!!!!!” the professor shared on X.
Posted in Dystopia Watch | Comments Off on Doctor Richard Scolyer Cancer-Free One Year After Using Own Revolutionary Treatment on Terminal Brain Tumor: ‘I Couldn’t Be Happier!’
16th May 2024
Power Line.
Things are not going well here in America. That is obvious to pretty much everyone who lives here. And yet, our democratic, free market heritage is not yet entirely squandered. That is perhaps most easily seen through the eyes of others, like Britain’s Telegraph, which documents how much better off we Americans are compared with UK residents.
Posted in Dystopia Watch | Comments Off on How Others See Us
16th May 2024
StrategyPage.
Documents collected and interviews conducted by Israeli newspaper Haaretz revealed that senior Hamas leaders had a plan for what they would do if they somehow invaded and conquered Israel. First, Palestinian occupied Israel would be divided up into several cantons, each ruled by a Hamas leader. The plan included details on which Israelis would be killed, expelled, or forced to remain because they were educated Jews and experts in the areas of medicine, engineering, technology, and civilian and military industry.
Fatah, another Palestinian organization founded in 1959 with the help of exiled Palestinian professionals working in the Persian Gulf oil states and elsewhere, eventually became the dominant political force in the West Bank after the Six Day War. In the 1990s Fatah was a major component of the PLO (Palestinian Liberation Organization) when a peace deal was negotiated with Israel. Fatah was supposed to hold elections to select leaders but corruption eventually made the elections meaningless. That was trouble for Fatah, but the Hamas faction in Gaza won the election there and took control as an area no longer ruled by Fatah in the West Bank. Hamas was founded with the help of the Egyptian Moslem Brotherhood. In 2007 Hamas ejected Fatah from Gaza and Israel blockaded Fatah in Gaza, not allowing Palestinians in Gaza to enter Israel without permission.
Posted in Living with Islam: The world's most intolerant—and intolerable—religion | Comments Off on Winning: What Hamas Planned to Do in Israel
16th May 2024
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Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah urged Lebanese authorities to ‘open the sea’ in order to flood Europe with a new wave of migrants.
Nasrallah made the remarks during a televised address at a rally marking the eighth anniversary of the assassination of late Hezbollah Resistance military commander Mustafa Badreddine.
The militant leader called for “a national decision that says: we have opened the sea… whoever wants to leave for Europe, for Cyprus, the sea is in front of you. Take a boat and board it.”
Posted in Living with Islam: The world's most intolerant—and intolerable—religion | Comments Off on Hezbollah Leader Threatens to “Open the Sea” to Flood Europe With Migrants
16th May 2024
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Woke activists today often like to hearken back to nostalgic media from the 1960s; what they consider the golden era or genesis moment of far-left movements in British and US history. These were the days when being a progressive was considered “counter-culture” and cool, with every major rock star and celebrity tapping into youth angst and hippie philosophy. The progressive shift led to considerable social instability in the 1970s.
It is common these days to hear leftists in popular media argue that TV shows like Star Trek or Doctor Who were “always woke” and that they are simply carrying on the tradition. This is simply not true. While many productions in the US and in Europe displayed liberal sensibilities, woke activists are not liberal and do not hold liberal values. They are, rather, a hybrid ideology combining elements of Marxism/communism/fascism, collectivism, moral relativism and narcissism.
One could argue that the woke cult is the natural end state, the unavoidable final evolution of liberal thinking. That may be true, but that’s a debate for another day. The point is, the woke activism of today has very little in common with the political movements of the 1960s. In fact, if you were to go back in time only 15 years ago and tried to explain to a typical Democrat in the US or Labour member in the UK what leftists are trying to get away with in 2024, they would laugh in your face and call you crazy.
Posted in Dystopia Watch | Comments Off on Get Woke, Go Broke: New “Queer” ‘Doctor Who’ Suffers Worst Ratings In Series History
16th May 2024
Newsbusters.
As pertains to the ongoing war in Gaza, CBS News continues to solidify its reputation as the most pro-Hamas among the networks. A brief report on the Biden administration’s request for new military assistance for Israel quickly turned into an opportunity to echo pro-Palestinian points and observe “al-Nakba”, which loosely translates to “Catastrophe Day”
Posted in Axis of Drivel -- Adventures in Narrative Media | Comments Off on HAMAS MEDIA: CBS Evening News Observes ‘Nakba Day’
16th May 2024
Newsbusters.
The Regime Media kicked off their respective evening newscasts by hyping the upcoming presidential debates, which were just agreed to by President Joe Biden and former President Donald Trump. But ABC News, aggressively Biden-servile and an announced debate host, chose to disinform the public by insisting on casting Biden as the one who challenged Trump to a debate, when the record reflects the exact opposite.
Posted in Axis of Drivel -- Adventures in Narrative Media | Comments Off on 2024 Presidential Debate Host ABC News Falsely Casts Biden as Issuing Debate Challenge
16th May 2024
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Good news for Gordon Liddy … Oh, wait, he’s dead.
The Ninth Circuit is famous for being the most reversed-by-the-Supreme-Court Circuit in the country. Just sayin’.
Posted in Your tax dollars at work - and play. | Comments Off on Convicted Non-Violent Felons Can Own Guns, Ninth Circuit Rules
16th May 2024
Washington Post.
Gotta be careful when a season looms.
Posted in Dystopia Watch | Comments Off on Orcas Again Sink Yacht Near Strait of Gibraltar as High-Risk Season Looms
16th May 2024
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Largest city being run into the ground by crooked racist Democrats? Check.
Chief executive a morbidly obese billionaire? Check.
People leaving for Red States? Check.
Posted in Dystopia Watch | Comments Off on Illinois Ranks as ‘Most Normal State’ in U.S. According to Washington Post Data Analysis
15th May 2024
Steve Sailer.
From the New York Times news section, an exercise in pounding home the Democrats’ talking point that the late May 2020 explosion in gun murders was due to the pandemic. The pandemic was the cause. The cause was the pandemic. Pandemic, pandemic, pandemic.
Number of times mentioned by NYT:
Pandemic: 26
George Floyd: 1
Protest: 1
Black Lives Matter: 0
Riot: 0
Defund: 0
Depolice: 0
Racial reckoning: 0
Posted in Dystopia Watch | Comments Off on Repeat After Me
15th May 2024
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The World Professional Association for Transgender Health, or WPATH, is the leading authority in the field of gender medicine. Its guidance is routinely used by top medical associations in the U.S. and abroad, while its standards of care inform insurance companies’ approach to coverage policies.
But behind closed doors, top WPATH doctors discussed, and at times seemed to challenge, the organization’s own published guidelines for sex-change procedures and acknowledged pushing experimental medical interventions that can have devastating and irreversible complications, according to exclusive footage obtained by the Daily Caller News Foundation.
Posted in Dystopia Watch | Comments Off on THE WPATH TAPES: Behind-Scenes Recordings Reveal What Top Gender Doctors Really Think About Sex-Change Procedures
15th May 2024
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U.S. officials have cut off funding to a nonprofit that funneled government money to a laboratory in China located in the same city where the first COVID-19 cases appeared.
Posted in Your tax dollars at work - and play. | Comments Off on US Suspends EcoHealth Funding Over Wuhan Lab Compliance
15th May 2024
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A school district in Riverside County will pay $360,000 to settle a suit by a former high school teacher who was fired after refusing, for what she described as religious reasons, to promise to call transgender students by their chosen pronouns or to keep their gender identity secret from their parents.
The Jurupa Valley Unified School District agreed Tuesday to pay $285,000 to former high school gym teacher Jessica Tapia and $75,000 to her lawyers at Alliance Defending Freedom, a conservative religious nonprofit. The settlement said it was not an admission of wrongdoing by district officials, but Tapia’s lawyers proclaimed a victory for religious rights.
Posted in Your tax dollars at work - and play. | Comments Off on California District Agrees to Pay $360K to Teacher Who Refused to Use Students’ Preferred Pronouns
15th May 2024
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Former federal prosecutor Robert Costello testified Wednesday before Congress that disgraced lawyer Michael Cohen—the star witness in Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg’s case against former President Donald Trump—told him he had “nothing truthful” implicating Trump in a crime.
Costello, who advised Cohen when he became the subject of an investigation by federal prosecutors in the Southern District of New York, told the House Judiciary Select Subcommittee on the Weaponization of the Federal Government that Cohen is now on a “revenge tour” against Trump and lacks credibility. His testimony challenges claims Cohen made on the witness stand during Trump’s Manhattan trial.
Posted in Democrats: Party of Moochers and Looters | Comments Off on Veteran Prosecutor Testifies Michael Cohen Admitted He Had ‘Nothing Truthful’ Implicating Trump
15th May 2024
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Two legal challenges were filed over the new emissions rules, Nebraska Attorney General Hilgers said in a statement on May 13.
They include a petition for review filed by a coalition of 24 states in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit which challenges the Biden administration’s new regulation setting stronger greenhouse gas emissions standards for heavy-duty vehicles.
That petition lists the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and its administrator Michael Regan as defendants.
Posted in Your tax dollars at work - and play. | Comments Off on Coalition ff States Sue Biden Admin, California Over Electric Vehicle Mandates
15th May 2024
LifeHacker.
Shoot them with an air gun or a bow, drag them inside, dress them out, bury the entrails in the garden (good compost), section the carcass, throw the parts in the freezer, don’t tell anyone.
Eventually the deer will learn to avoid your yard. Problem solved. Good eating along the way.
Posted in Dystopia Watch | Comments Off on How to Keep Deer and Other Animals from Destroying Your Yard (Without Destroying Your Yard)
15th May 2024
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Does it make sense for cities and states to decide which illegal aliens can stay in the country?
No.
Should cities and states be allowed to flout federal immigration law, or any other federal law they don’t agree with?
No.
Are cities and states that have sanctuary policies for illegal aliens harboring and enabling lawlessness?
Yes.
Would Kate Steinle and Laken Riley be alive today if sanctuary city policies didn’t exist?
Yes.
Posted in Democrats: Party of Moochers and Looters | Comments Off on SOCIETAL ROT, Part 3: How Blue Cities’ Flouting of Federal Immigration Laws Has Proved Fatal
15th May 2024
The Register.
Doomed internet cesspits Omegle and Chatroulette should have been warning enough of what happens when a webcam is placed between random strangers, yet the Portal art project linking New York City to Dublin didn’t last a week before being shut down.
Among the examples of “inappropriate behaviour,” as described by Dublin City Council, flaunted before the Portal were derrières, members, raunchy dancing, thrown eggs, drug use, and middle fingers. Nastier still were images of swastikas and the twin towers on 9/11. Thankfully, the giant webcam does not transmit audio.
Most of the unruliness was coming from the Irish side, leading the New York Post to dub it the “portal to hell,” though one US adult content creator thought “the people of Dublin deserved to see my New York homegrown potatoes” as “revenge” for the World Trade Center taunt.
She reportedly went on to make around $10,000 in new OnlyFans subs. The Register cannot confirm whether the potatoes are organic.
My, what a surprise. Aren’t you surprised? I’m sure surprised.
Posted in Dystopia Watch | Comments Off on Dublin Debauchery Derails Portal to NYC in Six Days Flat
15th May 2024
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Betcha he ‘identifies’ as ‘black’….
Posted in Dystopia Watch | Comments Off on Who Is Clifton Williams? NYPD Identifies Suspect in ‘Random’ Attack on Actor Steve Buscemi
15th May 2024
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Two prison guards were killed and three others injured after a group of armed attackers cornered a prison transport van at a toll booth near Rouen in northwestern France on Tuesday, breaking a notorious convict out of custody. A manhunt is now underway for the prisoner.
Mohamed Amra, the convict freed by gunmen in the deadly attack, has a long history of convictions for violent crimes that started when he was only 15, according to judicial sources.
The 30-year-old inmate, reportedly known as “La Mouche” (The Fly), was still on the run Wednesday, a day after heavily armed accomplices killed two prison officers at a toll station and fled the scene with him.
Islam is an international criminal conspiracy, masquerading as a religion, with which no co-existence is possible.
Posted in Living with Islam: The world's most intolerant—and intolerable—religion | Comments Off on International Manhunt Underway After Two Guards Killed in French Prison Transport Break
15th May 2024
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Six migrants charged with attacking New York City police officers in January were offered plea deals on Tuesday, the New York Post reported.
During a court appearance, it was also revealed that one of the migrants had been arrested again while out on bail.
Six young adults identified as asylum-seekers were arrested following the alleged assault of two police officers near Times Square, ABC News reported on Jan. 31.
“We need a blanket!” “How about this fig leaf?”
Posted in Your tax dollars at work - and play. | Comments Off on Migrants in NYPD Attack Offered Plea Deals
15th May 2024
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Car manufacturers are slowing their transition to producing electric vehicles (EVs), because of low customer demand and production problems.
Imagine that.
Posted in Dystopia Watch | Comments Off on European Car Makers Hitting the Brakes on Electric Vehicles
15th May 2024
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Some of this stuff seems a bit dated now, sure, and the video thing sounds a little creepy. But mostly it looks reasonable—couldn’t hurt, right?
Except it did hurt. Students who did the Emotion program ended up smoking more cigarettes and more weed and drinking more alcohol than students who received no program at all. Which is to say: researchers came into schools in Los Angeles and ran a drug prevention program that caused a bunch of seventh-graders to do more drugs
(Best of all, the name of this program was Project SMART.)
What about the kids in the Social program? Basically bupkis. The effects were way stronger in the Emotion program, and in the wrong direction.
Beware of sociologists bearing clipboards.
Posted in Dystopia Watch | Comments Off on How to Get 7th Graders to Smoke
15th May 2024
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Within this feud, Lamar’s diss tracks have leveled two core accusations against Drake. First, Lamar references allegations that Drake may prey upon underaged girls — for example, the 2018 revelation that Drake (then 32) had initiated a close texting relationship with actress Millie Bobby Brown (then 14). Kendrick’s rap calls Drake a “pervert” and “pedophile” who “should be placed on neighborhood watch.”
Despite the seriousness of this sexual allegation, a great deal of public reaction to the feud has focused on Lamar’s second key accusation: that Drake — biracial, Canadian, Jewish, and a former teen soap opera actor who grew up middle-class — is inauthentic as a representation of rap’s essential African-American culture. Lamar’s lyrics thus highlight American society’s ongoing debates about how to define and redress cases of cultural appropriation, caricature and exploitation.
If Drake isn’t Black Enough, then Obama sure isn’t — and I don’t think they want to go there.
Posted in Whose turn is it to be the victim? | Comments Off on The Drake-Kendrick Lamar ‘Great Rap War’ Is a Battlefield of Race, Identity — and Jewishness
15th May 2024
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President Biden is willing to debate former President Donald J. Trump at least twice before the election, and as early as June — but his campaign is rejecting the nonpartisan organization that has managed presidential debates since 1988, according to a letter obtained by The New York Times.
The letter by the Biden campaign lays out for the first time the president’s terms for giving Mr. Trump what he has openly clamored for: a televised confrontation with a successor Mr. Trump has portrayed, and hopes to reveal, as too feeble to hold the job. In a Truth Social post on Wednesday morning, Mr. Trump quickly agreed to the two dates proposed by the Biden campaign, although it was unclear whether he would agree to Mr. Biden’s other terms.
Mr. Biden and his top aides want the debates to start much sooner than the dates proposed by the Commission on Presidential Debates, so voters can see the two candidates side by side well before early voting begins in September. They want the debate to occur inside a TV studio, with microphones that automatically cut off when a speaker’s time limit elapses. And they want it to be just the two candidates and the moderator — without the raucous in-person audiences that Mr. Trump feeds on and without the participation of Robert F. Kennedy Jr. or other independent or third-party candidates.
This would be entertaining. I can’t believe that Biden’s handlers are this stupid.
Posted in You can't make this stuff up. | Comments Off on Biden Offers to Debate Trump, With Terms, Shunning the Debate Commission
15th May 2024
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Since the Stone Age, hunters have brought down big game with spears, atlatls, and bows and arrows. Now, a new study reveals traditional societies around the globe also relied on another deadly but often-overlooked weapon: our legs.
According to a report published today in Nature Human Behaviour, running down big game such as antelope, moose, and even kangaroos was far more widespread than previously recognized. Researchers documented nearly 400 cases of endurance pursuits—a technique in which prey are chased to exhaustion—by Indigenous peoples around the globe between the 16th and 21st centuries. And in some cases, they suggest, it can be more efficient than stealthy stalking.
The findings bolster the idea that humans evolved to be hunting harriers, says Daniel Lieberman, an evolutionary biologist at Harvard University. “Nobody else has come up with any other explanation for why humans evolved to run long distances,” says Lieberman, who adds that he’s impressed with the paper’s “depth of scholarship.”
Posted in Think about it. | Comments Off on Born to Run? Endurance Running May Have Evolved to Help Humans Chase Down Prey
15th May 2024
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What comes after repealing parking mandates? Lots of newly legal homes. Studies from two cities observed that in the years following reform, 60 to 70 percent of new homes would previously have been illegal to build.
The new data add to the heap of evidence that parking mandates—local rules that ban new homes and businesses unless they have a pre-determined number of off-street parking spaces—are a binding constraint on housing construction. While only a few buildings opted out of providing parking entirely, most new homes in the studies ultimately benefited from the increased flexibility.
“It isn’t surprising,” said researcher C. J. Gabbe, who authored one of the studies. According to Gabbe, homebuilders have been saying for a long time that demand for off-street parking was lower than what zoning rules required.
Enter the Texas Doughnut.
Posted in Your tax dollars at work - and play. | Comments Off on Parking Reform Legalized Most of the New Homes in Buffalo and Seattle
15th May 2024
Posted in Your tax dollars at work - and play. | Comments Off on Do We Spend More on Interest Than Defense?
15th May 2024
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In recent weeks, a number of US college campuses have been turned into protest encampments in the name of the Palestinian cause. Activists have occupied buildings and pitched legions of identical tents in campus quads. Protestors at UCLA have built palisades out of plywood and umbrellas in expectation of violent clashes with police and/or counter-protestors; at Columbia, participants have held press conferences, performed interpretive dances, and demanded “humanitarian aid” in the form of DoorDash.
With all of this the protestors have made themselves look ridiculous, and their cause unattractive. When met with police action, they’ve been dragged to squad cars screaming like toddlers. Still, for all their absurdity, it would be an error not to take these events seriously.
No matter how comical and counterproductive their tactics may seem, every Leftist protest or rally is an act of political violence. This brand of political violence presents both an expression of power and an implicit threat to everyone who sees it. Antifa-type demonstrators are visible, angry, and loud, and therefore effective. They tell the average American that they’re in charge – that they are the street-level authority on what political expressions are acceptable, and that one defies them at one’s peril.
Posted in Dystopia Watch | Comments Off on Aesthetic Violence
15th May 2024
Erik Prince.
It is painfully apparent to anyone of sound mind and judgment that there’s something gravely wrong with America’s current military capacity and our ability to project power in the world. The WWII-era fighting force composed of fourteen million GIs with a muscular industrial base backing them up is almost unimaginable today. In the last three years, five different US embassies have been hastily evacuated: Sudan, Afghanistan, Belarus, Ukraine, and Niger. Americans are held hostage in Gaza; commercial shipping traffic is blockaded and our ground and naval forces are shot at daily with impunity. How did America go from winning the Cold War and becoming the sole global superpower in the 90s to the state of disarray that we find ourselves in now?
Posted in Think about it. | Comments Off on Too Big to Win
15th May 2024
ZMan does a deep dive.
A regular feature of the internet age is the emergence of what is called a “new right” that is supposed to supplant the “old right.” This is largely due to the collapse of Buckley-style conservatism over the last twenty years. The assumption is that the failures of mainstream conservatism and its dwindling demographic must lead to its demise and its replacement by a new, more contemporary right. As a result, there have been a lot of hats thrown into the ring from alternative rights.
What may be emerging as the real threat to win the competition is something that has yet to name itself. The recent hit piece on the publisher of Passage Press, the group responsible for rehabilitating Steve Sailer, led to a gathering of online friends and acquaintances in support of the publisher. This is the online character known as Lomez, who has written for Claremont sites and has a big following on Twitter. He is part of a loose network of influencers that could be called the Cosmo Right.
That is the first place to start with understanding this collection of people emerging into a movement of sorts. They are cosmopolitan in the old bourgeois sense of the word, as they often live in or around the trendy cities. Maybe they went to a college that is near a trendy city or they worked at a company in a hipsterville. Maybe they just like to hang out in places like Austin. It is not so much about location when it comes to their cosmopolitanism, but their attitude.
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15th May 2024
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When they were still in arts school in Seattle in the early 1990s, Jesper Myrfors and Sandra Everingham would sometimes look for inspiration by exploring Fort Worden, an abandoned 19th-century military base at the entrance of the Puget Sound. To them, it felt like a dwarven ruin.
One day they found a trap door hidden in the woods near the fort, which opened to reveal a rusty ladder leading to a series of underground bunkers filled with broken doors and graffiti. Myrfors snapped a portrait of Everingham as she stood near the base of the ladder, head limned by sunlight, and then forgot about it.
“Later I was looking for some good lighting reference for hair and I remembered the photo, so I took it out and started painting,” said Myrfors. Before he knew it, he had produced an image called The Fallen, one of the thousands of cards that populate the legendary deck-building game, Magic: The Gathering. That card still gives Myrfors the creeps, 30 years later. “It freaked me out a bit, how easily it was created. Almost as if it created itself.”
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15th May 2024

Welcome to the Heartland.
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15th May 2024
Newsbusters.
A massive effort spearheaded by a censorship-obsessed group financed by leftist billionaire George Soros is looking to incorporate global pressure to push Big Tech platforms to juice their censorship operations before the 2024 U.S. presidential election.
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15th May 2024
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The Florida Keys are a place where deer stand next to children at school-bus stops. They lounge on lawns. They eat snacks right out of people’s hands. So when the deer began acting strangely in the summer of 2016, the people of the Keys noticed. Bucks started swinging their heads erratically, as if trying to shake something loose.
Then wounds opened on their heads—big, gaping wounds that exposed white slabs of bone. Something was eating the deer alive.
That something, lab tests would later confirm, was the New World screwworm, a parasite supposed to have been eradicated from the United States half a century ago. No one in the Keys had ever seen it. If you had asked an old-time Florida rancher though, he might have told you boyhood stories of similarly disfigured and dying cattle. In those days, screwworms found their way into cattle through any opening in the skin: the belly buttons of newborn calves, scratches from barbed wire, even a tick bite. Then they feasted.
Kind of a metaphor for Democrat politicians.
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