After all, I could be posting my shexts. And impressive ones they would be. In any case, the house is in an uproar as we start preparing our latest move. Wonder Dog alternates between whining, “SP NOT HERE!” and “WE GO PLACE WITH SNOW???” I’m writing a presentation for work which is guaranteed to piss off everyone. Oh, and sloopy stuck me with Links Duty today.
In other words, situation normal, yet abnormal.
But births are a normal thing, including a saint who swallowed; a decent and accomplished guy who is less famous than his daughter; a guy who should be more famous than Mark Twain; a guy who was the white Mike Tyson; a guy who’s the answer to the classic engineering question of, “What is butter worth to Chebyshev?”; a guy who will not make Old Guy Music, but perhaps should; a guy who was always steady; a piece of shit who did one good thing in his entire career; a guy who was truly the father of glam rock (and should have collected royalties from KISS); a guy who founded a band that had three great albums, then got popular; a pretty decent guitarist from the same era; a piece of shit who didn’t even do one good thing; and a vicious midget with outsized mendaciousness.
Let me wander randomly into some actual links.
Why are we spending even one dollar of tax money on this moondoggle?
“I don’t actually have to touch those people, do I?”
I always love it when everyone is lying, and everyone knows that everyone is lying.
CNBC discovers Pareto’s Law, acts very surprised.
What happens when science meets government and media.
Old Guy Music is a classic from one of the birthday boys and an era when this band was actually interesting.
Pretty sure Peter Green founded Fleetwood Mac. The name was an enticement to help recruit his rhythm section. Their first 4 albums were great.
They were even called “Peter Green’s Fleetwood Mac” at the beginning.
Secondly, since we don’t have good global energy imbalance measurements before this period, there is no justification for the claim, “the magnitude of the increase is unprecedented.” To expect the natural energy flows in the climate system to stay stable to 1 part in 300 over thousands of years has no scientific basis, and is merely a statement of faith. We have no idea whether such changes have occurred in centuries past.,/em>
Don’t let that stop you.
This was the Xest year on record.
How far back do the record go?
This is the first year we’ve kept records.
I have an incredibly strong desire to know more bout what made the high-rise condo collapse last night in Miami. Oh and good morning!
COVID
I was gonna go with
global warmingclimate change.Racism. It’s always racism.
But Trump is the root of all racism.
Mar-a-Lago is in Florida, after all.
And Trump’s spent months in Florida!!1!1!
Connect the dots!!eleventy!!111!!!!!
Fair. Mainstream news will not get me the answer. It’s just that my steel and concrete design manual should not allow for such cascading failures to occur. This means a lot of things had to be wrong with the building and one failure lead to a progressive failure. I lament the loss of life but my desire to know more is insatiable.
Sinkhole? Aren’t they all over FL?
I’ll wait for the inevitable feature on one of the Science Channel engineering failure shows.
In DC, a truck was the cause.
It was most likely the foundation.
The real question is why nobody drew attention to it or ignored the settling issues before the collapse, because they had to be glaring.
Methinks there may be some questions about the original foundation inspection as well.
It’s Ron DeSantis’ fault, undoubtedly.
It was made by woke chicks?
I remember the FIU pedestrian bridge collapse. Nah, this condo was built in 1981.
^^^THIS^^^
It was made by people that came up through a system that promoted people based on characteristics that had absolutely nothing to do with actually showing capability. This is what we are heading towards. As we remove the system that rewarded those that were capable and knew what the fuck they were doing, to protect our mediocratic credentialed elite hereditary aristocratic class of imbeciles and their even dumber offspring’s grip on power & wealth, we will have more and more people that will be in charge of things with life & death consequences that will result in catastrophe. And you know damned well that they will never correctly diagnose why because the agenda is more important than the body count.
The powerful will live in the buildings designed and built by the few capable, while the rest of us will be left to navigate the cities depicted in the movie Ideocracy.
“a system that promoted people based on characteristics that had absolutely nothing to do with actually showing capability.”
Been that way since the 1950’s
Five bucks says the inspectors were paid off to ignore foundation issues at the very beginning of the project. Yet another example of how we would all die without government.
Beachfront condo building, rich old people…my money’s on unpermitted renovations inside one of the units, that weakened a load-bearing wall.
I’m looking the photos and it appears that a lot of the rebar just slipped right out of the concrete and is clean. That indicates poor bonding.
Florida has notoriously soft concrete because of the high limestone content. So I’m leaning towards a shit mix (cheapest supplier) that was poured on hot days and started setting up too early. Probably really soft and voided. It wouldn’t be the first time.
https://www.aljazeera.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/06/Miami.jpg?resize=1200,630
One of those Israeli drones was using Apple maps?
John McAfee’s records?
Delusion of the Fury is a very fine Partch work.
As noted in one of her articles on tuning and temperament, Wendy Carlos notes that the “mistake” Partch made was in his primary focus on percussive instruments. Sustained tones provide greater opportunities to hear the tonal impact of the various ‘pure’ temperaments.
Still, there’s some lovely stuff there.
“It always ends well when government decides it wants get deeply involved in the economy and technology. Intersectional!”
The fascists won. We have government that colludes with the industries they like to pick life’s winners and losers, making some of life’s biggest fucking stupid people, winners, while punishing the people that do good things…
If nothing else does, events of recent years should provide ample evidence to even the most wilfully blind that fascism is not necessarily related to the right–it is more at home with the left, and shares more with socialism than with capitalism.
One of the left’s greatest victories was to label fascism right-wing so they could create a bogyman that would allow the to strawman the evil nature and body count of marxism.
Will Harris use the terrible power of he cackle to turn back the tide of immigrants?
Her personality alone should be enough to send them scattering. Hopefully she won’t have to break out the Commie-La Cackle.
Mount speakers along the border blaring the cackle 24/7.
Dude! Geneva Convention!
I don’t see them wearing uniforms…
?
I have been reliably informed that her delay in going to the epicenter of the crisis which she has supposedly been assigned to “manage” is a nothingburger. You see, she visited the border once when she was Attorney General of California.
If you had asked me in 2008 I would have said of course we should return to the moon. But knowing what I know now about NASA, about government, no. No there’s little to no value in trying any 21st century reprise of Apollo. Maybe I’m just jealous or jaded. I used to be easy to inspire.
It’s also stupidly wasteful to do old fashioned moonshots. Clark had it right in “2001” – build a real orbital space station, and from there (preferably with a space elevator) assemble space craft to go elsewhere in the solar system.
I’ve read that the initial research to mine asteroids revealed that a moon base was necessary for next steps, as the cost of launching from Earth’s gravity was too high. The private sector players backed off until others (most likely Uncle Sam) figured out the moon’s colonization.
In that context, it makes sense to me to have the public money do the most wasteful spending. I don’t have to cheer though.
Word salad to go with your coffee
Average life expectancy in the United States plummeted in 2020, widening the life expectancy gap between the U.S. and other high-income countries. The decline was particularly sharp among Hispanic and Black Americans, a new study found.
Health experts anticipated life expectancy would drop during the pandemic, but how much it did came as a surprise.
“I naively thought the pandemic would not make a big difference in the gap because my thinking was that it’s a global pandemic, so every country is going to take a hit,” said Steven Woolf, director emeritus of the Center on Society and Health at Virginia Commonwealth University, who led the new study. “What I didn’t anticipate was how badly the U.S. would handle the pandemic.”
——-
Although life expectancy is expected to increase in 2021, the pandemic will have lasting financial, mental and physical health consequences that will ripple far beyond 2020. Especially last spring, people were delaying screenings or emergency care out of fear of being exposed to Covid-19. For others, medical care was delayed. These consequences have the power to shorten Americans’ lifespans in the coming decades, Woolf and his colleagues noted.
——-
Everyday stressors in American life tend to eclipse those of other countries, contributing to chronic disease and mortality, Braveman said.
“Things like affording child care are a major source of stress for people even in the middle class, and lack of good public transportation means people are sometimes commuting hours to work,” Braveman said.
Social determinants of health rooted in inequity — including poverty, where a person lives, to which types of food they have access and their education — were also hugely important factors in a person’s health, especially among nonwhite Americans.
“Those tendencies in the U.S. that we outlined in 2013 were on full display during the pandemic, and the systemic issues that cause them are still in place,” Woolf said.
——-
“Vaccine hesitancy underpinned by racism and mistrust in the health care system hasn’t gone away even though these other protective factors like mask mandates have,” she said.
To make lasting changes and to close the racial gap in health outcomes, Creary said the nation needs to invest in long-term trust, and that starts with anti-racist medical training for physicians.
“If I have a disease that a doctor doesn’t understand, my life is threatened,” she said. “If I am a Black or brown person and you don’t have anti-racist training, my life is threatened in the same way.”
Blah blah blah racism is killing the poor folks.
SCIENCE!
“If I have a disease that a doctor doesn’t understand, my life is threatened,” she said. “If I am a Black or brown person and you don’t have anti-racist training, my life is threatened in the same way.”
So, he’s saying POCs are biologically different from wypipo? Seems pretty racist to me.
Involuntary anti-racist training is a good way to make new racists.
If people keep telling you that you are a racist, you may start to agree. You no longer have to worry that if you act racist somebody will call you a racist.
I forget who said it, but somebody made the point that if you keep telling someone they’re the bad guy, eventually they will just go “fine, I’m the bad guy” and act accordingly.
Also, if someone is telling you that you are racist, that you were born that way, and that there is nothing you can do to change that, you may decide to say “fuck it” and not even try.
Any time I get asked if I understand CRT I tell them sure I do: it is an ideology that says based on your skin color you are either a fucking stupid loser that can’t ever get a break cause life is rigged against you, or a horrible and evil asshole that can never be anything but an evil asshole…..
Then I ask how this shit helps ever solve anything other than help the mediocratic machine in charge divide and conquer the uppity serfs..
What an asshole.
There are certainly medical considerations between races. The most obvious in the case of COVID are vitamin D levels and the general lack of it among urban blacks because it takes more sun exposure for them to generate their own compared to whites and the fat that they’re inside so much.
All the public health experts failed miserably on this count by encouraging people to stay in their homes and avoid the outdoors.
Sickle cell anemia, (((Tay-sachs)))…
(er, -Sachs)
Fuck off, commie.
Speaking of commies I hear Buffalo elected a WoC socialist mayor*! You must be so proud of your old stomping grounds.
*technically, she has to win the general election, not just the D primary, but you know…
Yeah, I had a chuckle at that.
Perfect example of the machine working as designed. Nobody votes in these things, so only the most radical voters show up.
And of course the D is a lock for the general because Team.
It makes me wonder if open primaries might break the machine? I dunno. The Dems will never allow it for obvious reasons.
Yeah, they gave out the raw vote totals for the Albany primary, and like 6000 people voted.
Or maybe, just maybe, it was the heavy-handed government mandates like masking that caused people to not want to comply any more than they had to.
Wha??
Maybe some of us already had it in November of 2019. Knocked poor Judi out for a few days and I got the sniffles. Vaccine at gun-point? Do your worst.
POC’s have the most vaccine hesitancy but it’s only bad when white people are hesitant.
White people are hesitant because they are racists. POCs are hesitant because the vaccine is racist.
You know what’s more important than anti racism training? How about medical illustrations using black people? If all the photos in textbooks use white people it can be hard to recognize an issue on black skin. That is an honest to God example of systemic racism hurting black people and potentially killing them, but anti racism training won’t fix it. Providing ways for doctors to recognize symptoms and issues will. There’s actually a project doing just that, started by a black medical student. https://thetab.com/uk/2020/07/14/medical-student-creates-handbook-to-show-symptoms-on-darker-skin-166352
“What I didn’t anticipate was how badly the U.S. would handle the pandemic.”
Meaning what, exactly? We should have been more like Australia?
He’s right, but not the way he thinks. The government’s unjustified restrictions and shutdowns fucked the nation in the ass over a disease with a 99.9% survival rate.
I bet fewer people would have died if the government had done absolutely nothing.
Not shoved infected patients into nursing homes, not banned HCL, not pushed the worthless masks, or inflicted any lockdown nonsense on people.
Psssst, it wasn’t about minimizing deaths…pass it on.
Remember that when this thing was finally figured out in it’s early stages, before it became politicized and a great way to finally give the people that needed Trump to be gone a way to do it, everyone in the know understood this was a virus created in the Chinese military’s experimental lab in Wuhan, using gain of function research the US government and other big corporate entities (Google, for one) provided money for – through third party entities to avoid the laws prohibiting this shit in the US – and because they all knew China was conducting bioweapon research, that this thing could be a real life run of “The Stand”. The lockdowns, world wide, was because every intel agency told their government this thing is man made, likely a bio weapon we have few, if any, details about, and we are going to more likely than not – based on how they saw China deal with it at home – watch bodies drop like fucking crazy. They didn’t realize the CCP didn’t have the details themselves, but they did see that the CCP, once it realized the virus had gotten out, decided not to limit the impact to China and did its best to spread it to the globe.
A month into this shit they got enough information to know this thing was lethal, but not as lethal as predicted, and then the whole shitshow was hijacked by the people that fortified the election, because the globalists movement needed Trump gone. That’s why we got fucked real bad, and the people that did this are going to try hard to hide these details from people (hence the censorship around all of this shit), but ultimately fail, because they are just too mendacious and stupid to even wipe their own ass clean properly.
This is a pretty good newsletter, where do I subscribe?
This is what Dong Jingwei just shared with the DIA as the FBI & CIA, both entities he avoided doing his defection to because they are completely initiated and have a leadership that is completely compromised and controlled by the Chinese secret services. I hear the US government (a.k.a. Biden admin) has told the DIA to hand over the guy to the intel cabal China owns so they can return him to China. Apparently this guy has such a large trove of damaging information about China’s shenanigans, but more importantly, has information that reflects real negatively on the people that fortified the last election and how they handle things right now, making their number one enemy -Trump – look good or something, so he can’t be allowed to stay or talk…
Dude.
DUDER
Or “El Duderino,” if you’re not into the whole brevity thing.
MOAR TRAINS!
Huh, meant as a reply to Brooks.
You Brooksed your reply.
Bike lanes will solve all our problems.
I’m thinking it will be dump trucks.
Old Man music just made my day. Thanks! Love that tune.
Are you slagging on John McVie, old man? Because I’m already pissed (in UK and US terms), and I won’t put up with that.
But yeah, Peter Green’s FM was a great band.
McVie was a modest talent. At best. And bringing in Christine pretty much ended any chance of them doing anything beyond anodyne pop.
“Each bill is an essential part of a bipartisan plan to level the playing field for innovators, entrepreneurs and startups and to bring the benefits of increased innovation and choice to American consumers,” Nadler, a New York Democrat, said in his opening statement.
And if you believe that…
Silly me i though the point of innovation was not a level playing field but an advantage
Good morning, Old Man!
Our dogs seem pretty concerned about all the unusual activity here, too. I hope Wonder Dog likes his new home!
So the cop is going to the border. It is amazing to me how Trump can still cause so much chaos among these people. Sad, really.
Old Guy Music is indeed a classic. The audience shot at the end was hilarious.
I hope all of you have a fantastic day!
He wasn’t a Cuomo. I’ll take tapping the breaks on New York’s slide into irrelevance as a “win”.
#FreeBritney
*Insert “leave Britney alone!” video.
We’ll see. The Squad-approved socialist won’t win, so there is that.
Are we sure? They’ve been saying it will take weeks to get a final result. Plenty of time to do the necessary calculations.
So Double-barrel Joe is now threatening the population with warplanes and nukes. And he mumble-mouthed the Jefferson quote that the left seems to be pushing now for some reason. Tell me, Joe, why is the government afraid of my 1950s technology rifle if it has warplanes and nukes? And 2a doesn’t mean I can own a cannon? The private militias and privateers in the American Revolution are all very confused by such a statement as they look at their weapons stores and private warships. In fact, there is an entire constitutional provision allowing the government to contract private actors to commit literal piracy on behalf of the government, which was adopted from the Continental Congress’s use of such measures. Have you read the Constitution, Joe?
As another comment on his asinine remarks, it was actual painful to watch. They *admin should know that the dude literally cannot speak without a teleprompter.
81 million votes. *eyeroll*
Take out the 10 or so million fraudulent votes and that’s still alot of stupid we’re surrounded by.
The thing that annoyed me the most about his mumbly Jefferson routine was that he seemed unable to say the word tyrant. The patriot blood means nothing if we aren’t also spilling tyrant blood. What a joke.
The news item here is that we have a sitting US president (FICUS) that has actually said that the US government is willing to use its military to disarm the fucking people it wants to treat as serfs…
Think hard about that…
I guess it’s unsurprising to us who have been playing the role of frog sitting in a pot.
Yeah, but I saw many people on the other side smile and point out that’s why owning firearms is a thing of the past and completely ignore that a president just told them he is willing to nuke them…
That level of team cognitive dissonance tells me we better all start learning Mandarin or Cantonese, cause that’s the end game we are heading for: serfs of China.
Don’t bother with Cantonese under that scenario. China has been putting pressure on it since the handover of HK in the 1997.
The libs in my circle are always surprised when I point out the history of privateering in our country. The Dem’s aren’t against a Letters of Marque system entirely; they just issue them to TMITE who use the weapons of propaganda.
“Being an actor’s no different than being a rugby player or a construction worker, save for the fact that my tools are the mechanisms that trigger human emotion.”
–Kirk Lazarus, Tropic Thunder
Whadda you mean, “You People?”
What do YOU mean, “You people?”
I stay in character until the DVD commentary is done.
At least the masks are off.
Eh. Bitches make threats.
Worst goddamn vacation in recent memory. 38 degrees with a real feel of 42. Before i said to myself not to overdo it on the beer but i am averaging 6 a day in this heat. Plus a couple of glasses of white wine on some days.
Hot weather = gin & tonic or mojitos.
I’m not a hot weather aficionado either.
Gah! Supposed to get up to 40 Celcius up here over the weekend. We’re lucky to hit a day or two over 30.
Pimm’s cups are great in the summer.
38 Rankine is pretty warm, if you’re a cold blooded vampire
Don’t vampires lay out in the heat to warm up like lizards do, only not in direct sunlight, cause that causes them to combust?
A vampire, being undead, can survive at any temperature down to absolute zero. So they should be relatively comfortable there. 38 R should be positively balmy. I just don’t get why they’re not terribly uncomfortable at temperatures that are normal for humans.
The blood would burn their lips?
Context is key
America’s top military officer on Wednesday defended teaching “critical race theory” to US Army cadets at West Point — and said it’s important for those in uniform to understand “white rage.”
During a budget hearing held by the House Armed Services Committee, Army Gen. Mark Milley, chairman of the Pentagon’s Joint Chiefs of Staff, said that “on the issue of critical race theory, etc., a lot of us have to get much smarter on whatever the theory is.”
“I do think it’s important, actually, for those of us in uniform, to be open-minded and be widely read, and the United States Military Academy is a university, and it is important that we train and we understand,” Milley said.
“And I want to understand white rage, and I’m white, and I want to understand it.”
——-
“I’ve read Mao Zedong, I’ve read, I’ve read Karl Marx, I’ve read Lenin, that doesn’t make me a communist,” he said.
“So what is wrong with understanding, having some situational understanding about the country for which we are here to defend?”
White rage? WTF?
Are we proceeding from a “know your enemy” starting point, as with the Cold War examination of Soviet politics and economics, or are we teaching West Pointers to to despise their country and themselves? It makes a difference.
Sounds like he’s accepting the framework of the concept as having validity as his starting point. Das ist nicht gut.
If we could just get these people to admit that they just plain don’t like white people maybe we could move on from this sooner rather than later.
Absolutely not, and that mendacious twat knows it.
CWAA
“White rage” is apparently being a human with less melanin than the rest and lashing out by minding your own fucking business, or something. What a fucking divisive turd.
I’m pretty sure “white rage” means objecting to being denigrated and marginalized based solely on your lack of melanin.
If you object to being called a racist, that proves you’re a racist, you racist!
But I love my kitteh and he ain’t WHITE…
Do you acknowledge his superiority over you? As a cat, I mean, not because he’s non-white.
All grey cats are grey in the dark.
When I read Marx/Engels diatribe, Mao, and other marxist butchers, it was not to take on their ideas/ideals, but to understand the enemy and how evil it was. Similarly, when I read dystopian novels like “1984”, “Brave New World”, “Fahrenheit 541”, and so on, it was also to become warned of the evils of totalitarian government, and not as “How to” manuals. This political appointed leftist fucking hack destroying our military from within is not making the troops read this shit to learn what not to do, but because he wants them to accept and want this evil shit.
I just hope that I’m old and frail enough to not witness this come to fruition. My parents died relatively young, quite suddenly. Mayhaps I’ll luck into that.
This plays out in the next decade Festus. I too wonder if I want to go through this, and then I remember that I am not going to go down without a fight, so that makes me shrug and move on.
That’s quite a motivating speech. The only one I ever got from a general was telling me how fun war can be. Sheesh, to think I could’ve been called a racist instead. So disappointed 🙁
“When we shoot at them, everybody dies! When they shoot at us they always miss!”
No poor bastard ever won a war by dying for his country, he won the war by making the other poor dumb bastard
die for his countryfeel guilty for being born the wrong color?and said it’s important for those in uniform to understand “white rage.”
I though it was important for those in uniform to have a certain level of their individuality removed so they can function as a cohesive fighting force in order to kill those in uniform that are enemies of our country. Silly me. I’m sure sergeant micro-aggression will do a wonderful job of teaching soldiers to use there weapons to commit macro-aggressions against the enemy.
I do think it’s important, actually, for those of us in uniform, to be open-minded and be widely read
Sure, but save the commie literature to explore as an intellectual exercise on your own time. Meanwhile, American values should be driven into the troops.
American values caused the military to have to do a stand down and a troop political ideology examination. The US military will soon have its own Zampolit.
Soon? It’s already there. Besides the overt political officers in DEI billets, this is pervasive (not 100% obviously) in the officer corps.
Being seen drinking the Kool-Aid (and making others drink it) is absolutely necessary for ones career.
DEI billets?
I asked google–
Did you mean:
DIY bullets
Yes… Yes, I did.
“I’ve read Mao Zedong, I’ve read, I’ve read Karl Marx, I’ve read Lenin, that doesn’t make me a communist,” he said.
I find it hard to believe you ever actually read any of them, except maybe skimming, and even then you probably only did it to impress a superior or complete a class. You’re not a communist, but that has nothing to do with what you read, and everything to do with the fact that being a communist won’t get you more money or power right now.
Goddammit Old Man! If I peruse the links I’ll read nothing else for a day. (goes to the corner and plays with spinner)
Is no one going to mention how confusing and out of it Biden was?
“If you think you need to have weapons to take on the government, you need F-15s and maybe some nuclear weapons”
So you’re saying we need to allow the people to buy nukes and F-15s? I’m not sure if my wife would appreciate me bringing one of those home.
The scripted propaganda that is the news cuts right over to a leftist to agree. Everyone watching the news at home is still thinking “Holy shit, ‘the President’ is senile.”
Tel it to the Viet Cong, asshole.
Politicians neutered the military in their actions over-there, I do not think they will extend the same kindness to us here if it came down to it.
Kindness won’t be the problem here. Cherry-picked stupidity will do it.
I’m sure they’ll find time in between sexual harassment training and anti-racisim struggle sessions to actually learn how to kill people and break stuff.
The Afghans have done pretty well for themselves too.
Just a JV Squad, so to say.
So you’re saying we need to allow the people to buy nukes and F-15s?
Indeed. The Abrams tank in my driveway should be between me and my hoa.
Was this a victory speech on Afghanistan and are we finally done there?
And yet, a bunch of barely-armed yahoos came within an inch of overthrowing the government and installing Donald Trump as Emperor-For-Life.
Can you really hurt yourself from rolling your eyes too hard? I feel like I’m about to find out.
???
What’s really awful about that exchange is that not one of those assholes from the supposed media called out “Mr. President, are you saying you’d use F-15s and nuclear weapons against American citizens?”
It’s really too bad also. Shotgun Joe is just the guy to say something off script like “If they threaten my government, I absolutely would”.
“C’mon man! The… uhm, uhh… the Thing and the… well, uhh, yeah… I guess what I’m saying is…. umm, uhh… when in the course of human…. umm… you know, it’s from that guy… THAT GUY WITH THE WIG!… yeah, don’t hug domestic terrorists… uhh… with nuclear arms. Just… uhh… and Waco… and like wearing some pelt like a wild man. Just uhh, no decorum. Why do you ask?”
The Bee couldn’t have written that better.
Having expectations of the media, other than them being simpering assholes, will just make you miserable.
CCP & globalist psyops….
It was nice when Fleetwood Mac was a good band.
Doctors hate Thot Thursday for this one weird trick!
https://archive.li/V8pG4
Milley’s remarks came just days after US Navy Adm. Michael Gilday, chief of naval operations, was grilled by GOP committee members about sailors being advised to read the 2019 book “How to Be an Antiracist” by Ibram X. Kendi.
“I am not going to sit here and defend cherry-picked quotes from somebody’s book,” he said.
“This is a bigger issue than Kendi’s book. What this is really about is trying to paint the United States military, and the United States Navy, as weak, as woke.”
Gilday added: “We are not weak. We are strong.”
If you have to constantly tell people how strong you are…
Again- are they assigning the book as an example of the sort of deranged nonsense currently in vogue, or are they using it as instructional material?
It’s the military equivalent of putting a “Black Lives Matter” sticker in your shop window.
“I am not going to sit here and defend cherry-picked quotes from somebody’s book,” he said.
Thank you for your service, Mr. Gilday; your commission and appointments are hereby rescinded. Please remove your uniform before you leave the building. Your desk is being cleared out for you.
“We are not weak. We are strong.”
“And please respect my pronouns.”
YOU USED THE WRONG PRONOUNS!
Hand me the football.. I am ordering the SSBMs to launch against your evil ass!
Hungary’s sweeping new anti-pedophilia law prohibits showing pornographic content or depictions of homosexuality or transgenderism to minors under 18. It includes other child protection provisions, like regulations on sexual education, tougher rules against child pornography, and the creation of a new sex offender registry.”
EU leader says it “goes against all the values, the fundamental values of the European Union.”
https://www.lifesitenews.com/news/eu-to-take-legal-action-against-hungarys-anti-pedophilia-bill?utm_source=top_news&utm_campaign=standard
What are the fundamental values of the EU?
The fundimental values of the EU are “Western Civilization Bad, Traditional Values Bad”. You know, like the values of Academia.
Banging kids must be somewhere near the top of the list it looks like.
“minors under 18.”
There are minors over 18?
21 to drink, 26 for medical insurance, so yes.
I told my XX, “You’re not an adult to me until you don’t need a dime from me.” That includes health insurance.
What are the fundamental values of the EU?
Decadence and pedophilia? And Hungary did not kill itself.
Ah, this must be the cause of all the Pride virtual signalling ahead of the Germany-Hungary Euros match.
It’s even stupider and more morally degraded than I expected.
Maybe some of the resident audiophiles can help.
I’m trying to find a set of portable speakers or a small inline amplifier to use while travelling. My main criteria – it has to not be made in china. My secondary criteria – that it is relatively small and not easily damaged by getting jostled around. Third criteria – I have to be able to get the volume of the input above the ambient noise of driving on a busy highway.
I have an ear that can’t tell the difference between an mp3 and higher fidelity audio formats, so anything of middling to decent audio quality will do. My audio source is a walkman whose volume is fit for headphones, but simply can’t get loud enough to overcome the highway at times. I would prefer to stick with 1/8 inch jacks, but do have adapters if the device needs 1/4 inch.
What’s wrong with your car stereo?
no Aux port. Flaky electronics. Can’t pair bluetooth. USB port keeps failing, can’t shell out $600 every time to fix it. I gave up. Besides, pulling the walkman to go for a hike means no effort to sync my place between multiple devices.
Does the radio work? You could get one of those FM transmitters, if any are made in USA.
I have no idea. But I’m doubting they’re made anywhere else.
FM transmitter, but good luck finding any electronics not made in PRC.
All the more reason to look for the exceptions.
A nonChinese manufacture Bluetooth audio product? They’re out there but it’ll require a bit of searching and $$$ most likely.
Not bluetooth.
Wired audio.
Oh, and be careful with the national ownership of the company, a lot of the stuff is Designed in Wherever but Made in China.
What you’re asking for is not audiophile.
/audiophile
I’m guessing they would have to know what to turn their noses up at that’s ‘good enough for the tin-ears’
Made in America Bluetooth and a 3.5.
https://www.klipsch.com/products/groove-portable-bluetooth-speaker#product-specs
Correction might be made in America. Some of their speakers are produced here some aren’t.
That one is designed in the USA and made in china. It was one I turned up during my own research.
Only their higher end products are made in the USA.
And they’re largely crap.
They make great stuff. I don’t think it is made in the US based on this statement, Similar to Apple’s Iphone.
The Klipsch Groove Portable Bluetooth speaker is designed and engineered with pride at our worldwide headquarters in Indianapolis.
“DESIGNED AND ENGINEERED IN INDIANAPOLIS”
I almost guarantee that’s made in PRC. When they don’t specify it’s almost always for a reason but it could be Taiwan or some similar.
99.9% of quality audio gear is made in Shenzhen or someplace within a stone’s throw of it.
Here is one you can build your self. It has great sound and can operate from a walkman or by blue tooth. You will need to spend a few hours making it and another few hours customizing it.
https://www.parts-express.com/Dayton-Audio-MKBoom-Portable-Bluetooth-Speaker-Kit-300-7166
Here’s some stuff.
Thank you. The Schiit looks promising.
Also Ohm and Axiom (for speakers).
The China restriction fucks you on anything decent. I review this stuff for pay, and there’s more great stuff than ever and cheaper than ever because of manufacturing efficiencies there.
UCS on a road trip. with his radio
If you object to being called a racist, that proves you’re a racist, you racist!
Unmasked, I am.
Bernie the cuck
Democratic leaders have begun grappling with ways to placate that constituency. A draft proposal by Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., the Budget Committee chair and a key player in crafting the legislation, includes $120 billion for “SALT” relief over five years, according to a copy obtained by NBC News.
A source familiar with the behind-the-scenes negotiations said one idea under discussion among Democrats is to nix the cap only for those making $400,000 or less, but that nothing has been finalized.
“No SALT, no deal,” Suozzi said, vowing that he and his allies have the votes to block a bill that makes changes to the tax code if it doesn’t also lift the SALT cap.
He called it “a very positive development that Sen. Sanders has included that in his proposal.”
Party of the
millionairesbillionaires!There’s some truth to the notion floated by tankies that Sanders is not that far left. He just sits near the left end of the rather narrow Overton window. Though communism always gets a lighter touch than fascism from the establishment, the reality is it really doesn’t have much traction among our elites. They want cushy sinecures, power without commensurate responsibility, nice houses, and fat pensions for themselves; everything else is just a means to that end. Sanders gets to stick around precisely because he’s willing to play ball. The far left is as much a boogeyman as the far right, trotted out from time to time to remind everyone to stay on the centrist plantation.
Like Michael Moore and Partice Cullors, Bernie is someone that grifts. They all peddle marxism stupidity to a bunch of morons that pay them for this.. There isn’t a more predatory kind of capitalism than the marxism peddling snake oilsmen….
H/T to my pal DEG
Salma Hayek: My breasts keep growing ‘a lot’ — but they’re natural
Yowza.
Que rico!
Such vim and vigor! Good heavens.
Heh that was posted yesterday and I ain’t complaining. Also Slum posted her dance from Dogma and again, not complaining.
I’ll cop to watching the “snake dance” from time to time.
That’s Tarantino’s vampire flick right?
Where is that Dogma clip?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X5dMlWT-O3Q&t=7s h/t Slumbrew
^^^ Possibly NSFW depending on outrage around you of persons in bathing suit type attire
Our government has screwed up so many things and everything now hyper-political that all I can think about is: two infrastructure failures in as many days as Congress begins hammering out the details of their bill(s) for infrastructure just doesn’t quite sit right in my mind.
As always, TMITE
*hands OBE a roll of tin foil*
*Beats a Congresscritter over the head with bespoke roll of foil* Hopefully the ginourmous ones that we used in the restaurant industry so that it will leave a real dent.
We were informed yesterday at work that, beginning at the end of June, all COVID-19 safety protocols that our company has in place will be cancelled, except that if a worker displays symptoms of COVID-19 they will be removed from the workplace and contact tracing will be performed. This includes all masking, social distancing, enhanced sanitation and occupancy limitations. Except for employees in California, where things are still nuts, apparently.
We’re still not required to go back to the office (except for people in manufacturing facilities) until at the earliest, Labor Day. Even then, it’s likely we’ll be doing some sort of hybrid situation with mostly remote work.
I don’t expect to be mask-less forever. Certainly not by Company or Union mandate. Canada Post is woke as fuck and my overlords are milking them for every red cent that they can.
“do”
That’s good news.
My work still has masking for filthy unvaccinated people like myself. I was worried that the masks would then become a visual marker of who hasn’t taken the shot yet, thus making me a target for pressure and ostracism, but about 1/3 of people are still wearing them (either because they haven’t gotten the vax or because they’re so deep in the COVID religion that they are afraid to take it off).
That is how it is here and since they cannot ask status, those who mask or don’t, no one knows (except the idiots that put it on the socials) if they are or not and so far, no one gives a damn.
Overreaction
“This is the Tea Party to the 10th power,” Steve Bannon, Trump’s former adviser who has zeroed in on local school board fights over critical race theory, said in an interview. “This isn’t Q, this is mainstream suburban moms — and a lot of these people aren’t Trump voters.”
Concerns about critical race theory, which examines how race and racism permeates society, have been percolating for months in what activists describe as a sincere grassroots phenomenon led by parents. Critical race theory dates back to the 1970s, but as the country remains in a prolonged conversation about race following George Floyd’s death, a new political battle over how to teach American history has emerged.
It has increasingly become a major focus of the Republican establishment, which has sought to capitalize on the angst even as some officeholders have failed to define what critical race theory is and the threat it poses. (Critical race theory, for example, does not imply white students should feel guilty about past civil rights issues and is not taught in many of the schools where lawmakers are seeking to ban it).
Those dumb old Republicans don’t even know what they’re talking about. We’re just trying to help.
There is no point in pretending black people have not been subjected to institutional abuse and discrimination. That part is obvious to anybody. The problem is that the progressives, as usual, identify a problem and then set about constructing “solutions” which only make things worse.
Turning black people into a permanent dependent class does not make them better off. Casting them as hapless victims of circumstances beyond their control does not make them better off. Telling them to wallow in self pity does not make them better off. Telling them that they should somehow hold themselves apart from the main stream of American culture does not make them better off.
critical race theory, which examines how race and racism permeates society
Flip a coin every morning:
If heads, today critical race theory is a benign philosophy that we should all aspire to and any who oppose it are reactionary knuckle-draggers;
If tails, today critical race theory doesn’t exist except as a boogeyman invented by Republicans and white nationalists (who are one and the same anyway).
The rebranding of CRT will be here within the summer. By next school year, the content will be the same but it will have a different name.
When viewed through that lens, this has been going on since public school began (hello, Horace Mann, John Dewey, etc.). The true accomplishment of university education departments is to teach people with middling IQs that everything they’re doing is novel and “research-oriented” and informed by all the best science and pedagogical practice. The reality is there’s a disused library in the basement of one of the buildings with a thousand books dating back to whenever the school was founded showing that this has all been done before, and in fact gets redone about every 5 years, because the department has the institutional memory of a flea. The normies push back, some content gets amended, as you say it gets rebranded and repackaged, and then we do it all over again in a few years’ time. The long march is slow but, so far, effective.
It’s exactly the same strategy with gun control: One minute, they’ll say we should do X, Y, and Z, then the next minute they’ll lament how crazy the Republicans are for thinking that anyone is even thinking about doing X, Y, and Z.
It is nothing more or less than the far left seizing the moment to impose Marxism on America.
Nobody pushing it believes any of it – it’s just a means to power.
Yup. Same thing happening up here except swap out “Black” for “Indian”. They are calling for the cancellation of Canada Day. How much more milquetoast can you get when your national holiday is called “Canada Day”? It’s not even being given a long weekend this year. We always tacked it on to the closest one that we could find but not this year. Works out for me because I work Sunday to Thursday. I get a long weekend but 35 million people don’t. People take Thursday and have to go back on Friday. Sucks to be them.
Canada doesn’t take midyear off? Probably because the calendar is racist.
Democrats, liberal political analysts, and even celebrities have used the power of the Black press and broadcast news to push back.
Becky Pringle, president of the National Education Association and a friend to the Biden White House, supported a thorough teaching of American history — including the more painful parts — in an NBC interview last week. “We have made many mistakes in this country, but our kids, our kids deserve to learn all of that truth,” she said.
Journalist and author Ta-Nehisi Coates and Hollywood actress and LGBTQ activist Lena Waithe, along with dozens of academics and writers, are also backing efforts to support teaching students about systemic racism. They penned an open letter in The Root in support of Nikole Hannah-Jones, creator of the New York Times Magazine’s 1619 project, which many Republicans see as a key tool for pushing critical race theory.
“These are not the droids you’re looking for.”
the more painful parts … learn all of that truth
Motte
New York Times Magazine’s 1619 project
Bailey
Exactly. It’s a textbook example.
I think we absolutely should teach all the evil in US history. The Cherokee were assimilated in Georgia but when gold was discovered, they were forced out by the government. Those of Japanese ancestry were forced into camps and their property stolen – by the government. Jim Crow laws were established and enforced by the government.
It must just be a coincidence that all your examples were perpetrated by Democrats.
I, too, support a more thorough teaching of American history.
I just suspect my textbook would be very different from that of a bunch of crypto-Marxist grievance hustlers.
Some top Republicans aren’t coy when they talk about the electoral benefits that stoking such a culture war issue could provide.
Democrats, of course, are completely unmotivated by electoral politics. Pure as the driven snow, they are. That whole culture war thing is a myth perpetuated by evil Republican political consultants. Democrats just want you to be a better person.
When Republicans use race to draw electoral districts, they’re gerrymandering; when Democrats use race to draw electoral districts, they’re empowering minority voices.
And I want to understand white rage, and I’m white, and I want to understand it.
To which I’d like to see a Congressman respond with a simple one-word question – “Why?”. Why is it necessary for our military to understand the notion of “white rage” (assuming it actually exists)? Do we think the Chinese Communists are motivated by white rage? Or the Russians? Or the Iranians? As far as I know, even the proponents of the notion posit it as a predominantly American phenomenon. Is that the potential target of the American military you see the need to study up on?
You summed up my feelings exactly. If one thinks it is a topic worth studying, a military academy is exactly the wrong place to study it.
If there is such a thing, sanctioned stupidity is probably at the bottom of it.
a military academy is exactly the wrong place to study it.
Unless, as I suggest, that military is preparing itself for a war against some segment of the American people. And I think, yeah, any chance the Republicans (or anyone else) gets to box them in to admitting as much should be exercised. Let the public know that their government is contemplating a war against them or their family and neighbors. That’s kind of something that the public shouldn’t be kept in the dark about.
???
^^^INTERNETS WINNER OF THE DAY^^^
Well Mr. Smarty-pants, I’ve felt White Rage before so shut up! That replacement clutch that failed after 20 miles? White Rage! The time the outboard motor seized and we had to paddle back? White Rage! Too many clouds in the sky? You guessed it… White Rage!
How much more milquetoast can you get when your national holiday is called “Canada Day”?
Seriously.
It should be Lamentations of the Women Day.
Goodnight, sweet prince.
Goodnight, sweet prince.
John McAfee, dead at 75. Found in Catalan prison cell. (if you don’t know where the link goes.)
Wait! When did this happen!? 🙂
HE GOT EPSTEINED!
The wealthiest 1% of Americans controlled about $41.52 trillion in the first quarter, according to Federal Reserve data released Monday. Yet the bottom 50% of Americans only controlled about $2.62 trillion collectively, which is roughly 16 times less than those in the top 1%.
So?
Secondly, since we don’t have good global energy imbalance measurements before this period, there is no justification for the claim, “the magnitude of the increase is unprecedented.”
I started reading the article and said, “Unprecedented compared to what?” And 2/3rds of the way through, I see this. Excellent.
Adams, a former NYPD captain, emerged in April as the frontrunner in public polling by emphasizing his crime-fighting credentials. His rise coincided with survey results showing that violent crime was the top concern of voters in the nation’s largest city, replacing the COVID-19 pandemic.
Given the city’s strong Democratic tilt, Adams will be the overwhelming favorite to win the general election later this year, should he emerge victorious from the primary. Republicans on Tuesday nominated talk show host Curtis Sliwa — a longtime city fixture known for his trademark red beret and his leadership of the volunteer anti-crime group the Guardian Angels — as their candidate for the November election.
Oh boy.
The problem with these wealth redistributionist asshats is that they believe the reason there is a disparity is that the haves MUST have committed some evil shit to rob the have nots. I have often pointed out to these idiots that while there certainly are some real scumbags amongst the haves, and that I agree with them that an incestous relationship where government and powerful private entities come together to pick winners and losers allows for some real shitty things, you rob banks, not piggy banks to get rich.
If I could magically make everyone wake up tomorrow with the same amount of money in their pocket/bank, not more than a week later, most of the people that were “the haves” will again be on the path to having (with the government types going into hyper criminal overdrive for sure), while all but a real select few of “the have-nots” will be back to complaining they got robbed. See how the $2K credit cards issued to New Orleans Katrina displaced people were used for examples of why things will play out like this…
Here is a hint: impulse control… If you can’t delay gratification, you are NOT going to do well at building & keeping wealth…
Delaying gratification is white supremacy.
Ow! My eye-rolling muscles!
This has actually been said by people claiming America is evil for demanding people not do stupid shit and then deal with the consequences of that stupid shit.
You know, the people that tell you Oprah and Obama are oppressed people, while some honkey homeless guy with sever drug problems and a mental disorder that shits on the streets then sleeps in it is the oppressor, because of their skin color…
You’re paraphrasing Thomas Sowell, who described white privilege as “the idea that a white coal miner in Appalachia, due to his race, has advantages denied to a Harvard-educated black attorney in Manhattan.”
Give that animal a Salmon!
The vast majority of poor people I know are constantly quitting jobs with no notice and blowing half their checks on cigarettes and alcohol. They are taking in every kind of welfare available and constantly bumming money from friends and family until they’re cut off, and they’re still struggling to pay the rent. Any extra money they happen to accumulate will be immediately blown on amenities and luxuries. Money given to these people is just incentivizing and enabling their lazy profligate behavior. It’s morally worse than just giving them nothing.
I wish there were better data on the relationship between poverty and financial/personal decisions. I bet the findings would put a big hole in the narrative that poverty only exists because of the racist, sexist, cruel, capricious hand of capitalism.
“the relationship between poverty and financial/personal decisions” is caused by systemic racism. See predatory lending, food desserts…
Mmm, my favorite kind of desserts. 😉
As my teacher once told me…to remember how to spell deserts and desserts is you want more desserts so it has more es’s.
Can’t you just spell them both as “des’erts?”
They’re definitely much better than a pedant’s just desserts 😉
I wish there were better data on the relationship between poverty and financial/personal decisions.
There is a ton of data out there on that. Barring extremely rare exceptions, poverty is 100% related to financial/personal decisions here in the United States. Even for Act of God natural disasters, there’s a financial decision to take out/not take out insurance for protection. Now the government-supported riots that burnt down family businesses who can’t collect on insurance or the Covid lockdown-related bankruptcies fall into what used to be a rare exception.
The Millionaire Next Door is a really good book about building wealth. The authors found most of the millionaires they interviewed were people like plumbers, regular office workers, etc, just regular people earning less than six figures who made good financial/personal decisions… essentially saving money and living below their means. That’s the magic formula for getting out poverty. Most millionaires aren’t getting big pay checks and those that do usually have their wealth wiped out in the next generation.
^^^^
This.
The two biggest causes of more days than dollars poverty are 1) people working entry level part-time jobs because they’re unwilling to work harder/more; and 2) upper middle class consumption habits on lower middle class income.
You can’t accumulate wealth making $20k a year. You can’t accumulate wealth spending more than you earn.
You’re right, but–
I would push back a little by saying that some people just don’t have enough money to survive. That’s a fact. They are not just broke, but poor, and being poor is expensive.
For those who are not poor but broke, I would say that most of them just have no hope of anything better so there is no point to delaying gratification. Never mind building wealth, they can’t even get ahead a little. Saving for a rainy day is a nebulous, out-of-reach concept, things only people with money actually do.
So what you’re dealing with is people who don’t see the point of delaying gratification because they’re never going to get things they want if they do. Wealth? What’s that?
Saving for a future means you have hope. You have to have hope to delay gratification, and I believe that most people don’t have any.
I would push back a little by saying that some people just don’t have enough money to survive.
True, but this poses the question of what counts as enough money to survive. Many “poor” people spend their money on things that I don’t count as “survival” – expensive clothes, phone and cable plans, hell, phones and TVs, etc. I suspect many “poor” people spend more on these kinds of things than we do. The number of people who don’t have enough money to survive is pretty small, in this country. Especially when you count all the welfare benefits that are available to a skilled player of the system.
They aren’t “poor”, but I know a number of people who live paycheck to paycheck who have much nicer cars than we do, and go on more expensive vacations than we ever would, every year. And I am quite confident that when they hit retirement age, they will be in for a very rude awakening, too late.
My base question is WHY people are unable to delay gratification. What’s going on in their minds? I am saying that for most people, it’s lack of hope or–and I just thought of this–an inability to be foresightful. That can’t be fixed unless there is a sea change in a person’s thinking, even if their circumstances change.
WHY people are unable to delay gratification
Because it’s a discipline and we have a culture (or at least some subcultures) that rejects discipline.
Thomas Sowell looms large here. His international studies on this topic are awesome and, IMO, very enlightening. Culture matters a lot in this.
Mojo,
I had a friend that came from a dirt poor family that busted his ass in school, to learn as much as he could, while working nights, because his family needed his income to survive. Life was hell for this kid for close to a 6 years. He eventually got into the Navy, did real good, and then had them pay for his education. After that he focused everything he did to pay off the debt he accumulated, and lived way below his means for about another 3 or so years, to finally break out. Owns his own business today. He is African American BTW.
I get that he is not the norm, but the thing he did is not lose hope. Losing hope is what makes you make the mistakes. or just cascade mistakes (because we all make mistakes). Life is about setting up a system and sticking to it. And yes, some people get to start way further back than others, which means they have to work a lot harder and longer, to get there. It might not be a consolation, but quite a few people that start way ahead make the same mistakes and, unless mommy (& daddy) are wicked rich or politically connected, then get sent to the back bigtime.
America is about a mobility that you don’t get anywhere else. BTW, my ex was one of those people that had a decent head start in life, because of her parents hard work, that did a lot of dumb things. She had $30K in credit card debt and another $15K in student loan debts when we married, and I forced her to live way below our means to pay that off first. She wanted a new car and a big house. Now that we are divorced I heard she has an eating disorder because of nerves about her finances. For people like her it was not about losing hope, but feeling that she should be able to never compromise what she felt should be her standard of living..
I feel for those that lose hope, but I am not able to distinguish between those that actually do that and those that simply feel the system won’t let them live like they want to so fuck it all.
I feel for those that lose hope, but I am not able to distinguish between those that actually do that and those that simply feel the system won’t let them live like they want to so fuck it all.
It’s all intertwined. Losing hope doesn’t make you a victim. It makes you stubborn. That so many people become defensive about their ass backwards lifestyles when it becomes readily apparent how destructive they are simply shows how their lost hope has anchored them to poor decision making.
How many people out there are completely incapable of understanding personal finance versus how many are willfully ignoring the warning signs because it feels good to lease a new car, buy a big house, work only 20 hours per week, or whatever the particular situation may be? How many people have the humility to get as far as “there’s something not right here, I shouldn’t be struggling so much”? For every hard luck case I’ve heard, there are 50 people who refuse to give in to the smallest amount of reason because they have an acute case of the “I deserve its”.
I’ve also encountered people who believe that “the system” is so unfair that they’ll never get out of poverty, so might as well stop trying and just waste your days working at whatever menial job you can get and playing video games.
I assign partial blame to the Leftist messaging about “upward mobility decreasing” and the wretched unfairness of capitalism.
John McAfee didn’t kill himself
I bid you all a fond adieu. Between flirting with younger women and going nuts over present news, I’m done.
Festud (as autocorrect came up with once), indeed. Sleep well!
Bye Festus!
American made MP5 clone is apparently pretty good:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tRTdG3rmXA0
Totally illegal in NY, and 10lb trigger? WTF?
I’ve never been really impressed with MP5 triggers, nor the HK 21 or 33, which I *think* use the same trigger pack. They have always seemed overly heavy and creepy to me.
I’ve heard good things about PTR products in general. But, like the old military grade HK products they are cloning, the triggers stink. Just factor the trigger-job into the price if it’s important to you. Still a lot cheaper then an HK.
Just factor the trigger-job into the price
As far as I’m concerned, factory triggers that don’t benefit from some work are the exception.
I wish I had bought that PTR91 I was looking at 10 years ago.
I read somewhere that German military specs call for being able to handle a 1.5m drop onto a hard surface, cocked and safety off, without discharging. That’s gonna be tough without a heavy trigger.
Update: The story about the shooting in Arvada, CO was chatted about yesterday on this forum. Someone nailed it…
https://www.thedenverchannel.com/news/local-news/good-samaritan-who-died-in-arvada-shooting-was-shot-by-police-according-to-sources
Tha’s some fine police work there, Lou.
*sigh*
I was really hoping to retain some optimism today…
Yup.
*pops black pill*
Mrs. Dean is finally getting her new rifle (the Tavor bullpup) to the range today. Watching her load mags (stripper clips FTW!) and throw some extra boxes of ammo in her range bag, I was glad I swallowed hard and bought 1,000 rounds of 5.56 even at today’s prices. Also taking her new HK handgun, because why not? Yes, she also put a dent in our 9mm stockpile for that, as well.
I eagerly await her report. This is a no-lose deal for me. If she likes shooting the Tavor, great. If she doesn’t, I’ll flip it to right-handed and use it myself.
This message brought to you in the hopes of restoring some optimism.
Mrs. Dean is heading to the range on her own?
Outstanding. Good for her. And well done to you, for getting her into the Culture without screwing it up like so many other well-meaning SOs.
Sorry about your ammo budget, though.
NPR is also on the case
Beyond the more than 600,000 deaths in the U.S. directly from the coronavirus, other factors play into the decreased longevity, including “disruptions in health care, disruptions in chronic disease management, and behavioral health crisis, where people struggling with addiction disorders or depression might not have gotten the help that they needed,” Woolf said.
The lack of access to care and other pandemic-related disruptions hit some Americans much harder than others. And it’s been well documented that the death rate for Black Americans was twice as high compared with white Americans.
The disparity is reflected in the new longevity estimates. “African Americans saw their life expectancy decrease by 3.3 years and Hispanic Americans saw their life expectancy decrease by 3.9 years,” Woolf noted.
“These are massive numbers,” Woolf said, that reflect the systemic inequalities that long predate the pandemic.
“It is impossible to look at these findings and not see a reflection of the systemic racism in the U.S.,” Lesley Curtis, chair of the Department of Population Health Sciences at Duke University School of Medicine, told NPR.
——-
The study estimates that the decline in life expectancy was .22 years (or about one-fifth of a year) in a group of 16 peer countries (including Austria, Finland, France, Israel, the Netherlands and the United Kingdom) compared with the nearly two-year decline in the United States.
“The U.S. disadvantage in mortality compared with other high income democracies in 2020 is neither new nor sudden,” Barbieri wrote. It appears the pandemic has magnified existing vulnerabilities in U.S. society, she added.
“The range of factors that play into this include income inequality, the social safety net, as well as racial inequality and access to health care,” Duke’s Curtis said.
Amerikkka. What a shithole. If only we could be as enlightened as the EU.
It were systemic racism what kilt them people, not the incompetence and self-aggrandizing showmanship of our elite public health shock troops.
But… we have Obamacare, so how can this be?
the more than 600,000 deaths in the U.S. directly from the coronavirus
“Coronavirus”, “blunt force trauma/drowning/cancer/diabetes/etc.”, “tomayto”, “tomahto”.
Or have we forgotten that at the outset it was stated very clearly and in no uncertain terms that “every death WITH covid will be counted as a death OF covid”?
Beyond the more than 600,000 deaths in the U.S. directly from the coronavirus,
And . . . I’m out. There is zero data of any kind supporting that claim. You only get to anything close to that number by using data that is “died with COVID” or similar. Died “of” COVID numbers are much lower.
It’s really disheartening how many people unquestioningly believe that number. I can list off the reasons that this number should be doubted, but I’m always met with something like “Well sure, there’s always some slight difference in the reported vs. actual numbers, but it’s mostly on point”.
I don’t know if we’ll ever have something like an accurate death toll unless there’s a massive retrospective review of all of the “COVID deaths”. And even then, there’s an information problem with trying to determine the cause of death when someone had emphysema, lung cancer, COPD, and then caught the ‘vid. I’m inclined to say that maybe very elderly people with major lung problems should only count for a fraction of a death, and perhaps those who are already on hospice care shouldn’t be counted at all.
Interesting thing I got out of discussing words with my teen. He said “I don’t like Obama, Bush, Trump, Biden and especially Harris” I tried to get him to show me the reason behind why he doesn’t like any of them but he couldn’t quite articulate any points. He did say that Harris was evil so, that is good. I get the feeling his generation has lost all respect for politicians of old (good thing) but are very willing to go with any snake-oil salesmen that says the right things. Which I told him, that is politics. Our parents didn’t like the previous crop of politicians and fell for the next batch that said the right things.
He has this notion that it is different today. Of course it is son, because what you are seeing has never happened before in human history. You are special. That is about where our conversation broke down anyway.
At least there was that beacon of hope in my hour long struggle fest with him last night.
The story about the shooting in Arvada, CO was chatted about yesterday on this forum. Someone nailed it…
I won’t bother to feign surprise.
Whycome them no want proactive policing?
The U.S. Supreme Court ruled Wednesday that police cannot always enter a home without a warrant when pursuing someone for a minor crime.
The court sent the case back to the lower court to decide if the police violated the rights of a California man by pursuing him into his garage for allegedly playing loud music while driving down a deserted two-lane highway late at night.
Writing for the unanimous court, Justice Elena Kagan said police had no right to enter the man’s home without a warrant for such a trivial offense.
“On many occasions, the officer will have good reason to enter — to prevent imminent harms of violence, destruction of evidence, or escape from the home,” she wrote. “But when the officer has time to get a warrant, he must do so — even though the misdemeanant fled.”
The court’s ruling came in the case of Arthur Lange, who was playing loud music in his car late one night, at one point honking his horn several times. A California highway patrol officer, believing Lange was violating a noise ordinance, followed him, and when the motorist slowed to enter his driveway, the officer put on his flashing lights.
Lange, who later said he didn’t notice the police car, drove into his garage. The officer, in “hot pursuit,” got out of his car and put his foot under the closing garage door sensor to force the door open again. He had no warrant to enter the home, but once inside, he said, he smelled liquor on Lange’s breath and arrested him, not only for the noise violation, but also for driving under the influence.
Intolerable hooliganism cannot go unpunished, just because of some ephemeral gibberish on a scrap of parchment. He reeked of liquor. He might have crashed his car in his own garage.
“…when pursuing someone for a minor crime” When that said crime is ‘loud music’ in a car it should be thrown out all together.
Define “loud”, specifically, what decibel level at how many feet from the source is in excess of the allowable level? And how do you know his music exceeded that (presumably statutory) level? In the absence of any such definitions, this is the very definition of arbitrary and capricious.
“Loud” is situational. I live on a 3 acre lot at the edge of a National Park. When one of my neighbors has a hair band revival party on his patio, the noise level would might be OK in the middle of an urban area or on a 1,000 acre estate, but it is most definitely not OK in a neighborhood like mine, which is typically dead silent at night, and chosen by the residents for that reason.
Specificity is just as much a source of arbitrary and capricious as anything else. The decibel number you put in as the bright line between “no problem” and “shut it down, bub” is as arbitrary and capricious as anything else.
This.
To move to a tangential situation, this is why neighborhood covenants are superior to HOAs. Why neighborhood watch is superior to police patrols.
When you put the onus on the neighbors to report the nuisance, to challenge the violation, etc. the result is much less capricious than when you have somebody tasked with finding nuisances and violations as a matter of job responsibility.
All you need to do is specify level above background at X time of day for the locality. For residential locales with near silence at night, just specify no noise above background past 10:00 PM. It’s not undoable, and it’s better than leaving it up to the total discretion of officer friendly looking for an excuse to fuck with people.
The level you specify is still arbitrary. As is defining the locality.
Its the dirty little secret of rules. They are a constant dance between inherently arbitrary black lines, possibly with exceptions of increasing complexity and vagueness, and undefined/vague rules subject to arbitrary enforcement.
I recall the discussions here about age of consent. Is 18 years old an arbitrary standard which makes perfect sense almost never? You bet. Does it have exceptions, based on the number of years difference between the participants? Many places it does, which may alleviate some injustices by increasing the number of arbitrary bright lines. But I don’t think anyone would support a pre “facts and circumstances” standard based on evaluating the (subjective) mental and physical maturity of each participant, either.
Not surprised at all to hear things like this…
FDA to add warning about possible heart problems to Moderna and Pfizer Lil Rona vaccines
FDA plans to “move rapidly” to add a warning to fact sheets for Pfizer and Moderna’s Covid-19 vaccines about the rare risk of developing inflammatory heart conditions, an agency official said Wednesday.
“Based on the available data, a warning statement in the fact sheets for both health care providers and vaccine recipients and caregivers would be warranted in this situation,” Doran Fink, deputy director of FDA’s vaccines division, said during a CDC advisory committee meeting on Covid vaccines.
A CDC safety panel has determined there is a “likely association” between the Pfizer and Moderna shots, which both use mRNA technology, and cases of myocarditis and pericarditis in vaccine recipients, according to an analysis presented at the meeting Wednesday. Myocarditis is marked by inflammation of the heart muscle, while pericarditis involves inflammation of the membrane surrounding the heart.
In 10 years once they are approved vaccines they will have one of the largest scaled trials to put all the possible side effects on their commercials.
There are no real trials being done on these vaccines. Even the original double-blind studies started less than a year ago were all been unblinded six months in.
It may well be that Trump’s accelerated program for the vaccine was his biggest blunder, in hindsight.
I was referring to the mass vaccination program going on right now as the trials…
Lemme guess… this is tied to the cleaved spike proteins that have that nasty habit of chewing up cardiovascular tissue.
We need more heavy handed government to stop white supremacists which threaten our democracy!
Reading up on local crimes, I learned that hiding a body is a separate felony from murder or conspiracy.
What is it you were doing with that body, Mr. Roat?