Do I need it?
“Jurassic Park 30th Anniversary 4K UHD Edition Is Up for Preorder”
Friday Afternoon Links
About The Author
Riven
[riv-uhn]
noun
1. a gaming, lifting, shooting, intoxicated, ravenous, and happily-taken nerd.
2. often aims to misbehave.
3. and though she be but little, she is fierce.*
And rumor has it that she (and her husband) are also delightful dinner companions. You didn't hear it from me, though.
whaddup doh’
Welcome back to the land of the living.
Now grab a shovel and get to digging.
Happy Friday, everyone!
And a good Friday at that. My middle GD comes tomorrow, promising to bring a cake. Haven’t seen her for close to a year. This past winter was one to shelter in place.
I’ll try to get her to take some stuff but I’m afraid she won’t. She does like Grandma stuff though.
The standard wisdom (at least in my area), was that the best strudel was the one that grandma made.
Indeed. Been a long time coming, this Friday.
Can confirm.
Agreed. These two-week long weeks need to stop.
Thank you for putting this in my head. My brain excels at random ear worms based on similar phrasing.
Dammit! I knew that would have hit me before long.
Happy Friday right back atcha! Summer cold came a few weeks early, 3 days of pure misery, but looks like I’ll be better in time for the weekend (and the smoke is back in Canada where it belongs).
Good tune, although downtown ain’t what it used to be.
Good explainer on the phenomenon that caused the smoke-bomb-a-palooza, with City Journal’s usual restrained style being employed to tell the climate cultists “not so fast”.
Nice – the stationary low pressure over Nova Scotia which blew the smoke down here for a week is quite unusual, especially in summer months, but it happens every now and then. Surprised the author did not mention controlled burns, or the lack thereof, as a contributing factor. Maybe that doesn’t apply in this specific situation.
Sorry about the cold. I hope you are right and it goes away before the weekend.
Clearly it’s the deadly corona-chan. This wouldn’t have happened if you got your weekly booster!
Well, the girlfriend and I are planning on heading out tonight, so I will not be around to kick off and host the standard Zoom.
Therefore, here be the unmoderated one.
Possible fireside chat for me tonight. No humidity, no wind, 54 overnight low, and it’s FRIDAY
OT, but I wanted to give an update. Dad got out the hospital on Wednesday. He had a pacemaker installed and is doing well. His heart ended up being in better shape than the doctors had first thought. Thanks for all the prayers and good thoughts.
No worries. Glad things worked out.
Feel free to kick up your feet, grab a pint, and hang around a bit.
👍
Good to hear
Happy things are working out.
👌
That’s great news, um…
…
…
…whoever you are!! ::glances around self-consciously, skulks away::
Sorry, I never get around to comment on time. I wrote I last week.
Welcome. Under the circumstances I’ll wait on the formal greeting.
Glad to hear Dad is groovy.
Glad to hear that.
Welcome aboard. Somehow I missed your arrival.
FOT, and all that.
This is good news.
Hello, and welcome! (If I haven’t already said it. I don’t remember. I’ve slept.)
Nice ta meet ya.
You know, you can just drop in to the current post. The worst that will happen is you will catch an inside joke for reposting something that has already been posted.
Thanks for mentioning that. I’ve seen others say similar in the past and never understood it. There is always a “live” post (level of activity obviously varies by day/time). Drop into it and chat.
Yeah, I don’t even read dead threads let alone post on them.
This illustrates what economist Mancur Olson called the logic of collective action. Because the benefits are concentrated on one small group and the costs are dispersed on one large group, it’s easier for the small group to organize in favor of the policy.
See: pretty much every single government program in history.
Then a lobbying group starts up to siphon some of the money off in donations.
AARP has grown and grown. Some old people vote, some old people vote that don’t even know they are voting.
That’s ok, we fill the ballots out for them.
“some old people vote that don’t even know they are voting.” But enough about our President.
The insidious part about this is that everyone has their hand in everyone else’s pocket. Nobody wants to be the first to lose their benefit.
And good luck getting the government to cut benefits drastically for everyone at the same time.
https://fee.org/articles/is-building-free-market-cities-an-effective-tool-for-economic-liberty/
Finally, someone speaks to me! 😉
Another reason I think cities are hotbeds of statism is due to the fact that modern urban life has been heavily dependent on local government for quite some time. Governments run water, sewers, garbage, electricity, public transit, schools, muhroads etc. Since modern urbanites are dependent on the state right now why would they support laissez-faire economics?
Also this has been a problem since the 1880s at least and have libertarians found a solution yet? The Mao or Pol Pot solutions have not worked, to be but it mildly.
Hey, everybody, it’s Winston!
He’s here because his mom is “entertaining guests “.
A case in point: I can’t remember off hand who it was, but at the old site there was a self-described “individualist anarchist” city slicker who got dogpiled for supporting the city government on an article about how NYC was fining (with sufficient fines resulting in jail time) homeowners for not shoveling the snow off of the ostensibly public, city-owned sidewalks in front of their ostensibly-private homes.
Niki.
Or was it Nicole?
Can’t remember.
Nikki, I think?
All I remember is that she was the worst.
Lol, I remember the “Nikki is the worst” meme, but had forgotten that was who took up that argument.
It is an odd situation. The government does not repair or shovel or provide liability for accidents on sidewalks, so how can they claim to own them.
It’s your duty shovel it!
It’s my land, no!
Awe, so cute you think you actually own this?
Happy Friday, everyone!
Just back from two hour trip to DMV. It should get happy-ER, anyway.
Do you think they are actually trying to destroy the country?
I mean, it is so painfully obvious that the putative democratic structure is a fiction. Biden clearly isn’t a president in any meaningful way. We have known him for 4 decades as a national figure. None of his current administration is consistent with what we know of him. His background of bribery and the protection of the FBI gives a hint as to the mechanisms at work.
But the repeated “in your face” nature of political prosecutions and the two decades of not even bothering to have a real budget process scream the lack of legitimacy from the rooftops.
They have been screaming “Hitler” and “dictator” and “fascist” at everything that opposes them, including free speech, keeping and bearing arms and self defense.
They are doing their level best to impersonate a 3rd world revolutionary dictatorship.
Soon it won’t be an impersonation.
Yes. The Great Reset. Our elites think we need less people using less resources and that AI and robots will render most of the world population obsolete.
I love how they think that this time the revolution won’t eat its own.
The Soviets had this down to an art and science. It’s not accidental, it’s intended to demoralize, and the longer people go along with it, the more demoralized they become, because they’re participants in the lies. You lose any moral high ground from which to oppose that in which you willfully participated. Every time they make you repeat a falsehood that you know is a falsehood, that they know is a falsehood, that they know you know is a falsehood, and that you know they know is a falsehood, you lose a little slice of your soul. Solzhenitsyn captured both the methods and the psychological trauma of it very well. I’ve linked it a million times because it’s such a great essay for these times, but Live Not By Lies should be mandatory reading.
In the same vein, by Dalrymple:
☝️
The most curious thing is that those who want to humiliate — racist! sexist! transphobe! — are expecting to invoke shame in their target, when they themselves have absolutely no sense of shame. They are terrified of being found non-conformist, but that is exclusion from the body.
“OK, pronoun person, let’s say, hypothetically, I am incapable of shame. What’s your next move?”
And it leaves the door wide open for the epic levels of insanity pouring forth from the left side of the populace.
In other words, the Treasury took out a loan (issued a bond), the Federal Reserve buys the bond from the group that gave the government a loan, and the Federal Reserve gives the treasury back all the interest it has to pay on the loan. This amounts to something like an interest-free loan the government was able to give itself, and it is only possible because of the money creation by the Federal Reserve.
Seems a bit complicated. Or, perfect for a government solution.
How does Fed pay it’s bills of it gives up all the interest income?
They hold a lot of other assets. A lot. Mortgage backed securities and students loans come to mind. They also provide various financing vehicles to banks, which I’m sure pays.
We cut the Fed out. Get rid of the middleman.
I’m certain we can come up with some other grift for them.
FreedomFest 2023 agenda is live.
Report from the NH House. This is about the session where the House passed the budget. The budget, and the session, are a mixed bag.
We learned that Republican attendance still put them in the minority today as compared to the Democrat caucus. With 8 Republican members out, and 4 on the Dem side, it put the numbers around 191D-187R in the morning and hovering around 188D-182R later in the day. It is the reason some nanny state bills passed today.
So let me understand. These clowns went out and campaigned, raised a whole bunch of Other People’s Money, got themselves elected, and then couldn’t be fucked to show up on tight votes? Well done, guys.
Sortof. NH House candidates generally spend their own money on their campaigns. That is slowly changing.
The NH House averages 25 absences on session days. This is above average attendance.
There are vacancies too right now. I thought there were three vacancies (400 total state representatives if there are no vacancies), so I think Judy Aron’s attendance numbers might be off. Even so, still above average attendance.
But yeah, other than the money bit, you’re right.
More on the NH budget
State House watchers were stunned Thursday when the narrowly-divided House of Representatives swiftly and overwhelmingly voted to accept the $15.2 billion state budget sent over by the Senate, an unusual move that prevents a protracted battle and gives both sides political wins to take home to voters.
Just a week ago, the halls of the House were swirling with rumors of a plan by some in the Democratic caucus to blow up the budget, perhaps even force Republican House Speaker Sherm Packard (R-Londonderry) out of his job. House sources told NHJournal it was motivated by Democrats’ desire to disrupt popular Gov. Chris Sununu’s plans to run for president.
But on Monday, Sununu announced he was sitting out the 2024 GOP presidential primary, and on Wednesday, the state Senate voted 24-0 to pass a budget and send it to the House, where all but 19 Democrats present voted to pass it.
Coincidence, or something more?
House Bill 1 passed on a 351-25 vote. House Bill 2 passed on a 326-53 vote. “I believe we kind of just made history,” Packard said after the vote. “This chamber deserves a lot of congratulations.”
NH Education Freedom accounts expanded
In a blow to school choice opponents, the New Hampshire Senate passed HB 367 in a 14-10 party-line vote Wednesday, expanding eligibility for the popular Education Freedom Account (EFA) program.
With Gov. Chris Sununu expected to sign it into law, HB 367 will expand eligibility for the EFA program from families making no more than 300 percent of the federal poverty level to households with income at or below 350 percent of the federal poverty level.
That is a 16.7 percent increase in the EFA income eligibility cap.
“This win is a great step in the right direction toward empowering New Hampshire families with education freedom,” Corey DeAngelis, a national advocate of school choice and executive director of the Educational Freedom Institute, told NHJournal.
https://en.m.wikisource.org/wiki/Earth-Hunger_and_Other_Essays/What_Our_Boys_are_Reading
Interesting reading how puritanical many of the classical liberals were. Why did libertarians go in the opposite direction?
And interesting reading and seeing Sumner (along with Herbert Spencer) realizing that industrial, commercial and urban societies that they supported completely failed to “civilize” the population as they expected them to do.
Rothbard and Rockwell carried on in that tradition, eventually leading to the coining of the term “paleolibertarian,” but the broader libertarian movement, if there is such a thing, embraced the ’60s counter-culture and made libertinism and egalitarianism of primary importance.
“the broader libertarian movement, if there is such a thing, embraced the ’60s counter-culture”
I hadn’t realized the roots of cosmotarianism ran that deep.
Libertarians: trying (and failing) to be the cool kids since 1967.
Rothbard was always chasing the (few) Libertarian ladies when Joey wasn’t around.
Cite? I wouldn’t be surprised if true though.
Also Rothbard was aligned with the Counterculture until he realized they were Commies who weren’t listening to him. And Mises.org still complains about the cops and the drug war.
His writing about the 1960s campus radicals aged like fine wine:
https://mises.org/library/never-dull-moment/html/c/507
He was probably right for the majority of them – the fad-chasing ones Zappa was talking about with their affected political consciousness. Unfortunately, like most of the country, he was too naive to realize there actually were true believers.
One thing I noticed is that the classical liberals didn’t realize how much of their support was a fad and they and assumed their victory was complete and permanent. However once it be became a fad to be a socialist around 1890 or so classical liberalism collapsed pretty quickly. The same mistake was made in 1990s. Remember the Libertarian Moment?
Anyone who thinks their “victory” is complete and permanent is a fool. Hubris clobbered by Nemesis.
Told to me by two he propositioned.
If libertarians were relevant this might be an excuse to cancel him. );
Weasels Ripped My Flesh
https://www.menspulpmags.com/weasels-ripped-my-flesh-from-mans-life-magazine-to-the-mothers-of-invention/
https://www.canada.ca/en/health-canada/news/2023/05/canada-to-become-first-country-in-the-world-to-require-health-warnings-on-individual-cigarettes.html
So after Canada legalized pot they criminalized single-use plastics and handguns, adopted carbon taxes, covid lockdowns, jacked up spending and now this. How do libertarians explain this?
Reefer madness?
The Canadian government isn’t libertarian even if they perform a single act that is in line with increasing personal liberty? That seems to cover it.
The government doesn’t care if you’re stoned, but doesn’t think the little people deserve to live a comfortable life?
Legalizing pot was never about “libertarianism”.
It was about too many of a certain kind of person getting in trouble for smoking it in public.
What would that certain kind be good sir?
Liberal Party voters.
Jazz aficionados.
She was living in a single room with three other individuals.
One of them was male and the other two, well, the other two were females.
God only knows what they were up to in there .
And furthermore, Susan, I wouldn’t be the least bit surprised to learn that all four of them habitually smoked marijuana cigarettes – reefers!
How do libertarians explain this?
Ah, took a few posts, but there’s the old Winston.
Yup. It’s like he has some weird compulsion.
Theory: Winston and The Bro are the same person.
The compulsion just gets expressed differently between the two accounts.
I’ll be honest, even if he’s trolling, I like that he shakes things up a little. Libertarians don’t always have good answers for everything, and even if you have a sacred cow, you should periodically gore it just to make sure it holds up.
It doesn’t bother me and I agree it’s good to have your ideas challenged. But it does come across as monomaniacal.
Do you see?
Happy Friday indeed !
Have a social engagement so no zoom.
See you tamale.
“Social engagement” is a polite way to lay down a subtle brag
Hayek is not that coy. If she was gettin’ some we’d probably be hearing about it.
Indeed, see the overnight links. Rolling home at 03:30 like a boss.
Ya she does.
Yeah, she’s getting laid.
True, true. 👍😘
How much was that Ma Deuce again?
The slope, she is slippery.
“I told you so” isn’t very satisfying in these circumstances.
Big Tech, Mexicans and Urbanization have sure worked out well haven’t they?
Wow. What madness.
What surprises me the most about shit like this is how fast it’s coming. This would have been absolutely unthinkable only what…five years ago? Three?
I mean the whole point of the slippery slope analogy is that things will pick up quickly. I mean remember covid?
Go fuck yourself, Winston.
?
I Wasn’t trying to insult you. I mean it is very hard to predict what will happen and we don’t want to admit that our country is rapidly turning to shit. I’ve been pessimistic myself but I sure as hell didn’t predict Covid.
Apologies. Misread snark in your comment.
And no, the point is that one action will start a chain of unwanted events. Speed is secondarily (if at all) part of the argument.
I suppose you are right. I guess I was more thinking along the lines that once a decaying system starts to collapse it will collapse quickly and utterly.
It’s a purity spiral. As one persons says “I am pure” the next person has to say, “no, I am MORE pure” followed by the third person, ad infinitum.
And it is just going to get worse until the system breaks.
From the horse’s mouth: https://www.project-syndicate.org/commentary/can-democracy-survive-polycrisis-artificial-intelligence-climate-change-ukraine-war-by-george-soros-2023-06
Wow.
Brutal meme is brutal.
I dipped my toe in a Twitter thread(?) about the Trump indictments.
J. F. C. We aren’t just doomed as a society, we deserve to be doomed.
“We” is a pretty wide brush…
Well, when a society fails, it fails everyone, and takes everyone down with it. Perhaps better phrased as “our society is doomed” etc.
It takes a village to swirl down the drain together.
Bravo.
We hereabouts are rare company.
Extremely rare. Maybe even rarer than women with shenisis and men with truly a gash
I try to convince myself that Twitter can’t possibly be representative of the general public. I truly don’t think it is, I’m just not sure the general public is actually any better; just different.
Twitter is primarily composed of people who think their opinions are important.
They’re not.
We are freaks. The actual 1%
Are there really 3.5 million of us?
We’re less than the 1%, I fear.
Well that was inadvisable.
Whatz up party people!?!?!
Greetings, fellow chat room participant.
Is there meeting I wasn’t aware of? Dammit where is my tiki torch!
My BAC
“Do I need it?”
No, no you don’t. I expect the 4K will make the early-gen computer graphics even more apparent.
Unless you’ve got an IMAX sized screen in your house and 20/20 or better vision, the difference from 1080p would be fairly negligible. The analog film it was printed on that played in theaters in 1993 has a higher theoretical resolution by unit conversion. 4k is e-masturbation.
Shhhh you’re giving away the cow for the milk
TFW you are really really really glad you didn’t spout off when you felt like it.
Keeping my mouth shut and my tone measured has saved my ass more times in my life than I can remember. Bravado and “shoulda said” are all well and good until they bite you in the ass.
I get that benefit almost as a passive ability because it takes me so long to formulate my words.
It also means I’m terrible at live debate.
That’s something I live by. Also, keeping it brief.
Since we’re going full doom today.
Ugh.
Fought tooth and nail to keep XY off Insta and TikTok, and he could get around us faster than a ghost of gnats.
oof
Tragic.
But since we’re all libertarian assholes here… get ready for the but…
Nothing on the modern web is all that much different from when I was a tween and teen. Yes, the technology is more ubiquitous, but it’s also more centralized, sanitized and curated. We got broadband in my household (128k DSL, upgraded to 256k a year later when it became available) when I was 11 years old. I was pretty much terminally online by 12 or 13. We had no parental controls on our network. My dad gave me exactly one warning in my entire life about computer viruses – he got substantially more of them than the handful that I did over the years. I certainly saw things on the internet that my parents wouldn’t have been happy about, but I never got groomed or raped. Never sent anybody nude or compromising photos of myself. Never got cyberstalked or kidnapped. Goatse, lemonparty, 2 girls 1 cup, /b/ and mislabeled gore and porn videos on Limewire was about the worst of it. So what was my secret? There were groomers, perverts, cyberstalkers, pedophiles, and malicious actors all over the internet during my formative years. If anything they were more out in the open back then because there was less law enforcement engagement on the internet generally, and people still had the pre-9/11 illusion of anonymity and privacy online. Maybe I was just lucky. Or maybe I was taught some moral, ethical and practical lessons offline that translated to my online activities. Instead of focusing on keeping your kids offline or becoming a digital helicopter parent, teach them some fucking values and give them some practical life advice. Networking protocols and the shitty web platforms that use them are inanimate pieces of hardware and software no different from the IBM mainframes in dusty bank buildings in the 1960s. They’re not responsible for your kids doing incredibly stupid shit and getting themselves into massive trouble. That’s on your kids, which ultimately comes back to you. Give them the benefit of this life changing advice. Take them to church, or sports, or clubs or something in the real fucking world from time to time. When I was 3 years old I knew enough not to talk to strangers at the park. That concept can be pretty easily adapted to the digital realm, too.
Maybe I was just lucky. Or maybe I was taught some moral, ethical and practical lessons offline that translated to my online activities. Instead of focusing on keeping your kids offline or becoming a digital helicopter parent, teach them some fucking values and give them some practical life advice.
just this
The Bee, from the top rope:
https://babylonbee.com/news/trump-names-hunter-biden-as-his-running-mate-so-doj-will-stop-investigating-him
*sensible chuckle*
https://praxeology.net/HS-FC-25.htm
Herbert Spencer thought that soccer was barbaric, along with cricket and rowing. Also he thought the sports section in your local paper was barbaric.
I’m pretty certain he never read the sports section in my local paper.
I bet he didn’t squat or read Glibfit either.
Literally a monster.
Geek who got picked on by the jocks hates the jocks, film at 11.