Archive for 2019
June 19, 2019
THE 21st CENTURY ISN’T WORKING OUT THE WAY I HAD HOPED: The Sexbot Devolution.
HMM: Study reveals biology of leptin, the hunger hormone. “The researchers discovered that the mechanisms by which reductions in plasma leptin concentrations stimulate food intake are not limited to the brain, as previously thought. In rodents, fasting first activates leptin receptors in the brain, followed by an intermediary step that involves the endocrine system. This system includes the pituitary and adrenal glands, which secrete another hormone, corticosterone, that regulates energy, stress responses, and food intake. The research team learned that this chain of events is required for leptin to stimulate hunger when food is restricted, or when diabetes is poorly controlled and plasma leptin concentrations drop below a critical threshold.”
AT AMAZON, save in Car Care.
RELIGION OF PEACE UPDATE: Feds arrest Syrian refugee accused of plotting Islamic State-inspired terrorist attack on Pittsburgh church.
HOW CAN WE MISS YOU IF YOU WON’T GO AWAY? Good News, America: Obama Doesn’t Plan to Shut Up in 2020.
But will he still be bedeviled by the forces stopping him from being clear?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oFlZ2Vb5Pzo
WHY IS DEMOCRAT-DOMINATED HOLLYWOOD SUCH A CESSPIT OF DEPRAVITY? It Took Jurors Four Hours to Find Accused NXIVM Sex Cult Leader Keith Raniere Guilty.
TO START WITH, DON’T USE BOEING: How To Build Something That Lasts 10,000 Years.
MEDIA AWAKES FROM SLUMBER; WILL RETURN TO NAPPING BY THE FALL OF 2020: Watch CNN suddenly discover that Joe Biden might have a racism problem (video).
As Kyle Smith wrote of Biden in March, “When he became veep, any attack on Biden risked looking like casting aspersions on the man who made him his number two, and the media could not countenance any naysaying about the judgment of the Precious. For the next few months, though, we’re in an amusing interstitial period when the media actually has a reason to attack their fellow Democrats: any hacks out there who think their party can do better than Biden (or Sanders, or Warren, or Harris, or etc.) can rip into their disfavored candidates in order to give an assist to their preferred picks. All of this goes away as soon as the Democratic pick for 2020 becomes evident, but until then we’ll be seeing some actual vigorous reporting.”
Related: De Blasio slams Biden with N-word tweet after he fondly recalls racist senator.
WAIT, ALL THE BEST PEOPLE TOLD ME THAT THE SCIENCE WAS SETTLED: The Slow, Welcome Death of the GMO Panic.
In the United States, the public panic about the dangers of genetically modified foods is fading fast. This is an amazing—and rare—triumph of reason and science over public hysteria and political posturing.
On Monday, for example, the New York Times published an article by Knuvul Sheikh detailing recent advances in genetically modified crops without offering a single word about potential health dangers or environmental concerns. In fact, it seems there’s a rebranding effort on the left to hype GMO foods as a vital response to climate change.
After describing the benefits of growing plants under artificial light conditions, Sheikh writes: “Researchers have also adopted new genetic techniques to optimize flowering times and make plants more resistant to the rigors of a warming planet.” What types of techniques? None other than Crispr-style gene editing: “Unlike older crossbreeding and crop modification techniques, newer tools like Crispr allow scientists to snip out portions of the plant’s own DNA that may make it vulnerable to disease. [Plant geneticist] Dr. [Lee] Hickey and his team are working on adding Crispr machinery directly into barley and sorghum saplings, in order to modify the plants’ genes while simultaneously speed breeding them.”
Scientists are going full Frankenplant and the New York Times thinks it’s just great: “With cheaper, more powerful technology, opportunities are opening up to improve crops around the world.”
Faster, please.
TOTALLY EXPECTED HEADLINES: Willie Nelson says he’s ‘chief tester’ at his marijuana company.
WE HAVE A MAN-HATING MEDIA CULTURE: The Damage of Dad-Shaming. It’s amazing to see that in the NYT, and even more amazing to read this comment: “The constant, endless criticism of boys and men from women is abuse. By the way, guess who voted to prohibit Federal funding of research on domestic abuse of men by women until 2011? Yep, Senator Joe Biden.”
UNEXPECTED HEADLINES: Putin spy girl fears cloning extinct woolly mammoth will spread plague on world.
WOODY GUTHRIE TO JOIN KATE SMITH IN THE MEMORY HOLE? This Land Is Not Your Land: Woke Culture Now Demanding Woody Guthrie Be Canceled Over Folk Music Faux Pas.
In a grueling 3,000-word article for Folklife, Native rights activist Mali Obomsawin calls the song an embarrassment for liberal culture, and admits to being “shaken up like a soda can” every time she hears the lyrics — to the degree that she believes the song itself should either never be played again, or come with a trigger warning about Guthrie’s limited, mid-20th century view of American culture.
“These lyrics shake me up like a soda can every time I hear them. As an activist, folk musician, and songwriter (in Lula Wiles), and recent label-mate of Woody Guthrie on Smithsonian Folkways Recordings,” she says, “my social circles tend to worship Guthrie as the father of all musical protest. But as a Native person, I believe ‘This Land Is Your Land’ falls flat.”
The problem is that Guthrie simply wasn’t woke enough about “this land.” Although one of the founding fathers of protest music, Guthrie somehow missed that the land he was singing about — the United States — was, in fact, land stolen from Native Americans, so it wasn’t really “his land” at all.
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“By critiquing ‘This Land Is Your Land,’ I don’t mean to imply that Guthrie himself promoted conquest, but the song is indicative of American leftists’ role in Native invisibility,” Obomsawin says, “The lyrics as they are embraced today evoke Manifest Destiny and expansionism (‘this land was made for you and me’). When sung as a political act, the gathering or demonstration is infused with anti-Nativism and reinforces the blind spot.”
I eagerly await apologies from Bruce Springsteen and Barack Obama over their rampant anti-Nativism and all-around lack of wokeness.
(Via Ace of Spades.)
SHE’S COMPROMISED, ALL RIGHT: Democrat Establishment Now Sees Elizabeth Warren As ‘Compromise Nominee.’