SO DELICIOUS EVEN A CAVEMAN CAN DO IT: Neanderthals mostly ate meat, study confirms.
Archive for 2019
February 21, 2019
ANALYSIS: TRUE. Liberty is not possible for an unarmed society.
I think it was Kurt Schlichter who said a while back that an armed man is a citizen; a disarmed man is a serf.
That’s Liz Sheld, complete with a flashback to this report from last month:
If you own a Ring doorbell camera system, we’ve got some bad news. The smart home company owned by Amazon, which the internet retail giant shelled out more than $1 billion to acquire, has apparently been violating its customers’ privacy in a pretty shocking way. A new report from The Intercept quotes unnamed sources who confirm that engineers and executives at Ring have “highly privileged access” to live customer camera feeds, utilizing both Ring’s doorbells as well as its in-home cameras.
All that’s apparently required to tap into the live feeds is a customer’s email address. Meaning the company has been so egregiously lax when it comes to security and privacy that even people outside the company could have potentially done this, using merely an email address to begin spying on customers, according to the report.
When I installed a couple outdoor security cameras last year (I’m not about to install some internet-connected door lock or doorbell), I bought gear from Ubiquiti which stores all the camera recordings locally. It’s a more expensive solution than letting someone else store your videos their on servers, but it’s almost infinitely more secure.
SPACE: SpaceX, Boeing design risks threaten new delays for US space program.
Just ahead of the first scheduled un-manned test flight slated for March 2 under NASA’s multibillion-dollar Commercial Crew Program, NASA’s safety advisory panel cited four “key risk items” in its 2018 annual report earlier this month.
For Boeing, they include the capsule’s structural vulnerability when the heat shield is deployed. For SpaceX, the report mentioned the redesign of a SpaceX rocket canister following a 2016 explosion and its “load and go” process of fueling the rocket with the crew already inside the capsule. “Parachute performance” remained an issue for both companies.
“There are serious challenges to the current launch schedules for both SpaceX and Boeing,” the report said.
Two people with direct knowledge of the program told Reuters that the space agency’s concerns go beyond the four items listed, and include a risk ledger that as of early February contained 30 to 35 lingering technical concerns each for SpaceX and Boeing.
Reuters could not verify what all of the nearly three dozen items are. But the sources familiar with the matter said the companies must address “most” of those concerns before flying astronauts and, eventually, tourists to space.
Let’s get this fixed and get to launching.
WHEN INMATES RUN THE ASYLUM: Isn’t the most important question: How did this dimbulb get hired in the first place?
“Yesterday, HuffPost fired a recently hired, Los Angeles-based social media editor after her managers were alerted to the fact that an Instagram account belonging to the new hire was spewing racist rants online. Using a now-deleted Instagram account, Ashley Rose, who was hired earlier this month, targeted a number of people with the sort of racist invective you’d expect to find in the darkest 4chan threads.”
You can read the specific posts here. This garbage isn’t the product of faux-outrage or identity politics: It’s out and out nasty. So how did they hire her, as a social media editor, no less? Unthinking application of white feminism, perhaps?
Forget it, Jake, it’s Huffingtontown.
OUCH: The Obama Presidential Library That Isn’t.
I say “ouch” because believe it or not this is from the New York Times:
The four-building, 19-acre “working center for citizenship,” set to be built in a public park on the South Side of Chicago, will include a 235-foot-high “museum tower,” a two-story event space, an athletic center, a recording studio, a winter garden, even a sledding hill.
But the center, which will cost an estimated $500 million, will also differ from the complexes built by Barack Obama’s predecessors in another way: It won’t actually be a presidential library.
In a break with precedent, there will be no research library on site, and none of Mr. Obama’s official presidential records. Instead, the Obama Foundation will pay to digitize the roughly 30 million pages of unclassified paper records from the administration so they can be made available online.
And the entire complex, including the museum chronicling Mr. Obama’s presidency, will be run by the foundation, a private nonprofit entity, rather than by the National Archives and Records Administration, the federal agency that administers the libraries and museums for all presidents going back to Herbert Hoover.
The plan was revealed, with little fanfare, in May 2017. Few details of the digitization were made public until Tuesday, when the foundation and the archives unexpectedly released a legal agreement outlining procedures for creating what is being billed as “first digital archives for the first digital president,” which they say will democratize access.
But as awareness of the plan has spread, some historians see a threat to future scholarship on the Obama administration.
Call me a cynic, but I’d wager that’s a feature not a bug.
THIS IS CNN: Don Lemon: The worst part about Smollett hoax will be all the conservative pouncing, you know.
“Sean Hannity is going to eat Jussie Smollett’s lunch every single second. Tucker Carlson is going to eat Jussie Smollett’s lunch every single second. The President of the United States is going to eat his lunch.”
As Ed Morrissey writes:
Sorry. Mr. Lemon. The media earned every bit of ridicule and criticism it earned by going all-in on Smollett’s weird claim from the get-go. They earned every bit of criticism for doing the same thing with the Covington Catholic High School kids for the same purpose — to pounce, if you will, all over conservatives, pro-lifers, and anyone who might have a little sympathy for Donald Trump.
At least in some corners of the industry, they haven’t learned a damn thing from either failure. Expect more to come.
“Don Lemon completely gives the game away of why CNN won’t simply own up to this and other failings. Because they are paid to act like opposition. Smollet, Parkland, Covington, list goes on… they believe they are political opposition. Not journalists,” Stephen Miller adds on Twitter.
Back in 20s, H.L. Mencken wrote, “It is the prime function of a really first-rate newspaper to serve as a sort of permanent opposition in politics.” If only old media had gotten that message instead of becoming Democratic Party operatives with bylines.
Flashback: Don Lemon Says He Texts Jussie Smollett Every Day Following Attack.
THIS IS SHOCKING. ALL THE BEST PEOPLE ASSURED ME THAT THOSE FEW OF US WHO WEREN’T KILLED OUTRIGHT BY THE END OF “NET NEUTRALITY” WOULD BE REDUCED TO COMMUNICATING VIA SMOKE SIGNALS: More Americans Have High-Speed Internet Access Than Ever: Preliminary FCC report claims the number of Americans with high-speed connections grew by 20 percent in 2017.
BECAUSE SOCIALISTS: Aid is piling up on Venezuela’s border. Here’s why it’s not getting in.
Guaido has thrown all his weight behind a “humanitarian channel” that would bring tons of much-needed aid from foreign countries into Venezuela. But the plan isn’t just benevolent — it’s also a direct jab at Maduro, who for years has denied that a humanitarian crisis was happening in Venezuela.
“The impact of the humanitarian aid is highly political,” admits Juan Miguel Matheus, an MP for the opposition. “Our first and primary goal is to provide relief for the Venezuelan population, but after that, with this move we want to checkmate Maduro.
“If the aid gets in, Maduro is shown to have lost control of the situation; if it doesn’t get in, we show that Maduro doesn’t care for the suffering of the people,” he says.
Really committed socialists have been using food as a weapon since the beginning. But if you’re opposed to socialism, it’s because you’re an uncaring monster.
THIS TRANSLATION WORKS FOR A LOT OF THINGS:
WELL, HE’S A DEMOCRAT SO THE MEDIA BACKED OFF: Ralph Northam Is Still Governor Of Virginia, And He’s Likely To Remain There.
Related: Justin Fairfax’s accuser speaks out as Virginia Democrats end calls for his impeachment.
Hey, #BelieveAllWomen, unless it might put a Republican in power.
BRUCE BAWER: The New York Times’s Islamic Flimflam Man.
On February 18, in keeping with its apparent goal of remaining America’s most reliable source of pro-Islamic propaganda, the New York Times ran yet another op-ed by Mustafa Akyol, who seems to be replacing Tariq Ramadan (who is currently in jail awaiting trial for raping two women) not only as the Times’s house dissembler on Islam (since 2013, he has held the title of contributing opinion writer) but, more broadly, as the leading personification of “modern Islam” or “moderate Islam” in the West.
Read the whole thing.
COLLUSION: Bob Zimmerman: Even as NASA announces schedule for SpaceX Dragon test flight, anti-American forces at NASA work to block that flight. “Note that these are anonymous sources. Note that their attack, a bunch of unsubstantiated leaks, is directly aimed at discrediting the efforts of both companies. Note also that if they succeed the ultimate and only benefactor will be Russia, since NASA will then be forced to buy more Soyuz flights from them, on a rocket that has recently had a launch failure and in a capsule that someone in Russia actually sabotaged during assembly. The last highlighted phrase, suggesting that NASA is going to use its power to block the ability of these free American companies from privately selling tourist flights on their capsules, is even more egregious. Once again, the only benefactors of this action would be the Russians, who will then be able to grab that tourist business.”
SHARYL ATKISSON ASKS THE RIGHT QUESTIONS ABOUT THE DEEP STATE: The former CBS News reporter is suing the government to find out who ordered the intrusion of her computer and other surveillance that appears to bear some disturbing resemblances to the Russia Collusion Scandal.
Writing for The American Thinker, Atkisson asks some highly pertinent questions:
“Who is behind the move to use government surveillance tools against innocent Americans? Do some of these officials still work inside the government? Were some of them the very same officials now implicated in alleged surveillance abuses during Campaign 2016?”
Prediction: The answers to the first question will provide the answers to the second and third. Given what’s already on the record in both the Atkisson case and the Russia Collusion Scandal, one need not be “conspiracy theorist” to see where this is going.
And yes, there is an appeal for financial support in Atkisson’s post. To understand why, read her explanation for why merely printing a brief for the federal court system costs not $20, not $40, but $4,367.70. Justice is not cheap anymore, friends.
TYLER O’NEIL Lesbian Army Vet Says Transgender Legal Victory Dehumanizes Women. “Women have to keep fighting the rise of trans misogyny.”
IT’S JUST SUCH A TERRIBLY WRITTEN AND EDITED, AGENDA-DRIVEN PAPER THAT IT WAS BOUND TO GET INTO TROUBLE: Covington Catholic High student’s lawyer says lawsuit is ‘message’ for ‘weaponized’ Washington Post.
HIGHER EDUCATION BUBBLE UPDATE: School helps students ‘nurture feminist masculinities’ during ‘Masculinities Month.’ Sounds like a hostile educational environment for male students to me.
WOW! SNOPES FACT CHECKS THE BABYLON BEE. AND YOU THOUGHT I WAS JOKING WHEN I CALLED THE BEE AMERICA’S PAPER OF RECORD. ALSO, HAVE WE REACHED PEAK 2019 YET? I DON’T THINK I CAN TAKE MUCH MORE INSANITY. ONE THING IS THE CRAZY YEARS, ANOTHER THE YEARS WITH UNDERPANTS ON THEIR HEADS: Was ‘Empire’ Actor Jussie Smollett Offered a Job at CNN?
WOW: Thousands Demonstrate in Paris and Across France Against Surging Antisemitism.
The show of solidarity with French Jews in the capital was replicated across the country, with rallies against antisemitism being held in more than 60 cities and towns, including Lyon, Marseille, Toulouse and Strasbourg — the city in eastern France near which only on Tuesday morning dozens of graves in a Jewish cemetery were found defaced with swastikas and antisemitic slogans.
The vandalism at the cemetery came following a week of high-profile antisemitic incidents, including the daubing of a Jewish-owned bakery with the slogan “Juden!” and the abuse hurled at the French-Jewish intellectual Alain Finkielkraut last weekend by protesters affiliated with the populist “yellow vest” movement.
Under the floodlit statue of Marianne, the symbol of the French Republic, the demonstrators who gathered at dusk in Paris held signs declaring “Ça suffit!” (“That’s enough!”), as well as the greeting “Shalom, Salaam, Salut.
I hope this is the start of something larger.
HIGHER EDUCATION BUBBLE UPDATE: Syracuse U: U.S. Constitution is ‘exclusionary’ to some students.
AT AMAZON, Fresh Deals on Top Rated Products.
Plus, Shop Top Gift Ideas.
And, Shop Amazon – Best Selling Products – Updated Every Hour.
Also, browse the Kindle Deals of the Day.