Archive for 2020
June 8, 2020
LET’S GET BACK TO WORK: The W.H.O. Just Gave Us Another Great Reason to End the Coronavirus Lockdowns RIGHT NOW. “Asymptomatic people with the coronavirus are not driving the spread of the virus.”
IT’S AN IDEA THAT’S SO CRAZY, IT JUST MIGHT WORK: To save black children, abolish teachers unions.
FRESH AIR AND SUNSHINE: Office lighting experiment suggests workers sleep longer when exposed to more daylight.
PAST PERFORMANCE IS NO GUARANTEE OF FUTURE RESULTS: Top Obama Official Endorses White Senator Who Wanted To Put Black People ‘Back In Chains.’
I’M EXPECTING AN EARTH-SHATTERING KABOOM: It’s 2020, And Astronomers Have Just Found a New Class of Massive Space Explosions.
WELL, BACK TO MY DAY JOB: Multimillionaire Forrest Fenn’s treasure hidden, worth $1M, found in Rocky Mountains.
THEY WERE RIGHT THE FIRST TIME: Pal Judith Miller knows the workings of The New York Times as well as anyone, and this piece doesn’t use the word “craven”…but it ought to. Money graf:
“While Bennet and A.G. Sulzberger, the paper’s publisher, initially defended the decision in the name of exposing readers to “counter-arguments, particularly those made by people in a position to set policy,” both soon caved to the fury of the paper’s own staff and readers.”
I’M SURE THOSE NUMBERS WILL DECLINE RAPIDLY, ONCE CHICAGO DEFUNDS ITS POLICE DEPARTMENT: 35 Shot, 5 Fatally, over Weekend in Gun-Controlled Chicago.
MY LATEST FOR THE PJMEDIA MOTHERSHIP: Disgusting: Hannah-Jones of ‘1619’ Agitprop Accuses Sen. Tom Cotton of ‘Misinformation.’
J.K. ROWLING AND THE ROAD TO TERFDOM:
The tale of J.K. Rowling, finally revealed as a modern-day witch guilty of wickedness over sex and gender, is one of those stories that captures just about everything bad about this issue and about public conversation conducted via, and shaped by, social media. Rowling’s crime was to tweet that biological sex is real and should not be subordinated to the subjective concept of gender.
‘My life has been shaped by being female. I do not believe it’s hateful to say so,’ she wrote. ‘If sex isn’t real, there’s no same-sex attraction. ‘If sex isn’t real, the lived reality of women globally is erased.’
Cue firestorm.
As Megan McArdle wrote in 2018, “Listen to the ‘Bad Feminists’ — They’re the ones who still believe women have power.”
THIS IS UNSURPRISING, THOUGH INTERESTING: Genes May Leave Some People More Vulnerable to Severe Covid-19. “Variations at two spots in the human genome are associated with an increased risk of respiratory failure in patients with Covid-19, the researchers found. One of these spots includes the gene that determines blood types. Having Type A blood was linked to a 50 percent increase in the likelihood that a patient would need to get oxygen or to go on a ventilator, according to the new study.”
OF COURSE THEY DID: Minneapolis Rioters Burned One Of America’s Most Beloved Independent Bookstores To The Ground.
Independent bookstores are a threatened American institution, and Uncle Hugo’s was considered a flagship operation. Owner Don Blyly was noted for his ability to adapt to modern bookselling conditions and serve an audience of devoted genre readers. With most independent book shops, the margins are low and often owners are in the business as much for love as for money. For Don Blyly, it doesn’t matter anymore.
The books are burned. His shop is gone.
“There was a call from the security company around 3:30 this morning that the motion detector was showing somebody in the building. I threw on clothes and headed over there,” said Blyly in an email. “When I was 2 blocks away, I received a call that the smoke detectors were showing smoke in the store. Every single building on both sides of Chicago was blazing and dozens of people dancing around.”
And much of our intelligentsia was cheering.
I WONDER WHAT THE WAPO’S CRITERION IS FOR DISTINGUISHING “CITIZEN PATROLS” FROM “DANGEROUS VIGILANTES.” I CAN GUESS. . . Citizen Patrols Organize Across Minneapolis as Faith in Police Plunges.
But remember, ultimately police aren’t there to protect citizens from criminals, so much as to protect criminals from informal law enforcement at the hands of citizens.
WHO? BidenWatch for June 8, 2020. “I know people have been busy focusing on all the rioting and other Social Justice Warrior insanity, but the inexorable march toward the November general election continues, and first up is Biden passing a big milestone.”
THINKING LIKE CHILDREN, AND EXPECTING APPLAUSE: “In the pages of Vice, a moral lecture, delivered from on high: ‘How to Talk to Relatives Who Care More About Looting Than Black Lives.’”
“As an exercise in question-begging and dense, self-satisfied presumption, it’s quite a thing, that headline. It’s very now,” David Thompson writes. Read the whole thing.
I THINK THAT THIS SITUATION ABSOLUTELY REQUIRES A REALLY FUTILE AND STUPID GESTURE BE DONE ON SOMEBODY’S PART. AND WE’RE JUST THE GUYS TO DO IT! The North American distributor of Fuji Bicycles has halted the sale of its police bicycles.
HMM: China May exports slip back into contraction, imports worst in 4 years.
The somber trade readings for the world’s second-biggest economy could pile pressure on policymakers to roll out more support for a sector that is critical to the livelihoods of more than 180 million workers. Total trade accounts for about a third of the economy.
Overseas shipments in May fell 3.3% from a year earlier, after a surprising 3.5% gain in April, customs data showed on Sunday. That compared with a 7% drop forecast in a Reuters poll.
While exports fared slightly better than expected, imports tumbled 16.7% compared with a year earlier, worsening from a 14.2% decline the previous month and marking the sharpest decline since January 2016.
It had been expected to fall 9.7% in May.
This would be a great time for other countries to double down on decoupling.