Archive for 2020
June 26, 2020
WAIT, WHEN PEOPLE WERE SUGGESTING THIS IN MARCH WE WERE TOLD THEY WERE KOOKS: Scientists test if gargling salt water helps treat coronavirus.
WELL, DARN: Coronavirus baby boom unlikely, survey suggests.
WHAT IS HE ON? Jerry Nadler Says Antifa Is Imaginary.
WAS IT OVER WHEN GEORGE KIRBY BOMBED PEARL HARBOR? Nancy Pelosi Calls George Floyd ‘George Kirby.’
UPDATE: Pelosi’s gaffe “followed Schumer’s Wednesday remark that Senate Republican police reform did not deserve to pass given the opposition of the lawyer representing the families of ‘Floyd Taylor, uh, George Taylor … George Floyd and Breonna Taylor.’”
Found via Matt Woking of Trump’s reelection campaign team, who notes, “These are the people blocking police accountability legislation.”
I’D BE SHOCKED IF HE HADN’T BEEN: Does a Newly Released Document Prove Hunter Biden Was Selling Access to the Obama Administration?
I’M EXPECTING AN EARTH-SHATTERING KABOOM: 700-km Brazil ‘megaflash’ sets lightning record.
SUPER GAFFE-O-MATIC ’76! “Biden said Thursday. ‘Now we have over 120 million dead from COVID.’ Wow! That is quite a pandemic, right? What he meant to say, I hope, is that the death toll as of Thursday was 122,000 according to Johns Hopkins…The way the press has kowtowed to Biden so far in the campaign, they may as well be paid staffers.”
Just think of the media as Democratic Party operatives with bylines, and it all makes sense.™
AMERICA’S PAPER OF RECORD: Cities Protecting Statues By Disguising Them As Karl Marx.
NOW THEY TELL US: ‘COVID toes’ might be from lack of physical activity, not coronavirus symptom. “‘COVID toes’ might not be a symptom of coronavirus infection, but instead the result of lifestyle changes during lockdown, two small studies published Thursday by JAMA Dermatology found.”
WHO OWNS YOUR STUFF? With YouTube Music, Google is holding my speakers for ransom. “I could sit here and complain for days about YouTube Music’s regressions, the maze-like UI, and the weird blending of random YouTube crap and my music collection. But what I really want to shout from the rooftops right now is this: YouTube Music doesn’t respect people who purchase music. If you bought your music, uploaded it to YouTube Music, and expect to be treated like you own the music, this service is not for you. If you bought a Google Home smart speaker or any other Google Cast device, Google’s public position right now is that you’ll need to pay a monthly fee to cast to your speaker once Google Music shuts down.”
WHERE’S HUNTER, FAT? Does a Newly Released Document Prove Hunter Biden Was Selling Access to the Obama Administration?
(Classical reference in headline.)
THE BIGGEST OBSTACLE TO GAY RIGHTS IS … THE GAY RIGHTS MOVEMENT ITSELF: Focus on the Family’s Glenn Stanton, writing on The Federalist, explains why the movement’s take-no-prisoners attitude bars acceptance of claims everybody can just get along by going along:
“The queer movement — elsewhere, Rauch recommends using the more concise and inclusive “Q,” or queer, rather than the alphabet soup — cannot employ the end-of-discussion “civil rights” language, consistently label their opponents hateful bigots, and then also speak of good-faith compromise. The two exist in necessarily exclusive universes. Absolute language requires absoluteness, and the queer movement leaders set these terms with great care and intention.”
BOB ZUBRIN TAKES NO PRISONERS IN HIS SCATHING REVIEW OF DANIEL DEUDNEY’S DUMB NEW BOOK OPPOSING SPACE EXPLORATION. Excerpt:
Deudney’s book contains over 200,000 words, and costs only $36 retail, so purchasers will be rewarded with over 5,500 words for every dollar spent, which is well above industry standards for new hardcover books. The writing style is sort of Germanic, but it is better than Hegel, so readers who enjoyed The Phenomenology of Mind should find it at least equally pleasurable. It is true that most of the material is filler, but levity is provided by many original technical errors sprinkled generously throughout the text. Deudney claims, for example, that the temperature of objects in Earth orbit is 300 degrees Centigrade, that bodies made of water will freeze “instantly” in deep space, that the limit of Earth’s gravitational field is 30,000 kilometers, that objects in space “must move fast or they will fall down,” and — contradicting Newton and Copernicus, respectively — that different laws of motion apply to objects on Earth and in space, and that there is a geographical boundary between Earth and space. (N.b.: Earth is in space.) Crusaders for emergency measures to upgrade elementary- and secondary-school science education will doubtless find much useful evidence here to buttress the importance and urgency of their cause.
Deudney appears to be in the grand tradition of people who claimed that Robert Goddard’s rockets couldn’t work in space because without an atmosphere there’s nothing to push against.
Plus: “The more serious problems with the book appear when we consider Deudney’s ideas.”
SO YOU’RE SAYING IF WE LET THEM CLOSE PARKS AND BEACHES, PEOPLE WILL DIE!!!!??? Summer might kill coronavirus, but only if people stay outside, researchers say.
CHINA SYNDROME: Warning—Apple Suddenly Catches TikTok Secretly Spying On Millions Of iPhone Users. Another case of “adversary technology,” where your device turns out to actually be working for someone else.
DISCRIMINATORY ENFORCEMENT: “A federal judge in Albany has issued a preliminary injunction overturning New York’s limitations on religious gatherings during the coronavirus pandemic, as an impermissible restriction on religious freedom considering the government’s allowing large Black Lives Matter protests at the same time.”
JOANNE JACOBS: History of right now: Short and virtuous. “Tearing down statues and changing syrup logos are not enough to end racism, notes the Babylon Bee. So that no one will repeat the mistakes of the past, new history books will cover only the morally correct things that happened in the current year. Every year, the books will be burned and replaced.”
HIGHER EDUCATION BUBBLE UPDATE: Trump wants federal hiring to focus on skills over degrees. If this really happens it’ll be brutal for my industry.
SMART: Unilever to Halt U.S. Ads on Facebook and Twitter for Rest of 2020. Basically, they’ve gotten too toxic. In fact, social media is basically an amplification system for toxic ideas.
IF THEY SACK ALL THE ANTI-SEMITES, WILL THERE BE ANYONE LEFT? Labour’s Rebecca Long-Bailey sacked in anti-Semitism row.
WORLD WAR III IS GONNA BE LIT: Excessive masturbation is hurting China’s military. “The Chinese military says excessive masturbation and too many video games are among the reasons its physical-test failure rates have reached an ‘alarming high.’ The People’s Liberation Army is now dishing out advice after one city saw more than half its candidates — 56.9 percent — fail their physicals.”
Plus: “The PLA has struggled to recruit new members, despite desperate measures to find candidates like releasing a rap recruitment video last year. The Ministry of Defense last month announced the PLA would be cut from 2 million to 1 million — a move that some believe is due to a lack of new recruits.”