HMM: Genesis Going All Electric in 2025.
Related (From Ed): No word if the new car will be based on the Phil Collins or Peter Gabriel iteration of Genesis:
Archive for 2021
September 7, 2021
YOU MAY NOT BE INTERESTED IN THE GLEICHSCHALTUNG, BUT THE GLEICHSCHALTUNG IS INTERESTED IN YOU: Rutgers bars unvaccinated students from attending virtual classes.
ROGER KIMBALL: ‘Adults,’ ‘Progress,’ and Disaster. “Historians will look back at the Great Afghan Fumble of 2021 and say it was there and then that the United States took a large public step towards its own diminishment.”
EVERYTHING IS GOING SWIMMINGLY: ‘Inexcusable Bureaucratic Red Tape’: Left-wing Senator Excoriates Biden for Delay in Rescuing Americans Behind in Afghanistan.
HIGH NOONAN: Peggy Noonan “doesn’t mention her support for Biden in her September 2020 Wall Street Journal column when the choice was between Biden and Trump. Conrad Black observed that Noonan had gone full metal-jacket for Biden. Black’s column has stood the test of time. Noonan’s is already obsolete. Noonan is a sore subject of long standing with me. She makes my skin crawl…Having turned on George W. Bush, Noonan moved on to support the election of Barack Obama later that year. Noonan all but endorsed Obama in her 2008 column ‘Obama and the runaway train.’ The anti-Bush and pro-Obama columns fit neatly together.”
STILL #1 IN UNITED STATES ATLASES & MAPS: Rand McNally 2022 Road Atlas (United States, Canada, Mexico) (Rand McNally Road Atlas: United States, Canada, Mexico).
TRUNALIMUNUMAPRZURE! President Biden mentions a tornado hitting but says “they don’t call them that anymore.”
SARAH HOYT’S SHOCKED FACE IS ON AN EXTENDED SABBATICAL: Mark Zuckerberg may have lied to Congress about who can see WhatsApp messages.
In 2016, WhatsApp announced it was using end-to-end encryption for all communications on its platform, covering everything from messages to file transfers. The use of end-to-end encryption is intended to offer users a level of privacy and security, but it seems that may not be true for the messaging app.
In a report by ProPublica, it is claimed WhatsApp employs more than 1,000 contract workers in Austin, Texas, Dublin, and Singapore, specifically for examining “millions of pieces of users’ content.” The workers “use special Facebook software” to look through messages and content that have been flagged by WhatsApp users, and have been screened by AI systems.
The reviews occur in spite of an assurance that appears in the app before users send messages for the first time, claiming “No one outside of this chat, not even WhatsApp, can read or listen to them.”
In 2018 testimony to the U.S. Senate, Facebook CEO Macrk Zuckerberg claimed “We don’t see any of the content in WhatsApp.”
Don’t use any Facebook services.
TALIBAN ANNOUNCE NEW GOVERNMENT FOR AFGHANISTAN:
The Taliban have announced an interim government in Afghanistan, declaring the country an “Islamic Emirate”.
The new cabinet is made up of senior Taliban figures, some of whom are notorious for attacks on US and Nato forces over the last two decades.
It will be led by Mullah Mohammad Hassan Akhund, one of the movement’s founders, who is on a UN blacklist.
The interior minister is the feared FBI-wanted leader of the Haqqani militant group, Sirajuddin Haqqani.
The Taliban seized control of most of Afghanistan more than three weeks ago, ousting the previous elected leadership.
The announcement of the acting cabinet is a key step in the formation of a Taliban government. The new leadership will face significant challenges, not least stabilising the country’s economy.
No word yet if the Taliban are Keynesians or follow the von Mises–Rothbard school of Austrian economics.
Exit question: Would Biden Veto a Move at UN To Repeal Taliban’s Status as Terrorist Organization?
HE’S A PROTECTED MEMBER OF AMERICA’S NOBLE CLASS: Why Does Fauci Still Have a Job?
THE BIG LIE: Biden’s Withdrawal From Reality. “Don’t be surprised if Biden is nominated for a Nobel Peace Prize. The brazenness is stunning. This is not your typical political spin, it is propaganda. It is the willful effort to corrupt our perception of reality. Say it loud and long enough and people will believe it. If they don’t, get Twitter mobs and cancel culture to silence and punish them. That is increasingly becoming the Democrats’ playbook.”
KEVIN WILLIAMSON: Like a Rolling Stone.
The Rolling Stone story got picked apart in about five minutes as soon as it encountered the lightest skepticism. The Duke lacrosse story required a criminal investigation. Lena Dunham’s made-up story fell apart as soon as one curious reporter — in this case, me — spent five minutes on Google and made one telephone call. That wasn’t exactly hardcore investigative journalism, and I don’t write that to be modest: The students I taught at Hillsdale were undergraduates, not professional magazine editors, but they were able to see the problems with Rolling Stone’s reporting and its agenda-driven narrative pretty easily. Which is to say: These stories don’t get published because nobody knows how to prevent that from happening — these stories get published because nobody cares, because these stories serve the purposes of a particular narrow cultural agenda and flatter the prejudices of a particular narrow set of educated and generally affluent American professionals.
Exit quote: “A note to our progressive friends: This is your version of Q-Anon — falling for obvious, ridiculous lies because you want to believe the worst about people you hate.”
Read the whole thing.
TO BE FAIR, THEIR APPEAL IS BECOMING MORE “SELECTIVE:” Why can’t we fire the Blob?
(Classical reference in headline.)
ROBERT SPENCER: Communist China Is Taking Advantage of Biden’s Weakness on the World Stage. “It’s hard not to see China’s new belligerence toward Taiwan as yet another core element of the Biden legacy: When America projects weakness to the world, malign actors take advantage. Nor is this even anything new; the ChiComs began acting aggressively toward Taiwan just days after Old Joe took office.”
THE DAILY MONITOR: “How to identify gas-lighters in your life and stop them.” I love that this Ugandan independent daily newspaper quoted my book:
They will shut you down as soon you start to speak. And you fear to express your opinion unless it agrees with theirs. You are always wondering, “What will they think of this?” You fear them so much you would rather have peace than confront them. Helen Smith, in her book, Men on Strike: Why Men Are Boycotting Marriage, Fatherhood, and the American Dream – and Why It Matters, writes, “Women are verbally more skilled and ready to manipulate others using these verbal skills. Men are not taught how to fight back verbally nor do they often want to; for some time, it is not their nature.”