STILL QUITE IMPRESSED WITH MY STARLINK SERVICE. Here’s a speed test I ran yesterday afternoon.

This is actually kind of on the slow side of my experience. Stats showed 3 minutes of no-satellite downtime in the previous 24 hours.

Meanwhile, during a very heavy thunderstorm about an hour later I had a few seconds when pages wouldn’t load, but it was brief and almost immediately thereafter I ran a speed test with this result:

I ran this one a bit later when it was raining somewhat harder, though not as brutally hard as when I lost signal:

Summary: When it was raining so hard that you could really hear it hitting the roof with a roar, I lost signal. Less than that slows it down a bit, but isn’t fatal. Definitely less rain-fade than I experienced back when I had DirecTV, which seemed to shut down for heavy dew. And the Insta-Wife noted that Comcast — which she was using — also dropped out for a bit during the worst of it.

STATE DEPARTMENT INVESTIGATOR: Wife of Wuhan Lab Researcher Died of Covid-Like Symptoms In December 2019.

ANTHONY FAUCI DISCUSSED DUAL-USE RESEARCH IN 2012 SENATE HEARING:

Dual-use research, of which gain-of-function research is a kind, can involve examining the ability to manipulate natural viruses to become more transmissible or possibly even a bioweapon. Gain-of-function research has found its way into the pandemic lexicon due to the resurgence of questions regarding the origins of COVID-19. Dr Fauci has continued to downplay both his personal involvement and the involvement of NIAID in grant money used to fund research of potential bat-borne viruses in China and at the Wuhan Institute of Virology.

* * * * * * * *

Today the Australian published a story resurfacing the fact that in 2012 Dr Fauci argued that the benefits of gain-of-function research outweighed any risk of a laboratory accident, or worse, that could spark an international pandemic. In a paper, Fauci wrote, ‘Many ask reasonable questions: given the possibility of such a scenario — however remote — should the initial experiments have been performed and/or published in the first place, and what were the processes involved in this decision? Scientists working in this field might say — as indeed I have said — that the benefits of such experiments and the resulting knowledge outweigh the risks.’

Related: Why Was Dr. Fauci Put in Charge of the COVID-19 Pandemic After His Disastrous HIV Epidemic Performance?

WELL, YES: It’s a Travesty to Compare the Capitol Siege to 9/11: More than 3,000 children never saw their parents again. On Jan. 6, Congress returned within hours. Yes, this is obscene, yet another example of the narcissism of our ruling class.

Prediction: With the passage of time, more Americans will feel that the problem with 1/6 was that it didn’t go far enough.

IF SCIENCE SAYS IT IT MUST BE TRUE – SO ANYBODY LIVING OVER 150 YEARS WILL HAVE TO BE EUTHANIZED AS A SCIENCE DENIER:  This is the maximum age humans can physically reach: scientists.

I know, I know, don’t give the idiots ideas.

OKAY, YES, IT STARTED AS A TYPO, BUT TRAD BEING TRADITIONAL, IT’S APT:  Tools of the Trad.

GOOD. THIS IS NO TIME TO GO WOBBLY:  College of the Ozarks denied preliminary injunction, vows to fight on.

BECAUSE THEY’RE ALL CORRUPTED BY EITHER CHINESE MONEY OR KOMPROMAT:  Why would the Senate make it easier for China to flood American markets?

OH. THERE IS MY SHOCKED FACE, AGAIN:  Cancer Death Rates Are Up Because of COVID Protocols.

YEAH. OUR MILITARY HASN’T GOT THAT CONVERGED. YET:  Military Finds Feminist Rhetoric Deluded BS.

AS HE SHOULD BE:  Trump Giving The Whole Government The ‘I Told You So’ For Looking The Other Way on This.

TOO LATE TO HIDE, COCKROACHES. THE LIGHTS HAVE COME ON:  It’s not just Arizona: Push to review 2020 ballots spreads.

HOW LONG UNTIL CALIFORNIANS TRY SNEAKING INTO MEXICO TO PUT THEIR KIDS IN SCHOOL?  Mexican parents clean reopening schools where thieves took even toilet doors.

OH, PLEASE, ACCORDING TO THE WAY OF MRS. COSMOPILITE OF QUIRM STREET, ANKH-MORPORK “I WASN’T BORN YESTERDAY”:  Indian yoga guru slammed for ‘irresponsible’ COVID views.

I.e. the left is fine with crystals being talked about as cures for cancer. but Winnie the Flu? Oh, no. That’s sacred onto Marx, and therefore can only be cured by official science promulgated by the CDC and other governmental entities.  Pfui.

WHAT? MY SHOCKED FACE YET AGAIN?   EXCLUSIVE: COVID-19 ‘has NO credible natural ancestor’ and WAS created by Chinese scientists who then tried to cover their tracks with ‘retro-engineering’ to make it seem like it naturally arose from bats, explosive new study claims.

So…  Here’s my prediction:

BEHOLD! MY SHOCKED FACE:  Following the Politics, Not the Science.

FOR A YEAR I’VE BEEN TOLD THAT RIOTS ARE THE VOICE OF THE UNHEARD, BUT: Gaetz and Greene vs. Adam Kinzinger: Did Gaetz really hint at using violence against Big Tech? “Having waded through the details of this dispute, it’s plausible that Gaetz is getting a bad rap and that Adam Kinzinger was misled by a deceptive edit.”

It’s also plausible that Kinzinger will say anything that will get him plaudits from the legacy media, because that’s his track record.

NOTHING TO SEE HERE, MOVE ALONG: An explosive new study claims researchers found ‘unique fingerprints’ in COVID-19 samples that they say could only have arisen from manipulation in a laboratory. “Gain of Function involves tweaking naturally occurring viruses to make them more infectious, so that they can replicate in human cells in a lab, allowing the virus’s potential effect on humans to be studied and better understood. Dalgleish and Sørensen claim that scientists working on Gain of Function projects took a natural coronavirus ‘backbone’ found in Chinese cave bats and spliced onto it a new ‘spike’, turning it into the deadly and highly transmissible SARS-Cov-2. . . . Their new paper says these features of SARS-Cov-2 are ‘unique fingerprints’ which are ‘indicative of purposive manipulation’, and that ‘the likelihood of it being the result of natural processes is very small.'”

UPDATE:

I ACTUALLY REMEMBER PEOPLE SAYING JOE BIDEN WOULD BE A NORMAL PRESIDENT:

Joe Biden looks at a little girl in the audience, the daughter of a veteran, and says "I love those barrettes in your hair. Man I’ll tell you what, look at her she looks like she's 19 years old sitting there like a little lady with her legs crossed." pic.twitter.com/DbH8ihG2Mj

— The Post Millennial (@TPostMillennial) May 28, 2021

WISCONSIN: Top Wisconsin Republican Robin Vos hires former cops to investigate November election.

Arizona: GOP lawmakers seek to nullify Hobbs in election litigation. “Republican lawmakers took the first steps Tuesday to strip Secretary of State Katie Hobbs of some of her powers. Measures approved by both the House and Senate Appropriations committees would take away her power to defend state election laws and give it to Attorney General Mark Brnovich.”

Georgia: Motion to dismiss delays Georgia’s ballot fraud lawsuit.

Thanks to commenter Porkypine for these links.

UPDATE: From the comments: “Not once in all the challenges have the Democrats responses indicated ‘we have nothing to hide.'”

Well, as Nate Silver says:

ANOTHER UPDATE: From the comments:

One, “respectable” Reps have figured out they can support audits, as long as they say “this won’t change the 2020 results, we just want to improve the process in future.” Cut ’em slack – when the results make a more radical position “respectable”, they’ll come along, but not a moment before. Cautious friends are FAR better than enemies.

Two, the 2020 audits are about where the Wuhan Lab source theory was a year ago – highly disrespectable among all Right Thinking People, right up untill the drip drip drip of evidence finally washes the ground out from under their feet.

It’d gonna be an interesting next eighteen months.

Indeed. Plus: “When you’re hiding something, you’ve got something to hide.”

OPEN THREAD: Well, another crazy day. You’ll comment the night away and forget about everything.

TAKING BIGOTRY TO COURT: Chicago mayor Lori Lightfoot is SUED by white reporter from Daily Caller after she said she would only give one-on-one interviews to black or brown journalists.

BEZOS AS SORE LOSER: Protests, trolling and more: Drama swirls around NASA’s next astronaut moon lander.

A GOOD MAN WITH A GUN: Armed School Employee Prevents Man From Allegedly Kidnapping Juvenile Utah Girl.

STEPHANIE GUTMANN: Soldiers In Drag Are Nothing New For The Identity-Obsessed U.S. Military.

Why this happened is a long story involving changes in world power dynamics, a belief that with forever peace at hand maybe we didn’t need a military that was so, well, military, and a Congress stuffed with social engineers like Barbara Boxer, Dianne Feinstein, and Pat Schroeder.

Suffice to say that by 1995, when I began research for a book about gender integration in the military, the Pentagon was already obsessed with pleasing its paymasters and increasing the percentage of women in the services from its paltry 15 percent to an improbable 50/50 sex ratios in all military jobs (including infantry and submarines) and up the ranks.

In its ham-fisted and condescending attempt to make their workplace more “female-friendly,” the Army had renamed the boot camp “Obstacle Course” the “Confidence Course.” Rather than admit the embarrassing fact that the vast majority of enlisted females would fail the course on a simple completion basis, a new emphasis on “team-building” was added (women are more social, don’t you know?). In other words, recruits didn’t have to actually scale that intimidating climbing wall one. They were allowed to recruit others and, say, use a human pyramid as a kind of step stool.

Drill sergeants were herded into “sensing sessions” with their trainees where they were supposed to receive “feedback” on their leadership style. Indeed, some truly vomit-worthy training films were launched, such as one using a childish female voiceover to tell recruits that the first few weeks of their new life could be challenging but “it’s okay to cry.”

This will not end well.