OPEN THREAD: If this ain’t love, why does it feel so good?
Archive for 2022
June 12, 2022
COMING SOON FROM JOE PAPPALARDO: Red Sky Morning: The Epic True Story of Texas Ranger Company F.
NEWS FROM DAVY JONES’ LOCKER: 340-Year-Old Shipwreck May Change What We Know About 17th-Century Maritime History.
IT’S COME TO THIS: Young Sheldon Rerun Crushes J6 Hearing in TV Ratings.
OUT ON A LIMB: Report by German Parliament Expert Committee Finds No Evidence that Lockdowns did Anything.*
Not just in Germany: “An analysis of studies of the effects of lockdowns on COVID-19 mortality has just been released by a team of researchers at Johns Hopkins University, and their conclusion is depressing. ‘Our study finds that lockdowns had little to no effect in reducing COVID-19 mortality,’ they wrote. ‘However, lockdowns during the initial phase of the COVID-19 pandemic have had devastating effects.'”
* Oh, they did something alright: More teens in mental crisis boarded in hospital ERs during pandemic.
WELL, WHEN YOU THREATEN PEOPLE IT’S NOT SURPRISING THAT THEY LEAVE THE STATE: Vermont botanists find threatened orchid not seen in state since 1902.
THE MONEY GOES TO BUY A LEATHER CHAIR FOR SOME GUY YOU NEVER HEARD OF IN AN OFFICE DOWNTOWN: Even with federal funds, U.S. schools still rely on low-cost methods to slow Covid, a study shows.
FAST TIMES AT BEN BRADLEE HIGH: Washington Post in-house spat shows we’ve gone overboard with therapeutic ‘me’ culture.
But the coup de grâce, so to speak, came when a Post software engineer named Holden Foreman (pictured) chimed in via a lengthy Twitter thread to defend Somnez (and in other tweets, Lorenz) even though a reasonably rational person could see they were clearly in the wrong.
Foreman looks like he could be a high school freshman; indeed, just last year he was a student at Stanford University. And last August, he took to the student paper Stanford Daily (which has a predilection for publishing piddly student complaints) to rip the university for not catering to (no pun intended) his “disordered eating.”
Complete with a trigger warning (“This column contains references to disordered eating”), Foreman’s piece noted that his alleged malady — “a compulsion to eat less than needed when [in] either in social settings or when [one has] trouble estimating the amount of food [they’re] consuming” — still remains undiagnosed.
“In theory, Stanford’s dining halls present students with the opportunity to eat as much as they need given its buffet format,” Foreman wrote. “Yet students like me may struggle to take enough of any of the available food when they are charged with portioning it themselves.”
If this doesn’t already sound farcical enough, Foreman followed up with several suggestions for Stanford to coddle his alleged needs, such as “educat[ing] the student body regarding disordered eating.” He also noted the university did contact him regarding his condition, but he never followed up: “Despite my struggles, I never sought help with my disordered eating from Stanford. But it’s not fair to place the blame squarely on my shoulders […] the fact that [Stanford’s] email was the only dedicated outreach, especially for someone with a history of disordered eating, is deeply concerning.”
So … Foreman didn’t budge an inch when Stanford reached out to him … and it’s Stanford’s fault.
Where does this sense of entitlement come from? Foreman sure seems like a bright enough guy, but … has he ever been told “no” in his life?
In my senior college year, I used to get uptight going to the student gym to work out because many college athletes hung out there. It was intimidating, as I felt the need to “measure up” to my 20-something behemoth peers. Eventually I got myself some free weights to keep in my dorm room so I didn’t have to go to the gym.
What never occurred to me was to ask The Review if I could write an op-ed about how the university bore much of the responsibility for my anxiety (“Why wasn’t there a gym just for non-college athletes? Where was the outreach?”). Because that would be ridiculous.
Why, it’s as if safetyism has destroyed a whole generation, or something.
GREAT MOMENTS IN GASLIGHTING: WaPo: $5 gas is largely Putin’s fault.
The United States has hit another uncomfortable milestone: $5 gas is now the norm. More than 20 states have prices above the $5 mark (California is above $6 a gallon), according to AAA. Record gas prices are a daily reminder of how different the current economy is from what many Americans are accustomed to: Inflation is at a four-decade high, and interest rates are rising at a pace not seen in two decades. People are anxious about this economy. Consumer sentiment is at a record low since the University of Michigan began tracking it in the mid-1970s.
This is largely Vladimir Putin’s fault. Gas prices are up nearly $2 in the past year, and 75% of that increase came since Putin’s Russian troops invaded Ukraine. The United States and many other countries rightly responded to this unjustified war by imposing heavy sanctions and halting purchases of Russian oil and grain. But that means supplies are down, and energy and food prices have soared to record highs around the world. Putin wants — and expects — the world to cave and lift the sanctions and cede parts of Ukraine to Russia in the face of these high prices. As hard as it is, we cannot let Putin win.
Stronger demand is also playing a role. As pandemic restrictions fade, Americans are booking trips to the beach, theme parks, and cities at home and abroad. Airport security checkpoints are processing nearly as many people as they did pre-pandemic. This is on top of many families driving to vacation spots and driving to the office and school again.
In the short term, there’s not a lot President Biden can do.
Does anyone at the Washington Post actually read their own newspaper?
● Biden’s plan to cancel Keystone pipeline signals a rocky start with Canada.
—The Washington Post, January 19th, 2021.
● Biden pulls 3 offshore oil lease sales, curbing new drilling this year.
—The Washington Post, May 12th.
● Biden administration won’t appeal judge’s ruling revoking Gulf of Mexico drilling leases.
—The Washington Post, February 28th.
Flashbacks: Why Aren’t Democrats Dancing for Joy About Sky-High Gas Prices?
In the service of reducing carbon emissions, Democrats have long openly worked to raise the price of fossil fuel energy. They have done so by proposing carbon taxes, cap-and-trade schemes, higher leasing fees, and other measures to jack up costs so people burn less of it. This is why Barack Obama said, in answer to a related question about electricity, that his energy plan would make prices “necessarily skyrocket.” This is why Democratic Rep. Ro Khanna praised BP’s CEO less than six months ago for pledging to reduce oil and gas production by 40% by 2030. Reductions in oil production and rising gasoline prices are part of the Democrats’ agenda and the Paris climate agenda.
There’s even more to it than that. Over the past decade, the Democrats’ overt hostility toward fossil fuels has even driven companies in the industry to sideline production, purely for public relations purposes, while prioritizing meaningless, politically correct carbon emissions goals. How can Democrats suddenly feign outrage at their incredible success in influencing the industry?
Is it a mystery why Democrats aren’t doing a sack dance and celebrating the salvation of planet earth?
There’s the small matter of their political survival, of course. It would be unseemly — like doing a jig at an Irish funeral — to celebrate other people’s pain. And it would cost many Democrats who are secretly jubilant about high gas prices their political careers.
Instead, Democrats are pretending to look for a way to “ease consumers’ pain.”
In September of 2019, after CNN’s seven hour “climate change town hall,” Bryan Preston wrote, “Seriously, if you see all of the above — which is just a sample — and vote for any of these people for any office at any level, it’s on you. If you like Venezuela, voting for any of them will bring you a whole lot of Venezuela.”
And as Kate of Small Dead Animals wrote after the CNN horror show, “Don’t make the mistake of thinking they don’t mean it.”
● Aren’t California’s High Gas Prices What The Left Have Wanted?
● NBC, the Washington Post, and the New York Times in lockstep call for higher gas taxes.
● 2008 L.A. Times headline: “The joy of $8 gas.”
Exit quote: “Under my plan, energy costs will necessarily skyrocket…”
In other words, Obama administration retreads are following the same playbook as the original Obama administration: “We’re going to keep at it to ensure the American people are paying their fair share for gas,” is the perfect Kinsley Gaffe for an Obama administration retread like Biden: As Steven Chu, Obama’s then-incoming energy secretary, told the Wall Street Journal in the fall of 2008: “Somehow we have to figure out how to boost the price of gasoline to the levels in Europe.”
So is it fair to ask if Biden is on the payroll of Putin? As Walter Russell Mead wrote in 2017:
If Trump were the Manchurian candidate that people keep wanting to believe that he is, here are some of the things he’d be doing:
Limiting fracking as much as he possibly could
Blocking oil and gas pipelines
Opening negotiations for major nuclear arms reductions
Cutting U.S. military spending
Trying to tamp down tensions with Russia’s ally Iran.
“Yep,” Glenn added in late 2019. “You know who did do these things? Obama. You know who supports these things now? Democrats.”
● Team Biden might be purposefully grinding down the middle class.
Related: Biden tormented by Republican guerrilla campaign and ‘I did it’ stickers.
Also: 100Pcs I Did That Biden Funny Car Stickers. #Resist #CommissionEarned
I’M PRETTY SURE I SAW RANDY NEANDERTHAL OPEN FOR DURAN DURAN AT THE ROXY IN 1981: Randy Neanderthal may be to blame for passing on the gene that caused up to a million people to die from Covid, scientist claims.
NEWS YOU CAN USE: 6 of the Smallest Handguns on the Market Today.
BRIGHTEN UP: LED Floor Lamp. #CommissionEarned
BY GLACIER STANDARDS THAT ISN’T SO LONG: Present Antarctic deglaciation may be unprecedented in last 5,000 years, UMaine study finds.
THE CORBYNIZATION OF THE DEMOCRATIC PARTY CONTINUES APACE: Star-studded LA high school is sued by Jewish father for its ‘racially divisive, anti-Semitic’ curriculum which branded Jews ‘oppressors’: Woke syllabus was ‘quietly ushered in’ after death of George Floyd.
GRADUALLY, AND THEN SUDDENLY: How San Francisco Became a Failed City.
If you’re going to die on the street, San Francisco is not a bad place to do it. The fog keeps things temperate. There’s nowhere in the world with more beautiful views. City workers and volunteers bring you food and blankets, needles and tents. Doctors come to see how the fentanyl is progressing, and to make sure the rest of you is all right as you go.
In February 2021, at a corner in the lovely Japantown neighborhood, just a few feet from a house that would soon sell for $4.8 million, a 37-year-old homeless man named Dustin Walker died by the side of the road. His body lay there for at least 11 hours. He wore blue shorts and even in death clutched his backpack.
I can’t stop thinking about how long he lay there, dead, on that corner, and how normal this was in our putatively gentle city. San Franciscans are careful to use language that centers people’s humanity—you don’t say “a homeless person”; you say “someone experiencing homelessness”—and yet we live in a city where many of those people die on the sidewalk.
San Francisco’s last Republican mayor left office at the beginning of 1964.
I’M NOT SURE I’D BE FLATTERED BY THAT: Researchers name new alga species after inaugural poet Amanda Gorman.
WE DIDN’T EVOLVE TO SLEEP ALONE: Adults who share beds with a partner have more restful sleep, study says.
FOOD: Russia-Ukraine war: ‘That grain needs to get out,’ former NATO Supreme Allied Commander says. “Russia’s blockade of ports on the Black Sea prevents Ukrainian wheat exports, which are imported by Middle East countries including Egypt, Lebanon, Tunisia, Libya, and Somalia.”