BIG IF TRUE: How L.A.’s bird population is shaped by historic redlining and racist loan practices.
This would be a blockbuster story from the L.A. Times, but fortunately, birds aren’t real.
Archive for 2023
October 11, 2023
LIFE IN THE 21ST CENTURY: This compact robotic tank is designed to shoot down drones.
WHAT DID CALIFORNIA USE BEFORE CANDLES? ELECTRICITY! California Bans Gas Generators Sales in 2028 and Appliances in 2030.
NEVER UNDERESTIMATE JOE’S ABILITY TO F*** THINGS UP: The U.S. Money Trail With Iran Is Worse Than You Think.
In a recent article, senior adviser at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies and former National Security Council official Richard Goldberg traces the money trail. He confirms: It is so much worse than we think.
Goldberg lays out the numbers. The $6 billion you’ve seen in every (other) headline is only the money being transferred from our friends in Qatar. But this is separate from the $10 billion of assets being transferred from Iraq, which Goldberg says will continue on “a rolling basis.” Then there are the reports that Iran will be allowed to access $7 billion in fiat currency by trading drawing rights with the International Monetary Fund. He also says Japan is scheduled to transfer $3 billion to Iran.
“Money is fungible,” and even the funds that have not yet been unfrozen are likely being treated as good credit in Iran’s ledger.
The revelations do not end there. U.S. officials have also quietly acknowledged that they’ve uncapped Iranian oil exports to China. These export levels, previously held around 775,000 barrels per day under Trump’s sanctions, are now estimated to be between 1.4 and 2.2 million barrels per day. Modest estimates value this relief at $25 billion annually.
The total? $50 billion.
It’s giving a thug a loaded machine gun and expecting him not to shoot the bullets.
Oh, I don’t think this White House of Obama retreads expected that at all.
I’D HAVE THOUGHT NEANDERTHALS WOULD BE LESS SENSITIVE TO PAIN: Neanderthal gene variants associated with greater pain sensitivity.
KEVIN DOWNEY JR: According to KGB Defector Yuri Bezmenov, It’s Time for a ‘Crisis.’ “A ‘crisis’ may involve violent riots as we saw from 2020 to 2021. Or perhaps a manufactured shortage of food, water, and energy. There may be a handful of ‘crises’ that form one large calamity. The chaos will likely result in another lockdown — you know, to keep us ‘safe’ like last time. Remember: Marxism, like most tyrannies, comes disguised as virtue.”
GREAT MOMENTS IN EDITING:
The @nytimes changed it from “terrorists” to “gunmen.”
Wouldn’t want to upset the Hamas Caucus, I guess. https://t.co/s1AJjIpC4K pic.twitter.com/LiELP4S9ki
— Jeremy Redfern (@JeremyRedfernFL) October 11, 2023
The editors of the New York Times are finely attuned to their readers’ sensitivities. They helped nurture them, after all.
AMERICA’S NEWSPAPER OF RECORD: Emperor Hirohito Calls For Ceasefire After Bombing Of Pearl Harbor.
AT AMAZON, Prime Big Deal Day. #CommissionEarned
AIRBRUSH ALERT: New York Times changes ‘Hamas terrorists’ to ‘Hamas gunmen.’
AI AND CORRELATION: A fundamental rule in data analysis is “correlation is not causation.” Professor Gary Smith, writing in Mind Matters, sees an interesting implication of that rule to understanding the application of Artificial Intelligence (AI).
PLAYBOY AND OTHERS FIRE MIA KHALIFA AFTER PORNSTAR MOCKS SLAUGHTER OF JEWS IN ISRAEL: “Can someone please tell the freedom fighters in Palestine to flip their phones and film horizontal,” Khalifa said after Hamas started its invasion of Israel.
“GENERAL COUP:” Let’s be honest about Mark Milley’s legacy. “Promoted as the supposed savior of the republic by a well-orchestrated public relations campaign and a fawning press, Milley exhibited ambitions more akin to those of a partisan military commissar than the nation’s senior military adviser under the authority of the president. His tenure proved destructive to post-WWII civil-military norms, the integrity of the military chain of command, and the image of the U.S. military as being worthy of public trust. Milley supervised a subversive revolution in military culture.”
ROBERT SPENCER: Hamas and Fatah Explain What Their War Against Israel is All About. “Two jihad groups, including the one that was behind the massacres, Hamas, and Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas’ Fatah, have issued statements that clarify exactly what they think they’re doing. As you might expect, they both make for chilling reading.”
WE REALLY NEED TO TAKE A CLOSE, HARD LOOK AT THE DESTRUCTIVE ROLE HIGHER EDUCATION HAS PLAYED IN AMERICAN LIFE: How Did Jews Go from Victims to ‘Oppressors?’ Universities.
LOL: Mitt Romney and Paul Ryan hold summit to find alternative to Trump. The has-been/never-were caucus.
PATRIOTS OWNER TO HAMAS SUPPORTERS, WHAT’S WRONG WITH YOU PEOPLE? Robert Kraft Slams Hamas, Calls Out Americans Supporting The Terrorists.
BIDEN’S ROLE: HOLDING ISRAEL’S COAT, OR HOLDING ISRAEL BACK?
We need a victory in this war, as I see it, that will … at least equal what we had in ’67, if not dwarf it. To achieve that kind of a victory, we need to take out Iran’s entire system. We need to take out Hamas not only in Gaza but also in Judea and Samaria, which is the Palestinian Authority. What we need to do is we need to take serious action to devastate Hezbollah and its war-fighting capabilities in Lebanon. We need to undermine the stability of the Iranian regime and take out its ability to transform the nuclear capabilities that it now fields into a nuclear arsenal.
These are things that Israel needs to do. And I don’t even think that there’s a question that we can get away with less. And my fear from the American embrace is that they’re here to prevent that from happening.
Entirely plausible.
HIGHER EDUCATION BUBBLE UPDATE: Bay Area high school grad rejected by 16 colleges hired by Google.
College admissions decisions disappoint thousands of high-achieving students each year, but one Palo Alto teen’s story is catching the attention of Congress.
Stanley Zhong, 18, is a 2023 graduate of Gunn High School in Palo Alto.
Despite earning 3.97 unweighted and 4.42 weighted GPA, scoring 1590 out of 1600 on the SAT’s and founding his own e-signing startup RabbitSign in sophomore year, he was rejected by 16 out of the 18 colleges he applied to.
But shortly after the wave of rejections, he was offered a full-time software engineering role by Google, one of the world’s top tech companies. . . . Zhong’s story was brought up by a witness testifying at the House Committee on Education and the Workforce hearing. The goal of the hearing was to consider how this summer’s Supreme Court decision banning affirmative action in college admissions is shaping university policies, policies that confound Zhong and his father.
Everyone knows that if he’d been black instead of Asian with the same scores he would have been accepted everywhere. On the other hand, why should he waste 4 years in college when he can start work at a six-figure job out of high school, probably the same job he’d get with a BS in computer science?
INCLUDING HIS BOWELS, APPARENTLY: The GOP Can’t Control The House. Biden Can’t Control the Border — Or Anything Else.
SPACE: For the third time in a year, Russian hardware on the space station is leaking.
The problems with leaky radiators began about 10 months ago.
On December 14, 2022, as two cosmonauts were preparing to conduct a spacewalk outside the space station, the Soyuz MS-22 spacecraft docked nearby began to leak uncontrollably from its external cooling loop. This Soyuz MS-22 spacecraft had been due to bring cosmonauts Sergey Prokopyev and Dmitri Petelin, as well as NASA’s Frank Rubio, back to Earth in March. A replacement vehicle had to be sent up to bring them home, and they landed safely last month.
Additionally, on February 11, 2023, the Progress MS-21 supply ship attached to the International Space Station lost pressure in its external cooling system. Once again, all of the coolant on board a Russian spacecraft leaked into space due to a rupture. This vehicle, which had been docked to the ISS since October, later detached and returned to Earth’s atmosphere without incident.
After these problems, Russian officials blamed both of these coolant system leaks on “an external impact,” pointing toward a micrometeorite or small fragment of orbital debris as the cause. Although privately some NASA officials questioned whether both of these leaks really were caused by impacts in space, rather than technical defects with the hardware, publicly the US space agency has gone along with the explanation.
But then Monday’s incident happened.
Russian gear isn’t known as the most reliable but this is ridiculous.
FIVE FREED HOSTAGES AND A RIVER OF BLOOD: $6 Billion in Iranian Assets Buys What, Exactly?
UPDATE (FROM GLENN): How do you say “Thanks for the $6 billion” in Farsi? “Death to America!”