I’M NOT SAYING CRIME IS OUT OF CONTROL, BUT: Armed Robbery Foiled When Getaway Car Is Stolen by Another Thief.
Archive for 2023
December 19, 2023
FIREARMS NEWS: The Gun Debate is Increasingly Academic. “The best part about the gun debate is that it’s increasingly just academic. Our victory is assured. Put aside Bruen, or Heller, or McDonald, or any of the other gun rights victories in courts. Put aside the massive increases in gun ownership, in every demographic.”
AT AMAZON, Shop Last Minute Deals. #CommissionEarned
MICROBIOME NEWS: The hunter-gatherer groups at the heart of a microbiome gold rush.
YOU CAN ONLY BE AVANT-GARDE FOR SO LONG BEFORE YOU BECOME ‘GARDE:’ Saturday Night Live Won’t Touch Hunter Biden (And We All Know Why).
(Classical reference in headline.)
FRONTIERS OF SCIENCE: Barbie should expand her range of medical and scientific professions, suggests study.
OLD AND BUSTED: “Food Deserts.”
The New Hotness? “News Deserts!” As More Media Layoffs Ring in the New Year, Americans Face Prospect of ‘News Deserts.’
The media industry has been rocked this holiday season by news of newsroom layoffs as outlets downsize to combat volatility in advertising, after an already-brutal year of job cuts.
In the last month alone, Condé Nast, G/O Media, Vice Media and Vox Media have all cut staff, most of whom already had layoffs earlier this year. (Vice filed for bankruptcy in June.)
Broadcast, print and digital outlets collectively saw 2,681 journalism job cuts in 2023, up 48% from 1,808 in 2022 and 77% from 1,511 in 2021, according to a report from employment firm Challenger, Gray & Christmas.
With a collapsing advertising-revenue model and more media companies experimenting with artificial intelligence to create content, the outlook for journalism is dimming, media analysts told TheWrap. The decline underscores the need for the public and even governments to fund news gathering if it is to survive in its current form and avoid widespread “news deserts,” they said.
“All available evidence suggests that the commercial future for journalism is especially dire,” Victor Pickard, a professor of media policy and political economy at the University of Pennsylvania’s Annenberg School for Communication, told TheWrap. “We cannot simply let the market drive local journalism into the ground. I expect to see more legislative efforts, especially at state government levels, aimed at shoring up and even expanding local journalism.”
The staffers of China’s Xinhua News Agency, North Korea’s KCNA, and the ghosts of Pravda smile; because governments funding journalism has always ended so well for all concerned in the past.
There is a bit of good news, though. Presumably, “news deserts” will work out as well as the original “food deserts” have, as Glenn blogged in 2017:
“Food deserts” claim is bogus. “This is a good paper with a credible research design and impressive data from some 35,000 supermarkets covering 40% of the United States. Moreover, because of the widespread attention given to ‘food deserts’ this paper probably had to be written. But color me un-surprised. The results are obvious.”
Also, when you ground-truth the government’s food-desert map, you find things like this: “Knoxville’s Federally-Designated “Food Deserts” Include Super Walmart, Sam’s Club, Kroger. Plus a couple of tasty oriental supermarkets.” And a Trader Joe’s.
Related: “If food deserts actually exist, why can’t both the USDA and the local bureaucrats make an accurate map of them?” And if they can’t make an accurate map, what’s the chance that they’ll accomplish anything no matter how well-funded?
Of course, with this being Obama’s third term, the DNC-MSM have reverted to their groveling tone from the start of his original administration, along the lines of The Hill post from September of 2009: Obama open to newspaper bailout bill.
OH, GROW UP: Gen Z Now Plagued by ‘Menu Anxiety.’
DR. SMITH’S GARDEN: NASA gives update on long-lost space tomatoes.
RUSSIA HAS NO ONE TO BLAME BUT PUTIN: Russia summons Finland ambassador over US border accord.
Russia has summoned the Finnish ambassador in Moscow, after Finland signed a new agreement on military co-operation with the US.
Monday’s deal grants the US broad access to the area of Finland’s long border with Russia.
Moscow said it would “take necessary measures to counter the aggressive decisions of Finland and its Nato allies”.
Finland joined Nato this year in response to Russia’s Ukraine invasion.
Russian President Vladimir Putin recently accused Nato of having “dragged” Finland into the bloc, and announced the creation of a new military district near Finland’s border.
Meanwhile Finland has accused Russia of channelling migrants towards its territory in a “hybrid operation”, and has temporarily closed all its border crossings with its eastern neighbour.
If Putin doesn’t like his neighbors joining defensive alliances, maybe he should stop invading them.
FUN GIFT: Tikduck Flying Orb Ball Toys Soaring Hover Boomerang. #CommissionEarned
HOW IT STARTED: Mayor Rahm Emanuel: ‘Chicago Always Will Be A Sanctuary City.’
Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel added his voice to the chorus of big-city mayors who say theirs will remain “sanctuary cities” in response to President-elect Donald Trump’s hard-line positions on illegal immigration.
Surrounded by immigration activists, business leaders and state and federal lawmakers, Emanuel sought to reduce the fear of immigrants living in this country without authorization.
“To all those who are, after Tuesday’s election, very nervous and filled with anxiety … you are safe in Chicago, you are secure in Chicago and you are supported in Chicago,” said Emanuel at a news conference called to publicize the expansion of mental health services for people anxious over the election results.
“Chicago has in the past been a sanctuary city. … It always will be a sanctuary city,” the mayor said.
—NPR, November 14th, 2016.
How it’s going: HA! Brandon Johnson MELTS TF DOWN Because TX Keeps Sending Illegal Immigrants to Sanctuary Cities (Watch).
Awwww, would you look at that? Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson is upset with Texas for sending illegal immigrants to Sanctuary Cities across the country. Does he not realize that’s what Sanctuary Cities are for?
Like so many Democrat mayors who were more than happy to accuse Abbott and DeSantis of being RACISTS for opposing Joe Biden’s open border, they sure seem to change their tunes quickly when they get to deal with a small, minuscule even amount of what our southern states deal with every day.
Watch this:
Mayor Brandon Johnson melts down over Texas sending illegals to sanctuary cities:
"IT IS NOT JUST A CHICAGO DYNAMIC!
HE IS ATTACKING OUR COUNTRY!" pic.twitter.com/n0yND8Mv5Q— End Wokeness (@EndWokeness) December 19, 2023
Earlier: Sanctuary Cities Seethe as Illegal Immigrants Actually Arrive.
The surest sign that public policies are simply virtue signals is when the messages don’t cost anything. The easiest way to tell when that signal starts to fail is to watch politicians flounder as the costs start to rise and voters demand relief.
It was free—and meaningless—for progressive churches to post banners calling themselves “nuclear free zones” during the Reagan era. Their dwindling congregations loved it. It was free, after George Floyd‘s murder, to post woke catechism signs on your front lawn, proclaiming “In this house, we believe: Black Lives Matter, women’s rights are human rights, no human is illegal” and so on. Maybe the neighbors gave you high-fives. And for years it has been free for deep-blue cities to proclaim themselves “sanctuaries” for illegal immigrants. That’s changing now that voters want some sanctuary for themselves.
Changes like this happen when voters realize the old virtue signals actually entail serious costs—and that they will have to pay them. That is exactly what’s happening in New York City and Washington D.C. now that Texas governor Greg Abbott is sending those cities a few busloads of illegal immigrants from his state.
These progressive bastions were silent when the Biden administration flew planeloads of illegal immigrants to suburban airports in the middle of the night. TV coverage was prohibited, and the arrivals were secretly dispersed. Abbott’s buses, by contrast, arrive downtown greeted by local TV crews. Now you can hear the politicians screech.
The ghost of Saul Alinsky smiles: “Make opponents live up to their own book of rules. ‘You can kill them with this, for they can no more obey their own rules than the Christian church can live up to Christianity.’”
Incidentally, “dynamic” seems to be an all-purpose buzzword the mayor has adopted: Editorial: Mayor Johnson, crime in Chicago is not a ‘dynamic.’ It’s a full-blown crisis.
Asked about it, Johnson told Block Club that “There’s work to be done.” He went on, then, to say, “We’re going to continue to work with the Police Department and the full force of government to address this dynamic, just like we’re addressing every single other dynamic in the city of Chicago.”
And therein lies a key part of the problem. Mr. Mayor, this isn’t a “dynamic” akin to “every single other dynamic.” It’s not a second-tier issue.
Johnson’s budget adds modestly to investment in more cops, and he’s called consistently for more detectives to try to improve Chicago’s woeful clearance rate on the most serious crimes. Homicides are down year-over-year, which is modestly good news. They remain way too high.
But what’s afflicting the public now is rampant armed theft, making it increasingly unsafe to walk neighborhood streets. Robberies are up a mind-boggling 57% so far this year. Many of those are armed robberies.
No, Mr. Mayor, this isn’t just another headache you must cope with while zealously pursuing your agenda of hiking taxes to fund more social programs. This is the job. It may not be the job you would prefer to do, but there isn’t anything more important on your plate.
In August, there was another D-word moment from Johnson:
Johnson touted among his successes movement on his Bring Chicago Home initiative to help the homeless, and his efforts to revamp the approach to policing so it incorporates his campaign promise of utilizing mental health experts for some 911 calls.
“We’re moving toward actually passing that, we’ve actually shifted the dynamic in the city of Chicago as we prepare to confirm our next police superintendent,” Johnson said. “I don’t know we’ve ever had a police superintendent talk about treatment not trauma. I mean, that’s what I ran on.”
Gooder and harder, Second City.
GO-TO ‘EXPERTS’ FOR ISRAEL HATE: Collin Anderson of the Washington Free Beacon shines light on two “experts” who are regularly cited by the Washington Post and the New York Times on the Gaza War. You would never know it from the WP or NYT, but Human Rights Watch’s Omar Shakir and Gaza Attorney Raji Sourani have nothing but hate for Israel.
RABBI MICHAEL BARCLAY: To Win This War, We Cannot Be Distracted by the New York Times. “Whatever mistakes were made in the past are inconsequential right now. Israel is at war with an enemy that is truly evil. An enemy that must not only be defeated, but utterly destroyed. As long as Hamas exists in any form, their commitment to the destruction of Israel also exists; and like Amalek, Hamas must have ‘their remembrance be blotted off the earth’ (Deut. 25:19). We must remember that Israel is just the front line in their war against the world in an attempt to create a global Islamic theocracy.”
WOKISM BREEDS RACIAL ENTITLEMENT: Insufferable entitlement behind Wu’s only ‘people of color’ Christmas party.
#RESIST: Data poisoning: how artists are sabotaging AI to take revenge on image generators.
Researchers who want to empower individual artists have recently created a tool named “Nightshade” to fight back against unauthorised image scraping.
The tool works by subtly altering an image’s pixels in a way that wreaks havoc to computer vision but leaves the image unaltered to a human’s eyes.
If an organisation then scrapes one of these images to train a future AI model, its data pool becomes “poisoned”. This can result in the algorithm mistakenly learning to classify an image as something a human would visually know to be untrue. As a result, the generator can start returning unpredictable and unintended results.
As in our earlier example, a balloon might become an egg. A request for an image in the style of Monet might instead return an image in the style of Picasso.
Some of the issues with earlier AI models, such as trouble accurately rendering hands, for example, could return. The models could also introduce other odd and illogical features to images – think six-legged dogs or deformed couches.
The higher the number of “poisoned” images in the training data, the greater the disruption. Because of how generative AI works, the damage from “poisoned” images also affects related prompt keywords.
I’m curious how pixels are “altered” but the article is skimpy on the details.
JUST WENT TO THE TOP OF MY LIST: Book Review: David Solway’s ‘Crossing the Jordan: On Judaism, Islam and the West.’
READER FAVORITE: Moose Forearm Exerciser – Hand, Wrist, and Forearm Strengthener. #CommissionEarned
OUCH: Russia’s Central Bank Raises Key Rate to 16% Amid Growing Inflation.
The central bank has been grappling with the economic fallout of the offensive in Ukraine that includes Western sanctions, a surge in government military spending and the call-up of hundreds of thousands of men.
“Current inflationary pressures remain high. Annual inflation for 2023 is expected to be close to the upper bound of the 7.0–7.5% forecast range,” the Bank of Russia said in a statement explaining its decision.
Higher interest rates are designed to sap demand by making it more expensive to borrow money and encouraging consumers and businesses to save, not spend.
Analysts expected the increase as the central bank repeatedly stated its priority to fight inflation, which accelerated to 7.5% in November.
The Bank said it was anticipating “that tight monetary conditions will be maintained in the economy for a long period.”
The exchange rate is seen as a key barometer of Russia’s economic health by politicians, businesses and the population.
Maybe Biden will rejigger his campaign messaging to “At least we aren’t Russia.”
#RESIST: Gov. Abbott: If Biden Won’t Lock Up Illegals, Texas Will. “If you thought the situation on our southern border — aka “WHAT southern border?” — was chaotic, wait until the fight over the bills Abbott just signed hits the courts.”
NEWS FROM THE WORLD OF HIGHER EDUCATION: Presbyterian college cancels ‘BDSM 101’ event led by pro-LGBT chaplain.
WELCOME TO THE PARTY, PAL: China’s real estate meltdown is battering middle class wealth.
At the heart of the decline in family wealth is China’s real estate meltdown, which having a pervasive effect on a society where 70% of family assets are tied up in property. Every 5% decline in home prices will wipe out 19 trillion yuan ($2.7 trillion) in housing wealth, according to Bloomberg Economics.
“It might just be the beginning of more wealth losses in coming years,” said Eric Zhu, an economist with Bloomberg Economics. “Unless there’s a big bull market, small gains in financial wealth are unlikely to offset losses in housing wealth.”
While China’s official data show just a mild drop in its existing home prices, evidence from property agents and private data providers indicate declines of at least 15% in prime areas in its biggest cities.”
There are more middle-class Chinese than there are Americans of any income. Anything that impacts them negatively is going to have global repercussions — probably largely positive for American consumers.