NEMESIS NEVER SLEEPS: Bombshells, Landmines, and Nemesis.
Archive for 2023
February 22, 2023
IT’S WHO HE IS, IT’S WHAT HE DOES: The Toxic Racialist Obsessions of Joe Biden.
THIS RACE CARD WAS WAY OVERDRAWN: Pushback: Home appraiser sues professors who called him racist without evidence.
HE’S NOT WRONG: Life on Earth is Doomed (without us).
NO. NEXT QUESTION? The Mask Mandates Did Nothing. Will Any Lessons Be Learned?
People may have good personal reasons to wear masks, and they may have the discipline to wear them consistently. Their choices are their own.
But when it comes to the population-level benefits of masking, the verdict is in: Mask mandates were a bust. Those skeptics who were furiously mocked as cranks and occasionally censored as “misinformers” for opposing mandates were right. The mainstream experts and pundits who supported mandates were wrong. In a better world, it would behoove the latter group to acknowledge their error, along with its considerable physical, psychological, pedagogical and political costs.
Don’t count on it. In congressional testimony this month, Rochelle Walensky, director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, called into question the Cochrane analysis’s reliance on a small number of Covid-specific randomized controlled trials and insisted that her agency’s guidance on masking in schools wouldn’t change. If she ever wonders why respect for the C.D.C. keeps falling, she could look to herself, and resign, and leave it to someone else to reorganize her agency.
That, too, probably won’t happen: We no longer live in a culture in which resignation is seen as the honorable course for public officials who fail in their jobs.
As Jennifer Sey, the former brand president of Levi Strauss, who was forced out for being insufficiently woke, writes:
What seems clear is that the enthusiastic, religious devotion to the dogma — “masks work” — signified adherence to a set of beliefs: I mask therefore I am good. I mask my children therefore I am loyal to the Democratic Party and public health diktats. I mask therefore I care. I am a loyal follower of “the Science.” My faith is unwavering.
Those who claim to be on the side of “the Science” will continue to push unscientific policies in order to prove that they were right all along. This is the sunk cost fallacy writ large. Don’t admit mistakes. Ignore the actual science in favor of “the Science.” And continue to punish those who challenge. As well as those most vulnerable who simply aren’t in a position to challenge at all.
“Science” has apparently been rebranded by the left. It is now a slogan — a tagline — shouted at heretics to signify one’s moral superiority and loyalty to the party. What we have now is “science” that ignores the scientific method, which means “the science” is a cult. And a dangerous one at that.
Indeed.
February 21, 2023
OPEN THREAD: Speak friend, and enter.
EP_C FA_L: We have a new all-time greatest Wheel of Fortune fail.
I’m really concerned about the future of our country… pic.twitter.com/MCcQuKxNvD
— BJ Symons (@BJSymons) February 21, 2023
SMART: Texas is planning to make a huge public investment in space. “Further investment will cement Texas as the preeminent location for innovation.”
FINLAND TAKES ANOTHER LOOK AT YOUTH GENDER MEDICINE:
Dr. Riittakerttu Kaltiala knows gender medicine. She is the top expert on pediatric gender medicine in Finland and the chief psychiatrist at one of its two government-approved pediatric gender clinics, at Tampere University in Helsinki, where she has presided over youth gender transition treatments since 2011.
* * * * * * * *
Kaltiala was a major force behind the decision to reverse course in Finland. More recently, she testified before the Florida medical boards in support of their decision to restrict access to puberty blockers, cross-sex hormones, and surgeries for minors.
Asked by Helsingin Sanomat what she thought of gender self-identification for minors—a proposed element of the new Finnish law that did not ultimately pass—Kaltiala emphasized that it is “important to accept [children] as they are,” but this means neither pressuring a child to conform to behaviors traditionally associated with the child’s sex nor “negating the body” by confirming that the child’s gender self-identification is real. “In either case,” said the psychiatrist, “the child gets a message that there is something wrong with him or her.” Evidence from a combined 12 studies to date demonstrates that when children with cross-gender or gender variant behavior are left to develop naturally, the vast majority—“four out of five,” according to Kaltiala—come to terms with their bodies and learn to accept their sex. When they are socially transitioned, virtually none do.
It’s an idea so crazy it just might work — even in America.
JON GABRIEL: Teens spent the pandemic in front of screens. And we wonder why they feel hopeless?
Meta, Instagram’s parent company, found that adolescents face challenges with social comparison, social pressure and negative peer interactions on their app. The internal studies showed that “teens who struggle with mental health say Instagram makes it worse.”
A university study from Singapore showed that teens who received fewer “likes” reported more negative emotions and thoughts about themselves.
As Mitch Prinstein, the chief science officer of the American Psychological Association, put it, “kids have a biological vulnerability to want social rewards, and now we’re handing them a way to get it – on steroids.”
Then, COVID-19 entered the picture. Beginning in 2020, teenagers were locked out of schools and extracurricular activities to embrace a life mediated entirely by screens.
More from Ace of Spades: Depression and Suicidality Surge Among Teenage Girls and This Correlates With Smartphone Usage. Internet Addict Taylor Lorenz Says It’s Just “This Late-Stage Capitalist Hellscape” That’s to Blame, Not My Precious TikTok!
I CAN’T BELIEVE I’M DEFENDING THE NEW YORK TIMES NOW:
I know it’s hard to believe, but I must defend the New York Times.
Has the sky fallen? Have I gone crazy? Believe it or not, that’s not the case. There has been no love between the New York Times and me, well, pretty much ever. The paper once heralded as the nation’s paper of record is now nothing more than your garden variety liberal rag. Yet, it’s currently under attack, and I have to speak out in its defense.
The radical left is criticizing the New York Times for its coverage of transgender issues, and in the past week, they’ve been the target of an open letter from the Gay and Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation (GLAAD) and other organizations for their “irresponsible, biased coverage of transgender people.“ (RELATED: The Trans Cult Will Never Stop Silencing the Opposition)
What did the New York Times do that was so horrible? According to the GLAAD letter, the paper dedicates “so many resources and pages to platforming the voices of extremist anti-LGBTQ activists who have built their careers on denigrating and dehumanizing LGBTQ people, especially transgender people.”
Translation: They have balanced coverage of transgender issues by presenting both sides.
Which itself is a remarkable achievement given the current working environment at 620 Eighth Avenue: Ex-NY Times staffer: ‘It was like a Maoist struggle session.’
THE LONELY LIVES OF SCIENTISTS: This Wooden Phallus Might Be a Rare 2,000-Year-Old Dildo.
Run it through an Orgone Detector and if it comes up higher than background you’ve got your answer!
My favorite take on the Orgone Chamber: “A professor at the University of Oregon who bought an accumulator told an FDA inspector that he knew the device was phoney, but found it helpful because his wife sat quietly in it for four hours every day.”
STILL THE THIRD RAIL: Speaker of the House Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) is trying to end cutting Social Security and Medicare as the dreaded “Third Rail of American Politics,” but Democrats are determined to keep it shocking for Republicans.
IT’S A FATAL DISEASE, AND IT’S MEANT TO BE: DEI Continues To Infect Flagship Texas Universities.
I understand something is about to be done about this problem. None too soon.
WHERE’S PETE? Look Who’s Finally Going to East Palestine — Maybe.
Touchscreens are cheaper than buttons and knobs, which is why they’re pushing them. But they’re inferior.
See my related Popular Mechanics column.
I THINK I’D BUY ONE ON MY OWN AFTER THAT EXPERIENCE: Toyota, Buy This Woman a New 4Runner: The driver was going 40 mph when a tree crushed her SUV—and it may have saved her life. “Images posted to the Katonah Fire Department’s website show a mangled front end of the SUV, though the vehicle was still powered on after the crash for some time. “I couldn’t put my car into park or move my legs,” the driver wrote in the thread. ‘My foot on the brake was the only thing keeping me alive until firefighters arrived. If I relieved my foot from the brake, the car would roll further into the tree and closer to my face.’ Note that the driver was, remarkably, holding the brake while suffering from a broken shin and knee.”
Well, she had incentive.
A GREAT GOVERNOR OF FLORIDA AND HE MAKES HOLSTERS? Review: DeSantis Transit Leather IWB Holster.
(No, not really.) Just as, tragically, I’m not one of the tobacco or aluminum Reynoldses.
DISPATCHES FROM THE BLUE ZONES: Man wanted for racist egg-throwing spree on San Francisco Muni bus.
STAY WARM: FLSHMCEN Men’s Athletic Ankle Socks 8-Pairs. #CommissionEarned
ICYMI: Me on Feinstein, Fetterman, and Biden. “There’s a species of cruelty in putting people in jobs they’re mentally unable to handle, but there’s a worse species of cruelty in subjecting an entire nation to being governed by such people — or by whoever is pulling their strings from behind the scenes. Enough.”
STATE-SPONSORED PANIC-MONGERING: Study Finds Zero Loss of Antarctica Sea Ice – But BBC Spins as ‘New Record Low.’