Archive for 2023
January 2, 2023
THE LEFT’S WAR ON WOMEN: ‘Transgender Woman’ Roxanne Tickle Sues Women-Only App for ‘Discrimination.’
HOW’D THAT ZERO COVID THING WORK OUT FOR YA, COMRADE XI? China Dec manufacturing contracts sharply as COVID infections soar.
Previously: The COVID lockdowns were all for naught. “Guess which developed country had the lowest excess mortality between 2020 and 2022. Go on, have a guess. That’s right. Sweden, which refused to close shops or schools or to impose a mask mandate, saw cumulative excess deaths rise by 6.8%, the lowest figure in the OECD.”
HOW’S THAT “ZERO COVID” POLICY WORKIN’ OUT FOR YA, CHAIRMAN XI? More countries roll out China traveller checks amid Covid surge.
HMM: Women score higher for empathy than men in most countries. “A new study confirms what many believe: Women tend to be better than men at imagining or understanding what another person is feeling or thinking.”
This is presented as positive, but you know who else is unusually good at understanding what other people are thinking or feeling? Psychopaths. Understanding other people’s thoughts and emotions is important if you want to manipulate them.
FASTER, PLEASE: First-ever robotic pill makes insulin injections obsolete. “A new drug capsule developed at MIT may one day be able to replace those injections. The capsule has a robotic cap that spins and tunnels through the mucus barrier when it reaches the small intestine, allowing drugs carried by the capsule to pass into cells lining the intestine.”
SMALLER BUGS TO BITE ‘EM: First “virovore” discovered: An organism that eats viruses.
PRIVACY: Wickr Me, Amazon’s encrypted chat app, stops accepting new users.
The decision, first announced in November, follows several controversies surrounding the ultra-secure chat app, which allowed users to sign up without a phone number or other potentially identifying information, making it a favorite for security-minded groups including hackers, drug dealers and journalists.
In June, an NBC News investigation revealed that Wickr Me had become a go-to product for many people trading child sexual abuse material. The investigation identified 72 court cases from the past five years in which the defendant allegedly used Wickr (as it’s commonly known) to trade child sexual abuse material.
More:
In its statement in November, the company explained that it was shutting down Wickr Me to devote more resources and focus toward its business-to-business products, AWS Wickr and Wickr Enterprise. The post did not mention the business it has with government agencies, including the Department of Defense and the Department of Homeland Security.
…
In June 2021, Wickr was acquired by Amazon Web Services. Since the acquisition, the company had faced questions about its government contracts with agencies like Customs and Border Protection and attracted attention with its role in records-related scandals in which the app was used to automatically destroy government communications.
It seems as though Amazon is killing off consumer-level encrypted messaging to focus on providing unhackable (and instantly “shreddable”) comms to big business and big government.
CRAPPY NEW YEAR: Ukraine War Kicks Off 2023 with a Very Big Bang. “It’s the single-deadliest known strike in months.”
READER FAVORITE: Shark Vertex Cordless Stick Vacuum. #CommissionEarned
AND THEN THERE WAS NONE: Rodney Scott may well have been the only honest man in the current administration when President Joe Biden kept him onboard from the Trump team as head of the Customs and Border Patrol (CBP), according to Just the News’ Aaron Kliegman. Scott has has “Former” prior to that title.
“When the Biden administration went against the recommendations of experienced career border security professionals, terminated the Migrant Protection Protocols, canceled the Asylum Cooperative Agreements, and lowered the bar for credible fear determinations,” Scott said, “they sent a message worldwide and opened the flood gates for anyone that could make up a sad story or recite the one that was provided to them by the cartel and so-called migrant aid organizations operating in Mexico.”
That’s about as succinct a summary of how the border crisis reached its current stage as you are likely to find anywhere. Kliegman also provides an excellent summary at three recent analysis by the Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse (TRAC) on the explosion of immigration cases.
WELL, LIKE MOST GOVERNMENT PROGRAMS, IT CERTAINLY DIDN’T WORK OUT AS PROMISED: Was the sexual revolution a government psy-op?
IN THE INTEREST OF EQUAL OUTCOMES, GIVE ME $500K: Virginia school district pays almost $500k for ‘equal outcomes’ consultant.
NEW YEAR’S REFORMS FOR HIGHER ED: Sadly (as a former Cameron Crazie), I think we probably do need to end big-time college sports. Not just because it’s obviously just a minor league for the pros now, but because colleges use sports “homerism” to distract from the vile things they actually promote and mandate for the vast majority of students.
Update: I corrected my embarassing substitution of the word “prose” for “pros.” Is anyone else having this weird thing as they get older where they substitute homophones while writing? Or am I just losing my mind?
DISPATCHES FROM THE BLUE ZONES: California Officially Becomes a Sanctuary State for Child Mutilation.
YOU’RE NOT ALLOWED TO WANT TO HELP BOYS: Mathematics organization apologizes for comments made about gender.
At a mathematics education conference previously reported by Campus Reform in which numerous scholars pushed for Diversity, Equity & Inclusion (DEI), one speaker stood out by arguing that boys in particular are at a disadvantage in numerous ways in American K-12 education.
Campus Reform obtained exclusive audio of this presentation.
The conference was hosted at the Loews Vanderbilt Hotel by the Psychology of Mathematics Education of North America (PME-NA).
The speaker in question referenced the recent book “Of Boys and Men” by Richard Reeves—a scholar at the Brookings Institution. Quoting the book, the speaker said that “boys are falling behind in school because the educational system is structured in ways that puts them at a disadvantage.”
In regards to gender, the speaker posed the question, “Given current evidence, should we not also reassure boys that they too belong [in STEM-related fields]?”
However, the speaker’s comments on boys’ underperformance and struggles in education prompted a public apology email from PME-NA. The email, written by Dr. Alyson E. Lischka of Middle Tennessee State University, was also obtained by Campus Reform.
It states that the speaker’s presentation “did not exemplify appropriate scholarly inquiry and was counterproductive with respect to PME-NA’s goal of inclusion from the updated PME-NA equity statement, which includes ‘welcoming and making spaces for members of our community that have previously been othered.’”
The email goes on to say that “the way that gender was addressed in the talk was harmful to members of our PME-NA community.”
Signatories to the email also included Elizabeth Dyer, Jennifer Lovett, and Jeremy Strayer.
Campus Reform reached out to Dr. Lischka to find out what exactly about the speaker’s brief remarks on gender PME-NA found inappropriate but received no response.
Boys are ugly and stupid and don’t belong in school at all. School is for nice girls and those who identify as girls.
The zeitgeist: 
IT’S COME TO THIS: ASU publishes ‘black male privilege checklist.’
THE NEW SPACE RACE: ‘We better watch out’: NASA boss sounds alarm on Chinese moon ambitions.
So says NASA Administrator Bill Nelson, who warns that Beijing could establish a foothold and try to dominate the most resource-rich locations on the lunar surface — or even keep the U.S. out.
“It is a fact: we’re in a space race,” the former Florida senator and astronaut said in an interview. “And it is true that we better watch out that they don’t get to a place on the moon under the guise of scientific research. And it is not beyond the realm of possibility that they say, ‘Keep out, we’re here, this is our territory.’”
He cited an Earthly example in the South China Sea, where the Chinese military has established bases on contested islands. “If you doubt that, look at what they did with the Spratly Islands.”
If it weren’t for SpaceX, I’m not sure we’d be even contenders in the New Space Race.
KRUISER’S MORNING BRIEFING: The First Hillary-Bashing Briefing. “Happy New Year! I’m off again today, so here is another “rerun.” I wanted to find something from the early days after I took over the Briefing. This one was written after I’d been on the job a little more than a month, and I believe it is the first headline from what I’m now referring to as the ‘Drunk Hillary Collection.’ The days when I go off on Granny Maojackets always end up being popular. It’s also fun to see how things have changed since ancient times.”
IS PUTIN A MEDICAL MEGALOMANIAC? There is evidence that Putin’s invasion of Ukraine was a product in part of his treatments for thyroid cancer, according to Danish military intelligence sources quoted by The Lid.
REAGAN WARNED ABOUT COVID TYRANNY: Ronald Reagan’s 1964 national television address on behalf of Barry Goldwater for President is commonly known as “The Speech” that launched the actor’s political career. In fact, there was another Reagan speech three years prior that raised a lot of VIP eyebrows.
As Issues & Insights (I&I) notes, Reagan delivered an impassioned address denouncing socialized medicine at the outset of the ultimately successful Democratic drive to create Medicare. One of Reagan’s comments in that speech was this: “One of the traditional methods of imposing statism or socialism in a people has been by way of medicine.”
Were RR here today, he would be entirely justified in saying he told us but we didn’t listen. As evidence, I&I points out:
“Rather than focus on policies that would protect the most vulnerable from COVID, the Left seized on public fear of the disease to impose draconian controls nationwide. Previously unthinkable lockdowns became the norm.
“Mandates that people wear masks and get experimental vaccines became routine. The size of the federal government exploded — going from 21% of GDP in 2019 to 30% in the two years following the outbreak.
“Even now, more than three years after COVID hit these shores and long after it has mutated into little more than a severe cold, the Biden administration refuses to lift its ’emergency’ declaration.”
BOTTOM STORY OF THE DAY: Kim Kardashian takes up drinking. Well, 2022, man.