THAT EXPLAINS CERTAIN VERSIONS OF WINDOWS … Bill Gates knocked sleep as ‘laziness,’ would try to get less shuteye than colleagues.
Archive for 2023
August 8, 2023
THEY ALSO FUMED BEFORE AND DURING THE MEETING … NYT staffers fume after meeting with AG Sulzberger: ‘He murdered the sports desk’.
August 7, 2023
AND THEY CAN DEFINITELY KEEP HIM: Chris Christie Brings Bon Jovi to Ukraine.
IT HAPPENS: Team Haley says the quiet part out loud about the first GOP debate. “Haley’s adviser was honest about the attitude toward Trump. None of them are going to be bold enough to attack Trump. They could challenge him and his record in office. His record is mostly a good one, to be sure, but he has vulnerabilities, too. He accepted the pandemic mandates and advice from Fauci with little more than an off-hand comment about wanting to keep the economy strong and businesses open. That didn’t happen, though, and Team Fauci got what they wanted. The country shut down and everyone stayed home. The economy that had been so robust during Trump’s time in office took a nose dive because so many people were at home and unable to work. It was something we’ve never seen in our lives. . . . Nikki Haley won’t lay a glove on Trump. Heck, she called Trump before she entered the primary and all but asked for his permission to run, according to how Trump tells the story. The only person standing in the way of Nikki’s campaign is Ron DeSantis. And Vivek Ramaswamy. And Mike Pence. You get the point. Haley isn’t even in the top three in the primary race. She’s running for vice president.”
OPEN THREAD: Happy Monday!
LET’S GO BRANDON: Here We Go Again. Gas Prices Jump In Past Month.
GERMANS GONNA GERMAN: Porsche erases Jesus from Lisbon.
The 60th anniversary of the debut of the Porsche 911 is here, and Porsche is going all out.
Who wouldn’t use such a thing as an opportunity to cash in and remind people that the brand and the product are beloved?
Porsche even spent millions producing a video showcasing their 911 driving through iconic places throughout the years, recreating the history and evolution of the car and how it has fit into the changing lives and culture of its customers.
It’s a nice marketing move. Except for one thing: they had to make the video private because somebody noticed that in the scene where the 911 drives through Lisbon Portugal the video producers edited out the similarly iconic massive statue of Jesus Christ, erasing not just the history and culture of the city but of course of Christianity itself.
They have now made the video private on YouTube.
I’ll just leave it here.
I don’t think @elonmusk will cave to censorship on this platform. pic.twitter.com/abNLNJAler— Alex B. (@maisumcarneiro) August 6, 2023
Having been caught partying like it’s 1939 and airbrushing Jesus out of existence in the above video, Porsche has dialed back the Adobe After Effects that removed him from the video and added a pinned comment on its YouTube page, “A message to our community: in a previously-uploaded version of the 911 S/T launch film, a landmark was removed. This was a mistake, and we apologise for any offence caused. Your comments on this video were appreciated.”
THE NEW SPACE RACE: India’s Chandrayaan-3 lander arrives in lunar orbit.
AMERICA’S NEWSPAPER OF RECORD: Chicago Mayor Says That Due To Negative Connotations We Should Stop Using The Word ‘Chicago.’
Mayor Brandon Johnson advised Chicago reporters to stop using the word “Chicago” when describing anything that happens in Chicago because of all the negative connotations associated with Chicago.
“You can call it ‘The Windy City’ or ‘Downtown Deep Dish’ but do not, under any circumstances call it Chicago,” said the mayor of Chicago. “That just wouldn’t be appropriate.”
But Democrats with lavaliers and Chyrons already took us down this route 11 years ago: Mark Steyn: Racist dog whistles and the men who hear them.
And so it goes with American racism: The less there is, the more extravagantly the racism-awareness lobby patrols its beat. The Walmart carding clerks of the media are ever more alert to those who “appear to be” racist. On MSNBC, Chris Matthews declared this week that Republicans use “Chicago” as a racist code word. Not to be outdone, his colleague Lawrence O’Donnell pronounced “golf” a racist code word. When Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell observed that Obama was “working to earn a spot on the PGA tour,” O’Donnell brilliantly perceived that subliminally associating Obama with golf is racist, because the word “golf” is subliminally associated with “Tiger Woods,” and the word “Tiger” is not-so-subliminally associated with cocktail waitress Jamie Grubbs, nightclub hostess Rachel Uchitel, lingerie model Jamie Jungers, former porn star Holly Sampson, etc, etc. So by using the word “golf” you’re sending a racist dog whistle that Obama is a sex addict who reverses over fire hydrants.
I’m sure that last item will be covered in the sequel to Tablet’s bombshell interview with Obama biographer David Garrow.
OLD AND BUSTED: 2020’s Summer of Love.
The New Hotness? Altamont. John Nolte: Democrat-Run Portland’s Wealthiest Taxpayers Are Fleeing.
According to local station KPTV, Portland is “one of the fastest-shrinking U.S. cities.”
So how big of a loss is $1 billion in tax revenue? Well, the city’s entire budget for next year is $7.1 billion. So, that $1 billion will be felt.
The question now is, what will the city do about it?
The only way to attract residents, especially wealthy residents, is to create a safe and clean city with good schools, low taxes, affordable housing, and a healthy business climate. Well, as we all know, everything on that list directly contradicts what today’s Democrat party stands for. Urban Democrats invite crime and criminals by defanging local police. Drug addicts are allowed to sleep and poop on the streets. Taxes are always going up. Housing never goes up. Instead of quality of life issues, Democrats focus on “equity,” which means high crime, and the environment, which means no new housing.
But it’s not even what Portland’s Democrat leaders will do about it. The question is, what will Portland’s residents do about it? They are allowed to choose their own government and continue to vote for Democrats who make no secret of their pro-crime and anti-growth policies.
Related: Defund the Police movement has given Portland the title of Murder City USA.
Detroit, Chicago, San Francisco. Good company to be in, Portland!
LOWERING BLOOD PRESSURE WITH Isometric Exercise.
SO WHAT? IF IT WAS, WHAT WILL BE DONE ABOUT IT? Was COVID response a coup by the intelligence community? “You can see his point. The IC has been deeply involved in both the censorship regime and the spread of sketchy information that was pushed out. It helped monitor the flow of information, the implementation of draconian policies that limited people’s liberties, and infiltrated social media companies and search engines to manipulate public perception and acceptance of hitherto unheard-of policies that fundamentally altered Western Culture.”
Read the whole thing.
FASTER, PLEASE: Revolutionary Treatment Emerges in the Battle Against Deadly Fungi. Fungal infections are hard to treat, and the treatments are often long-lasting and unpleasant.
SNOWFALLS ARE NOW JUST A THING OF THE PAST: Lastly, California’s last day of snow skiiing this year was. . . yesterday, August 6.
The New York Times was not happy about this climate narrative confounding story:
It’s August. Californians Are Still Skiing. Don’t Ask.
Two of the biggest ski resorts on Lake Tahoe were still hopping on the Fourth of July, a time of year when the mountains are usually full of wildflowers. Mammoth Mountain, 140 miles south of the lake, got a positively Alaskan 75 or so feet of snow at its summit and is only now celebrating the final day of the season. . .
In mid-July, well after all the hot dogs and fireworks, I headed up to the Sierra and ran into so much lingering snow that the road through Yosemite National Park hadn’t yet opened for the season. . .
Remember how we were told a decade ago that snowfalls would soon become a thing of the past, and ski resorts were threatened with extinction?
Including by current presidential candidate RFK Jr. in 2008: “Snow is so scarce today that most Virginia children probably don’t own a sled.”
RON DESANTIS: America’s economy is decimated. As president, I have a plan to rebuild it.
Our declaration of economic independence must focus our agenda on rebuilding the American dream for our middle class. We will diversify and expand our economy by rewarding hard work and empowering our citizens to control their own destinies.
We want to be a country that makes things, where a family can raise children on a single income, and where young people can develop the skills and values necessary to build a decent life and contribute to their communities.
We will declare our economic independence from the failed elites who orchestrated American decline and from the never-ending federal spending that has inflated prices and plunged our nation to the brink of insolvency.
The goal of our declaration of economic independence is simple: We win. They lose.
Nice Reagan call back, and a nice way to refer to American elites as Soviet-style apparatchiks. As Steve Hayward wrote in the second volume of his Age of Reagan series, The Conservative Counterrevolution: 1980-1989:
Yet Reagan wanted to do much more than simply return to a robust anti-Communist foreign policy; he had spoken openly to his aides of wanting to win the Cold War, a hitherto unthinkable notion. Most notably, he told his future national security adviser, Richard Allen, sometime in 1979 that his view of the Cold War was simple: “We win, they lose. What do you think of that?” Reagan rejected coexistence and agreed with the orthodox conservative view that containment was a losing strategy in the face of determined revolutionists. Following Lincoln’s policy on slavery, Reagan wanted to place Communism on the course of ultimate extinction. Like Lincoln just after his election in 1860, Reagan probably didn’t think it could be done during his presidency (as indeed it wasn’t). But as with Lincoln in 1861, events would unfold in a course he did not foresee.
Faster, please.
RIP: Why didn’t William Friedkin get much credit when he was alive?
Following his death, Friedkin’s peers have come forward to praise him. In a typically erudite post on social media, Godfather director Francis Ford Coppola wrote, “I grieve for the loss of a much-loved companion. His accomplishments in Cinema are extraordinary and unique” — gotta love that capitalized C there. Mission: Impossible filmmaker Christopher McQuarrie, whose action scenes owe a substantial debt to Friedkin, wrote, “Raconteur, hellraiser, gentleman, giant. He smashed the mold while making it, ensuring he would always be imitated and never, ever equaled.”
Fine words after a man’s death are easy. Why didn’t he get this credit when he was alive?
Certainly, Friedkin’s two most famous films cast a long shadow. The French Connection, starring Gene Hackman in what might still be this great actor’s finest performance, is the ultimate gritty New York police procedural, shot as if it was a documentary and all but rubbing the audience’s faces in the dirt. And The Exorcist, which established Friedkin as an A-list director and turned satanic possession into box-office gold, was all the scarier because of the filmmaker’s lack of overt sensationalism, meaning that when the big frights came, they really landed hard. Both were big commercial hits, and had matters then gone slightly differently, there is no reason why Friedkin should not have had a career along the lines of a Scorsese or a Spielberg.
Unfortunately, Friedkin’s next picture, Sorcerer, a remake of the French thriller The Wages of Fear, was a substantial commercial flop, opening a month after Star Wars and being completely ignored in its wake. That the film was substantially underrated and is only now being given its due reappraisal, was little comfort. The director also acquired a reputation for being difficult on set, and without the comfort blanket of profit, Friedkin’s lucrative deal with Universal Studios was canceled immediately. His next movies, the undistinguished crime comedy The Brink’s Job and the dark psychosexual thriller Cruising, certainly displayed his versatility. The latter was decades ahead of its time in its unflinching depiction of BDSM practices in New York gay bars, leading it to become a cult film, but Friedkin’s imperial phase was over.
As Peter Biskind recounted in his 1998 look at the Hollywood Young Turks of the late 1960s and ’70s, Easy Riders, Raging Bulls:
The Sorcerer trailer Bud Smith cut played in front of Star Wars at [Grauman’s] Chinese Theater. Says Smith, “When our trailer faded to black, the curtains closed and opened again, and they kept opening and opening, and you started feeling this huge thing coming over your shoulder overwhelming you, and heard this noise, and you went right off into space. It made our film look like this little, amateurish piece of shit. I told Billy, ‘We’re f*cking being blown off the screen. You gotta go see this.’”
Friedkin went with his new wife, French actress Jeanne Moreau. Afterward, he fell into conversation with the manager of the theater. Nodding his head toward the river of humanity cascading through the theater’s doors, the man said, “This film’s doing amazing business.”
“Yeah, and my film’s going in in a week,” replied Billy nervously. “Well, if it doesn’t work, this one’ll go back in again.”
“Jesus!” Friedkin looked like he had been punched in the stomach. He turned to Moreau, said, “I dunno, little sweet robots and stuff, maybe we’re on the wrong horse.” A week later, Sorcerer did follow Star Wars into the Chinese. Dark and relentless, especially compared to Lucas’s upbeat space opera, it played to an empty house, and was unceremoniously pulled to make room for the return of C3PO et al.
Sorcerer was a major disaster, grossing only a piddling $9 million worldwide. Friedkin was dumbstruck. He could not believe the public didn’t like it. He could not believe the critics didn’t like it. Says Smith, “He probably put more into Sorcerer than any other film he’d ever done—time, energy, labor, and thought.” The picture is punctuated by some striking images, but it is self-consciously arty and pretentious, ironic in view of the way Friedkin had once put down film art in favor of commercialism, derided Coppola and Bogdanovich for their artistic aspirations. Friedkin says now, “I probably shouldn’t have done Sorcerer, ‘cause it was written to be a star-driven vehicle, and there were no stars in it. I made a big mistake with McQueen. I didn’t realize that the close-up is more important than the wide shot. A shot of Steve’s face was worth more than any landscape I could have shot. That was great hubris on my part. But the mere fact that the studio didn’t want me to make it kept me persevering and overlooking all of these things.”
The Mandalorian’s second season episode “The Believer” was a fun homage to Sorcerer, but in retrospect, by simply shooting it, it’s a bit of a cruel joke on him as well. RIP
CIVIL RIGHTS UPDATE: Colorado gun law raising age to purchase gun to 21 set to take effect Monday. “SB23-169, one of several sweeping gun reform measures approved by the state legislature and signed by the governor in the spring, will prohibit people under the age of 21 from purchasing a gun, with exceptions for active members of the U.S. armed forces, peace officers and people certified by the Peace Officer Standards and Training board.”
GREAT, NOW POLITICIANS SHOULD BE MADE TO REGRET THEM: Countries Are Starting to Regret Their CV-19 Responses.
It is okay now to criticize how CV-19 was handled, after a couple of years of berating and deplatforming anyone who suggested officials didn’t know what they were doing and were actually causing a lot of damage. The Scottish government had a very draconian lockdown and response and has now commissioned an inquiry into that response. An independent epidemiologist wrote a lengthy initial report. (Scottish Report) Basically what the epidemiologist said was that there was no evidence to support the lockdown. That was obvious from the start, and it didn’t stop politicians. This was unprecedented and literally crazy to have even contemplated. And it was basically copying the Chinese approach, which should have been a huge warning signal.
It’s crazy to allow important decisions to be made by people who pay no price for being wrong.
JUST NBC THE FAKE NEWS! NBC’s Dasha Burns Battles Ron DeSantis with Abortion Lies, 2020 Obsession.
YOU’RE GONNA NEED A MUCH BIGGER BLOG: Anthony Fauci’s Deceptions. A trove of emails, Slack messages, and other documents reveal Fauci’s behind-the-scenes involvement. ‘Tony doesn’t want his fingerprints on origin stories.’
GOODER AND HARDER SAN FRAN: Shocka! San Francisco woman crying on TikTok about how dangerous her city is voted for it (screenshot).
This woman comes from a social class were nobody was ever forced to suffer the consequences of their actions and choices. Now reality is quite literally spitting in her face and the only thing she can do is complain about the lack of police or bystanders willing to help her.… https://t.co/sxSlR2MPFn
— Carolina Lion (@CarolinaLion2) August 7, 2023