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Archive for 2023
December 16, 2023
VOYAGER 1 IS IN SERIOUS TROUBLE, NASA SAYS:
Normally, the probe — which, oddly, was launched about a month after Voyager 2, making it the second of the two-craft mission to launch despite its numerical name order — sends its scientific readings about interstellar space and its engineering updates in what’s known as a “package” of easily-translatable binary code.
Over the past few months, however, the probe has been “stuck” transmitting repetitive patterns of ones and zeroes that are the binary equivalent of gobbledygook. While the Earth-bound Voyager team was able to target which instrument was behind the malfunction, they haven’t yet been able to adequately troubleshoot it back into working order.
“This past weekend the team tried to restart the FDS and return it to the state it was in before the issue began,” NASA said in the statement, “but the spacecraft still isn’t returning useable data.”
It may take the agency’s engineers “several weeks” to figure out how to fix the probe.
“Finding solutions to challenges the probes encounter often entails consulting original, decades-old documents written by engineers who didn’t anticipate the issues that are arising today,” NASA pointed out. “As a result, it takes time for the team to understand how a new command will affect the spacecraft’s operations in order to avoid unintended consequences.”
We all know that this is going to eventually end very badly:
I’M PRETTY SURE THAT HBO CONCEIVED OF TONY SOPRANO AS A WARNING, NOT A HOW-TO GUIDE: Mobster Does Not Regret the ‘Great’ Topless Photo That Led to Arrest.
DECLINE IS A CHOICE: The Last Chevy Camaro Has Been Built.
A UNITER, NOT A DIVIDER! Trump ‘may turn off the internet’ if re-elected, former aide says.
One of Donald Trump‘s former staffers claims the former president may “turn off the internet” if he is re-elected.
Miles Taylor, Mr Trump’s former chief of staff at the Department of Homeland Security, made the claim during an appearance on MSNBC.
Mr Taylor was asked what kind of damage Mr Trump could potentially do if he were re-elected to the Oval Office in 2024.
“The possibilities are almost limitless,” Mr Taylor said. “The biggest concerns for me are on the national security side. I think Americans still don’t understand the full extent of the president’s powers and things Donald Trump could do, bubble-wrapped in legalese, that would be damaging to the republic.”
He claimed that Mr Trump could “invoke powers we’ve never heard a President of the United States invoke” which include decisions to “potentially shut down companies or turn off the internet, or deploy the US military on US soil”.
“Turning off” the Internet? It’s an idea approved by its “inventor!” Al Gore calls social media algorithms ‘digital’ AR-15s.
Former Vice President Al Gore took aim at social media algorithms Tuesday, saying sites that are “dominated by algorithms” are the “digital equivalent of AR-15s.”
Gore, speaking at the Bloomberg Green at COP28 event, said spending too much time scrolling on social media could be dangerous and suggested algorithms be banned. Numerous lawmakers have raised concerns about the use of social media among children.
“If you have social media that is dominated by algorithms that pull people down these rabbit holes that are a bit like pitcher plants, these algorithms, they are the digital equivalent of AR-15s,” he said. “They ought to be banned, they really ought to be banned. It’s an abuse of the public forum.”
Finally, someone is heeding the Goracle! Or perhaps not, as former President Trump is being proactively blamed for everything that could wrong in the future, perhaps short of the heartbreak of psoriasis:
QUESTION ASKED: What Will Become of Cities?
Why not convert office spaces to domestic apartments? It’s not so easy. The buildings put up after the Second World War were made for air conditioning and had wide footprints without windows in a large swath of the space. That simply doesn’t work for apartments. Cutting a giant hole down the middle is technically possible but economically expensive, requiring the rents in the resulting properties to be in the luxury range.
The next phase will be the fiscal crisis. Dying business districts, declining population, empty office buildings all mean falling tax revenue. The budgets won’t be cut because of pension obligations and school funding. The next place to look is to the capital for bailouts and then of course the federal government. But those will only buy time and certainly won’t address the underlying problem.
What bugs me most about this is just how much it fits with the dream of Anthony Fauci as he and his co-author explained back in August of 2020. Writing months after lockdowns, with American cities on fire with protests, he wrote that we need “radical changes that may take decades to achieve: rebuilding the infrastructures of human existence, from cities to homes to workplaces, to water and sewer systems, to recreational and gatherings venues.”
If your view is that the real problem with infectious disease traces to “the neolithic revolution, 12,000 years ago,” as they claim, you are going to have a serious problem with cities. Recall that this is the guy who said we need to stop shaking hands, forever. The notion of a million people working and socializing together in a few square miles of space is something that would run contrary to the entire vision.
Klaus Schwab of the WEF, too, has an issue with large cities, too, of course, with constant complaints about urbanization and the imagined world in which large swaths of our lives are spent online rather than with friends.
So a tremendous downscaling of cities might have been part of the plan all along. You will notice that none of the cities on the chopping block seem to be offering a viable plan for saving themselves. They could dramatically cut taxes, deregulate childcare, open up more schooling options, turn police attention to petty crime and carjacking instead of traffic fines, and open up zoning. That’s not happening.
New York is going the opposite direction, having effectively banned AirBnB in the city. Why did the city council do this? Because too many renters with space found it more lucrative to offer short-term rentals and overnight stays rather than make long-term contracts for residents. This is a sneaky way of pillaging property owners, not exactly a good plan for attracting real estate investment.
All of this speaks to a much bigger problem, which is that the whole political system seems to be engaged in an amazing game of “Let’s pretend” despite the overwhelming evidence of the disaster that has befallen us. No serious efforts are underway to reverse the damage of pandemic lockdowns and vaccine mandates and segregation. This is partly because there has been zero accountability or even honest public debate about what governments around the country did from 2020-2022. We live amidst the carnage but justice seems farther off than ever.
And to think of the trends among leftist urbanists prior to 2020:
Read the whole thing.
THE WAR ON CIVILIZATION CONTINUES: Canadian Medical Schools Asked to Shift From “Medical Expertise” to Anti-Racism and Social Justice Training.
FUN GIFT: Ooni Karu 12 Multi-Fuel Outdoor Pizza Oven – Portable Wood Fired and Gas Pizza Oven. #CommissionEarned
THE WEATHER CHANNEL IS ASKING QUESTIONS THAT NOBODY IS ASKING: Should I Stop Flying? It’s a Difficult Decision to Make.
Most of us can’t imagine not flying. But as airline emissions continue to adversely affect the climate, our writer deliberates why making the ethical choice is so hard—and why those who have done so are actually happier.
Four years ago, during a Zoom work meeting, a colleague who lives in London told me she’d decided to quit flying on airplanes. She simply couldn’t stomach the cost to the climate. Due to her decision, she said calmly, she would probably never visit the U.S. again. My heart skipped a beat.
Her choice seemed so extreme. She shared it with me casually in the context of conversation, without a trace of judgment or moralizing. Still, I felt shocked and inexplicably a little defensive—but also intrigued. At the time, I traveled by air as often as ten times a year for my work as a journalist and to see family members strewn about the country. I couldn’t imagine my life without flying.
But my colleague’s comment lodged in my mind as a beautiful and challenging seed. Over the next few years, it cracked through the concrete of what had been, until then, a completely unexamined belief in my inviolable entitlement to flying. When the pandemic arrived, grounding travelers and shrinking international air travel by 60 percent in 2020, I began to see that significantly reducing air travel—or even giving it up altogether—was absolutely possible.
Rare individuals have chosen not to fly for ethical reasons for decades, but in the years leading up to the pandemic, the smattering of outliers coalesced into a movement. It took root most quickly and deeply in Sweden, which in 2017 became the first country in the world to establish a legally binding carbon-neutrality target—a year before Greta Thunberg began protesting in front of its parliament*. In Swedish, the movement became known as flygskam, which translates to “flight shame,” a term commonly attributed to Swedish singer Staffan Lingberg, who gave up flying in 2017.
But the people who preach global warming as a religion the strongest aren’t even pledging to fly commercial, let alone switching to meetings via Zoom:
● Private Jets Flock To Dubai For COP 28: Event Set To Have Biggest Carbon Footprint In History.
● Sunak, Cameron and King Charles each take own private jets to travel to Cop28.
● “In 2022, U.S. government employees spent $2.8 billion on official travel, taking more than 2.8 million flights, 2.3 million vehicle rentals and 33,000 rail trips.”
To coin an Insta-paraphrase, maybe think about quitting flying when the people who tell you that global warming is a crisis start to act like it’s a crisis themselves?
* Thunberg has recently switched religions. So why take take flying advice from someone who’s now pro-Hamas?
THERE’S WAY TOO MUCH MONEY FLOWING INTO HIGHER EDUCATION: Northwestern employs 1 administrator for every 2 undergrads: analysis.
IT’S SATIRE — OR IS IT? US vows evacuation of citizens from Gaza will be as flawless as Afghan evacuation.
THEY FEEL SAFE BECAUSE SO MUCH OF OUR GOVERNMENT, MEDIA, AND ACADEMIA ARE ON THEIR PAYROLL: US and allies should warn China over Hong Kong kidnap threats. “Alongside his claim that communist China is a democracy, one of Xi Jinping’s more absurd assertions is that Beijing never interferes in the internal affairs of other nations. This is a patent falsity evinced by China’s expansive intellectual property theft, territorial imperialism, and election interference. Another example of China’s interference in the affairs of other nations is its claimed right to apply extraterritorial justice against political activists living abroad. On Thursday, the Beijing-directed Hong Kong police force issued arrest warrants for five more people living in the United States and the United Kingdom. They are accused of breaching China’s national security law for Hong Kong, which restricts criticism of the Communist Party and efforts to advocate democracy.”
#JOURNALISM: “That’s a NYT headline that makes me think if a comparable group were making memes for Biden, the headline would celebrate them as feisty and smart and really getting under Trump’s skin. . . . I thought this article was going to revile the speech, but it turned much more aggressive, with a very disturbing legal threat.”
They’ve given up persuasion now, in favor of intimidation.
INFOGRAPHIC FOR THE AGES: My Epoch Times colleague, Peter Svab, has compiled the most detailed and user-friendly graphic I’ve seen anywhere that explains all of the important facts, players and schedules for the four indictments and 11 lawsuits involving former President Donald Trump.
THE LID: Why is #MeToo Covering for Hamas?
Their identity is critically important because their sexual assaults were not random, back-alley attacks. They were part and parcel of the terrorists’ goal of violently humiliating Jewish women, as Jewish women. The attackers were making an ideological statement on women’s bodies. Yet, from reading the two #MeToo International statements, a person who has not been closely following world events could come away thinking that the Israeli women may have been raped by Israeli men.
The updated #MeToo statement then proceeded into the realm of “everybody does it.” There have been “acts of gender-based violence” in “places like Israel, Palestine, Sudan, Congo, and Tigray,” it asserted. The clear implication was that both Israeli soldiers and Palestinian terrorists have engaged in those “acts of gender-based violence.” But that’s false. One side did it. The other didn’t and doesn’t.
The sacred principle that sexual assault should never be politicized has been left in tatters by #MeToo International. If #MeToo’s leaders think they are helping the Palestinian cause by shielding Hamas from criticism of its rapes, they are mistaken; we all see what Hamas did. In its glaring attempt to cover up for Hamas, all the #MeToo leadership has accomplished is to undermine the noble cause for which #MeToo is supposed to stand.
Flashback: The Death of #MeToo: ‘To Be Fair, It Was Never Actually About Helping Women.’ “You think Democrats really care about women? If so, you are a damned fool. Mary Jo Kopechne could not be reached for comment.”
AT AMAZON, Last Minute Deals. #CommissionEarned
FUNNY, I DON’T THINK MIKE ROWE HAS EVER DONE A DIRTY JOBS EPISODE ON THIS PROFESSION: Megan Rapinoe Calls Playing For U.S. Team ‘Worst Job In The World.’
GET WOKE, GO BROKE: Applications for Early Harvard Admissions Dip.
I suspect that this is only the beginning. Of course, Harvard won’t actually go broke, but I believe that its long-term decline starts here.
“POLITICS IS DOWNSTREAM FROM CULTURE,” Andrew Breitbart liked to say. But sometimes it isn’t, as when a political worldview has a distinct impact on the pop culture a city gets to enjoy: Sports: the latest victim of DC’s crimewave. The departure of the city’s pro basketball and hockey teams to Alexandria was so avoidable.
[DC Mayor Muriel] Bowser has done a U-turn in recent months after multiple botched reform efforts that were killed by Congress and even opposed by fellow Democrats, but even her “drug-free zone” proposals are receiving pushback from progressives on the council. And those policy changes won’t solve the disastrous state of DC policing, which has seen a net loss of 500 officers since 2020. In the past, the city offered nearly thirty officers to Capital One Arena during events to keep order — now, they only offer three.
The underlying problems driving this crime wave are obvious. Unemployment, which is particularly high among black residents, is a major problem. But so is chronic absenteeism in DC schools, which has never returned to pre-pandemic levels: it’s 43 percent for students in general, and 60 percent among high-schoolers.
It turns out that offering free tracking devices for when you’re carjacked isn’t enough to satisfy the demands of workers, citizens and visitors who want to be safe when having dinner a stone’s throw from the White House and Capitol Hill — or if they want to spend the high prices necessary to go out to a game at night with their family in the increasingly unsafe Chinatown area.
There are fundamental problems that the city faces beyond crime as it relates to the arena, which was built in the mid-1990s. The trend in the NBA in recent years has been that owners want to own not just an arena, but the surrounding area as well — the retail, restaurants, hotel and residences in an area that will offer far more income than games alone.
In his remarks at the announcement ceremony, the owner spoke of the positioning of the Alexandria site, located between Ronald Reagan Airport and right by a new Metro site, as “romantic,” with the appeal of starting on “seventy acres, and the ability to start with a clean slate.” No amount of money the city could offer could compete with that.
Meanwhile on the opposite coast, there’s another leftist-monopoly city with crime rates its local government isn’t willing to face: San Francisco Giants Lost Out on Shohei Ohtani in Part Due to Rampant Crime, Homelessness.
San Francisco’s struggles with rising crime, rampant drug use, and sprawling homeless camps have kept tourists away and led to businesses and residents fleeing the city.
Now, the downtown disorder is being blamed for deterring a big name from relocating to the Golden Gate City: Major League Baseball superstar Shohei Ohtani.
Ohtani, a rare two-way talent who is both an elite hitter and pitcher, made news over the weekend when he announced he was signing with the Los Angeles Dodgers. He signed a record-breaking ten-year, $700 million contract with the team this week.
But news reports have indicated that the San Francisco Giants — the Dodgers’ biggest rival — were also all-in on trying to land Ohtani, and, in fact, offered him the exact same deal.
In an interview with the Athletic on Tuesday, one-time Giants All-Star catcher Buster Posey, who is now a member of the team’s executive board, suggested that San Francisco’s struggles with downtown degradation and lawlessness have played a role in preventing star players, including Ohtani, from signing with the team.
Posey said that Giants leaders tried to sell Ohtani on being part of the team’s storied history, and what joining the Giants could mean for the city. “I just feel that him coming to the Giants could have been transformative, obviously for the baseball team but it also would’ve given the city a boost that we’ve all been looking for,” Posey said.
While Ohtani never personally expressed concerns about the state of the city, there were some reservations in his camp, according to the Athletic. The Bay Area, according to the outlets, is perceived by many as damaged goods.
Former Power Line contributor Paul Mirengoff adds: Decline has consequences.
Some of the commentary about the move seems to assume that D.C. — the nation’s capital, after all — is entitled to host sports teams, or at least an NBA team given the city’s great affinity for basketball. Think again.
The basketball and hockey teams spent two decades in Maryland before moving to D.C. The football team has played its games in Maryland for more than 25 years. The entire D.C. area was without baseball for 35 long years.
Like every other jurisdiction in America, Washington, D.C. must compete to attract and retain businesses and taxpayers. Sure, D.C. has an enormous permanent industry — the federal government — but that’s not enough. Moreover, D.C. must even compete to keep some federal agencies from heading to the suburbs.
Every year is an audition. Washington, D.C., like so many other jurisdictions run by left-liberals (including neighboring Maryland), is failing its auditions. It is declining rapidly. And, as we can see from what’s almost certain to happen in Chinatown, the consequence of that decline will be more decline.
Both cities could tackle crime if they wanted to. But DC’s last Republican leader left office in 1961, and San Francisco’s last Republican mayor left in early 1964. As NRO’s Jay Nordlinger wrote in 2010 when Detroit was making headlines and photo spreads thanks to its Hiroshima-like bombed out landscape, “If people are voting a certain way — maybe it’s because they want to. Maybe they know full well what they’re doing. Sometimes you have to take no — such as ‘no to Republicanism’ — for an answer,” no matter what ancillary losses such decisions bring to those cities.