OVER AT MY SUBSTACK, reflections on life, death, and the final frontier.
Archive for 2023
May 18, 2023
A VOICE OF CONSCIENCE, BUT A RETROSPECTIVE ONE: Justice Gorsuch on COVID-19 and Emergency Government. “At the very least, one can hope that the Judiciary will not soon again allow itself to be part of the problem by permitting litigants to manipulate our docket to perpetuate a decree designed for one emergency to address another. Make no mistake—decisive executive action is sometimes necessary and appropriate. But if emergency decrees promise to solve some problems, they threaten to generate others. And rule by indefinite emergency edict risks leaving all of us with a shell of a democracy and civil liberties just as hollow.”
A few tarring-and-featherings, if not actual hangings from lampposts, would probably have a more salutary effect on future behavior. And a constitutional doctrine legitimating such remedies would be a useful judicial contribution, and one not out of line with the document’s spirit.
OPEN THREAD: Make merry.
THE NEW SPACE RACE: Political fight escalates over Space National Guard.
BEEGE WELBORN: My inaugural “Dear Beege” advice column: Bathing suits and beer. “The last thing anyone needs to see, at least any rational human being, is yet another tightly wound, upper-class Karen, marching forth with a sneer on her face, discarding memories in disgust, repeatedly spewing a single curse word as if she’s proving to her Mimi just how tough and naughty she can be while lecturing YOU on how ignorant you are that you thought bikinis and light beer kinda went together. Well…don’t they?”
PLANETARY PROTECTION: Astronomers Have Mapped The Paths of Hazardous Asteroids For The Next 1,000 Years. “The astronomers identified one particular NEO, Asteroid 7482, as especially hazardous. This asteroid will spend a significant amount of time near the Earth for the next millennium. While that doesn’t necessarily mean that it will strike our planet, it does mean that this rock poses the greatest chance of a collision within the next thousand years.”
JUSTICE: Unanimous SCOTUS shields Google, Twitter — and bypasses Section 230. “Neither case proved a successful challenge to Section 230, but neither did they produce an explicit endorsement of it. The court brusquely shrugged off Gonzalez v Google with a three-page per curiam decision that explicitly refused to consider Section 230 issues because of a lack of valid complaint overall.”
THOSE ANCIENT SUVs STRIKE AGAIN: Scientists discover past climate change to blame for Antarctica’s giant underwater landslides. “Writing in Nature Communications, the scientists say these weak layers—made up of historic biological material—made the area susceptible to failure in the face of earthquakes and other seismic activity. They also highlight that the layers formed at a time when temperatures in Antarctica were up to 3°C warmer than they are today, when sea levels were higher and ice sheets much smaller than at present.”
I pity the inhabitants of that earlier time frame, who didn’t have the option of stopping climate change by raising taxes.
MARK JUDGE: Art is a Quest to See God.
IRONIC THAT A CITY WHOSE POLICIES PRODUCE ROTTING JUNKIES ON THE SIDEWALKS IS SHAKING DOWN WALGREEN’S HERE: Walgreens to pay San Francisco $230M for its role in city’s opioid crisis.
Well, until you get to the words “shaking down.” Then it all makes sense.
THE MAN, THE MYTH, THE LEGEND: Ex-Biden Nuclear Official Sam Brinton Arrested As ‘Fugitive From Justice’ For Luggage Theft.
HOW IT STARTED: Why Did the Star Wars Hotel Flop? Disney Is Desperate To Find Out. Disney is pouring money into focus groups all about the Galactic Starcruiser hotel.
—Fatherly.com, June 8, 2022.
How It’s Going: Walt Disney World announces coming Star Wars hotel closing. “On Thursday, the theme park announced Star Wars: Galactic Starcruiser will permanently close at the end of September, CNBC reported.”
—The Miami Herald, today.
As John Nolte wrote in March, “Disney went woke and killed what even the stillborn Lucas prequels couldn’t kill: the magic of Star Wars.“
MAKE SURE THE PERSON HANDLING YOUR STOCK PHOTOS AND VIDEO knows the subject matter.
It’s amazing how often this sort of thing happens.
WELL, NOT IF THE GREENS HAVE THEIR WAY: Global Warming: Even with an extreme scenario, the world should be richer and more capable in 2050.
DEMS DISRUPT BUT CAN’T STOP FBI WHISTLEBLOWERS: They tried every parliamentary objection, inquiry and motion they could think of but Democrats were unable to prevent three FBI whistleblowers from telling Congress about beaucoup badness in the once-storied crime-fighting bureau.
EVERYTHING THAT MATTERS: What the Media Doesn’t Want You to Know About Its Mass Murder Narrative.
ANALYSIS: TRUE. Hey Dove! Fat Kids Need Treadmills, Not Representation!
READER FAVORITE: Sun Joe SWJ803E 10 inch 8.0 Amp Electric Multi-Angle Pole Chain Saw. #CommissionEarned
OLD AND BUSTED: Big Pickleball is coming for your tennis court.
—Spectator World, November 21st.
The New Hotness? Could pickleball courts soon fill shuttered Bed Bath & Beyond stores?
—Market Watch, today.
I THOUGHT IT WAS GOOD FOR EVERYONE: Cannabis use in first trimester has ‘significant’ harmful effects on a fetus.
GREAT MOMENTS IN OBJECTIVE JOURNALISM: Pete Buttigieg, intellectual god.
This is the story we are fed in Wired, which used to cover emerging technology long ago and far away. I even subscribed for a year, on one of those ridiculous $4/year deals you occasionally get. That was more than 20 years ago if I remember correctly, but whatever.
THE CURIOUS MIND of Pete Buttigieg holds much of its functionality in reserve. Even as he discusses railroads and airlines, down to the pointillist data that is his current stock-in-trade, the US secretary of transportation comes off like a Mensa black card holder who might have a secret Go habit or a three-second Rubik’s Cube solution or a knack for supplying, off the top of his head, the day of the week for a random date in 1404, along with a non-condescending history of the Julian and Gregorian calendars.
As Secretary Buttigieg and I talked in his underfurnished corner office one afternoon in early spring, I slowly became aware that his cabinet job requires only a modest portion of his cognitive powers. Other mental facilities, no kidding, are apportioned to the Iliad, Puritan historiography, and Knausgaard’s Spring—though not in the original Norwegian (slacker). Fortunately, he was willing to devote yet another apse in his cathedral mind to making his ideas about three mighty themes—neoliberalism, masculinity, and Christianity—intelligible to me.
Uh, what? Did nobody tell the author, Virginia Heffernan, that Buttigieg is a married gay man and likely not interested in the obvious crush she has on him?
Charles Cooke has an excellent parody of Heffernan’s hagiography: I Love Pete Buttigieg.
As he speaks, I admire his humility — a humility, I daresay, that might serve him well one day in the White House. I admire his common touch, too. For the next hour, the aide repeatedly returns to the door, but, despite his increasing agitation, Buttigieg dismisses him each time so that we can finish our chat. I feel special, seen, and heard — feelings that, in an age of MAGA, I haven’t felt for a long time.
He is listing the most common knots one might expect to find on a mahogany table when, unable to take it any more, I blurt out what I’m thinking. “Sir,” I shout, “I love you more than word can wield the matter / Dearer than eyesight, space, and liberty / Beyond what can be valued, rich or rare / No less than life, with grace, health, beauty, honor / As much as child e’er loved, or father found / A love that makes breath poor, and speech unable / Beyond all manner of so much I love you.”
“Yes,” he says, nodding.
Eventually, I have to leave. On my way in from Baltimore, I hit a pothole in central Washington, D.C., so I’m flying back while my car is in the shop. There are still a couple of hours before my plane leaves, and we’re quite close to the airport, but I was advised to get there early in case the security lines are long. You know how transportation is these days.
Shouldn’t socialists be able to actually make the trains run on time before being feted with Heffernan’s level of a puff piece? Or as Jon Gabriel asked in February: Sec. Buttigieg … What Would You Say You Do Here?