NOW THAT’S AN INSURRECTION: Antifa Forces Lay Siege to Georgia County in Battle Against ‘Cop City.’
Archive for 2023
January 20, 2023
CULTURE OF CORRUPTION: Top Obama Fundraiser Confesses To Misusing $600,000 in Federal Grants Meant for Poor Youth.
LIGHTENING DEAL: Eureka PowerSpeed Bagless Upright Vacuum Cleaner. #CommissionEarned
FALLOUT: The World Economy No Longer Needs Russia. “With alternative sources in place, Putin’s attempt at blackmailing Europe on energy has failed.”
Putin still has Xi, but he buys at a discount.
THERE’S NO “WHAT IF?” THEY ARE DOING MORE HARM THAN GOOD: NY Times Op-Ed: What If Diversity Trainings Are Doing More Harm Than Good?
January 19, 2023
HAPPY DIVERSITY THURSDAY: Do the right thing.
THE WAR ON (SHH, DON’T SAY IT) ASIAN STUDENTS: Number of Virginia high schools who failed to inform students of merit awards rises to 17.
TRACKS AND A GUN DO NOT A TANK MAKE:
That is correct, this is not a tank. This is a self-propelled artillery piece, which if it gets shot at by a tank, will die. https://t.co/MZS0tP4tSD
— Pointed Commentary (@RoyCalbeck) January 19, 2023
UPDATE: Flashback: What is, and what is not, a tank. “In part this is a response to my frustration – one shared by, it seems, quite a few people – at the continued inability for journalists in particular to correctly identify what is and is not a tank. But more importantly it provides an opportunity to discuss what tanks are and what they are for.” Note the many vehicles labeled “this is not a tank.”
Plus: “Now does it matter that the general public cannot tell the difference between a tank and an IFV? No, it probably doesn’t, to be honest. But it does matter that journalists covering wars and politicians making decisions about them also don’t seem to be able to, because it hints at a broader gap in the base of knowledge they are working with. ‘Bradley/BMP-3 isn’t a tank, but something else (an IFV) with a different function and purpose’ is a fairly entry-level piece of information about modern warfare.”
ANOTHER UPDATE: Yeah.
Have to say, having been a newspaperman in hostile zones, to include combat in Iraq, the aggressively obtuse ignorance of my douche media colleagues would have been astonishing if I didn't know them better.https://t.co/qx7uIe9chD
— BullshitSquared (blue check) (@xenophonrocks) January 20, 2023
WELL, I CERTAINLY DIDN’T EXPECT IT: Unexpected: Church of England holding tight to marriage means “man and woman.”
OPEN THREAD: It’s your time to shine.
DISPATCHES FROM THE EDUCATION APOCALYPSE: She Lost Her Job For Showing a Painting of Muhammad in Class. Now, She’s Suing.
SPACEX TO THE RESCUE: SpaceX Dragon capsule to be 5-person ‘lifeboat’ in event of ISS emergency.
TO BE FAIR, THAT WAS ALWAYS THE GOAL OF SOME PROGRESSIVES: How We Broke Science. Less emphasis on basic research, over-emphasis on citation counts, and costly regulations — like the ones responsible for Eroom’s Law (that’s “Moore’s” spelled backwards) of drug research, which keeps getting more expensive and less productive.
SCIENCE, UNSETTLED: We Might Have Been Wrong About The Role Rats Played in The Black Death.
OF COURSE NOT, ESPECIALLY ONCE THEY DISCOVER THE PRICE TAG: Should Virginians Pay for University “Diversity” Leftism? The Virginia Association of Scholars has added up the costs of the DEI racket at the state’s public universities. The money spent on these bureaucrats, whose six-figure salaries often dwarf professors’ pay, could have paid for 150 full-time professors.
JOHN STOSSEL: The Recycling Religion. A smart column accompanied by an excellent video showing how costly and pointless recycling is, including some nice footage showing how all those plastic bags lovingly tossed into the recycling bin end up clogging and shutting down the machinery at recycling plants. Of course, a lot of the stuff from the recycling bin just goes straight to landfills.
AND CODDLING CRIMINALS: Embracing Failure. Despite recent crime spikes, decarceration advocates are unrepentant
21ST CENTURY PARENTING: Canceling the Sleepover: Americans need to make a practice of fearing each other less.
Almost any Millennial internet user will have been targeted by a meme that roughly says, “It’s Friday night. Mom just put Totino’s Pizza Rolls in the oven. Your best friends are sleeping over, and you will all play GoldenEye on Nintendo 64. Life will never be better than this.”
It’s not true, of course. The hedonic pleasures of staying up too late, mainlining Pizza Rolls with Mountain Dew, and passing out on the living-room floor are nothing compared to what most adults regularly arrange for themselves. And yet, nostalgia started to sneak up on me when the Washington Post informed me that sleepovers are now controversial among parents. . . .
In other words, Americans no longer assume they share values with their peers in their actual communities. And so they continue to withdraw from one another into ever-more-elaborately curated virtual communities, where they nurture more refined suspicions of their neighbors. Their homes become little foreign countries unto themselves, with entirely unique dietary, sleeping, and media-consumption regimes. Being a helicopter parent now implies the duty to exfiltrate your child at 10:30 or midnight from a “late-over” rather than allow them the danger of a sleepover.
Negotiations with other households are just too exhausting. Parent 1: Oh, our child only eats Kraft Mac & Cheese, not homemade. He wants to bring his iPad and watch HBO Max. I let him watch whatever, LOL. Parent 2: Ah, well ours only eats Annie’s Mac & Cheese, or prepared food from Trader Joe’s. He uses his one hour of screen time to watch episodes of Octonauts that I’ve screened beforehand. Also, the third and fourth members of our polycule will be sleeping over with my spouse and me that night, is that okay? Parent 3: People still eat carbs from cardboard boxes? No wonder the frogs are turning gay. My child eats offal. I put him in blue-light-blocking sunglasses at 6:30 p.m. to help his circadian rhythm settle down. We shut off the electricity at the circuit-breaker box at 8 p.m. to avoid “dirty electricity.”
Sleepovers were a crucial part of the social ecology of my own childhood. They forced you to deal tolerably with another household’s routines and taboos, helpfully putting your own in perspective. It was just another one of those little, easy, horizon-expanding experiences. It was at sleepovers where I saw how brothers fight and still love each other, or found out what it might be like to keep a bird as a pet. There were other less-flattering glimpses into what other families were like. At the edges, the culture of sleepovers as a matter of course among so many of my friends provided weekend escapes or respites for children in unhappier homes, or adolescents who were suffering a strained relationship with their siblings or parents.
It’s actually a good thing for children to learn how to manage without Mommy for a night, or to get an idea of living to different standards, whether you perceive them as lower, higher, or just different. It’s good to learn what it’s like to sleep in a sleeping bag. Or how to say no to friends who try to pressure you into something stupid. Or how to ask forgiveness when they do and you do it. Or how to consume a meal you don’t like and express gratitude for the people who prepared it for you.
All of this is true, but as usual, we’re letting the most neurotic 10% of upper-middle-class women set the agenda. And that never goes well.