THE NEW SPACE RACE: Artemis Accords reach 50 members with Panama, Austria signing space pact.
Archive for 2024
December 12, 2024
THE “CONSPIRACY THEORISTS” HAVE RUN UP A PRETTY GOOD TRACK RECORD:
If you uttered the facts in this IG report last year, you were labeled a “conspiracy theorist.” It’s also notable that the IG report came out literally the day after Christopher Wray resigned. https://t.co/7u6T2e4ZjN
— Vivek Ramaswamy (@VivekGRamaswamy) December 12, 2024
DRAWING THE LINES AT VIOLENT CRIMES? Meh.
Just The News is reporting that NYC Mayor Eric Adams announced he will “work with President-elect Donald Trump’s border czar Tom Homan to deport illegal immigrants in his city who have committed violent crimes.”
“We’re not going to be a safe haven for those who commit repeated violent crimes against innocent migrants, immigrants and longstanding New Yorkers,” Adams told reporters at a press conference. “That was my conversation today with the border czar, to figure out how to go after those individuals who are repeatedly committing crimes in our city.”
I suppose half a loaf is better than none, but I’m betting NY District Attorney Alvin Bragg will define “violent crimes” downwards. Not to mention the truck-sized hole that “repeatedly” means. Stab a cop once? No problem. Stab a cop two or three times, maybe not so much.
KRUISER: Just Sayin’ — I Never Asked to Be Pardoned for Crimes I Haven’t Committed.
The people being mentioned as being in need of “Get Out of Jail Free” cards in the next month haven’t been publicly lobbying for themselves, but it’s an almost certain bet that they’re jumping up and down screaming, “Me next!” behind the scenes.
As Scott wrote last week, Adam Schiff, Liz “I’m Just Like Lincoln” Cheney, and alleged physician Anthony Fauci headline the group of people most in need of an assist from President LOLEightyonemillion.
Schiff and Cheney are sweating bullets because they were members of the J6 House Soviet Select Committee on Daddy Issues, a pathetic un-American charade that only succeeded in wasting the taxpayers’ money.
Anthony Fauci is on the list for being Pol Pot, M.D. during the pandemic, of course. Four years later, we’re still waiting to see if he told the truth about anything other than the spelling of his name in 2020.
Read the whole thing — and I might have to steal “Pol Pot, M.D.”
WHOSE EMOTIONAL SUPPORT ROBOT FOR KIDS IS IT, ANYWAY? Startup will brick $800 emotional support robot for kids without refunds.
Embodied blamed its closure on a failed “critical funding round.”
…
The company didn’t provide further details about the pulled funding. Embodied’s previous backers have included Intel Capital, Toyota AI Ventures, Amazon Alexa Fund, Sony Innovation Fund, and Vulcan Capital, but we don’t know who the lead investor mentioned above is.When it first announced Moxie in April 2020, Embodied described the robot as a “safe and engaging animate companion for children designed to help promote social, emotional, and cognitive development.” It advertised play built around “best practices in child development and early childhood education”; changing weekly themes, like empathy, friendship, and respect; and activities like meditation, reading, and drawing with the bot.
But soon, none of those features will be available, making the pricey children’s toy virtually useless. According to Embodied, Moxie can’t perform core functionality without cloud connectivity. Worse, owners apparently have an uncertain and limited amount of time until the devices are bricked.
Teach your kids the value of on-device functionality before you buy them a cloud-enabled emotional support robot.
Either that or tell them to play in the yard with the dog.
OFT EVIL WILL SHALL EVIL MAR: Victor Davis Hanson: The Evaporation of the Obama Mystique. Obama’s behind-the-scenes political maneuvering culminated in a failed Biden presidency that ultimately led to a significant Democratic electoral defeat and rejection of his political legacy.
His legacy has been very destructive for the Democrats. He cleared off their bench while he was in office, and now they’re looking even worse.
SHOCKING NEWS FROM THE WORLD OF SCIENCE: Smoking as preteen, teenager can injure young people’s hearts.
21ST CENTURY LEGAL ISSUES: Can You Sue Over Assurances Made by Company’s Customer Service AI Chatbot?
BIDEN’S PARTING GIFTS:
EXCLUSIVE: Weeks before Trump takes office, Biden is racing to auction off unused border wall materials.
Video shows trucks hauling wall materials off the border to a government auction site, where a massive amount of wall is waiting to be sold. pic.twitter.com/ogaQMBHw7R
— Daily Wire (@realDailyWire) December 12, 2024
Full story here.
WELL, EASY TO BELIEVE FOR A NEW JERSEY ATTORNEY GENERAL: “Imagine filing lawsuit against Glock, getting five paragraphs in, and admitting you fundamentally don’t understand how the gun even works.”
MEANWHILE, OVER AT VODKAPUNDIT [VIP]: Gray Swans, Regime Collapse, and the Kremlin.
Last week, 50-plus years of the Assad family’s Ba’ath Party rule ended after an 11-day lightning campaign by rebel forces that nobody saw coming. Could Vladimir Putin’s regime suffer a similar fate? Authoritarian regimes appear strong, invincible even, right up until the moment they disappear in a gray swan event.
In a Substack essay this week, Charles Hugh Smith defined a gray swan event as “an event that is known and possible to happen, but which is assumed to be unlikely to occur.” The most recent example is the fall of the Bashar al-Assad regime in Syria last weekend. People are right to marvel at how quickly it came undone but only after nearly 14 years of civil war. And there had been very little movement since March 2020.
Nevertheless, a gray swan appeared from nowhere two weeks ago, and 11 days later, Assad was history.
Much more at the link.
READER FAVORITE: DASH Rapid Egg Cooker: 6 Egg Capacity Electric Egg Cooker. #CommissionEarned
LIMITED TIME DEAL: Alpha Grillers Instant Read Meat Thermometer for Cooking Grill and BBQ Griddle. #CommissionEarned
AS THE TACO GIRL SAYS, WHY NOT BOTH? Shooting: Classes or Practice Time?. I try to practice weekly, and mostly manage.
KINDA MAKES YOU CEO TYPES FEEL STUPID ABOUT BACKING THE LEFT, HUH?
A CEO is assassinated, and now “wanted” posters are appearing across the country, targeting others simply for being successful. Someone even put up a highway sign calling for more murders. This isn’t just outrage—it’s mob mentality, and it’s tearing at the fabric of who we are as… pic.twitter.com/bXP3PqOapm
— Dan Crenshaw (@DanCrenshawTX) December 12, 2024
GORGEOUS:
Starship ready for testing ahead of Flight 7 pic.twitter.com/urGAsbQSR8
— SpaceX (@SpaceX) December 12, 2024
Flight 7 is set for no sooner than January 11.
NEW KOSA, SAME AS THE OLD KOSA: Why this co-author of The Coddling of the American Mind opposes the Kids Online Safety Act
RELIGION OF PEACE UPDATE: Pittsburgh Man Converts to Islam, and — Yes, AGAIN. “One thing you can say about Jack Molloy: he loves his mom. Molloy, a Pittsburgh resident who is now facing up to eight years in prison on terror-related charges, told his mother about his ‘master plan,’ and now that plan is part of the reason why he has come to the attention of the feds.”
AMERICA’S NEWSPAPER OF RECORD: McDonald’s Surpasses FBI In Number Of Shooters Apprehended In 2024.
GREAT MOMENTS IN STRATEGIC PLANNING: Tony Blinken Tells Congress ‘No One Anticipated’ Taliban Takeover of Afghanistan.
Secretary of State Antony Blinken testified before Congress on the Biden administration’s chaotic Afghanistan withdrawal in a long-awaited hearing that was originally scheduled for September. Though he claimed that “no one” in the Biden State Department anticipated the Afghan government’s swift collapse, a group of diplomats warned Blinken of that very prospect roughly one month before the Taliban captured Kabul.
“Even the U.S. government’s most pessimistic assessments did not anticipate that the Afghan government and security forces would collapse so rapidly in the face of Taliban advances,” Blinken told the House Foreign Affairs Committee on Wednesday.
Twenty-six diplomats, however, sent Blinken a dissent cable in mid-July 2021—one month before the fall of Kabul and six weeks before a suicide bombing attack killed 13 American servicemembers—warning of Afghanistan’s rapid deterioration. Asked why he ignored that cable, Blinken responded, “Very simply because no one anticipated the government and Afghan forces would collapse as quickly as they did.”
Blinken’s appearance comes nearly two months after the Biden official was set to testify before the House committee in late September. But Blinken failed to attend the hearing, defying a subpoena in the process, and only agreed to testify after the November presidential election. Blinken also missed a May deadline to turn over withdrawal-related internal documents, which were requested under subpoena.
Blinken’s appearance staved off a contempt proceeding in Congress that passed through the House Foreign Affairs Committee, setting the stage for a full vote in the GOP-controlled House. Instead, Blinken agreed to testify before traveling to the Middle East for discussions on Syria.
In April, Ben Shapiro wrote: America Is Now in the Business of Losing Wars. And Tony’s your man for the job!
NIKOLA TESLA GOT IT: Pigeons are misunderstood: These little-known facts will prove why.
WHAT A DIFFERENCE A DECADE MAKES:
Flash-forward to the end of 2024, where David Thompson explores “The Bleeding Unobvious:”
And in radical menstruation news:
Menstrual leave employment policies allow employees experiencing painful menstrual cycle-related symptoms or illnesses… to take time off work. Traditionally, these policies have been sex-specific, targeting women or females.
I suspect sharp-eyed readers can guess where this is going.
However, some companies have begun expanding their language to include “people with uteruses” or “menstruating employees.” This shift is significant, as research shows that sex-specific employment policies undermine gender equality at work.
Readers may wish to ponder whether listing special sex-based requirements – taking time off work, every month, for days, and still expecting to be paid, for instance – is the ideal basis for asserting the obviousness of workplace gender equality.
I’m also unclear on how gender equality, a term used many times, is bolstered by the belief that menstruating women may in fact be men – and the implication that men can also become women and can therefore barge into previously female-only spaces.
In 2022, Van Jones tried to warn his leftists that their attempts at redefining reality and language were going to end very badly, but hey, it’s CNN, so fortunately no one was listening: ‘I’ve Never Met A LatinX:’ CNN’s Van Jones Tears Into Left-Wing Rhetoric.
Top CNN anchor leaves panel gasping after on-air EULOGY of the Democratic Party pic.twitter.com/FWziaLNbbk
— Benny Johnson (@bennyjohnson) June 17, 2022
He said the elites use strange rhetoric that does not appeal to working class voters.
“Those people talk funny,” he continued. “I’ve never met a LatinX, I’ve never met a BIPOC … There’s this weird stuff that all these highly educated people say. It’s bizarre, nobody talks that way at the barbershop, the nail salon, the grocery store, the community center. But that’s how we talk now, so that’s weird.”
That’s what happens when you Bud Light your brand, leaving a massive opening among voters for Orange Hitler to remind them, “Kamala is for they/them. President Trump is for you.”
WHAT FOUR YEARS OF DEMOCRATIC CONTROL OF GOVERNMENT AND MEDIA HAS BROUGHT US TO:
Elites endorsing the targeted assassination of other elites seems poorly thought out. https://t.co/7zWwM6Hi3h
— Jon Gabriel (@exjon) December 12, 2024