Archive for 2024
February 26, 2024
FEBRUARY: Qatar announces new gas output boost with mega field expansion. “The overall expansion of North Field from 77mtpa currently to 142mtpa by 2030 represents an 85 percent increase in production.”
For export, of course.
January: Joe Biden Halts Natural Gas Exports Over ‘Existential’ Climate Threat. “The move was welcomed by environmentalists as a step toward tackling climate change that would incentivize other nations to switch to renewables, but one urged the Biden administration to consider broadening the measure to other fossil fuel exports.”
It’s fair to ask if the Big Guy got a cut for crippling US exports.
WHAT’S GOING ON WITH SYRACUSE? Syracuse microaggressions workshop: Looking at a service animal could be ‘micro-assault.’
EVERYTHING IS RACIST, INCLUDING Taylor Swift Fans, Chiefs Winning the Super Bowl, Says BLM Leader. “I know I mentioned the part where she’s a professor. Now I’d like to remind you that she’s teaching her students to swim neck-deep in grievance culture.”
HIGHER EDUCATION BUBBLE UPDATE: Something’s got to give when it comes to rising tuition– Universities must reprioritize.
WHAT’S UNC (AND PROBABLY EVERY OTHER SCHOOL) TEACHING THESE DAYS? “For example, when I enrolled in an introductory philosophy course at UNC, I was surprised to find, on the front page of the syllabus, a series of photos of notable philosophers, from the Greeks to the present day, in which each of the “dead white men” (a popular condemnation on campus) had an “X” through his face. The photos of the modern, “diverse” philosophers were unadulterated.” Sounds like someone let Google Gemini generate their syllabus…
CHANGE: CRE vet who advised on $8 billion of deals says 30% of office buildings are ‘basically worth nothing’ and ‘just have to be torn down.’ “‘There will be a bifurcation… The product in a good location with a good, safe environment will recover. And then you’ve got another group that will somehow hang in there and get reset in pricing,’ said Cordova, who is CEO of the real estate consultancy. ‘And then you have the others that are basically worth nothing—the D class. Those just have to be torn down. That’s probably at least 30% of all offices in the country.'”
KRUISER’S MORNING BRIEFING: The 2024 Trump Train Isn’t Slowing Down for Anything in Its Path. “Trump would end up defeating Haley in her home state by more than 20 percentage points. That’s not merely a convincing victory, that’s an electoral bloodbath, especially given how much more money Haley spent in the primary than Trump.”
CDR SALAMANDER: VLS Reloading: time, distance, & opportunity cost. “So, things are moving at the speed of rust – but perhaps at this rate we’ll have something available for the fleet by . . . 2030?”
TRUTH: “An appliance used to be a machine. Now it’s a bureaucracy.” “Things used to work in this country. This is the stock complaint of the Baby Boomers, and if you are lucky enough to inherit a piece of their technology, you may find yourself agreeing. But when I say ‘things used to work,’ the object of inherited nostalgia is not only manufacturing standards before planned obsolescence and offshoring. Things used to, literally, work. You turned a knob, and sound came on, because the knob controlled the mechanism that tuned the radio to the broadcast that the big metal radio towers dotting the landscape beamed at you. I am not a gearhead of any description and don’t care much about how the insides of electrical devices work, but I know exactly what I, personally, have to do to operate my end of the GE radio. There are no downloads, no platforms, no passwords, no little pull-down menus, no verifications or account recovery protocols. There is no streaming. Personal technology used to be a machine. Now it’s a bureaucracy.”
Worse yet it’s an intrusive, dishonest, woke bureaucracy.
GOOGLE’S GEMINI FAILURE: AN ANALYSIS.
Gemini’s ridiculous–I mean that literally, as it inspired an enormous amount of ridicule–photo generation bias isn’t really important in and of itself. AI photos generated by Gemini are not good enough to be “deep fakes,” and everybody can see how stupid these images look.
So why is the story so important?
It showed us the man behind the curtain, and not in some abstract way. We got to see the world Google is trying to recreate in pictures worth more than a thousand words.
We see that Google’s world is a carefully constructed lie.
If you can’t trust them, what are they worth? And it’s clear that you can’t trust them. A friend writes:
Woke AI is useless AI, as are woke employees. Gemini has now made this perfectly clear. As Mario Juric asks in a recent X post:
“Would you hire a personal assistant who openly has an unaligned (and secret — they hide the system prompts) agenda, who you fundamentally can’t trust? Who strongly believes they know better than you? Who you suspect will covertly lie to you (directly or through omission) when your interests diverge?”
Nope.
Nope, indeed.
Related: Google’s problem is a lack of diversity. “How does that happen? How does an organization with thousands of engineers remain blind to what is easily seen by the rest of the population? The answer: a complete LACK of diversity in Google’s leadership and employee population (and this isn’t limited to Google, of course). . . . The result of all of this: an echo chamber full of politically left-leaning head nodders. There was no one in the room who could look at the results, raise a hand, and say ‘Um . . .I think we may have a problem here.’ That person simply did not exist. There was no one to question the outcomes – no diversity of thought… and it left them blind.”
EVERYTHING IS GOING SWIMMINGLY: Millennials Are Losing Their Cars.
Billing disputes surged year-on-year among Gen X and Millennials, LegalShield said, who have experienced a 96 percent increase in billing inquiries. Calls are up across the board as well, with a 53 percent increase among all LegalShield members, indicating a broader rise in billing-related issues.
John Saltarelli, a LegalShield provider attorney from Texas, identified three primary factors contributing to the surge in inquiries regarding bankruptcies, repossessions, and billing disputes.
Credit card defaults, intensified collection efforts, and the impact of inflation.
“Consumers we talk to only have enough money to cover some of their bills, so they prioritize a roof over their head ahead over other expenses, racking up high-interest credit cards,” Saltarelli said in a statement. “Collectors are turning up the heat after the pandemic, and increasing inflation makes what money people do have, worth less.”
Beyond individual mismanagement, the growing number of individuals seeking legal advice on repossession and bankruptcy signifies a broader economic distress, according to LegalShield CEO Warren Schlichting.
The White House and the talking heads keep telling my how great the economy is doing but I keep finding stories like this one.
FROM CLOWN SHOW TO CRIMINAL CLOWN SHOW: ‘Time to Indict and Disbar’: Fani Willis cell phone data report met with fury.
BETTER TO 86 THE DIVERSITY STUFF ENTIRELY: ABA May Revise Diversity Accreditation Standard To Increase ‘Identity Characteristics’ From Three (Gender, Race & Ethnicity) To 14.
And the ABA shouldn’t be in the accreditation business anyway. It’s politically compromised, and doesn’t have the interests of consumers — either of legal education or legal services — at heart.
INCENTIVES MATTER: Business Owners Have the Blue State Blues. “According to the Freedom Economy Index (FEI), only 13% of employers in California are happy with their location. Forty percent are either planning a move or considering it. Another 27% want to move but can’t make the business case. Yet. And the results in California are seen nationwide. While over 75% of red state business owners say they are happy in their current location, only about 30% of blue state employers say the same.”
JORDAN PETERSON, God, and Christianity.
LIFE IN THE BLUE ZONES: State of Maryland vs. The Takoma Torch. “My name is Eric Saul, and I am the creator of the Takoma Torch. Unfortunately, this is not a satirical article. Instead, this a disturbing true story that I never would have believed was possible: the Montgomery County State’s Attorney has criminally charged me for a satirical tweet. Here’s how it happened.”
I HOPE WE’RE NOT TOO MESSIANIC OR A TRIFLE TOO SATANIC: Imam who ‘called the French flag satanic’ has his residency permit cancelled after living in the country since the 1980s and is deported to North Africa.
DEAL OF THE DAY: BISSELL Little Green Multi-Purpose Portable Carpet and Upholstery Cleaner. #CommissionEarned
HOW BIDEN GAVE US THE BORDER CATASTROPHE: He told America what he was going do do in 2019 and on his first day in office, President Joe Biden did exactly what he said he would do – open the U.S. border to all comers, be they terrorists, spies, gang members, murderers or rapists. The Epoch Times’ Emel Akan and Lawrence Wilson document the whole process in a Special Report this morning.
Among much else, Akan and Wilson put the lie to Biden’s claim that Republicans in Congress blocked that “comprehensive immigration reform” package he proposed on Day One:
“On his first day in office, President Biden introduced the U.S. Citizenship Act of 2021, which he referred to as a ‘comprehensive immigration reform plan.’ The bill included an array of changes to existing law that would have made it quicker and easier for those who enter the country legally to gain citizenship and, in a sweeping amnesty, would have provided a pathway to citizenship for millions of people who had entered the country illegally.
“The bill offered little to decrease the flow of illegal immigrants into the country apart from requiring the Department of State to ‘advance reforms in Central America’ to address the reasons people are migrating to the United States and to create refugee-processing centers in the region.
“President Biden has said Republicans in Congress blocked the bill. But Democrats, who controlled both the House and the Senate in 2021, made no apparent effort to advance the bill, and it died in committee in both chambers, never receiving a hearing.”
HYPOCRISY, THY NAME IS ACADEMIA: In a picture-perfect illustration of how the Cultural Marxists who dominate the Academia view Freedom of Speech, it turns out that former University of Pennsylvania President Liz Magill approved severe sanctions on a conservative law professor whose speech offended DEI advocates, according to the Washington Free Beacon’s Aaron Sibarium.
And a short time later, McGill also defended a pro-Palestinian, anti-semitic “literary” festival on campus. Whatever they may claim to the contrary, their works make clear that there is no such thing as a fixed principle for the Left unless it advances their acquisition and retention of power to order the lives of everybody else.
TO BE FAIR, WHAT’S THERE TO CHECK? McCaskill: Media Must Stop Fact Checking Joe Biden.
MSNBC contributor and former Democratic Senator Claire McCaskill has been one of the most vocal voices attacking critics of Joe Biden and opposing any investigations into his family or his policies. She attacked journalists and others who spoke in favor of free speech, calling them “Putin apologists” and Putin lovers. Now she is lashing out at the media for fact checking Joe Biden’s false claims . . . any false claims.
McCaskill called The New York Times “ridiculous” for a story correcting Biden’s false claims about the economy. She warned the media that they are only helping Trump by pointing out Biden’s false or misleading claims.
“Facts are good for Trump!” might not be the endorsement of Biden she thinks it is.
MORE ON AMERICA’S INTERNAL REFUGEES: A Blue State Exodus: Who Can Afford To Be A Liberal.
Is the blue state exodus from California, New York, and Illinois making red states like Florida, Texas, and South Carolina more liberal? Studies suggest the answer is no. . . .
I disagree with the comment by Lush, “When you’re younger you can afford to be a liberal.”
Instead, I propose the first group of people who can most afford to be liberals are the political class that takes advantage of young idealistic fools. The process is accurately called “vote buying”.
The second group that can afford to be liberals are the arrogant elites such as Bill Gates and George Soros.
Blue state exodus is largely Red or Independent because Republicans and Independents make up the majority of people with enough money to afford a house and choose to do so in a non-blue state for tax purposes.
As a result of blue state exodus, the blue states will get bluer and bluer until the whole thing blows up in the faces of blue state politicians.
I’m hoping for an earth-shattering kaboom.
And check out Roger Simon’s new book, American Refugees: The Untold Story of the Mass Migration from Blue to Red States.