QUEEN KAMALA CROWNED: Kamala Harris is officially crowned as the Democratic nominee to take on Donald Trump.
Archive for 2024
August 2, 2024
REPAIR, REUSE, REPLACE: A Band-Aid for the heart? New 3D printing method makes this, and much more, possible.
VDARE.COM SHUTTING DOWN AS A RESULT OF LAWFARE. Its current homepage tells a harrowing tale of how government and corporations collaborated to wipe a website off the Internet, free speech be damned. I don’t know enough about the site to opine on its content, and I also know that doesn’t matter. We should be very angry that our institutions enable and engage in this cowardly silencing behavior–and wonder who else they’re silencing today.
IT’S TIME FOR VICTORIA TAFT’S West Coast, Messed Coast™: Another Corporate HQ Takes Jobs and Flees California. “Welcome to the West Coast, Messed Coast™ where Democrats imagine that money trees grow in deep ancient forests of Washington, Oregon, and northern California to fund the luxury beliefs of San Francisco, La Jolla, Medina, and West Linn.”
NOT READY FOR PRIME TIME: ChatGPT still not very good at diagnosing human ailments.
DISPATCHES FROM THE BLUE ZONES: Measure banning mountain lion hunting qualifies for Colorado’s statewide ballot.
Currently numbered as Initiative 91, the ballot measure purports to ban the practice of “trophy hunting,” which generally means killing an animal for sport and not for consumption or harvest. However, the initiative goes on to broadly define trophy hunting as “intentional killing, wounding, pursuing or entrapping of a mountain lion, bobcat or lynx,” which in practice means a ban on hunting the animals entirely, according to Dan Gates from Coloradans for Responsible wildlife Management, a pro-hunting group that opposes the measure.
“They say they want to curtail trophy hunting, but the definition in the petition says ‘intentional killing,’” Gates previously said. “All of hunting is intentional killing. If they are going to classify that hunting as intentional killing, how can they not be for getting rid of all forms of hunting?”
In Colorado, the hunting of mountain lions, which runs yearly from November to March (with additional hunting in April if needed) is already prohibited unless the meat of the animal is harvested for consumption. In other words, lion hunting just for the taking of a trophy is already illegal.
Lynx are already protected by both state and federal law, with hunting and trapping prohibited.
Yes, but Initiative 91 makes Denver/Boulder Axis progressives feel good.
OLD AND BUSTED: From Bauhaus to Our House.
The New Hotness? From Bauhaus to Our Skatepark! Mark Judge test rides The Beautiful New Carver Bauhaus Skateboard.
It’s a perfect fit for a skateboard. Because the German Bauhaus Movement (1919-1933) combined fine art and functional craft, many of its most lasting works were not necessarily painting and sculpture, but furniture, craft and home design. Marcel Breuer, Marianne Brandt, and others created the minimalism that would influence the furniture and utensils of the 1950s-60s, and architects such as Walter Gropius and Ludwig Mies van der Rohe were the forefathers of the International Style that still exists in architecture.
The Carvehaus art design is two circles, red and blue, intersecting, with a curve of yellow where they overlap. It signals pure early-20th century modernism. As is always the case with Carvers, the patented deck, truck and wheels are top flight—industrial, indestructible, archetypal and beautiful; Bauhaus masterpieces themselves. For me modernism has also always had a profound spiritual power. Although the movement is considered an artistic break from the past, and it was, there’s also something godly and familiar in the shapes and designs. Carl Jung was right that there are archetypes that have always existed that we don’t create but can discover. It’s why Piet Mondrian’s squares seem both new and familiar, why Picasso hits us with something new yet also buried deep in the psyche, why Rothko’s shapes evoke not just radicalism but contemplation. It’s why minimalism in music such as the composer Philip Glass can be both soulful and surprising. As Chesterton said, the Christian can believe in both fate and free will.
As Mies van der Rohe never said, God is in the gnarliness. Read the whole thing.
HOW IT STARTED: How Joe Biden Is Positioning Himself as a Modern FDR.
—Time magazine, October 28th, 2020.
How it’s going: Welcome to the Harris-Biden Recession.
—Matt Margolis, PJ Media, today.
Flashback: Milton Friedman’s Revenge.
FILE UNDER YMBFKM: A Paris 2024 official has had his accreditation revoked for appearing to make a hand gesture during the women’s street skate finals last weekend which can be interpreted as “an expression of white supremacy.”
The Telegraph reports that:
“The man in question, who was wearing Olympic Broadcasting Services (OBS) kit but was later identified as a subcontractor, was standing behind athletes and coaches at La Concorde Urban Park on Sunday when he was twice spotted making the ‘OK’ hand sign, low and to his side, in the background of event footage.”
Hey, it’s not like he allowed a male gorilla to punch some women’s lights out.
Priorities, man.
**Updated with better link**
CORN, POPPED:
NEW: Inside the staff rebellion at Crooked Media, the progressive media org behind Pod Save America.
Among the issues dividing staff: the war in Gaza. A founder dating an employee. The union filing a complaint over union busting claims.
A third of staff have left since Jan '23 pic.twitter.com/lhYhu1jhVt
— Ashley Carman (@ashleyrcarman) August 1, 2024
Full report here: While ‘Pod Save America’ Tries to Unite Democrats, Its Staff Rebels.
The link is supposed to get readers behind Bloomberg’s paywall but I don’t know if it has an expiration.
IS HARRIS BURNING? ‘Bully’ Kamala Harris ‘berated staff,’ left them in tears after berating them with ‘F-bombs,’ intern told never to make eye contact: report.
Kamala Harris “throws around F-bombs” and constantly berated her staff when she was California Attorney General, according to a shocking report.
An unearthed 2019 op-ed from professor Terry McAteer published in California newspaper The Union describes the “eye-opening” month his son Gregory spent as an intern for Harris, now the presumptive Democratic nominee for president.
McAteer, a Democrat with generational political ties to the party, claimed his son was subjected to a “side of Kamala Harris which the general public does not know”.
“Harris vocally throws around ‘F-bombs’ and other profanity constantly in her berating of staff and others,” McAteer wrote.
“As AG… Harris instructed her entire staff to stand every morning as she entered the office and say, ‘Good Morning General’.
Don’t worry though, the AP has an explanation for all of that. She’s an “adroit code-switcher:”
Kamala Harris has range. She can grill nominees for the Supreme Court or meet with foreign dignitaries, then pivot to hosting a Diwali celebration or dancing enthusiastically alongside an HBCU-styled marching band.
It is a dexterity that Harris, the first Black woman and Asian-American to serve as vice president, developed as a person of color to navigate the corridors of power or Main Street in a nation where race and identity influence how one is received or embraced.
Harris, the daughter of immigrants from Jamaica and India, is an adroit code-switcher, a term that can include deliberately adjusting one’s speech style and expression to optimize relatability and ensure she gets a message across.
Kamala Harris morphed into Hilaria Baldwin so slowly, I hardly even noticed.
Or as America’s Newspaper of Record reports: Hillary Clinton Meets With Kamala To Help Her Improve Her Black Accent.
THIS IS THE CORRECT TAKE: I’m Sorry You Have a Horrible Medical Condition. Now Stop Punching Women in the Face.
I THINK THAT WAS ALWAYS THE PLAN:
There’s time! https://t.co/UjOBAWvoEl
— Mickey Kaus (@kausmickey) August 2, 2024
OUCH: Intel to Cut Jobs and Suspend Dividend in Cost-Saving Push.
Intel plans to lay off thousands of employees this year and pause dividend payments as part of a broad cost-saving drive more than three years into Chief Executive Pat Gelsinger’s turnaround effort.
Gelsinger laid out the plan to reduce costs by more than $10 billion next year as the chip maker reported second-quarter sales of $12.8 billion, down 1% and below analysts’ forecasts in a FactSet survey. Reaching that cost-reduction goal will require cutting jobs and lowering capital expenditures, among other moves, the company said.
The company’s stock fell 20% in after-hours trading.
Intel has struggled to gain a foothold in the market for artificial-intelligence chips that have driven the sales and valuations of Nvidia and some other rival chip makers. The heavy spending on those AI-focused chips to build out big data centers also has cut into demand for the non-AI processors for data centers that have long been central to Intel’s business.
Intel missed the boat on mobile over 15 years ago, repeatedly failed to stick to its own roadmap on x86 chip development in the years since, and got caught flat-footed on AI chips, too.
It’s been a long time since the days of “only the paranoid survive.”
READER FAVORITE: 10-Minute Strength Training Exercises for Seniors: Exercises and Routines to Build Muscle, Balance, and Stamina. #CommissionEarned
BETRAYAL OF DUTY: Director Rowe Personally Crippled Trump’s Secret Service Team. “The security ‘breakdowns’ were so massive and implausible when combined that any large police force could have done a better job than the most elite protection unit in the world. The shooter was identified, tracked, photographed, filmed on the roof, the Secret Service was warned multiple times, the shooter was in the line of sight of the snipers, and Trump was trotted out onto the stage and kept there as the shooter was lining up his shot in full view of the Secret Service snipers. None of that is disputable.”
HMM: Border Invasion Validation. “Texas’ theory that the state is undergoing an illegal alien invasion, as per Article I, Section 10, Clause 3 of the Constitution of the United States of America, due to the Biden Administration willfully ignoring border control laws, just got some validation from the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals.”
CANCEL CULTURE IS BAD EVEN WHEN IT’S YOUR ENEMIES BEING CANCELED, and the definitive case for Rikki Schlott & my definition of cancel culture.
YES, THE GENERAL SOCIAL SURVEY SHOWS MARRIED MOMS AND DADS ARE THE HAPPIEST: Contrary to pop culture narrative, married people happier, wealthier: sociologist. “‘Nothing predicts happiness … like a good marriage does,’ professor says.”
Pop culture says otherwise, because it’s designed to produce Democratic voters, who tend to be neurotic and unhappy.
WARGAMING THE ELECTORAL COLLEGE: Keystone Edition. “All indications are that demi-President Kamala Harris will pick Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro as her running mate and I’m not going to sugarcoat this one for you — that’s a problem.”
LOUSY NEW TITLE IX REGS OFF TO A DESERVEDLY ROUGH START. Bad news: the regs strip students of critical free speech and due process rights, taking away the right to a live hearing and to cross-examine witnesses, and (while ED has been cagey on this) making schools punish students for “misgendering.” Good news: They’re so bad that, for now, courts have blocked them from taking effect in 26 entire states, and on many other campuses as well.
This huge mess is directly attributable to ED’s determination to use Title IX as an excuse to attack some of our most fundamental rights as Americans.