Archive for 2019
December 1, 2019
AT AMAZON, Deal of the Day, AGS Certified 14k White Gold Diamond with Screw Back and Post Stud Earrings (1/2cttw, J-K Color, I1-I2 Clarity).
MATTHEW CONTINETTI: The Broken China Model: A weak and unstable China is also more dangerous. “What is happening in Hong Kong is not isolated. The China model of authoritarian development is damaged and scarred. What seemed as sturdy and invulnerable as a Borg Cube looks more like a fragile and wobbly mobile by Alexander Calder. The regime of Xi Jinping is under economic and political and diplomatic pressure that it is not handling well.”
INFORMATION WARFARE: 300+ Trump ads taken down by Google, YouTube.
Related: Google bans eight different Tory election adverts as disinformation concerns mount. “Disinformation” seems to mean “effective messaging by the right.”
THE ENEMY WITHIN: Chick-fil-A needs saving in battle it’s losing from within. Get woke, go broke.
NARRATOR VOICE: THEY DIDN’T. If Progressives Don’t Wake Up to How Awful Obama Was, Their Movement Will Fail.
Related: Obama: ‘I Don’t Care’ Whether You’ll Like the Nominee, Just Vote Democrat.
ANALYSIS: TRUE. Democrat Joe Lieberman: Impeachment of Trump ‘Most Partisan of All.’
UPDATE: GOP ranking member: The first witness we’ll call to testify on impeachment before the Judiciary Committee is Adam Schiff. Under oath, with Bill Barr as AG.
OPEN THREAD: Don’t disappoint.
THE COST OF LOW-COST SHIPPING: The Lonely and Dangerous Life of the Filipino Seafarer. Filipinos are amazing people, who the world treats not so well overall. A friend on Facebook comments: “Fifty years ago, you went everywhere, and got to know everywhere well, while now you go almost nowhere, and get to know it not at all. And now you’re expected to do it for wages you could make on shore.”
I remember way back in Admiralty class, when Charles Black observed that the containerization revolution was a huge boon for trade, but that it sharply devalued the traditional role of maritime expertise, which was bad for seamen.
K-12 IMPLOSION UPDATE: Minority Voters Chafe as Democratic Candidates Abandon Charter Schools: The front-runners for the presidential nomination are moving away from the charter school movement, and black and Latino families ask why their concerns are lost. Interesting to see this coverage in the NYT.
BECAUSE THIS IS WHEN PEOPLE ASK ME THIS QUESTION: Cyber Monday — What Computer Should You Buy for 2020?
OUR POLITICAL CLASS IS CRAZY: Gabbard Derangement Syndrome: Is there nothing that the embattled elites won’t blame on Russia?
Spoiler: No.
YOU DON’T HAVE TO FALL IN LOVE, YOU JUST HAVE TO FALL IN LINE: Obama: ‘I Don’t Care’ Whether You’ll Like the Nominee, Just Vote Democrat.
I DUNNO, THEY EMPLOYED WALTER DURANTY WHEN MY GRANDPARENTS WERE NEWLYWEDS: Michael Goodwin: The New York Times’ long descent from credibility. Maybe it’s not so much that they’ve gotten worse, as that we’ve gotten wise.
TOM FRIEDMAN WAS UNAVAILABLE FOR COMMENT: ‘Pre-Crime’ AI Is Driving ‘Industrial-Scale Human Rights Abuses’ In China’s Xinjiang Province.
SCIENCE MARCHES ON:
Don’t think of it as a waste of resources, but as confirmation of the Brady Hypothesis.
NOW DO GRANDFATHERS: You’re Not The Man Your Father Was. “Studies show that men’s testosterone levels have been declining for decades. The most prominent, a 2007 study in the Journal of Clinical Endocrinology and Metabolism, revealed a “substantial” drop in U.S. men’s testosterone levels since the 1980s, with average levels declining by about 1% per year. This means, for example, that a 60-year-old man in 2004 had testosterone levels 17% lower than those of a 60-year-old in 1987. Another study of Danish men produced similar findings, with double-digit declines among men born in the 1960s compared to those born in the 1920s. . . . These trends coincide with a decline in musculoskeletal strength among young men: In a 2016 study, the average 20- to 34-year-old man could apply 98 pounds of force with a right-handed grip, down from 117 pounds by a man of the same age in 1985.”