#METOO: J.K. Rowling: ‘I’m So Sick of This S***.’ “This is not a woman. These are #NotOur Crimes.”
Author Archive: Stephen Green
February 28, 2024
DISPATCHES FROM THE BLUE ZONES: Mayor Adams Surrenders to Reality, Begs to Change NYC Sanctuary Status. “Gov. Abbott, and Gov. DeSantis, please go ahead and pat yourselves on the back today. If you do it with such vigor that you develop carpal tunnel syndrome, no one would blame you.”
CHANGE: US Army Is Slashing Thousands of Jobs in Major Revamp to Prepare for Future Wars.
The U.S. Army is slashing the size of its force by about 24,000, or almost 5%, and restructuring to be better able to fight the next major war, as the service struggles with recruiting shortfalls that made it impossible to bring in enough soldiers to fill all the jobs.
The cuts will mainly be in already-empty posts — not actual soldiers — including in jobs related to counterinsurgency that swelled during the Iraq and Afghanistan wars but are not needed as much today. About 3,000 of the cuts would come from Army special operations forces.
At the same time, however, the plan will add about 7,500 troops in other critical missions, including air-defense and counter-drone units and five new task forces around the world with enhanced cyber, intelligence and long-range strike capabilities.
The structural changes are necessary and probably past due. But I doubt the Army would be shrinking its overall size if the Woke BS wasn’t deterring actual warriors from enlisting.
THE NEW SPACE RACE: China Announces Name of Spacecraft Landing Crew on Moon.
The capsule is called Mengzhou, or “dream vessel,” while the lander is called Lanyue, or “embracing the Moon,” a reference to a poem written by Mao Zedong in 1965, as CNN reports.
The almost 30-foot-long Mengzhou spacecraft will weigh in at a whopping 22 metric tons, per the announcement. The lander is big enough to house two astronauts and a 440-pound rover. According to the statement, their development is “progressing well.”
It’s a highly ambitious plan, but given the country’s progress — including becoming the first to land a spacecraft on the far side of the Moon in 2019 — it may just have a shot at pulling off its goal of returning astronauts to the lunar surface by 2030.
When is that next Starship test flight?
KRUISER’S MORNING BRIEFING: I’m Glad Richard Pryor Isn’t Here to See What Woke Is Doing to Stand-Up. “Stand-up used to be rewarded for its boldness. The woke mob wants it neutered, censored, and easy to control. The feds who used to lurk in Lenny Bruce’s audiences have been replaced by woke idiots with too much Twitter/X time on their hands. They’re all trying to force state-approved entertainment on the public.”
THE NEW SPACE RACE: SpaceX discloses cause of Starship anomalies as it clears an FAA hurdle.
SpaceX noted that the Super Heavy first stage of the rocket performed nominally, with all 33 Raptor engines on this massive rocket igniting successfully. The booster then performed a full-duration burn to reach stage separation. At this point, the upper stage executed a successful “hot staging” maneuver in which the Starship stage separated from the booster while some of the booster’s engines were still firing.
For the Super Heavy booster, the next step was to perform a series of burns to make a soft landing in the Gulf of Mexico. As part of the initial burn, 13 of the rocket’s engines were intended to fire.
“During this burn, several engines began shutting down before one engine failed energetically, quickly cascading to a rapid unscheduled disassembly of the booster,” SpaceX said. “The vehicle breakup occurred more than three and a half minutes into the flight at an altitude of ~90 km over the Gulf of Mexico.”
The problem was subsequently linked to a problem with supplying liquid oxygen to the Raptor engines.
“The most likely root cause for the booster RUD was determined to be filter blockage where liquid oxygen is supplied to the engines, leading to a loss of inlet pressure in engine oxidizer turbopumps that eventually resulted in one engine failing in a way that resulted in loss of the vehicle,” the company stated. “SpaceX has since implemented hardware changes inside future booster oxidizer tanks to improve propellant filtration capabilities and refined operations to increase reliability.”
OK, let’s get to that third test flight.
IT ISN’T JUST GEMINI: Meta’s AI Achieves the Left’s Dream, Makes Donald Trump Disappear.
THIS ALWAYS SEEMED LIKE A BAD FIT FOR APPLE AND ITS 40% MARGINS: Apple Cancels Work on Electric Car, Ending Decadelong Effort.
Apple made the disclosure internally Tuesday, surprising the nearly 2,000 employees working on the project, said the people, who asked not to be identified because the announcement wasn’t public. The decision was shared by Chief Operating Officer Jeff Williams and Kevin Lynch, a vice president in charge of the effort, according to the people.
The two executives told staffers that the project will begin winding down and that many employees on the car team — known as the Special Projects Group, or SPG — will be shifted to the artificial intelligence division under executive John Giannandrea. Those employees will focus on generative AI projects, an increasingly key priority for the company.
Listen to the Big Take podcast on iHeart, Apple Podcasts, Spotify and the Bloomberg Terminal. Read the transcript.
The Apple car team also has several hundred hardware engineers and vehicle designers. It’s possible they will be able to apply for jobs on other Apple teams. There will be layoffs, but it’s unclear how many.
Apple, based in Cupertino, California, declined to comment.
The move came as a relief to investors, who sent Apple shares climbing Tuesday after an earlier decline. The stock was up about 1.2% to $183.37 at 2:33 p.m. in New York after Bloomberg reported the news.
Not even Tesla makes anything like the kind of margins Apple earns from computers and consumer electronics, and I’m not sure there’s anybody but Tesla turning a profit on EVs.
TO ASK THE QUESTION IS TO ANSWER IT: Biden Says a Deal Is Near to Halt Gaza Fighting for Ramadan. Is It True, or Is He Delusional?
February 27, 2024
OR THEY CAN JUST STAY AT HOME AND WATCH TIKTOK: CCP Dictator Encourages U.S. Students to Get Brainwashed in China.
I HAD BEEN ASSURED THAT INFLATION WAS AN ILLUSORY, TRANSITORY, HIGH-CLASS PROBLEM, AND OVER ALREADY: Food Is Taking a Bite Out of Your Income. These Consumers Are Getting Creative.
THIS WAS OBVIOUS ALREADY TO ANYONE WHO HAS SPENT ANY TIME WATCHING VIDEOS OF PROGRESSIVE WOMEN ON SOCIAL MEDIA: More women are psychopaths than previously thought, expert claims – these are the 7 key signs to look out for.
ANALYSIS: TRUE. Never Trump ‘Principles First’ Summit Was a Parade of Lying Charlatans Who Have No Principles. “It should be noted that these people stopped recognizing their party in 2016 because Donald Trump won an election that his GOP primary opponents almost certainly would have lost to Hillary Clinton. After eight years of His High Holiness the Lightbringer Barack Obama, the squishy middle of the Republican party was OK with losing to one of the most loathsome people in the history of American politics because of ‘principles’ and stuff.”
DON’T GET COCKY: Gas export pause could scramble Biden’s chances in Pennsylvania.
Democrats and labor unions in the state fear that the energy’s industry’s huge footprint there could make it a ripe target for GOP front-runner former President Donald Trump — even as environmentalists praised the move as a brave political action to protect the climate.
Biden’s reelection this year may hinge on whether he can hold the heavily working-class state he narrowly carried in 2020, which is now the second biggest natural gas producer in the country behind Texas. And while his move to reassess the climate impacts of natural gas shipments may have helped shore up support from young environmental activists, others are questioning his strategy.
Democratic Sens. Bob Casey, who is facing reelection this November, and John Fetterman, both argued the pause could hurt their state.
“Sen. Casey and I are very pro-energy, pro-job, pro-union and pro-American security,” Fetterman told POLITICO. “We stand with the president, but on this issue we happen to disagree. I am very clear. Natural gas is necessary right now. It’s a critical part of our nation’s energy stack.”
A lot of union guys who went for Trump over Hillary came home to the Democrats for Biden in 2020 but I don’t think that’s a mistake they’ll make twice.
ATTRITION: Budget Request Shows Chinese Incursions Straining Taiwan’s Military Fuel Funds. “The military requiring more funds to pay for fuel is due to two reasons. The first reason is due to the Taiwanese Air Force and Navy using their allotted fuel faster than expected to respond to daily incursions by the People’s Liberation Army (PLA). The other reason stated in the letter is due to high fuel prices not decreasing, which led to a shortfall in the military’s budget to buy the fuel required for all of its equipment. The military’s use of all its fuel budget occurred even after the military followed a policy of buying fuel, controlled the amount of fuel each branch used, and increased the efficiency of fuel purchasing and storage.”
THEY KEEP TELLING ME THE ECONOMY IS BOOMING BUT I KEEP FINDING STORIES LIKE THIS ONE: Kellogg CEO faces backlash for suggesting people eat ‘cereal for dinner’ to save money.
KRUISER’S MORNING BRIEFING: Pro-Hamas Lunatics Are Louder, Dumber, and More Unstable Than Ever. “The Obama years emboldened American leftists; the Biden years have weaponized them. It’s understandable. After they succeeded in leg-humping the pandemic and using it to install a senile puppet in the Oval Office, they probably thought they were invincible.”
WOEING: FAA panel finds Boeing safety culture wanting, recommends overhaul.
The report, written by a panel of independent aviation experts, cites “a disconnect” between Boeing’s senior management and engineering employees with respect to safety oversight. It states the panel “observed inadequate and confusing implementation” of essential elements of a positive safety culture.
The report focuses particularly on how Boeing manages engineering employees who conduct internal oversight on behalf of the FAA, work that is delegated to Boeing by the safety agency.
More than 1,000 such Boeing employees are legally required to have “a commitment to safety above all other priorities.”
However, the panel flags concern that those employees may be fearful of raising safety issues that cause delays in certification or production, stating that the jetmaker’s internal safety reporting systems may not function “in a way that ensures open communication and non-retaliation.”
The report acknowledges that changes Boeing made since 2020 have encouraged employees to speak up more, but it concludes that the current culture “still allows opportunities for retaliation to occur, particularly with regards to salary and furlough ranking.”
Boeing’s white-collar union representing engineers and technical staff, the Society of Professional Engineering Employees in Aerospace (SPEEA), on Monday said its members “have long reported a disconnect between the messaging they get from Boeing headquarters in Chicago or Virginia, and the messages they get from their direct supervisors here.”
“The report reflects the reality that people who see something are afraid of saying anything for fear of jeopardizing their careers,” SPEEA added in a statement.
That fear is generated from the top, where the deepest changes need to be made.
CHANGE: Self-checkouts are disappearing from retailers. Here’s why.
It’s the not-so-secret secret: retail chains are doing away with these lanes, and many do not want to talk about it.
In December, SFGATE.com reported that Target quietly removed self-checkouts in San Francisco, calling it “a trend in ‘defensive retailing’ that may soon spread across the city.”
Other reports say Target, when it does allow self-checkout, is only doing so for customers with ten items or less. No more big carts full of items.
Other chains, including Costco, have been dealing with the issue, saying that “shrink,” or the measure by which chains track retail theft, has increased in part due to the rollout of self-checkout.
Target and Costco did not respond to questions regarding the issue.
Now, California crime trends may be proving too costly.
You can’t enjoy high-trust conveniences in low-trust societies.