Author Archive: Stephen Green
September 18, 2023
September 15, 2023
FLORIDA MAN FRIDAY [VIP]: He Converted the Walmart Into a Drive-Thru. “It’s your much-needed break from the serious news and this week we have a latenight excavator joyride, how to get your lawsuit dismissed with complete prejudice, and Seattle Man’s unique drinking problem.”
CHANGE: Disney reportedly held talks about selling ABC. “Sources tell Bloomberg that the talks between Nexstar and Disney are still early and that a price hasn’t yet been named. Another source tells the outlet that Disney is also considering selling ABC to Byron Allen, the CEO of Entertainment Studios, which owns several stations, such as The Weather Channel.”
Update: Mogul Byron Allen makes $10 billion bid for Disney’s ABC, other networks.
WE’LL SEE MORE OF THIS AS EUROPE CONTINUES TO DEPOPULATE: An Italian island is letting foreigners live rent-free for three months.
Ollolai is located in the wild Barbagia area far from the Sardinia’s VIP-packed coastlines — a place where old traditions survive and bandits once lived in caves.
Through time, locals left in search of a brighter future elsewhere, emptying the ancient district, now covered in street art depicting rural life.
In the past century, Ollolai’s population shrank from 2,250 to 1,300, with only a handful of babies born each year.
The village adopted a highly publicized measure in 2018 to revive the old district: selling crumbling homes for 1 euro.
“That was a major success — many foreigners bought and restyled dozens of forsaken dwellings,” said Mayor Francesco Columbu told CNBC. “Now, after investing in high-speed internet, with this new project ‘Work from Ollolai’ we want to make our village a digital nomad hub.”
The VodkaWife and I could do this once the boys are finished with school… and now I’m the one counting the days.
STUDY: The Harm Caused by Masks.
Mask-wearers breathe in greater amounts of air that should have been expelled from their bodies and released out into the open. “[A] significant rise in carbon dioxide occurring while wearing a mask is scientifically proven in many studies,” write the German authors. “Fresh air has around 0.04% CO2,” they observe, while chronic exposure at CO2 levels of 0.3 percent is “toxic.” How much CO2 do mask-wearers breathe in? The authors write that “masks bear a possible chronic exposure to low level carbon dioxide of 1.41–3.2% CO2 of the inhaled air in reliable human experiments.”
In other words, while eight times the normal level of carbon dioxide is toxic, research suggests that mask-wearers (specifically those who wear masks for more than 5 minutes at a time) are breathing in 35 to 80 times normal levels.
It’s nice to see common sense from 2020 backed up with science, not that I expect it to change any minds among the mask-addicted.
IT’S GOOD TO BE THE NOMENKLATURA: The Hunter Biden Indictments Are a Ruse. Here’s Why.
FROM “LAYERS OF EDITORS AND FACT-CHECKERS” TO “SCREW IT, JUST GIVE IT TO THE AI”: Microsoft Publishes Garbled AI Article Calling Tragically Deceased NBA Player ‘Useless.’
Former NBA player Brandon Hunter passed away unexpectedly at the young age of 42 this week, a tragedy that rattled fans of his 2000s career with the Boston Celtics and Orlando Magic.
But in an unhinged twist on what was otherwise a somber news story, Microsoft’s MSN news portal published a garbled, seemingly AI-generated article that derided Hunter as “useless” in its headline.
“Brandon Hunter useless at 42,” read the article, which was quickly called out on social media. The rest of the brief report is even more incomprehensible, informing readers that Hunter “handed away” after achieving “vital success as a ahead [sic] for the Bobcats” and “performed in 67 video games.”
Condemnation for the disrespectful article was swift and forceful.
“AI should not be writing obituaries,” posted one reader. “Pay your damn writers MSN.”
CATHERINE SALGADO: ‘Not for Sale’: Taiwan Minister Slams CCP-Pandering Musk.
EVERYTHING IS GOING SWIMMINGLY (CHINA EDITION):
Imagine if Tony Blinken was removed, Lloyd Austin was placed under investigation and top generals in charge of US nuclear missiles were sacked. That is what is happening in China. As @USAmbJapan said, like Agatha Christie novel #AndThenThereWereNone https://t.co/paIdZyNKh9
— Demetri (@Dimi) September 14, 2023
To be fair, in this country, a shakeup like that would be a rare sign of political health. In Xi’s China, not so much.
MR. WANTS-TO-APPEAR-TOUGH-ON-CRIME: Newsom Announces $267 Million Program to Combat Organized Retail Theft.
PUNCH BACK TWICE AS HARD: McCarthy Makes AP Reporter Eat Her Phony Narrative Words.
BROKEN WINDOWS: Vandals vs NYC Transit: 97 windows smashed in a single day. “Repair crews rushed to replace the damaged windows but they didn’t have enough spares and had to start taking windows out of trains which were out of service.”
KRUISER’S MORNING BRIEFING: Is Cackles the Millstone Around the Biden Campaign’s Neck? “When Anderson Cooper asked Pelosi if she thought Cackles was the best choice for Biden’s running mate, she fell back on the old chestnut of, ‘Biden chose her.'”
BLUE STATE BLUES: Newest Sign of California’s Decline: Pirates. “The rule of law continues to decline all across California. Today’s case in point: Oakland Bay, where actual pirates are stealing and plundering ships.”
We used to hang pirates and they went away. We gave up the practice and they returned.
More seriously, the USN and the Royal Navy once virtually eliminated pirates from the high seas. Now we can’t even keep a handle on Oakland Bay.
KEVIN DOWNEY JR: Illegal Immigrant Wanted for Stabbing Gets Sprung, Murders Another.
HARDLY ANYONE CAN AFFORD A NEW CAR ANYWAY: UAW workers launch unprecedented strike against all Big Three automakers. “The strike came after the automakers scoffed at the union’s ambitious demands for increased wages, benefits and job protections for its members. With all three automakers reporting record or near-record profits, the union was trying to recapture many benefits they had been forced to give up more than a decade ago when the companies were cash starved and on the brink of bankruptcy.”
Related:
Delinquencies on auto loans are at the highest level in a decade.
Discussing this on tomorrows @CDG_Podcast with Economist Jonathan Smoke. pic.twitter.com/k9yRs1gFqo
— Car Dealership Guy (@GuyDealership) September 14, 2023
LIKE THE BOURBONS: Did Trump Learn Anything From the Mistakes That Cost Him the White House? “This is what I would have loved to have heard him say to Megyn Kelly.”
September 14, 2023
JOANNE JACOBS: KIPP schools are game changers. “KIPP charters are game changers, concludes a new Mathematica study. Compared to similar students who applied to KIPP but lost the enrollment lottery, graduates of KIPP middle and high schools were ’31 percentage points more likely to enroll in a four-year college within three years of high school,’ reports Jo Napolitano on The 74. ‘Their likelihood of graduating college within five years after high school shot up by 19 percentage points.'”
THAT’S BEEN THE RUSSIAN WAY OF WAR FOR A LONG TIME: Putin Betting on Massive Russian Conscript Surge to Win in Ukraine, Expert Says.
Olesya Tkacheva, assistant professor at Brussels School of Governance, said that when Russian President Vladimir Putin made the announcement, the implication was “all I need is young men between 18 and 35 years of age,” about .01 percent of the Russian population. Last year Russia mobilized 300,000 reservists. Putin also put the burden on provincial governors to deliver set, but secret, quotas of men to the Ministry of Defense. Some local municipal officials who kept the records of conscription registration and governors, both eager to curry favor with the Kremlin, exceeded Moscow-set quotas in mobilizing young men.
“Not all regions contributed the same share,” she added. From her studies of the mobilization, the call-up burden to fill the ranks fell heaviest on regions that did not strongly support Putin’s United Russian party in the latest Duma, or parliamentary, elections and were economically depressed.
Russian casualties in the war in Ukraine have been estimated at 120,000 killed and between 170,000 and 180,000 wounded through mid-August. Tkacheva said Putin’s regime has been very close-lipped on Russian casualties in the war that began in February 2022.
Win, lose, or draw, killing off that many young men from a country with Russia’s dismal demographics is just stupid.
LET THE SUNSHINE IN: Florida Advises Against New Covid Boosters For Most Age Groups, Citing No ‘Sufficient Clinical Evidence.’ “According to a press release from the FDOH, the agency based its new recommendations on the ‘absence of any meaningful booster-specific clinical trial data performed in humans’ that warrants the shots’ approval by federal health agencies. FDOH also claimed that the federal government ‘failed to provide sufficient data to support the safety and efficacy of the COVID-19 vaccines.'”