Author Archive: Stephen Green
April 27, 2023
“INCLUSIVITY” IS NEWSPEAK FOR “GROUPTHINK”: Bar loses customers after warning patrons it will ‘not tolerate intolerance’ among guests about Bud Light.
DUELING CAMPAIGN ADS: Trump Crushes ‘Failing, Weak’ Biden Admin in New Video.
FOR WHAT APPEARS TO BE PROPAGANDA RATHER THAN COMBAT: Russia Finally Sends T-14 Armata Tanks to Ukraine. “An auto loader famous for jamming that now cannot be accessed and cleared when it does jam, is somehow heavier and slower than the tank it has replaced, and comes combined together in a package so expensive the company that made it immediately went bankrupt. The country that bought it cannot afford it and it has about as much export potential as English whiskey.”
FROM EACH ACCORDING TO THEIR STUDY HABITS…: Now Comes ‘Equitable Grading’ to Dumb Down Our Children.
THEY FINALLY GOT THE PORTLAND THEY WANTED: Woke Portland grocery store to close after 50 years in business due to economic issues.
Many retailers are struggling to survive due to the rampant crime in the city. What is to be Portland’s first Shake Shack was hit by vandals before it even opened.
Others have chosen to shut down or abandon the city completely. Earlier this month, REI announced it was closing its only Portland location after almost two decades in the Rose City because the store “had its highest number of break-ins and thefts in two decades, despite actions to provide extra security.”
In March, woke pizza chain Hotlips announced the closure of three of its five Portland stores and Cracker Barrel also announced it was closing its only remaining locations in the city.
This followed an announcement from Walmart that it was closing its Portland area locations due to a lack of profits.
Gooder and harder, Portland.
OR MAYBE YOU WILL: You Won’t Believe the Fire Sale Price on This San Francisco High Rise.
SPACE: NASA Power Hack Extends 45-Year Voyager 2 Mission Even Longer.
At 12 billion miles (20 billion kilometers) from Earth, Voyager 2 is so far that it takes more than 22 minutes for NASA’s signals to reach the probe. With its power gradually diminishing, mission planners thought they might have to shut down one of its five scientific instruments next year, but a newly implemented plan has resulted in a welcomed delay.
A recent adjustment, in which the probe redirects a tiny amount of power meant for an onboard safety system, means all five scientific instruments aboard Voyager 2 can stay active until 2026, according to a NASA Jet Propulsion Lab press release. There’s a modicum of risk involved, as the affected system protects Voyager 2 from voltage irregularities, but NASA says the probe can now keep its science instruments turned on for a while longer.
Plus: “Although the spacecraft’s voltage will not be tightly regulated as a result, even after more than 45 years in flight, the electrical systems on both probes remain relatively stable, minimizing the need for a safety net.”
That’s one well-built probe.
I WONDER HOW A GROOMER GOT THE IDEA THEY COULD BE SO BRAZEN AND GET AWAY WITH IT: A 13-year-old boy was groomed publicly on Twitter and kidnapped, despite numerous chances to stop it.
FASTER, PLEASE: A sedan-sized microreactor could change billions of lives on Earth.
Earth’s only natural satellite, the moon, is 4.5 billion years old and roughly 240,000 miles away. The practical application for a microreactor on the moon may seem distant and the need hard to grasp, but Alaska presents an easier vision of pragmatic deployment of this technology.
“When we turn on the light switch in our homes, it turns on right away, right? So it is not the same for the remainder of the world,” said Yasir Arafat, a nuclear scientist who is project lead over MARVEL. “The demand for electricity and water is growing and it is very large compared to what we see in the United States. So how do we solve this? And everybody has different answers, but the answer I would like to provide is that it can be 24/7 reliable carbon-free electricity on demand, regardless of geographic location.”
That includes the United States’ own Alaska, where tiny hamlets have their own challenges.
I’d gladly host one in my backyard. Please, I’m begging you.
KRUISER’S MORNING BRIEFING: Tucker Carlson’s Haters Are Going to Be Disappointed. “Carlson’s star has risen so much in recent years that he can’t be canceled, not even by the once-mighty Fox News. I’ve been reassuring people since Monday that I don’t even think this is a hiccup for him.”
HEINLEIN’S CRAZY YEARS (CONT’D): Vermont school district removes ‘male,’ ‘female’ from reproductive system lessons. “Terms like ‘male’ and ‘boy’ would be replaced with ‘person who produces sperm.’ Likewise, ‘female’ and ‘girl’ would be replaced with a ‘person who produces eggs.'”
I’m so old, I remember when it was considered crass to reduce a woman to her reproductive organs.
YES: DeSantis’ Battle With Disney Could Win Him GOP Primary Support.
Democrats overwhelmingly see the state’s actions as a punishment for TWDC making unequivocal statements against Florida’s Parental Rights in Education law, with 87% of Democrats saying that DeSantis is targeting Florida as a result. Two-thirds of independents agree.
But GOP voters see the issue differently, with 64% of those surveyed agreeing that DeSantis is right in undoing the special treatment Disney has received for over five decades and only 36% insisting that the state is punishing Disney.
And that’s where things get interesting. While roughly half of voters say that their opinion of Walt Disney World hasn’t changed after the fight and 42% say their view of TWDC isn’t any different (this author is one person who still loves Walt Disney World even as the company disappoints), there’s a change in the perception of DeSantis.
THANKS FOR NOTHING, JOE: World powers pull their citizens as violence roils Sudan.
The White House said Monday the U.S. is helping from afar as thousands of Americans left behind in Sudan seek to escape fighting in the east African nation, after the U.S. Embassy evacuated all of its diplomatic personnel over the weekend and shut down.
The Biden administration is considering several options for assisting private American citizens in getting out of Sudan.
Two U.S. officials said one option being considered would be to send U.S. Navy vessels in, or en route to, the Red Sea to dock at Port Sudan and take Americans to Jeddah or another location. The officials said this would depend on the security situation and whether it was deemed safe for the ships to dock.
A U.S. official said the military has developed other options for getting Americans, including using an airfield that some European countries have used to fly out citizens. To date, it has not been told to do that, the official said.
What’s the White House waiting for?
April 26, 2023
OUR SOVIET PRESS IS HAPPY TO OBLIGE OUR AMERICAN BREZHNEV:
But, to be fair, not all of them:
Corporate Media reporter just asked Biden why he's running for re-election when over 70% of Americans, including a majority of Democrats, DON'T want him to run
Brutal. pic.twitter.com/TA9wye3gWw
— Benny Johnson (@bennyjohnson) April 26, 2023
Ouch.
UPDATE: On second viewing, Biden seems to have been prepped in advance for the “tough” question, too.
GEORGE MF WASHINGTON: The (Not So) Strange Return of the Vinyl LP.
It’s not just the thrill of discovery or that nostalgic sense of freedom that keeps me hunting for new (old) albums… the more I think about it, the more I think there’s something else going on… something that is also related to that damned algorithm, but in a much more nefarious way.
I have a growing fear of censorship… of the mass memory-holing of anything that doesn’t toe whatever the latest “NPC” line might be. What amounts to, essentially, the willful destruction of our culture and all it has produced or achieved in pursuit of some unattainable Utopian ideal. I worry that it won’t be long before Rock N’ Roll sits firmly in the crosshairs of a new generation of Woke Scolds who want to purge the Earth of anything they deem “problematic”… things like “sex, drugs and rock n’ roll”, for example. And because of the dizzying pace of technological advancement, I’m absolultely terrified that they are going to figure out a way to do it so that we won’t even notice it when they do.
What happens next — to “Brown Sugar,” no less — is truly frightening.
Just another example of owning hard copies of anything you want to keep, and maybe even more importantly, to pass on.
And do read the whole thing.
EVERYONE KNOWS HE CAN’T HACK IT: KJP Says the Quiet Part Out Loud About Biden Serving Two Full Terms.
VIDEO: Brit-Turned-American On the Glories of Suburbia. “British-born Laurence Brown has a YouTube channel dedicated to documenting the differences between Britain and the UK. In the last year, he’s become an American citizen and bought a house in the suburbs (Chicago’s, alas), and has some observations, mostly positive, about American suburbs, including the community of dog owners, immaculate lawns, and America’s love affair with rectangles.”
VODKAPUNDIT PRESENTS YOUR WEEKLY INSANITY WRAP [VIP]: McDonalds Wants HOW Much for a Big Mac? “I tried to order a McDonalds Big Mac but then escrow fell through.”
Plus:
- Kamala Harris is quite clearly stoned. Again.
- The real reason Don Lemon got canned.
- Meet Tucker Carlson’s replacement at Fox News.
So much more at the link, you’d have to be crazy to miss it.
JEFF GOLDSTEIN: Maybe I’ll be there to shake your hand, maybe I’ll be there to stakeholder capitalist the land.
Like many things faddish and ephemeral — disco, Pet Rocks, feathered hair, taking Michel Foucault seriously as an intellectual — the 1970s gave birth to the concept of stakeholder capitalism, one of the most unfortunate yet enduring of the bad ideas that polyester decade bequeathed us. At its essence, stakeholder capitalism is Marxian capitalism run through a lens of business ethics. It is the attempt to maintain authoritarian control over capitalism by forcing upon the Invisible Hand a Velvet Glove, then using that glove, which hides an iron fist, to pound the world into adopting values that both assert and maintain its worldview. It is Theory applied to markets, marketing, wealth creation and management, and an overall globalized ethos of required and policed “virtue,” with the end goal being — as it always is under the discourses of cultural Marxist thought — power: who has it, who controls it, and who uses it for their own ends most effectively and ruthlessly.
That’s just the intro. It gets even better.
HANS A. VON SPAKOVSKY: Columbia Law School — EXPOSED. “If you thought based on our coverage of the curriculums at Yale, Stanford, and Chicago that you had seen the worst of the political indoctrination that passes for a law school education these days, wait until you see the curriculum at the Columbia Law School in New York City.”
This is the fourth of a 10-part series.