Category Archives: News and Notes

Updates, new commentary, announcements, and more. Enjoy!

Welcome to the Service Economy

03 Tuesday Dec 2019

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Back when I was in high school, they lied to us about the bright shiny future of computers, easy work, and high pay. Reality is a little different.

To calculate the index’s value, the researchers split up the jobs created every month into those that pay above average and those that pay below average, and then divide one figure into the other. An index value below 100 means there are more lower-paying jobs relative to higher-paying jobs; a value above 100 means the opposite.

Other entities involved in the creation of the index are the Cornell University Law School, the University of Missouri at Kansas City, the Coalition for a Prosperous America and the Global Institute for Sustainable Prosperity.

This month, the index is just over 80, meaning there are 80 high-paying jobs for every 100 low-paying jobs. That’s a stark drop from 1990, when there were 94 high-paying jobs for every 100 low-paying jobs.

“There aren’t enough ‘good jobs’ to go around,” the Brookings Institution proclaimed earlier this month, when it released a report that found 44% of all workers are low-wage workers. These workers make a median pay of just $18,000 a year.

Meanwhile, the Fed is still gifting the Grabblers $100 Bn+ every day (EVERY DAY!). The thieves and the thieve-nots.

Another Flying Car Failure

02 Monday Dec 2019

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They just don’t work. Such hype and this is what you get.

Kitty Hawk confirmed to Forbes that, after unveiling a more polished version of the Flyer last year, it has decided not to sell the one-seater to individuals and has returned deposits to would-be buyers. Behind closed doors, Flyer encountered problems, including frequent breakdowns and fires involving batteries, electric motors and wiring, two former engineers said. Last year, the Mountain View Fire Department was called to put out an early morning blaze at the Flyer building, city records show; former employees said the fire at the Google-owned building involved damaged batteries that had been pulled out of a Flyer that had crashed the previous day in flight testing under remote operation.

I was ridiculing this exact model eighteen months ago. Kinda flew off the handle, eh?

20 Strict Conditions

02 Monday Dec 2019

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The other Khan of London, the one who was under court order not to be there, went anyway. Is anyone surprised that this cat was less than enthusiastic about following the rules in the West?

THE London Bridge terrorist was banned from entering London but had a one-day exemption to attend an ex-convict event, it emerged last night.

Usman Khan, 28, from Staffordshire, was released from prison in December last year on condition he obey 20 strict conditions – which included not visiting the capital.

The NTA (like the NRA, but short for the “Narwhal Tusk Association”) is lobbying hard to divert attention away from the dangers of bridges and fire extinguishers. Where’s Jeremy Corbyn when we need him? Sentencing reform is what will say the UK! Well, that and more DIEversity. If only they’d added a 21st fantasy condition about not stabbing people to death and running amock with a bomb belt. For shame.

The Tall Bearded Man

29 Friday Nov 2019

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So, London, how’s the knife control working out? Another familiar kind of attack:

The armed cops then order the members of the public to step away from the “tall bearded” man before he is shot by one of the firearms officers about 2pm.

A lorry was left jacknifed across the bridge as hundreds of panicked civilians ran for their lives.

Pictures from the scene showed one large kitchen knife lying next to the suspect’s body with a second blade removed by a hero passerby.

Guy Lawrence, 48, said he saw a man running out of a building, believed to be Fishmonger’s Hall, armed with two kitchen knives with 20cm blades.

He claimed one member of the public was seen running after the suspect, one armed with a 6ft stick and another with a fire extinguisher.

He told The Times: “I saw all traffic stopped in front of me. I heard shooting — there was an attack. And I saw a guy on the floor. I heard two shots: bang, bang.

“Police were running towards us and they told us to get out and run.”

Get out and run. Next time, the bomb may not be fake. Better ban them too. Or, just ban terroristic invaders. And, per the first law, just how many agencies was this attacker known too?

UPDATE: Of course. As Vox points out:

The attacker shot dead on London Bridge was known to police and had connections to terror groups.

The man, who was wearing a fake suicide vest, killed two people and injured three in the attack. The attacker was a convicted terrorist with previous links to al-Muhajiroun, the group led by Anjem Choudry and dubbed Britain’s “most prolific and dangerous extremist group”, The Independent understands.

The assailant had been recently released from prison and was being monitored by police.

Great job monitoring!

UPDATE: NARWHAL CONTROL, NOW!

Chewing the Fat, Post-Turkey Day

29 Friday Nov 2019

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I’m sure you’re out walking off those holiday pounds, if only at a black Friday sale. And, pounds Americans do have to lose. Fatter than ever…

As the second decade of the 21st century ends, a look back at 2010-2019 finds that more Americans have said they weigh at least 200 pounds than did so from 2001-2009. An average of 28% of Americans said they weighed 200 pounds or more from 2010-2019, up from 24% during the prior decade. Accordingly, Americans’ average self-reported weight has also risen, to 178 pounds — up from 174 pounds during the previous decade, with similar increases among men (4 pounds) and women (3 pounds).

More lies than ever too. The stats are waaaay off. A simple look around will tell you the average Amerikan is over 300 pounds, ugly, with 18 tattoos, insane, and shit stupid. The gross obesity literally feeds the mental decline.

From DTI, the researchers derived a measure called fractional anisotropy (FA), which correlates with the condition of the brain’s white matter. A reduction in fractional anisotropy is indicative of increasing damage in the white matter.

The results showed reduction of FA values in the obese adolescents in regions located in the corpus callosum, a bundle of nerve fibre that connects the left and right hemispheres of the brain.

Decrease of fractional anisotropy was also found in the middle orbitofrontal gyrus, a brain region related to emotional control and the reward circuit. None of the brain regions in obese patients had increased fractional anisotropy.

According to researchers, this pattern of damage correlated with some inflammatory markers, like leptin, a hormone made by fat cells that helps regulate energy and fat stores.

In some obese people, the brain doesn’t respond to leptin, causing them to keep eating despite adequate or excessive fat stores. This condition, known as leptin resistance, makes the fat cells produce even more leptin.

Worsening condition of the white matter was also associated with levels of insulin, a hormone produced in the pancreas that helps regulate blood sugar levels. Obese people often suffer from insulin resistance.

I’m confident that another 700 million third world invaders and a wealth tax can fix this.

What a Deal for Black Friday!

29 Friday Nov 2019

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TeeVee fans discover a potential downside to the modern couch potato-ing. From the FBI:

But new owners of internet-connected smart TVs might not be as good at spotting hackers as they are at spotting deals. The FBI’s Portland, Oregon, field office shared some tips this week for anyone who needs to secure a smart TV.

Some models of smart TVs include built-in cameras. They can be used for video chatting with friends and family, and some can let the TV recognize who is watching and suggest programming based on their past preferences.

But hackers may be able to access those TVs through the internet, allowing them to spy through the camera and microphone, or change channels, adjust the volume and play “inappropriate videos,” the FBI warned.

Hackers could even potentially use an unsecured TV as a backdoor to a router, potentially allowing them to access a computer or other device connected to the Wi-Fi, according to the FBI.

Now, where have you read similar warnings before? And, that’s the FBI. The CIA (who really know!) advise against the telly period.

What Happened to the White Whipping Boys?!

27 Wednesday Nov 2019

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A few years ago, I read that the number of colleges in America, way too inflated, was going to fall by about a third within ten years. It’s well underway. The fly-by-night$ are dying all over. Now, cursed by their own stupidity, the smaller liberal colleges decline too.

Liberal arts colleges running out of woke white men?

by philg

The financial struggles of New England liberal arts colleges have been in the news lately. “Marlboro planning to give campus and endowment to Emerson College” describes the end of 73 years of operation in Southern Vermont. “Can small liberal arts colleges survive the next decade?” (Christian Science Monitor)

A friend who has worked at the highest levels of college governance said that these bastions of righteousness in which white males are blamed for most things are having difficulty recruiting white males. Why does that matter? “Once the men stop attending,” he noted, “then women don’t want to enroll.”

 

Get woke, go broke. Good on ya, men.

News from the Fiction Front

26 Tuesday Nov 2019

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I’ve completed my mark-up of THE SUBSTITUTE. Hopefully, I’ll have a few minor corrections made by this evening. The plot is utterly unchanged. The pagination will be adjusted. I’m fixing a few typos. And, I decided that Vicky only needs to get engaged twice once. The margins are another issue – in some copies, the top is a little short. In others, it’s fine, or at least good enough. I’ll tinker with that.

And, over the Thanksgiving break, I plan to plug away at AURELIUS, a continuation of the Ironsides’s saga. And, there’s another novel simmering. I’m aiming to get one or both of those out sometime shortly after New Year’s.

“Decolonize Academia”

26 Tuesday Nov 2019

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The wise, but nameless SJWs of South Bend attempt the destruction of a finer school.

Activists at the University of Notre Dame are demanding a radical transformation of school policies and curriculum to purportedly cater to the desires of non-white, LGBT, and female students.

A student group calling itself “End Hate at ND” has issued a list of demands and has held multiple campus protests in an attempt to bring about those changes.

Included in the list are calls to “Decolonize Academia” and “Implement Diversity Training In Each Dorm.”

“No course or program of study should have a view limited to white, western, and/or male voices,” the group says. “We demand that people who are of Color, Indigenous, Black, queer, or not male are represented in the authorship of at least half course and major required readings. Diversifying the canon helps eliminate the violence of only privileging white scholarship.”

Violence? Eliminate the white male scholarship, and you eliminate the University. And, the West. That, one supposes, is the goal. Maybe these rats should shun other white violence, like electricity, medicine, cars, computers, and making demands. I demand they do so – go protest in the woods somewhere.

My niece, one of them, attends ND. At Christmas, if I remember (probably won’t), I’ll have to ask her how they razz and ridicule the mental snowflakes.

The New Briton is SO Exciting!

24 Sunday Nov 2019

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Expect more headlines like the following, only worse, in the future:

MASS BRAWL Five teens arrested after ‘100-strong machete-wielding gang storm Vue cinema sparking huge brawl’

Two machetes and a knife were recovered after armed police swooped just after 5.30pm.

And disturbing images have emerged of a baby-faced teenager wearing a Camo jacket and holding what appears to be a large machete.

Footage also shows terrified crowds evacuated as cops arrested at least five people including a 13-year-old girl on suspicion of assaulting police.

Another girl and boy aged just 14 and a 19-year-old were also arrested, while a 14-year-old male was held on suspicion of obstructing police.

It is understood the violence broke out before or during a screening of the gang warfare film Blue Story and spilled out into areas where children were queuing to see Frozen 2.

Since the brawl, Vue has pulled the gang film, which follows two young friends who become enemies in a postcode war, from all its cinemas,

In a pre-recorded message to its viewers, the cinema service line said: “We regret that we will no longer be screening the film Blue Story at any of our venues.

Birmingham, ENG looks A LOT like Birmingham, AL. And also a bit like Mogadishu. Virant! Strong!

And, what a relief that the heritage residents gave up their guns and are now giving up their knives. I suppose that “teens” are still allowed some blades for cinema riot purposes. The only problem left (aside from eliminating the remains of that heritage poseperity) is the fact of violent movies like Frozen. Duh.