Category Archives: News and Notes

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Ah, It’s Earth Day

22 Monday Apr 2019

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I was wondering why I suddenly read so many hysterical fake news bits about global whale melting. Here’s one from some nut at CNN, wherein he admits the climate crazies don’t understand the calendar or math and are just plain stupid and expect that everyone else is too. He’s also with the “okay, now aerosols are cool” thing. I really don’t get that one. The ozone and all. Yikes!

But the scale of the outrage in no way matches the magnitude of this disaster, which, like WWII, threatens to cripple or even obliterate human life on the planet as we know it.

We’ve known the truth about climate change — that people are burning fossil fuels and warming the atmosphere, with potentially catastrophic consequences — for decades now. James Hansen testified about the dangers of global warming when he was an NASA scientist in 1988. The New York Times headline: “Global Warming Has Begun, Expert Tells Senate.”

Since then, the eco-woke among us have created more than enough deadlines to try to force change. In 1990, as George Marshall wrote in his book “Don’t Even Think About It,” the magazine Ecologist published a book called “5,000 Days to Save the Planet.” About 5,000 days later, the Institute for Public Policy Research declared that there were “Ten Years to Save the Planet.” In 2008, he wrote, the New Economics Foundation said it was “100 Months to Save the World.”

As a journalist who’s been covering climate for years, I’ve been part of that deadline trend. In the leadup to the Paris climate talks in 2015, I wrote that there were “100 days to save the world.”

The deadlines aren’t the problem. It’s our failure to heed them.

Yeah, no, dumbass – you are the problem. 5,000 days after 1990 was about 2003. The world was okay. Ten years after that was 2013. The world was okay. 100 months after 2008 was 2017. We’re still here. Assuming he wrote his 2015 scare tactic piece on December 31st, the 100 days was up in early 2016. See a pattern?

Someone get these saps a calculator and a calendar – and be quick! – we only have 100 HOURS!!!! or the mania might end…

BTW, I need to dig up my real numbers for Earth Day post for a re-pub. Look for that in a bit.

In the Weed(s) with Generation Z

22 Monday Apr 2019

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I have little doubt that the underlying premise of this article is correct: Generation Z is going to smoke a lot of dope.

America’s Generation Z is coming of age in a whole new world of weed.

This large cohort, which already has big-time spending power as the oldest age into high school and college, is formulating its consumption habits at a time when marijuana muscles into the mainstream. Unlike their Gen X or Boomer parents, Gen Z shoppers have only known a time where cannabis is edging toward acceptance, with California voting to legalize medical use in 1996—a year before even the oldest Gen Z consumers were born.

“They’re growing up in a world where cannabis is completely normal,” said Anna Duckworth, co-founder and chief content officer of Miss Grass, an online cannabis accessories shop and publication based in Los Angeles. “Everybody will know how to roll a joint and there won’t be any shame talking about it.”

It’s things like those steady paychecks (enjoy them, now), the laziness of the stoners (real), and the psychotic-inducement of ultra-high cannabis (real) that give pause for concern.

Having seen maybe a little more of this cohort than I’d like, I’m beginning to have serious reservations about them as a group. Rather than being the class that returns to American roots, they may well be the most Amerikan generation ever. If that’s true, then maybe they should toke it up.

The “Business” of Playing God

21 Sunday Apr 2019

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This may be the final article I link to from “Business” Insider (or, maybe in the future, Business Insidious):

We’re altering the climate so severely that we’ll soon face apocalyptic consequences. Here are 11 last-ditch ways we could hack the planet to reverse that trend.

Geoengineering is a term that refers to technology that can alter Earth’s natural cycles to cool down the planet. It’s being increasingly discussed as a potential way to address climate change.

Putting mirrors in space, capturing carbon dioxide, and seeding clouds with particles are all ways of manipulating weather or the atmosphere.

But some scientists and politicians think geoengineering could damage the planet or lead to war.

Here are 11 strategies researchers have put forth to hack the planet and combat climate change.

Eleven ways, that they don’t even understand, to stop a problem that doesn’t exist. As always, this crap is about fostering communism and nothing else.

The apocalypse is still just around the next corner. But! Now the people that told us aerosols were destroying the planet via the skies, want to flood the sky with aerosol to save the planet. This is more religious than scientific and the priests, acolytes, and followers are utterly insane.

Ms. Woodward and her “experts” are right about one thing – with or without Marxist meddling, there will be war. That’s where the apocalyptic consequences come from.

‘It hated Me before it hated You.’

21 Sunday Apr 2019

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“If the world hates you, ye know that it hated me before it hated you. If ye were of the world, the world would love his own: but because ye are not of the world, but I have chosen you out of the world, therefore the world hateth you.” – Jesus Christ, John 15:18-19 (KJV).

The hate is on display this Easter Sunday. Over 200 are dead and 500 injured following a series of Church-bombing terror attacks, by Muslims against Christians, in Sri Lanka.

A BRITISH student and her TV chef mum are among the 207 killed in an Easter Sunday terror attack on eight churches and five-star hotels in Sri Lanka today.

Nearly 500 were injured when suicide bomb blasts ripped through multiple buildings in Colombo – where tourists were eating breakfast and Christian worshippers had gathered for morning mass.

Of course, the Jihadis were known in advance:

It has emerged Sri Lanka’s police chief warned of suicide bombers planning to hit “prominent churches” 10 days before today’s attack.

Pujuth Jayasundara reportedly said: “A foreign intelligence agency has reported that the NTJ (National Thowheeth Jama’ath) is planning to carry out suicide attacks targeting prominent churches as well as the Indian high commission in Colombo”.

The NTJ is a radical Muslim group in Sri Lanka that was linked last year to the destruction of Buddhist statues.

I wonder if Jacinda Ardern and other Kiwi cat ladies will pray the Rosary in “solidarity” with the victims. I wonder if Donald will have the AFT ban Church pews, known to “bump” the rate of Mass attendance. I wonder when or if tiny Benny Shapiro and the other usual suspects will crack jokes about these deaths. I wonder if Amerikans could even locate Sri Lanka on a globe.

I do not wonder, at all, about the ultimate outcome of any of this. These attacks and any resulting cultural stupidity are just too damned weak. In fact, all the hate the Prince of Darkness and his worldly followers can muster is just too weak. Remember, try as they might (and, boy, do they try), they simply cannot prevail against Us – because of Him.

HE is Risen – today, yesterday, tomorrow, and forever.

The Roboback of Notre Dame

20 Saturday Apr 2019

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I refuse to call this thing a robot because: 1) it’s pretty cool, and 2) I still hate robots.

Colossus is a firefighting tool, and it helped save the day at Notre Dame.

But Jean-Claude Gallet, the commander, had a backup plan: Colossus, a 1,100-pound tank-like robot with the ability to venture into danger zones where conditions would quickly kill a person.

Using a motorised water cannon capable of firing more than 660 gallons per minute, Colossus took aim at the stone walls of the ancient cathedral and began spraying.

In an interview with The Times, Mr Gallet credited the fire-fighting robot with lowering temperatures inside the glass-filled nave and saving the lives of its human counterparts as an even greater disaster loomed.

Screenshot 2019-04-20 at 7.44.39 PM

It’s more of a mechanical fire dog than a mechanical hound.

Social Media is Not Your Friend

20 Saturday Apr 2019

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Just last weekend, someone told me that I really, really, really need to get on the Gram, Instagram. I never entertained the thought, even before I found out that Facebook owns Insta. And, surprise! they’re pulling the usual Farceberg tricks on the Gram too.

Given the terrible run of form it’s been on over the last year, it probably shouldn’t be that surprising that Facebook waited until the highly anticipated report on Russian interference in the 2016 US presidential election to deliver some bad news.

While just about every reporter was poring over the document, Facebook updated a blog post from March indicating that passwords had been exposed, stored as readable text (as opposed to securely encrypted), for hundreds of millions of Facebook users and thousands of Instagram users. It added a new paragraph to the middle of the post today indicating that a lot more Instagram users were affected than it originally thought:

(Update on April 18, 2019 at 7AM PT: Since this post was published, we discovered additional logs of Instagram passwords being stored in a readable format. We now estimate that this issue impacted millions of Instagram users. We will be notifying these users as we did the others. Our investigation has determined that these stored passwords were not internally abused or improperly accessed).

Just a small update from “thousands” to “millions,” then.

Facebook said it would notify the impacted users and that there’s no evidence that anyone within or outside Facebook had access to the passwords. But still, those users, and perhaps anyone else, might want to change their password or enable two-factor authenticationjust to make sure. That’s never a bad idea anyway.

Now that I know what Instagram is and who runs it, there is no way in hell I’d have anything to do with it. If you’re okay with all of this, and most users are, then enjoy your post-literate pictures and videos and the loss of even the pretense of privacy.

Investigate Facebook and Zuck for Theft

19 Friday Apr 2019

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Inadvertent? Right. Here’s the Farceberg outrage of the day minute: 1.5 million accounts robbed of email contacts.

Facebook harvested the email contacts of 1.5 million users without their knowledge or consent when they opened their accounts.

Since May 2016, the social-networking company has collected the contact lists of 1.5 million users new to the social network, Business Insider can reveal. The Silicon Valley company said the contact data was “unintentionally uploaded to Facebook,” and it is now deleting them.

The revelation comes after pseudononymous security researcher e-sushi noticed that Facebook was asking some users to enter their email passwords when they signed up for new accounts to verify their identities, a move widely condemned by security experts. Business Insider then discovered that if you entered your email password, a message popped up saying it was “importing” your contacts without asking for permission first.

At the time, it wasn’t clear what was happening – but on Wednesday, Facebook disclosed to Business Insider that 1.5 million people’s contacts were collected this way and fed into Facebook’s systems, where they were used to improve Facebook’s ad targeting, build Facebook’s web of social connections, and recommend friends to add.

Why do the police always take Zuck’s word about these “inadvertent” mistakes? Smells kind of like theft to me. 1.5 million consecutive 1-year prisons sentences should do as punishment.

Anyhow, I’ll bet it was more than 1.5 million and it was more than just email contacts. If, for some strange, low-IQ reason, you’re still on FB, do at least check your “secret” file to find out exactly what they admit they have on you.

Strike that… If you’re still on the Zuckbook, then just keep looking at those pics and “reading” all those worthy Russian trolling attempts. You don’t need privacy nor need you be worried about anyone invading it; small minds aren’t worth reading.

The Red Badge of Merit

18 Thursday Apr 2019

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Again, with the Vox Day business, here. Vox pointed out a disturbing (but fitting) trend in the new and worsening Amerika:

‘There are really two opposing schools, I guess you could say that there’s one that’s on the side of progressive ideology, whereas the other one is more in line with the way business was always run,’ Jeremy Zogby, a partner in Zogby Strategies, told DailyMail.com. ‘There is definitely a progressive slant in Millennials and Gen Z.’

Among all Americans, 47 percent prioritized diversity in workplace hiring, while 37 percent said merit should matter most.

Just as identity politics trump ideology politics, mediocrity trumps merit in a multi-cultural, multi-ethnic society. Welcome to life as the Third World has always known it.

This, however, is a trend that you need not accept. Pursue excellence even as you embrace your identity.

It’s going to be a rough (possibly utility and food deprived) ride, folks. But, he’s right as usual – don’t be a part of the slide.

First Venezuela, Now Syria. When, here, America?

17 Wednesday Apr 2019

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And, thank you, Christian Russia, for checking the insane plans of the Washington Neocons. Syria, parts of it, are becoming Christian (again).

A community of Syrians who converted to Christianity from Islam is growing in Kobani, a town besieged by Islamic State for months, and where the tide turned against the militants four years ago.

The converts say the experience of war and the onslaught of a group claiming to fight for Islam pushed them toward their new faith. After a number of families converted, the Syrian-Turkish border town’s first evangelical church opened last year.

Islamic State militants were beaten back by U.S. air strikes and Kurdish fighters [and Russia and the Regime] at Kobani in early 2015, in a reversal of fortune after taking over swaths of Iraq and Syria. After years of fighting, U.S.-backed forces fully ended the group’s control over populated territory last month.

Though Islamic State’s ultra-radical interpretation of Sunni Islam has been repudiated by the Islamic mainstream, the legacy of its violence has affected perceptions of faith.

Many in the mostly Kurdish areas of northern Syria, whose urban centers are often secular, say agnosticism has strengthened and in the case of Kobani, Christianity.

Christianity is one of the region’s minority faiths that was persecuted by Islamic State.

So, maybe all it takes is a depression and a civil war to reverse the curse in the United States of Babel. Or, do we have to wait until we’re the minority? We already have the persecution from our own brand of ultra-radicals.

Anyway, good for the people of Kobani. May the faith spread.

This reminded me of a plea from a Syrian Priest – against both the Islamists and the Neocon loons:

A Week of Miracles: Paris Out of the Ashes; Tiger Roars Again at Augusta & Perrin Storms C-Town – From TPC

17 Wednesday Apr 2019

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This column addresses three topics of great importance, in reverse chronological order. The originally intended subject comes last, after two of perhaps greater relevance and general interest. This is good stuff (great, even); read on:

 

International Desk: Only the Building Burned. The Church is Adamant, the French Spirit Indomitable.

 

You’ve heard the news. The world knows. Paris’s landmark, 850-year-old Notre Dame Cathedral suffered extensive fire damage on Monday, April 15th.

 

I learned of the tragedy while, of all things, leading a discussion en Français with a group of talented young people. My first thought was, “that’s a maintenance accident!” Thus I thought because the inferno was emanating from the roof and attic. And, I’ve seen this exact scenario before in Athens, Georgia, of all places.

 

On a summer day in 1995, I traversed North Campus. Smoke I smelled and then saw. Brooks Hall, then home to the Terry College of Business (the same MB goes on about) was burning. Bad. They had been conducting roof renovations and some jackleg ignited the attic whilst welding. We lost two floors that day.

 

So it most likely was in Paris. Notre Dame’s roof is a thin cladding of lead over centuries-old timber framing. Dry, dry, dry wood possibly treated with pitch or tar(?). The lead requires soldering from time to time but they have to be extra careful given what lies beneath. On Monday something slipped. Bad. You know the deal – the central spire collapsed, the roof is gone, and complete destruction was narrowly averted by 500 doggedly determined firemen.

 

I am not yet ready to embrace any theory aside from this obvious scenario. Yes, I’ve seen some pictures. And, y’all know I have a keen sense of affairs and a vivid imagination. As is, I don’t (yet) buy the Islamic Jihad or false flag angles. I have, however, sensed a tremor in the force of Western Civilization.

READ MUCH MORE ONLY AT TPC