Ace of Spades HQ

December 10, 2023

Sunday Overnight Open Thread (12/10/23)

—Misanthropic Humanitarian

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The Quotes of The Day

Quote I

Most people wouldn't know music if it came up and bit them on the ass. Frank Zappa

Quote II

“Being fat, you're constantly proving yourself. You're constantly proving that just because you're fat, you're not dumb, you're not rude, you're not stupid" TikTok user named Kaitlin (@kaitlin_elisabethh)

Quote III

“But you have to start somewhere. And if we didn’t prove it can be done, you would never, ever get sustainable aviation fuel.” Sir Richard Branson

Quote IV

“I can tell you that by the end of this week, that is actually factual. I will have made more money in seven days than I would’ve made in an entire year in Congress,” Former NY Rep. George Santos

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The Comments of The Week

AceCorp, LLC appreciates all of those who enter The Comments of The Week Contest. Here is just a small sampling of the best comments in the biz...........

Posted by Misanthropic Humanitarian at 09:56 PM Comments

Gun Thread: More Re-Runs Edition!

—Weasel

Howdy, Y'all! Welcome to the wondrously fabulous Gun Thread! As always, I want to thank all of our regulars for being here week in and week out, and also offer a bigly Gun Thread welcome to any newcomers who may be joining us tonight. Howdy and thank you for stopping by! I hope you find our wacky conversation on the subject of guns 'n shooting both enjoyable and informative. You are always welcome to lurk in the shadows of shame, but I'd like to invite you to jump into the conversation, say howdy, and tell us what kind of shooting you like to do!

Holy Shitballs! How in the ever-loving Hell did it get to be December 10th?! How many days until Christmas? Why, there are 15 days left until Christmas! Also, you probably know the drill by now December = Weasel Busy = lame-ass Gun Thread effort.

With that, step into the dojo and let's get to the gun stuff below, shall we?

Posted by Weasel at 07:00 PM Comments

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Food Thread: Prime Ribs! Put A New Starter In The Jar!

—CBD

I'll tell you a secret; I like grilled rib steaks better than roasted prime rib. I think that the lovely fat in a nice rib steak handles the grill perfectly, with that unctuous and delicious combination of richness and crispiness that is so very difficult to achieve in the oven.

And when I say difficult, I mean impossible, at least in my oven with my skills. But there is something undeniably impressive about a large rib roast sitting contentedly in the middle of your Christmas* dinner table, and while I might prefer a different preparation, I will happily sit down as close as possible to that roast and angle for the first slice! Besides, grilling a bunch of steaks for a full table of guests is a pretty big undertaking. Roasting them as a single impressive chunk of beef is far easier!

I'll even help with the Yorkshire pudding which, when done well, risks a lovely burn or two as the cook wrangles the hot pan before it cools off and he is left with Yorkshire biscuits. Yes, that has happened to me, and yes, I ate them, and yes, they were pretty tasty.

Anyway, there are lots of great ways to cook a roast...I have tried a bunch of them and I don't recall ever being disappointed.

One tremendous advantage is that timing is pretty straightforward, and the roast will probably need to rest, so there is that lovely 20 minutes before dinner when everything is ready to go and you can sneak a glass of champagne or another beer or even a Manhattan made with maple syrup.

*For whatever reason, I have never made a rib roast for a religious holiday. Birthdays? Absolutely. New Year's Eve? Sure! But Jewish culture doesn't see a rib roast as festive as lamb and brisket. Although I have a dim recollection of my mother making one for Passover, so maybe I'll shut up now.

Posted by CBD at 04:00 PM Comments

First-World Problems...

—CBD

I have been reliably informed by The Guardian, the woke paper of record, Why the phrase 'first world problem' is condescending to everyone.

Apparently the phrase "third-world" is insulting and sexist and racist and causes terrible angst among a certain class of people. You know...the people who are profound assholes who would rather tell us what to do than actually do anything of value.

And "first world" is even worse!

To pre-emptively concede that my problem is just a first world one is to ostentatiously check my privilege before anyone else tells me to do so. At the same time, I remind myself and everyone in earshot that we are indeed living in the “first world”. So it is also a humblebrag.

Such privilege-checking becomes a more violent intervention when demanded by someone else. If, after listening to your pathetic account of how your Uber cab took a whole 10 minutes to arrive, I respond “first world problem”, then I am aggressively staking out the moral high ground and portraying myself (almost certainly dishonestly) as someone who only ever worries about the plight of starving children. Naturally, our powers of sympathy are limited and we all conduct psychic triage on the sufferings of others. But when “first world problem” is just a mealy mouthed way of saying “shut up”, it sounds distinctly compassion-free.

I have no idea who this person is, but I am confident that he is a stupendous asshole...a lecturing, hectoring, keffiyeh-clad leftist who does nothing of import in the world except preach his particular brand of authoritarian post-modernism. I will now be even more confident of the term "first-world problem," and I will also strive to use "third-world" even more in my writing and speech. It's the least I can do!

PS. I know all of you were worried about my door thumb latch. Rest assured...all is well. I contacted the manufacturer (Baldwin), and they guarantee their products unconditionally. They sent me a rebuild kit, which works fine! Although the instructions were awful beyond compare. Tiny little images that seemed to be photos of photos of photos. And steps that didn't apply to my style of lock, but there was no indication of that. So it was a fun 45 minutes, accompanied by much cursing.

Posted by CBD at 02:00 PM Comments

Nation-Building Is Back, And It's Going To Work Just Fine In Gaza...Just Like In Iraq And Afghanistan!

—CBD

Petraeus says Israel should try U.S.-style counterinsurgency in Gaza

“You have to, therefore, destroy them,” Petraeus said. Israel cannot allow Hamas to reconstitute as a militant group and it also must dismantle the group’s political wing, he argued, adding that military force alone won’t accomplish that goal.

“But there are some big ideas missing,” Petraeus said. “You can’t kill or capture your way out of an industrial strength insurgency.” The Hamas challenge echoes what U.S. forces faced in Iraq and Israel should take a similar approach, he said.

“The campaign should be a counterinsurgency campaign,” Petraeus said. “Don’t clear and go on. Clear, hold and build.”

I cannot write intelligently about General Petraeus' military skills, but anyone who touts "Nation Building" as a strategy after 20+ years of data that show it is a pathetic, expensive, and most of all bloody failure is immediately suspect as a thinker. I do know that he did not comport himself well in his personal life, and his handling of sensitive material may have been flawed. It is also entirely possible that the prosecution and conviction for that behavior was politically based, but that is the risk one takes!

Does he not see that trying to manipulate a recalcitrant society into a pie-in-the-sky Jeffersonian democracy is doomed to failure? Counter-insurgency leads to favoring one clan over another, which leads inexorably to all sorts of ridiculous alignments and alliances that cannot last once the occupying power is removed from the equation.

But the concept of nation building in Gaza is even more laughable. The two successes of the last 80 years -- Japan and Germany -- were the happy result of many influences, none of which exist in Gaza....yet. The Germans and Japanese were both regimented people with respect for authority. They were also thoroughly cowed by the might of the Allied war effort, and they knew, deep in their bones and their psyches that they and their ideologies had been destroyed. In addition, there was essentially one actor who held power, and that power was absolute.

Gaza satisfies none of those prerequisites for nation-building success. The Gazans are a corrupt population without any significant work ethic, without a cohesive society larger than Family and Clan, and their respect for authority rests primarily on the exercise of brutality, and not the political and social structure that buttresses authority in the West. Israel has not yet cowed the Gazans, although the sea change in Israeli political and military doctrine may very well change that dynamic.

But the biggest initial difference will be the chaos of a rebuilding effort. Israel will not have the final say in the construction of a civil society in Gaza. The controlling power will be the United States and its "partners" at the UN and in the Arab world. The effort will be a horrific mess of competing interests, corruption, a fierce fight (led by the UN) to return to the status quo ante bellum, and untold billions of American dollars lost in the miasma.

The ultimate difference of course is militant Islam. Its goal is the creation of a caliphate, and that drive will not be diminished by some wet dream of a Gazan Singapore, which is a fairy tale anyway. The Gazans had autonomy when Israel withdrew in 2005. What did they do with their freedom?

Posted by CBD at 12:00 PM Comments

Sunday Morning Book Thread - 12-10-2023 ["Perfessor" Squirrel]

—Open Blogger

Welcome to the prestigious, internationally acclaimed, stately, and illustrious Sunday Morning Book Thread! The place where all readers are welcome, regardless of whatever guilty pleasure we feel like reading (Remarkably, there were no pictures of politicians...). Here is where we can discuss, argue, bicker, quibble, consider, debate, confabulate, converse, and jaw about our latest fancy in reading material. As always, pants are required, unless you are wearing these pants...

So relax, find yourself a warm kitty (or warm puppy--I won't judge) to curl up in your lap, spin that dreidel, and dive into a new book. What are YOU reading this fine morning?

NOTE: I will not be around on today's Sunday Morning Book Thread as I volunteered to assist at church this morning, which means I need to get there early. I'm learning how to run the tech behind the scenes. Please be nice to one another!

PIC NOTE

Happy Hannukah to our Jewish friends on the blog! No doubt this time of year is particularly difficult for you all because of the rise in anti-Semitism and the continuing war in Gaza for the future of Israel. I am praying for you. I don't know much about Judaism or Hannukah. I do know that Jewish history is vast, complicated, and filled with both tragedy and triumph. One of the things I admire most about Judaism is its commitment to tradition and preserving the history, going back thousands and thousands of years. Few other cultures on Earth can make that claim and even fewer hold the past in such spiritual reverence.

COVERS LIE

As I was putting together the content for this week's Sunday Morning Book Thread, I was searching for images of Phillip José Farmer's The Dark Design. I came across an old image of one of the paperback editions that caught my eye. Another cover image for the same book also caught my eye for similar reasons. Both feature a rather significant deviation from the source material, which you would not know unless you read the books.

In the first book, the main character is the famous explorer Richard Francis Burton. In the second book, the main character is Sam "Mark Twain" Clemens. Both men featured glorious mustaches in real life. However, in the Riverworld, where these stories take place, everyone in history has been resurrected into a 25-year-old copy of their former selves with one key difference: MEN DO NOT GROW FACIAL HAIR! Every single man on the Riverworld is bare-faced with neither mustache nor beard. Naturally, this drives the Muslims a bit crazier than usual because they believe they have a holy obligation to sport beards.

It's a small discrepancy, but it is noticeable if you've read the first two books. Also, The image on the right appears to depict Richard Francis Burton wearing the outfit of an "explorer." In the books, both Sam Clemens and Richard Burton wear the local version of clothes, which involves kilts and towels held together with magnetic tabs. I can understand why the artist(s) made these decisions, however, as you can recognize both Sam Clemens and Richard Burton on the cover as the "main character."

A more egregious example is when the cover doesn't have any relation with the subject matter inside. In the cover on the left below, you can see an image of my original cover for Raymond E. Feist's A Darkness at Sethanon. I can confirm that the image depicted is accurate to a significant scene in the book. The image on the right, however, has NO bearing on the content of the book. That scene is to be found nowhere in the book. I had to buy new copies of The Riftwar Saga because all of mine had become worn out. Although I have a "matched" set of covers now, NONE of them are in any way representative of the story. The original covers are far superior in that regard.

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READING DIFFICULT BOOKS

By strange coincidence, both Anonosaurus Wrecks and I came across the following video last week. We must have the same YouTube algorithm. I watched it shortly before I posted the Sunday Morning Book Thread and saved it for this week. Then I saw the following comment later:

A blast from the past! Specifically, from the book thread.
I just came across this 8 1/2 minute video. The 5 Most Difficult Books Ever!

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=wUh7iZ5NrHw

Of the five, I've read three. Well, OK, I didn't make it all the way through Ulysses.
Posted by: Anonosaurus Wrecks, Abandon All Hope Ye Who Enter Here at December 03, 2023 12:49 PM (FVME7)

I have never read any of those books, though I've heard of them. I have no burning desire to start. I don't mind reading challenging books, but none of those interest me in any way. I don't like "stream of consciousness" writing. I don't think like most people, nor do they think like me, so I struggle with trying to understand a jumble of seemingly-random thoughts. I'm OK with complex characters and plots. In fact, I enjoy those stories quite a bit. I don't like authors making the book harder to read than it needs to be. Maybe the prose is fantastic. I don't know. I'm just not keen on trying any of these books. Some time ago I picked up Mark Z. Danielewksi's House of Leaves. It's way up there on the difficulty scale, as the book has all sorts of weird formatting. I simply don't understand it, though people do rave about it.

BOOKS BY IMBECILES

You may have noticed that the title of this section has changed. This is because after last week's conversation in the comments, I received the following email. "Diana Pool" (not her real name) gave me permission to print it in full:

"Hello". I'm a very long time lurker, disturbing the shrubbery occasionally to post some pics of my garden/orchard (paw paws, goji berries, etc.) and my past dogs - I have had several Irish Wolfhound companions over the years. I think I understand the old AOS pudding allusions (Pink Floyd?) but am not too sure of the cowbell allusions.
I am in your first category of writers. I have written a book, am working on a second one, and would like to see people read it. No. Make them read it to atone for their crimes against humanity. Will I ever make more than $4.75 in a given year? Hope is eternal, but in reality this may not realistically happen before the arrival of SMOD. That is ok though, as I have a job that pays the bills and don't really need the money (lucky me). I have probably spent more on the cover and the make it go through Smashwords editing than I will ever make on the book. But I did spend literally, if you get my drift, years writing the book. It was worth every minute as the research took me down paths I otherwise never would have traveled. I have my own business and have tried successfully over the years to find effective paths to successfully market my somewhat niche business. When looking at the whole book thing, I wrote to and received advise from Sarah Hoyt about traditional publishing. She kindly responded and offered one word, "don't". So how to get a readership base? I have been to the workshops - start a blog, do book signings, commit a highly creative and very public murder where a human interest note in the newspaper articles will be something like "The murderer committed the crime exactly as they described in the book but they weren't named Consuela." None of these avenues particularly appeal to me due to time constraints. So what is an author to do?

I have a few ideas to bypass some of the lines to get into the trendy bars called "Famous Authors Hangout" and "Prison Yard Authors", one of which is to perhaps have exposure from an Ace of Spades Book Thread posting. Another was to try and get Elvira to pose with my book between her delicious, um, shapely hands for a graphics design (I actually did meet her and ask and she said "I'll get back to you ", Any day now, any day now). She wasn't buying, so I will probably do that with another paragon of social interest.

So, to the present, I have a book under the nom de imbécile Diana Pool. I chose that nom because it is nom nom and also because I love Greek mythology and the tale of Rex Nemorensis. And because I used to swim in Diana's Pool when going to University.

So to the book. It is available from the usual outlets [Link goes to Amazon - PS]. It has 50% more wolfhounds and is in a sleek package that you can leave on your coffee table and people will say "WTF? I need that book or I will surely perish". It will make you younger, stronger, more attractive, and fabulously wealthy in a literary sense. And a far better overall imbécile.

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Blurb:

Holle

Holle is the exiled princess of the ruling family of the ancient seafaring kingdom of Solinacea who is gradually learning to love the seaport of Selinon to which she was exiled and appointed as the Sovereign in the unfolding years of the Renaissance. Having seen her success in turning the port into a flourishing and rapidly growing hub of trade, she begins to realize that she has made it a prize worth seizing. And she is suddenly aware that the recently colonized town in the wild and treacherous country on the far side of the cliffs ringing in the seaport are also beginning to flourish under the hand of an unknown leader of the men who live there.

Faolán

Who is this mysterious leader Faolán, where did he come from, and most importantly, what are his connections to the outside world and his potential threat to her Selinon? His past is a mysterious mixture of combat experience, education in the natural arts, and courtly graces, hinting at some sort of elevated social status. Most disturbingly, he assumes a familiarity with her to which she is unaccustomed and from which her best friend, Elizabeth, the Apothecary, is deriving far too much amusement. Elizabeth likes and greatly respects Faolán, is intrigued by his cloak of mystery, and can see what Holle can't, that she hasn't a prayer of escaping his attractions. She just hopes it will end well for Holle and is reasonably sure her hopes are well founded. Reasonably sure.

Wolfhounds

Wolfhounds destroy all enemies by rending and breaking them as they do with everything when they are not being sweet and gentle and looking charming and fetching while doing just about anything.
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So is this a proper request to be posted on the book thread? Let me know.

Diana

I sent a follow-up email to her, thanking her for reaching out to me. I also asked if I should change the name of this section. She's the one that came up with the term "Books By Imbeciles." She seems like someone who does not take herself too seriously and I'd love to meet her at a MOME sometime.

One of the challenges in attempting to verify if anyone is a "True Moron" is that we are by nature a secretive bunch who value personal privacy. Many of us (not me) use VPNs to avoid being tracked. Most of us (including me) use a "nic" that is NOT our real name on this blog and in other online social interactions. I've had communications with regular commenters via email without ever knowing their real names. I've met numerous folks at MOMEs and have no idea what their real names are. Members of the Horde come and go on the blog. I received an email from another person who used to comment frequently around here but has since gone back to lurking. Just the other day we saw "Vic" back in the comments section. He has been out of sorts for a few months due to medical and technological issues. There were a few folks skeptical it might be him, but he eventually seemed to confirm that he was indeed Vic. Or has he been replaced by a glowie? How would we know? This was actually a significant plot point in Tad Williams' Otherland series. A group of people are trapped in a virtual world, only interacting with each other through their online avatars. Unbeknownst to them, one of the trusted members of their party has been replaced by a deranged lunatic psychopath who killed the original inhabitant of the avatar and has infiltrated the group. Makes for a terrifying scenario when someone you trust online turns out to be very different in real life.

MORON RECOMMENDATIONS

Good morning horde. My recent reading material has revolved around The Enigma War by Josef Garlinski. For some reason, I decided I didn't really know enough about the Enigma story so off we went.
Glad I did. Now I have a much better appreciation for the pre-war history of Enigma and the world of the Polish team that originally broke the code. I better understand how the Bletchley Park effort came to be and the thought behind the designs.

One goal was to better understand the plumbing of the machine - how it really worked. I wanted to get beyond the generic "codes" and "combinations." The book got a long way there, but a few youtube tutorials made the difference. At some point, animation can illustrate concepts better than words.

The math geeks will appreciate the sheer magnitude of combinations but an understanding of how the machine worked was necessary to make informed decisions to include/exclude options for decoding.

Enigma machines periodically are available for sale through private sale or auction. No bargains anymore though. While many were made, few survive in good condition that aren't held in museum collections.

Posted by: TRex at December 03, 2023 09:30 AM (IQ6Gq)

Comment: Neal Stephenson's Cryptonomicon was my first exposure to the story behind the cracking of the Enigma code and the Bletchley Park crew that deciphered messages. Stephenson includes a lot of interesting technical details behind cryptography and even includes a cipher that can be used with a deck of playing cards, along with a Perl script for running the algorithm on a computer. Cryptography is way above my head, but it's pretty wild stuff when you start looking into it.

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I'm more open to looking at things from a spiritual perspective. I highly recommend Lorenzo Scupoli's The Spiritual Combat, which has helped me immensely.
His four weapons to win the spiritual combat are: absolute distrust of the self, absolute trust in God, proper orientation of our faculties and prayer.

That third one is really interesting because he's referring to surrounding yourself with things that elevate and inspire. If we look around, we see the opposite - instead of beauty, we get ugly, hateful things. It is remarkable how much you can change your view on things by cutting out the bad (books, TV, internet) and replacing it with good.

Posted by: Ace-Endorsed Author A.H. Lloyd at December 03, 2023 09:42 AM (llXky)

Comment: Anyone who looks at what is happening in the world today and doesn't see a spiritual warfare component may not be paying close enough attention. Of course, as a Christian I would believe that. Your own beliefs may vary. I do know that as my men's group neared the end of our study and fellowship program, it seemed like a lot of things were happening to men in the group all at once. It's easy to chalk it up to pure coincidence, but we're convinced that the Enemy does *not* like Christians banding together in fellowship and in Christ to strengthen our relationship with God. He'll do anything he can to break us apart, up to and including causing my cat to puke all over my shoes before church. Prayers for anyone who is going through a difficult time right now. Have faith and God will see you through these dark times!

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I've been reading Directive 51, by John Barnes, recommended here by someone. It's an apocalyptic novel, and it's gripping.
Loosely organized groups of radicals (of various political bent) want to take down the Big System. It's good in theory, but when they are faced with the actual results, some are stricken with great remorse.

Multiple stories interweave: the people who do the deeds to bring the technological world down, the government agencies who are trying to keep order while preserving the constitution, ordinary citizens coping and stepping up to rebuild a nation and world.

Posted by: Dash my lace wigs! at December 03, 2023 09:47 AM (OX9vb)

Comment: I may have been the one that recommended this novel, though Zoltan has also recommended it based on my own recommendation. It's a terrifyingly plausible scenario. Though it does seem as though the technology level in Directive 51 is slightly higher than ours, as they mention convoys of self-driving trucks that are taken offline due to the bio-cyber attacks against the infrastructure that supports them. It gets a little weirder when the humans find out what is happening. The end result is even more horrifying, though at least there is a continued future for a remnant of humanity.

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You're welcome. I learned about this only recently, reading Six Days of War, by Michael Oren. The first-third of the book is a recounting of Arab and Israeli internal political and foreign policy moves leading to the '67 war, from the 30s on. I recommend this book.
Posted by: Gref at December 03, 2023 09:43 PM (5fDan)

Comment: War is hell. 'Nuff said.

More Moron-recommended reading material can be found HERE! (1000+ Moron-recommended books!)

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WHAT I'VE BEEN READING THIS PAST WEEK:

After reviewing some of OregonMuse's old Book Threads, I thought I'd try something a bit different. Instead of just listing WHAT I'm reading, I'll include commentary as well. Unless otherwise specified, you can interpret this as an implied recommendation, though as always your mileage may vary.

Riverworld Book 3 - The Dark Design by Philip José Farmer

Whereas the first two novels in this series had subplots involving racism and antisemitism, this one has a subplot revolving around misogyny and feminism. One of the main characters is a highly qualified airship pilot from the late twentieth century. She died in 1983, so she is familiar with a fairly high degree of technology compared to other folks in the Riverworld who died long before then. She's even a "trifecta" character in that she's black (descended from Australian Aborigines, but mixed in with white ancestors as well), a woman, and bisexual. She does have a chip on her shoulder about the first two, though nobody seems to care much about her sexual preferences in the Riverworld unless she rejects their advances. She spends a fair amount of time trying to prove her worth to the airship captain of the story, who likes and respects her, but is also wary of her. She suffers from PTSD as well, since she has had some rough experiences after her resurrection. This tends to manifest as violent, unprovoked attacks from time to time. So she's unpredictable and must come to grips with that behavior before she can be trusted to be a first mate on the airship under construction. Other members of the crew grew up in an earlier era (e.g., WWI) and are therefore highly mistrustful of her abilities until she demonstrates that she knows more about airships than anyone alive.

It's a bit disappointing because it seems to be something of a rehash of The Fabulous Riverboat, where Sam "Mark Twain" Clemens builds his riverboat and embarks on his journey to find the source of the River. Now a group is trying to create an airship and accomplish the same task in much less time, as airships can travel much farther much faster than a riverboat, which must follow the course of a ten-million-mile long river. An airship can easily take shortcuts from Point A to Point B across the intervening terrain. The heroes do start to uncover more about the mysteries of who resurrected them and why.

(HT: StewBurner)

Christmas: The Rest of the Story by Rick Renner

This is a slow read for me. Mainly because I want to digest and savor each chapter. It's less than 300 pages long, but I figure it will take me a few weeks to get all the way through it. Lots of interesting history. Lots of spiritual stuff in here as well.

That's about all I have for this week. Thank you for all of your kind words regarding the Sunday Morning Book Thread. This is a very special place. You are very special people (in all the best ways!). The kindness, generosity, and wisdom of the Moron Horde knows no bounds. Let's keep reading!

If you have any suggestions for improvement, reading recommendations, or discussion topics that you'd like to see on the Sunday Morning Book Thread, you can send them to perfessor dot squirrel at-sign gmail dot com. Your feedback is always appreciated! You can also take a virtual tour of OUR library at libib.com/u/perfessorsquirrel. Since I added sections for AoSHQ, I now consider it OUR library, rather than my own personal fiefdom...

PREVIOUS SUNDAY MORNING BOOK THREAD - 12-03-23 (NOTE: Do NOT comment on old threads!)

Disclaimer: No Morons were harmed in the making of this Sunday Morning Book Thread. Reading the Sunday Morning Book Thread may be hazardous to your mental, physical, or spiritual health.

Close it up

Posted by Open Blogger at 09:00 AM Comments

12/10/23 EMT

—krakatoa

EMT.

Posted by krakatoa at 06:00 AM Comments

Daily Tech News 10 December 2023

—Pixy Misa

Top Story

EU member states - led by Bookburner General Thierry Breton - have agreed to landmark AI regulations that fine foreign companies 7% of annual revenues. (Ars Technica)

So nothing has changed in the EU.

Posted by Pixy Misa at 04:00 AM Comments

Saturday Overnight Open Thread (12/9/23)

—Misanthropic Humanitarian

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The Saturday Night Joke

An old tired-looking dog wanders into a guy's yard. He checks the dog's collar and feels his well-fed belly and knows the dog has a home.

The dog follows him into the house and jumps on the couch, gets comfortable and falls asleep. The man thinks its rather odd, but lets him sleep. After about an hour the dog wakes up, walks to the door and the guy lets him out. The dog wags his tale and leaves.

The next day the dog comes back and scratches at the door. The guy opens the door, the dog comes in and jumps on the couch, gets comfortable and falls asleep again. The man lets him sleep. After about an hour the dog wakes up, walks to the door and the guy lets him out. The dog wags his tale and leaves.

This goes on for days. The guy grows really curious, so he pins a note on the dog's collar: "Your dog has been taking a nap at my house every day."

The next day the dog shows up with another note pinned to his collar: "He lives in a home with four kids-- he's trying to catch up on his sleep. Can I come with him tomorrow?'(H/T Hrothgar)

Posted by Misanthropic Humanitarian at 09:58 PM Comments

Saturday Evening Movie Thread 12/09/2023 [TheJamesMadison]

—Open Blogger

Joe Dante

There's something Joe Dante says near the beginning of his commentary on the Blu-ray of his movie Innerspace that, I think, perfectly sums up who he is as a filmmaker. He's commenting on the scene where Martin Short's hypochondriac character goes to his doctor for the first time in the film, and Dante points out that the doctor was played by William Schallert who Dante cast in the role of the doctor because Schallert played a doctor in many 50s B-science fiction movies. He also mentions that he expects no one to get the joke but him.

Having watched all of his feature films and some of his television work, I think it's safe to say that that propensity for in-jokes is pretty much one of the best ways to define him as a filmmaker, and I don't say that derisively. He was a big kid who got to make movies, and he made movies that entertained him, filled with references to the media that he had grown up with, and always just trying to be fun. Early on, I was making comparisons in my head with Robert Zemeckis, but there were key differences. Firstly, Zemeckis had an early writing partner in Bob Gale with whom he cowrote most of his 80s output. Dante, never had a regular writing partner, but he was obviously someone who wanted the best talent he could get around him. The second difference was that Zemeckis eventually grew up, making movies like Cast Away and Forrest Gump that allowed him to play with his cinematic playthings in more mature stories.

Dante simply never got to the point where he wanted to tell a grown up story. The closest would probably be Matinee, but that's a celebration of B-movie filmmaking and spectacle in genre more than anything else. It's just that the storytelling has a maturity to it that the rest of his films don't (a lot of credit goes to his writer on that, Charles A. Haas). The financial failure led to him just returning to his roots (though with a much higher budget) in Small Soldiers. Despite the fact that his later career was mostly studio compromised product that deadened his voice to a whisper, he never lost the desire to simply entertain on his own anarchic wavelength.

Posted by Open Blogger at 07:40 PM Comments

Weekend Hobby and Crafting Thread

—J.J. Sefton

Greetings, all. Hope the weekend is going well. Time to head for the basement, shop, garage, studio or craft room, get creative and have some fun.

NOTE: This is not an open thread. Please limit comments to the subject.

Posted by J.J. Sefton at 04:42 PM Comments

Ace of Spades Pet Thread, December 9

—K.T.

* * *

* * *

Good afternoon and welcome to the almost world famous Ace of Spades Pet Thread. Thanks for stopping by. Kick back and enjoy the world of animals.

Would you like a treat?

Let's relax a little with the animals and leave the world of politics and current events outside today.

Posted by K.T. at 03:31 PM Comments

Gardening, Puttering and Adventure Thread, Dec. 9

—K.T.

Holiday Lights
Garvan Woodland Gardens, Hot Springs, AR

Greetings on a cold, foggy December day (at least here)! Anything going on in your garden, yard or neighborhood? Doing any decorations? Going on a family adventure to a holiday display? The one above started the weekend before Thanksgiving and ends on New Years Eve.

USA Today has published their list of the 10 best botanical gardens to visit for their holiday displays. Many of them are in the Southeast. The one with the froggie is number 7.

Throughout the holiday season, spectacular light shows brighten up botanical gardens across the country. Instead of spring flowers, visitors find twinkling holiday lights, often accompanied by a range of other festivities.
To find the best places to visit this holiday season, we asked a panel of experts to nominate their favorite light displays at botanical gardens throughout the U.S., then readers voted for their top picks. Here are the 10 best botanical gardens for holiday lights this year.

Hanukkah began at sundown on Thursday, December 7, and continues through Friday, December 15 this year.

Happy Hanukkah!

Posted by K.T. at 01:22 PM Comments

California Rant

—K.T.

Members of The Horde consider
the sorry state of California government

*

How long has it been since you communicated with one of your government representatives? What were the results? They say that letters are more effective than emails or other forms of online communication, but I think it probably depends on the recipient. Letters do provide a nice record, though. And sometimes you have to push back.

NorCal Sierra Foothills Lurker sent us a copy of a letter to the Governor of California (slightly altered here to protect the innocent). BOLD. The first part of the letter includes a partial description of personal travails in dealing with the Government of California regarding a simple short-term disability claim. The description of these struggles with inane government actions was followed by a timely rant on more general issues with state government. They are related.

I think this letter may have been triggered by the Newsom/DeSantis debate on November 30, which brought several of Newsom's shortcomings out into the open. But here are some other reminders of Newsom's heavy-handed and disastrous policies and actions.

*

I have added some paragraph breaks to the text of the letter, because the details of the bureaucratic ordeal described are maddening and deserve to be considered in some detail:

Dear Governor Newsom,
In June of this year, my husband fell at home and broke his right great toe and tore and/or severely bruised the meniscus in his left knee. Since he hikes up and down hills and kneels all day, he had to be off work for about 6 weeks. He applied for state disability, properly (we have copies) and sent them in. We waited.

Then a rejection letter came that basically said his doctor doesn't exist. It had instructions to appeal and a form. He filled it out, correctly (we have copies) along with proof his doctor exists in good standing and sent it in. We waited and waited. Nothing.

He began the infuriating task of trying to get through by phone to the EDD office. Over and over and over again. The automated system has you enter all your information then says there are too many callers, try another time, then hangs up on you.

After weeks of trying someone tells him that they, EDD, sent the wrong form so will send the correct one. We waited. Finally it comes.

He fills it out correctly (we have copies) and sends it in. We have waited and waited and tried and tried and tried to call. All to no avail.

He was hurt in June. It is now December and we are still waiting and calling. Again today.

Now comes the rant:

During the pandemic our state was the laughing stock of the entire country because of the horrendously run EDD, which is emblematic of every department this state runs. You were on tv smiling and promising time and time again that California had a huge budget surplus as well as federal dollars flowing in and you were overseeing the remedy and implementation to fix it.
You lied to us. EDD is every bit as bad as it was then when billions went to fraud here and even abroad. Yet my husband who has worked steadily, paid his taxes, and been a good citizen and great person helping family member after family member who needed it, can't even get the disability payments he is owed by the state.

And yet there you are running around telling everyone who will listen what a wonderful job you have done here. This after you have lied to us, fixed nor improved nothing while turning our surplus into a huge deficit. It is abhorrent!

Sincerely,

(Name included in the letter to the governor, but not here)

Wow. Short, but full of truth. This letter also provides us with an opportunity to provide some details for backup, including math:

*

The California Employment Development Department (EDD)

Here is a piece from January 2021 to back up NorCal Sierra Foothills Lurker's "laughing stock of the entire country" statement in the letter to the Governor - California Says Unemployment Fraud During Pandemic Cost Taxpayers Up To $31 Billion

"It should be no surprise that EDD was overwhelmed, just like the rest of the nation's unemployment agencies," Su told reporters Monday. "And we now know that as millions of Californians applied for help, international and national criminal rings were at work behind the scenes working relentlessly to steal unemployment benefits using sophisticated methods of identity theft."
Officials noted the state is continuing to struggle with a backlog of claims that have not been approved roughly three weeks after being filed, according to the Los Angeles Times.

The EDD announced in a Dec. 31 statement that 1.4 million unemployment claims would be frozen pending an investigation into the widespread unemployment fraud.

The state's Labor Department may also be losing its top official, potentially complicating efforts to address unemployment fraud and the backlog. President Joe Biden has reportedly picked Su to become deputy secretary at the U.S. Department of Labor, according to Bloomberg Law.

When they fail, kick them up to the federal level!

Perhaps the plan is to have her work her miracles in the federal government as well, in a future President Newsom Administration!

*

You would think that the California EDD would have had time to recover from its work overload and discovery of all those fraudulent claims from Nigeria in 2020 - 2021. The experience above suggests to me that perhaps this department should be broken up like a corrupt monopoly.

But maybe other parties have also been involved in making this morass worse.

CalMatters has done a four-part series of investigations on California's unemployment crash. Here's part of the overview:

Behind the scenes at the state Capitol, California is launching an unprecedented $1.2 billion overhaul of its battered job safety net. Its Employment Development Department -- better known as the EDD -- is attempting to rebuild its unemployment and disability systems as it recovers from a pandemic that left millions of workers waiting for payments and tens of billions of dollars missing to suspected fraud.

A year-long CalMatters investigation finds that the state was primed for disaster by years of missed red flags and failed reforms. Once COVID hit, public records and interviews reveal that California's system was initially friendlier to scammers than to many real workers - - and then the state got so aggressive that many workers struggled to prove their own identities. . .

I'm sorry, but I don't understand why the person in charge of the EDD at this time would even be considered for promotion to the federal system.

. . . New financial reports requested by CalMatters show that amid the chaos, the EDD and its unemployment payment contractor Bank of America split a half a billion dollars in revenue, though the bank says it ultimately spent more to cover fraud losses. Another large EDD contractor, Deloitte, made more than a quarter of a billion dollars on tech contracts and emergency contracts to build systems that state reports say buckled during the pandemic.

Bank of America and Deloitte. And unnamed others. Any possibility that there was some illegal activity going on with the State's contractors? Or are they all just really, really incompetent?

*

California's Current Budget

NorCal Sierra Foothills Lurker also mentioned in her letter Newsom's lies about the budget. She found this recent piece by Dan Walters, one of the few political reporters these days who came up through the business, skipping J-school:

Economic reality bites as Newsom faces a big California budget problem

During his much ballyhooed, nationally televised debate with Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis last week, California Gov. Gavin Newsom boasted that the state's economy is "booming" and leads the nation.
"California has no peers," Newsom declared. "California dominates."

About 18 hours later, reality reared its ugly head. The Legislative Analyst's Office revealed that state tax revenues are running tens of billions of dollars behind expectations due to a slowing economy, creating a monumental budget headache.

The dilemma became apparent when the November income tax filing deadline - seven months later than the original date - passed, and tax receipts for 2022 could finally be counted. . .

LAO analysts Brian Uhler, Chas Alamo and economist Seth Kerstein estimated that 2022-23 revenues are $26 billion under projections and "our updated revenue outlook anticipates collections to come in $58 billion below Budget Act projections across 2022-23 to 2024-25."

California, they said, started seeing an economic downturn in 2022 as the Federal Reserve System raised interest rates to tame inflation. . .

"The number of unemployed workers in California has risen nearly 200,000 since the summer of 2022," they added. "This has resulted in a jump in the state's unemployment rate from 3.8 percent to 4.8 percent. Similarly, inflation-adjusted incomes posted five straight quarters of year-over-year declines from the first quarter of 2022 to the first quarter 2023."
When Newsom and legislators finalized a 2023-24 budget in June, they knew that revenue estimates were shaky due to the postponed filing deadline, but assumed that they had a $30-plus billion gap to bridge.

Their happy but shaky little revenue estimates didn't work out? How could that be? Aren't they totally in tune with the electorate?

More details at the Dan Walters link, with some of his sources also linked.

*

But wait . . . MORE interactions with the EDD:

There was a part of the saga I forgot to include in that letter. After sending in the final form and waiting and calling and calling, my husband was told they were in the process of reversing the rejection and a check should be going out. Then we waited and called and called again, as per the letter.

After sending the letter to the governor:

After calling disability 3 times in one day, being on hold over an hour, they said they sent my husband a letter, which we never got, that said it went to office of appeals. Called them and they said he has to go to an appeals hearing and they will mail him a letter when time!
And take off work to go! WTAF?!!?? I have to wonder if it's political and on purpose. They can't actually screw up this bad without actually trying.

BTW, when he was on speaker phone with EDD finally, towards the end of the call with the lady that didn't seem to have a grasp of why he was denied and sent to appeals, I said, "You guys are a mess!" And they hung up on him. End of call. Apparently you're not supposed to speak of their horrendous job performance.

So much for getting it by Christmas. What a nightmare!

*

So far, this nightmare has continued from June to December!

My first thought was "The process is the punishment". What an odd, intrusive thought! Is the punishment for being in the wrong demographic? Hard to say. There could be a variety of reasons, but this is the state where (as VDH has pointed out and as I have seen myself) building codes in rural areas are not enforced where illegal aliens live because . . . equity!

And in the city, the priorities of the homeless take precedence over the priorities of merchants and other citizens - - - until representatives of the CCP visit!

*

"Your doctor doesn't exist" is a novel reason for denying a claim!

Best wishes to NorCal Sierra Foothills Lurker and her husband. I trust that at least we we won't hear of a scenario something like this:

*

And here in the Central Valley, a railroad update

Biden Invests $3 billion in California's High Speed Rail

Project has already cost $11 billion with no tracks laid

Well, NorCal Sierra Foothills Lurker did note that Newsom promise that federal dollars would be flowing into the state.

The money will help buy six electric trains and bankroll construction and design of a train station and other facilities and projects along a 171-mile stretch of rail line in California's central valley--far from either Los Angeles or San Francisco. So far this year the California bullet train project has also received nearly $230 million in U.S. taxpayer money through the 2021 federal infrastructure bill.
Biden's fresh money infusion comes as the high speed rail project already has a projected $100 billion deficit after spending more than $11 billion. California Democrats and Republicans alike have blasted the enterprise as costly with little to show for the time and money spent so far. California governor Gavin Newsom (D.) has criticized the project as overly expensive and time-intensive and proposed a scale-back--an idea he later said was taken out of context by the media.

"Only the Biden administration would look at a project that's years behind schedule and tens of billions over budget and think 'that's a good place to invest another $3 billion,'" said Republican assemblyman James Gallagher, the state assembly's minority leader. "Taxpayers around the country should be outraged that this boondoggle is getting another dime of their hard-earned money."

But let's focus on the positive:

The Biden administration did not comment on the grant specifics and whether the money comes with any accountability measures or conditions. A spokesman for the high speed rail agency said workers are making progress on infrastructure like viaducts that need to be in place before tracks can be laid.

The Classical Saturday Morning Coffee Break & Prayer Revival

—Misanthropic Humanitarian

(H/T KT)

***

A picture can say a thousand words. 7 powerful photographs of terminally ill patients living out their final wishes

Few gifts are greater than having your final wish granted.

The Ambulance Wish Foundation, a Dutch nonprofit, helps people like Mario experience one final request.
It's a lot like Make-A-Wish, only it's not just for kids.

In 2006, Kees Veldboer, who was an ambulance driver at the time, was moving a patient from one hospital to another. The patient was a terminally ill man who had spent three straight months confined to a hospital bed. During the trip from one hospital to the other, the patient told Veldboer that he wanted to see the Vlaardingen canal one last time. He wanted to sit in the sun and wind and smell the water again before going back inside.

***

Before we get into the Prayer Revival, just a few housekeeping items to go over. (Rulz for those of you in Ojibwa, WI)

(1) This is an open thread, feel free to lurk, opine and/or bloviate away the morning.

(2) Be kind to the Hectors and Sydneys of the world. It isn't their fault they were dropped on their heads as infants.

(3) Only 23 days until your new deductible starts. Now is the time to run with sharp objects if you so choose.

(D) By all means have whatever kind of weekend you want. But, I'm hoping it is a good one.

AoSHQ Weekly Prayer List

Please submit any prayer requests to me, “Annie’s Stew” at apaslo atsign hotmail dot com. Prayer requests are generally removed after four weeks unless we receive an update.

Prayer Requests:

10/21 – Sugar Plum Fairy asked for prayers for her dad, Mindful Webworker, as he has been pretty sick for the last few days. Prayers for recovery to full health and strength, and wisdom for her mom to help him would be appreciated.
10/28 Update – Mindful Webworker had an emergency surgery and is recovering well. They are not sure what happened, and tests are underway, but so far his prognosis is good. He is in good spirits and is recovering well. She sends thanks from the whole family for the prayers, and a special thanks to Muldoon for the limerick, which brought laughter to some dark days. Please keep praying, and thanks and glory to God for the doctors saving dad’s life.
11/18 Update – He is scheduled to have surgery the Tuesday after Thanksgiving, but for now, he is out of the hospital and home, where the coffee is good! Milady Jo could use some prayers, as she will be getting hip replacement surgery in Dec.

11/4 – Oddbob asked for prayers for his granddaughter. Without going into details, please pray hard for baby E. Thank you.
11/18 Update – Baby E is doing much better, but please keep praying. She and her parents (and grandparents) will need them for the long haul.

11/4 – Creeper asked for prayers again for his friend “Q”. We had prayed for Q, who had a bad back, and then had a temporary nerve stimulator put in, which helped tremendously. They installed the permanent stimulator last week, and it was a disaster. He woke up in excruciating pain, running a low fever, and vomiting. A CT scan found an ileus. It seems to have been caused by the stimulator, and if it doesn’t clear on its own, he will have to have it removed.
11/18 Update – They turned the TENS off for a few days. Then when they turned it back on, it was a big success. Q has control over the machine and is learning it fast. He’s not pain free – he never will be – but he is very happy with “tolerable”. Thank you to the ‘rons and ‘ettes. You’re the best.

11/15 – That Northerlurker what lurkd needs help. He commented that he is in the worst financial situation of his life, but the people in his town are reaching out to him to help. He added that the only thing worse than financial stress is asking for help.
11/19 Update That Northernlurker posted that he is on his first day of homelessness.

11/18 – Tonypete asked for prayers for the repose of the soul of B. He took his own life suddenly and without any apparent reason. He is greatly missed by his family, his classmates, and his teachers. He was an 8th grader.

11/18 – Hadrian the Seventh thanked everyone for the prayers for his sister. She came through her heart valve surgery with no problems and is recovering nicely.

11/18 – DMB had a job offer in Sarasota, FL that was withdrawn. God, in His providence, had better plans for DMB. He has now relocated to Ft. Lauderdale, and is still unpacking boxes, but started his new job this week! Praise be to God!

11/19 – FenelonSpoke requested prayers for a 2 month old baby named Lillian, who has a UTI and possible meningitis. Please pray for healing.

11/21 – BD asked for prayers for his brother Paul. Paul is very ill, and gets worse every day. He has had a long, painful, fight with congenital issues with his lymphatic system. He’s only 57 and deserved better. Please pray for a miracle and for his soul. BD thanks the people here who make his day every day, but recently it hasn’t been enough to overcome his sorrow.

11/22 – Fox2! requested prayers for his newborn great-nephew, J, who is in the NICU. He turned blue overnight. Please pray for him and his family.
11/18 Update – J is out of the hospital and progressing nicely. Thanks for the prayers.

11/18 – Fen asked for prayers for R, someone in her congregation. R’s dementia is making him angry and verbally abusive, which is hard for his daughters. R’s wife died several years ago. They are having trouble finding additional caregivers to help out. Prayers that rough places could be made smooth for this dear family are appreciated.

11/18 – Reforger asks for prayers for grandchild #2, prayers that he will begin to figure out that every time Papa says “you’re going to get hurt doing that”, he would listen instead of getting hurt ,and proving Papa right over and over again. Also, Reforger is afraid he will lose one of his best friends soon. She grew up in a smoking house and has smoked since she was 13, and a minor flu has turned into a 4 day stay in the hospital. Reforger is trying to quit, too.

11/18 – G asked for prayers for a friend’s wife (named Ileana), who is undergoing cancer surgery. Prayers for a successful outcome and a speedy recovery.

12/2 – Muldoon asked for prayers for the healing of a leg infection suffered by the man who was scheduled to carry out the GPR survey of the property where the cadaver dog team found strong evidence of human remains, in a location that is highly plausible as a potential site where Muldoon’s F-I-L was buried by his neighbor. The infection has caused an indefinite delay in further searches, as this individual is the key team member for the GPR analysis. Prayers both for the infection to heal and for the process of discovering Jack’s remains to move forward.

12/4 – FenelonSpoke asked for prayers as she went to visit a man “M” in the hospital. He’s not a member of her congregation, but is a friend of a friend who was okay with her visiting. He has had one thing after another, and has been in and out of the hospital. Prayers for his healing would be appreciated. Thanks so much.

12/5 – Jewells45 sent an update. She spent 5 hours seeing the doctor, waiting, getting the infusion of new drugs, waiting some more…. The news is a mixed bag: some improved, some stable, and some worsened, and new metastases in her lungs and ribcage. The pain is daily, but manageable for now. The good news was that it has not spread.

12/6 – Vic posted that his computer broke, and he has been in the hospital for 2.5 months with another cancer diagnosis.

12/6 – Jordan61 posted and asked for “good vibes”. His heart rate was going nuts and he was feeling some pressure in his chest so he went to the ER. He’d had one blood draw and was waiting for another to compare with – then he’d know whether he’d have to be admitted to the hospital.

For submission guidelines and other relevant info, please contact Annie's Stew, who is managing the prayer list. You can contact her at apaslo at-sign hotmail dot com. If you see a prayer request posted in a thread comment, feel free to copy and paste it and e-mail it to Annie's Stew. She tries to keep up with the requests in the threads, but she's not here all of the time, so she may not see it unless you e-mail it to her. Please note: Prayer requests are generally removed after four weeks or so unless we receive an update.

2 Corinthians 4:8-9
We are troubled on every side, yet not distressed; we are perplexed, but not in despair, persecuted, but not forsaken; cast down, but not destroyed.

***

Thank you Annie for your service to the Prayer Revival.

Close it up

Posted by Misanthropic Humanitarian at 07:58 AM Comments

Daily Tech News 9 December 2023

—Pixy Misa

Top Story

The duck has been cooked.

Came out great. Could have used a little more seasoning perhaps, but the skin crisped up just right and the meat wasn't dry at all.

I have acquired a chicken to try out the new slow cooker, but not today, because today I am full of duck.
Beeper Mini is an Android iMessage client from the team behind Beeper, an Android everything-but-iMessage client. (Ars Technica)

Through a clever bit of reverse engineering it is able to talk directly to Apple's messaging servers and interoperate with MacOS and iOS devices.
Beeper Mini is dead, killed by Apple. (Tech Crunch)

It was three days old.

Posted by Pixy Misa at 04:00 AM Comments

Do You Take This Post To Be Your Lawfully Wedded ONT?

—WeirdDave

HO! HO! HO! Christmas is bearing down on us fast, how about some memes to get in the mood?

Got a Moron wedding tomorrow. Won't say who because I don't know if he's mentioned it on here, but congratulations! Hope it's as nice as the last wedding I went to, a couple of friends of mine who met on a website devoted to ham radio enthusiasts. The service wasn't much, but man, I'm telling you, great reception.

Posted by WeirdDave at 10:00 PM Comments

Mystery Man Cafe

—Disinformation Expert Ace

by @yeraysg
via theglobalphotographycommunity

Riomaggiore, Italy.

Big iceberg breaks off and tumbles like an ice cube in whisky.

Amazing causeway towards a church on a hilly island in Spain. It's the church of San Juan de Gaztelugatxe, Vasco, Spain. Date of construction unknown, but no later than 1119.

Mountains at dawn.

Abandoned dog at risk of being put down in a high-kill shelter gets adopted.

Santa's doing some pre-flight route-scouting!!!

Diving a sea cave in Mexico.

China is absolutely demolishing us in illuminated dragon technology. Also, in most other areas of engineering and construction.

Nice waterfall.

Ocean sunset.

Lake Oeschinen, Switzerland. Wow.

Posted by Disinformation Expert Ace at 07:32 PM Comments

Quick Hits

—Disinformation Expert Ace

Squad member and insurrectionist Jamaal Bowman has been censured over the criminal act of pulling a fire alarm in order to stop a House vote (which is a Constitutional act). Apparently the DOJ will not be prosecuting him.

Only three Democrats voted to censure him. 105 Republicans, on the other hand, voted to expel George Santos. One side is doing this right and one side is doing it wrong and it doesn't matter which -- both sides must act the same way, no matter who is right and who is wrong. We cannot go on perpetrating 2-tier justice on ourselves.

The "journalists" and other "workers" at the Washington Post staged a very, very symbolic one-day walkout.

Why. Even. Bother.

They got me all excited about a strike, but then they all returned to their, and I use this term advisedly, " " " jobs " " " within 24 hours.

The Babylon Bee walked out in solidarity with their fellow fake-news providers:

Speaking of fake news: The hot new concept in " " " journalism " " " is the "duty to not report."

Specifically, to not report on the immigration status of criminals and terrorists. (And race, of course. And transgender status. And affiliation with the Democrat Party or leftwing causes.)

Yes, they've been doing that for over a decade, but now they've made it into an acknowledged and explicit code of Fake Journalism.

We have been discussing the latest Irish law to crackdown on free speech. Yet, even with the criminalization of speech, there is apparently still the danger of citizens reading or hearing facts from reporters that are best kept from them. Thus, Kitty Holland, a correspondent with the Irish Times, is defending the media's decision to suppress stories that would "incite hatred" and undermine journalistic viewpoints.
...

Holland... said that they had to be suppressed in the best interests of the public:

"I think elements of them were not good,. They were incitement to hatred, and I think that's why the media left out aspects of them. I think they were right to not include [Casey's full comments in news reports]. I don't think that they were helpful, and this is the kind of thing that the far right latches on to."

What was striking was the ease with which Holland moves directly into the suppression of a story as the guardian of the public good. Some news is simply "not helpful" so the media should not allow the public to be exposed to it.

Holland previously won the Journalist of the Year, News Reporter of the Year, and the Overall winner of the Justice Media Awards.

Holland's view is consistent with many in the media in the United States today.

I have long been a critic of what I called "advocacy journalism" as it began to emerge in journalism schools. These schools encourage students to use their "lived expertise" and to "leave[] neutrality behind." Instead, of neutrality, they are pushing "solidarity [as] 'a commitment to social justice that translates into action.'"

For example, we previously discussed the release of the results of interviews with over 75 media leaders by former executive editor for The Washington Post Leonard Downie Jr. and former CBS News President Andrew Heyward. They concluded that objectivity is now considered reactionary and even harmful. Emilio Garcia-Ruiz, editor-in-chief at the San Francisco Chronicle said it plainly: "Objectivity has got to go."

...

[A]merican politicians (including Barack Obama) have called upon the media to actively frame news to shape public opinion. This includes support for the widespread censorship of opposing views on social media.

The Holland interview shows how matter-of-fact the cause of censorship has become for reporters. The immediate question is not whether it was news to report (which it certainly was), but whether the news would further the cause or narrative of the media.

There has always been media bias, but it is now openly acknowledged and embraced by reporters. They view themselves now as the guardians protecting citizens from harmful information or news that they cannot put into the proper perspective. Information is treated like sugary drinks under the Big Gulp laws, you are better off having others decide what is healthy for you to consume . . . or to know.

And yet they continue to insist that they are objective, and in fact that they are so objective that they should be the only voices permitted in the public sphere.

Instapundit: Why aren't we talking about the real vectors of disinformation? The real pool of the ignorant easily infected by stupid nonsense?

The "elite," in other words?

In modern America, after all, very few important matters are put to the voters.
They're decided by unelected administrators: government bureaucrats, college administrators, corporate executives.

After George Floyd's death, we didn't have a national election on what to do. Institutions just executed a simultaneous turn to the same policies -- defunding police, for example -- most of which wouldn't have passed muster with voters and have been disastrous.

But everything from TV commercials to civil-rights policies to educational curricula changed all at once, in the same way.

And the armor is thinner.

Educated people, trained in school, tend to believe what they're told.

Working-class people tend to be more cynical about media and "experts."

Our ruling class is a monoculture of people educated in the same schools, in the same ways and with the same values.

Whatever fools one of them will probably fool all of them or enough to make a difference.

And they can be easily bought. Not just our political class but the entire upper stratum is for sale.

You can buy universities with donations, grants and institutes, you can buy politicians with campaign donations and jobs and consulting fees for families (see, e.g., Hunter Biden), you can buy off corporations even more directly.

They're for sale, and they're not even ashamed of it anymore.

Our ruling class mostly believes Israel is an "apartheid state" committing "genocide" -- it's not, and it's not -- capitalism produces poverty (rather the reverse, actually), "Western colonialism" is responsible for the ills of the Third World (nope) and whether one is male or female is purely a matter of social construction (also nope).

It thinks the only way to defeat racism is by being racist and the way to end urban violence is to disarm people in the suburbs.

So we need to look at armoring the top of our society against bad ideas instead of trying to limit what ordinary people can read online.

That would require limits on foreign funding, the cultivation of strong moral and patriotic values in our leadership and the reduction of top-level influence on society as a whole.

Breaking up big businesses and shrinking big universities and big government would make them less appealing targets and take away some of their power.

But doing that would reduce the amount of graft available, and it's hard to imagine our leadership class going along.

One in four people's bodies created unexpected "nonsense proteins" in reaction to the non-vaccine covid vaccines.

They claim that none of the gibberish proteins created by people's bodies were harmful at all. Not a single adverse effect, not one! Not one in all the hundreds of millions of cases!

How they could possibly know that will remain, forever, a mystery. Just more of that Magical Godscience we'll just have to pour all of our Faith into.

More than a quarter of people injected with mRNA Covid jabs suffered an unintended immune response created by a glitch in the way the vaccine was read by the body, a study has found.
No adverse effects were created by the error, data show, but Cambridge scientists found such vaccines were not perfect and sometimes led to nonsense proteins being made instead of the desired Covid "spike", which mimics infection and leads to antibody production.

mRNA jabs, such as the ones created by Moderna and Pfizer, use a string of genetic material to tell the body to create a specific protein that safely imitates an infection.

Research in the field, spanning decades, had been slow work. It often stalled because RNA itself is often attacked by the body as a foreign invader.

But in 2023, the Nobel Prize for Medicine went to the pair of scientists who had spent years working to fix the problem. It was done by taking one of the RNA bases, uridine, and swapping in a very similar synthetic alternative.

This breakthrough allowed scientists to create proteins in the body without the immune system attacking the jab.

It allows for quick and precise vaccines that are highly effective and was the backbone of the Covid vaccine response.
Not a perfect fit

It was thought the minor tweak to uridine caused no problems in cells, but a team of researchers at the University of Cambridge's Medical Research Council (MRC) Toxicology Unit have now found when this partially synthetic code is read, the protein-making machine in the body sometimes struggles with the uridine analogues.

Because it is not a perfect fit for what is expected, there can be a momentary pause which causes the process to stutter and a letter in the code can get skipped, much like a bike slipping a gear.

This process, called frameshifting, throws out the way the code is interpreted as it relies on groups of three bases, known as codons, being read in the right order.

500 Parisians line up to sample the wares at the country's first Krispy Kreme shop. Good. I can't wait till these f***ers all get fat so they can drop the superiority act.

Just kidding, they'll never drop the superiority act.

[T]o succeed in its 39th foreign market, Krispy Kreme's director general for France, Alexandre Maizoue, has pulled out all the stops: home delivery starting early next year, opening a production site in the eastern suburb of Creteil in 2024, and reaching 500 stores within five years.
"I think we have some great years ahead of us," he said. The company has already invested more than two million euros ($2.2 million) in its first store and production facility.

To ensure buzz, Krispy Kreme launched a huge publicity campaign -- with the Paris City Hall even accusing it of illegal postering -- and handed out some 100,000 doughnuts at various places around Paris.

A deejay and a red carpet welcomed clients to the Wednesday opening of the new store in the Halles shopping centre in central Paris.

According to Maizoue, around 400 people were in line at 8 am for the opening, with a total of 3,000 coming the first day.

The chain's first French store is offering 13 varies of doughnuts, or "donut" as it known in France, with clients able to observe the production behind a glass wall -- a hallmark of the brand.

I don't think I've seen it called a "doughnut" in America since I was a wee lad.

This is France24's English language unit. Must be staffed by Britishers.

Microsoft's making deals with Chinese communist party propaganda outlets, naturally. Probably coaching the Chinese communists on how best to censor their political enemies.

Microsoft helped Chinese state-run media outlets disseminate propaganda as part of previously unreported partnership agreements, documents obtained by the Washington Free Beacon show.

The nation's second largest corporation signed collaboration deals with state-run Chinese media outlets including China Daily and People's Daily, the latter of which is the official newspaper of the Central Committee of the Chinese government. Summaries of the deal state Microsoft would provide China Daily with technology that lets the paper target potential readers and gave the People's Daily access to an artificial intelligence bot specially designed to be controlled and censored by the Chinese Communist Party.

The deals have not been widely reported outside of China, nor have the financial terms been disclosed. A spokeswoman for Microsoft said both agreements "expired years ago and were not renewed." But experts say the fact that Microsoft inked the deals at all is a major win for the Chinese Communist Party.

"These are major propaganda outlets that publish outright falsehoods attacking the ideas of democracy, attacking the very concepts that undergird our society, and yet an American company is working to spread this," said Geoffrey Cain, policy director at the Tech Integrity Project, which fights Chinese Communist Party influence in American tech companies. "The purpose of all this is to show the Chinese Communist Party that it's firmly on the side of China and the Chinese system," Cain added.

"Anti-racist" "scholar" Henry Rogers, who LARPs under the fake name Ibram X. Kendi: White people can't connect with humanity. Please give me more money so I can further develop theories of anti-racism.

Holy sh*t!

An American professor and “anti-racist” activist, Ibram X. Kendi says that “whiteness prevents white people from connecting to humanity”.

The audience breaks into applause. pic.twitter.com/DkGFIeEEzp
— I Meme Therefore I Am 🇺🇸 (@ImMeme0) December 5, 2023

Please teach me how to be anti-racist, Absolute Moral Authority

Washington State asked a scientist to evaluate whether its cap and trade scheme would raise gas prices. He concluded that it would, in fact, raise gas prices.

So they demanded he falsify the science, and when he refused, they forced him to quit.

From King5.com:

For the last five years, Scott Smith of Tumwater was a transportation planner for the Washington State Department of Transportation (WSDOT). He was the primary WSDOT employee tasked with forecasting fuel consumption, pricing and revenues from gas taxes and fees. After 35 years working as a public sector economist, Smith said his career was ruined for his refusal to lie about how a new state policy, according to his mathematical calculations in early 2023, would jack up prices at the pump by 45 to 50 cents per gallon. He said the retaliation and pressure were so great he felt forced to resign.

Remember, when leftists say "Trust the Science," this is what they mean -- they mean "Trust the leftist consensus, which has rigged the science to say whatever the leftist consensus has demanded it say."

This is happening more and more: Child mask mandates were just proven, again, to be ineffective at stopping the spread of covid, or any virus.

Monica Gandhi MD, MPH @MonicaGandhi9
Child mask mandates for COVID-19: a systematic review -"current body of scientific data does not support masking children for protection against COVID". Hope MDs and public health officials will always be willing to change minds with evidence & data

But when Dr. Jay Battacharya told Ron DeSantis that, accurately describing the state of the science, his left-leaning fellow "scientists" banded together to smear him:

Jay Bhattacharya @DrJBhattacharya
100+ of my medical school colleagues, including the chair of epidemiology @Stanford, circulated a secret petition (leaked to me) asking the president of the university to silence me for the crime of telling @GovRonDeSantis that no good evidence supported child masking.

"The Science" is not science. "The Science" is "elite" leftwing political opinion in a white lab coat.

I missed these two stories:

CNN has demanded "carbon passports," limiting the number of plane trips we can take in our lives. Presumably rich media and governmental liberals would be exempted, because they fucking live on private jets.

The negative impacts of tourism on the environment have become so severe that some are suggesting drastic changes to our travel habits are inevitable. In a report from 2023 that analyzed the future of sustainable travel, tour operator Intrepid Travel proposed that "carbon passports" will soon become a reality if the tourism industry hopes to survive.

The idea of a carbon passport centers on each traveler being assigned a yearly carbon allowance that they cannot exceed. These allowances can then "ration" travel.

This concept may seem extreme. But the idea of personal carbon allowances is not new.

The concept of Naziism may seem extreme. But the idea of an Aryan empire is not new.

A similar concept (called "personal carbon trading") was discussed by UK Parliament in 2008, before being shut down because of to its perceived complexity and the possibility of public resistance.
...

Some European countries are beginning to take measures to reduce air travel. As of April 1, 2023, passengers on short-haul flights and older aircraft in Belgium have been subject to increased taxes to encourage alternative forms of travel.

Less than two months later, France banned short-haul domestic flights where the same trip can be made by train in two-and-a-half hours or less. Spain is expected to follow suit.

...

It's not just air travel that's being criticized. An investigation by the European Federation for Transport and Environment in 2023 found that cruise ships pump four times as many sulphuric gases (which are proven to cause acid rain and several respiratory conditions) into the atmosphere than all of Europe's 291 million cars combined.

Statistics like these have forced European destinations to take action against the cruise industry. In July, Amsterdam's council banned cruise ships from docking in the city center in a bid to reduce tourism and pollution -- an initiative that has shown success elsewhere.

...

Holidaymakers should prepare to change their travel habits now, before this change is forced upon them.

One man who will definitely not be reducing his private aircraft use, or even shifting to commercial airflight, is alleged global envoy for climate change John Kerry, who has declared that it's a "persistent lie" that he owns a private jet.

No, no one ever said you owned it. Your rich bitch meal-ticket wife owns it.

According to flight tracking data obtained by Fox News Digital in July 2022, a Gulfstream GIV-SP jet owned by Kerry's family made a total of 48 trips that lasted more than 60 hours and emitted an estimated 715,886 pounds, or 325 metric tons, of carbon over the course of the Biden administration's first 18 months.

The plane was registered to Flying Squirrel LLC, a charter company owned by Kerry's wife, Teresa Heinz-Kerry.

Kerry has declared that private airflight is the only means of travel that "makes sense for a person like me."

And so last week, our special envoy for practically living on private jets John Kerry signed America up to shut down 20% of our domestic electricity production.

The Biden Administration announced Saturday that the United States is committed to phasing out coal power plants nationwide and not building new ones as it moves ahead with its green agenda.
U.S. Special Envoy for Climate John Kerry announced at the annual United Nations climate change summit in Dubai, called COP28, that America is joining 56 other nations that comprise the Power Past Coal Alliance.

"We will be working to accelerate unabated coal phase-out across the world, building stronger economies and more resilient communities," Kerry said in a statement.

"The first step is to stop making the problem worse: stop building new unabated coal power plants."

It's unclear when existing U.S. coal plants would have to shut, but other Biden regulatory actions and international commitments already in play have targeted 2035 as a coal-free deadline.

Biden and Kerry are fond of announcing shut-downs in American energy production, but never announce any start-ups, except for nonsense wind farms.

If John Kerry wants to eliminate toxic atmospheric discharges, he should start by flying commercial for once in his life.

And laying off rich foods.

The fart heard around the world. John Kerry lets loose an audible fart during his talk at the recent COP28 climate conference in Dubai.
pic.twitter.com/H0vYiVnNh5
— Ian Miles Cheong (@stillgray) December 5, 2023

Close it up

Posted by Disinformation Expert Ace at 06:30 PM Comments

Tears of the Libs of TikTok

—Disinformation Expert Ace

This will get the Tear of the Libs of TikTok flowing -- a father in Colorado wants to hang a Straight Pride flag in his kid's school, as other parents fly "Gay Pride" flags, and a court might just support his right to equal pride in his own kid's socially-disfavored sexuality.

A lawsuit filed in U.S. District Court by one Denver Public Schools father alleging his two children have been denied their First Amendment rights to have a "straight pride" flag in school may stand a chance in court.
"This is not a groundbreaking lawsuit. This is just a controversial lawsuit," said David Lane, a civil rights attorney based in Denver.

CBS News Colorado has been following this lawsuit closely, which was first filed back on Nov. 10 by two Washington D.C. lawyers, Mike Yoder and ChadLaVeglia. The lawsuit argues Nathan Feldman, a father of two children attending the K-8 Slavens School in Denver, was denied being able to put up a cisgendered, heterosexual flag at school. He says a "straight pride" flag represents his children's beliefs and should be allowed on campus in the same way LGBTQ+ flags are allowed.

...

This lawsuit has riled up a lot of discussion and concern on social media, especially among the Slavens School community. Slavens' parents created a change.org petition supporting the school's teachers and inclusivity and calling for Feldman to stop the lawsuit.

"People are under the mistaken belief that offensive speech or hate speech is not protected speech. The U.S. Supreme Court has said the government doesn't get to choose and decide what is offensive, what is not offensive," said Lane. "If they're going to allow any political speech, they're going to have to allow all political speech of a related nature."

"Straight Pride" is apparently "offensive" "hate" speech.

A spokespyrsyn for LGBTQ Colorado argued that a Straight Pride flag shouldn't be allowed, because that is "divisive" and all about "us vs. them" whereas a gay pride flag is "inclusive."

Weird, I'm not feeling "included" when they claim that heterosexuality is "hate."

More Democrats say that Biden is a better president than... George Washington.

In its latest survey shared with Secrets, Rasmussen Reports asked, "Is Joe Biden a better president than Washington or a worse president than Washington? Or is there not much difference between Washington and Biden?"
Thirty-nine percent of Democrats said "better," 25% said "worse," 20% said "not much difference," and 16% said "not sure."

Across the aisle, 12% of Republicans said "better," 75% said "worse," 9% said "not much difference," and just 4% said "not sure."

Rasmussen also found that 40% of Democrats approve of removing memorials to Washington, 21% "strongly." Some 55% of Democrats disapprove.

The BLM rioters who burned down a Wendy's in Atlanta have been sentenced: Their punishment is... a five hundred dollar fine.

For criminal arson.

Is the American justice system tipped in favor of Black Lives Matter rioters who burnt a Wendy's to the ground and Portland, Oregon rioters who tried to burn down a federal courthouse?
Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene and many on the right say we're not dealing with an equal justice system that has sentenced 561 defendants to jail or a combination of jail and house arrest. "J6'ers are being locked up for years for walking into the Capitol and some never walked inside at all, but the guys who plead guilty to arson and burned down the Wendy's in Atl in 2020 BLM riots only have to pay a $500 fine!!!" Greene tweeted this week.

The Wendy's case that she's referring to concluded last week when Chisom Kingston and Natalie White pleaded guilty to first-degree arson charges and were sentenced to five years of probation, a $500 fine and 150 hours of community service that has to be completed in one calendar year.

Kingston and White helped set a fire on June 13, 2020, during a protest over a police-involved shooting that killed Rayshard Brooks, who was supposedly sleeping in his car in the drive-thru lane. Brooks struggled with officers that night and eventually gained control of one of the officer's Tasers. Brooks was shot twice in the back, according to an autopsy.

LibsofTikTok says "2-Tier justice system" and links this:

This plea deal comes from Fulton County -- from the DA's office run by Fani Willis, currently attempting to imprison Trump on fantastical RICO charges.

But if BLM thugs burn down a Wendy's, they have to pay a $500 fine and pick up some litter on the side of a highway.

Stanford professors were "blacklisted" for not acceding to woke student demands, such as reducing their expectations of black students allegedly suffering from racial "trauma" and other nonsense excuses made up to excuse failure.

A new report suggests that Stanford University students, acting in pursuit of racial and social justice, emailed hundreds of professors during the COVID-19 pandemic, demanding they lower academic standards and blacklisted them if they chose not to comply.
In the spring semester of 2020, at the start of the pandemic, Stanford made all courses pass-fail. Despite this, many students pushed for more radical changes, according to recent reporting by The Stanford Review.

Forming a coalition, Stanford students cold-emailed hundreds of professors, demanding that academic standards be lowered even further.

The Stanford Review writes, "Professors who met and supported the extreme demands of students to radically overhaul their academic standards received a green check." Additionally, "Those who didn't--and retained even some basic academic standards, or those who merely did not make 'any announcement acknowledging current events'--were blacklisted."

An image of an email template that The Stanford Review reports was used by students to message professors began with the suggestion that, "I am a Black/non-Black student in your ... class and am reaching out for support with balancing academics and the weight of various world events occurring all at the same moment."

Citing the "trauma" being experienced by African American students at the time, students asked for favors like "[p]roper academic accommodations for Black students," professors be "[a]ttentive and compassionate to individual requests for academic support," assignment extensions, and "solidarity and support to Black students."

The report also suggests students maintained a blacklist of professors, in effect grading them by how they gave in to the demands of the cold emails.

The Stanford Review shows that among those 200 individuals on the blacklist for not complying was Professor Dawson Engler, who was marked down because he did not "feel comfortable gutting the class ... more than it [had] been by the pandemic." Professor Aaron Lindenberg was also placed on the list because he did not "make any announcement acknowledging current events."

What is the point of affirmative action placement into elite schools, if those students are just going to turn around and use their race to demand to do none of the coursework expected of them? Should we just let them take four years off and mail them their diploma?

Wokal Distance @wokal_distance
Dec 7

The reason woke activists have huge freak outs over small, mundane, everyday thing is to try to make you walk on eggshells to avoid setting them off. However, learning how to appease them forces you to learn and internalize woke ideas so you know how to avoid upsetting them.

People generally want to keep the peace, and the woke abuse this bynusing the threat of freak outs to make you think "how can I avoid upsetting the activists." This forces you to learn woke ideology and think in woke terms, so you can figure out how to avoid setting them off.

The goal of this is psychological: they want you to have to integrate woke ideology into your everyday thinking so that you begin to get a little voice in your head that says "don't do such and such so you can avoid a woke activist freak out."

By doing this the woke are effectively hijacking your psychology by forcing you to integrate woke ideas and norms into your own thinking. When this happens eventually it is your own conscience that is always telling you "don't do such and so or you'll get freaked out on"

Because wokeness has no stopping point it always reaches into every area of life. So, when wokeness hijacks your conscience it turns your conscience into an inward facing woke "eye of sauron" that endlessly searches your mind for any thought that violates woke ideology...

If you do not resist and instead try to avoid troubld you end up being forced to integrate the voice of woke activists into you own thinking, and the result is that you end up having flare ups of conscious guilt every time you have a thought that isn't woke.

Once that happens the woke will have entirely hijacked your conscience and soon you'll be self policing your own thoughts and behaviours in order to avoid getting mobbed or freaked out on.

See how this works?

The woke have a concept called the "unbearable searchlight of complicity." It's their term for constant, unending, hypervigilant searching for anything complicit with "systems of oppression" (racism, sexism, etc)

It's the conceptual equivalent of an all seeing eye of wokeness

The unbearable searchlight of complicity is essentially the same as what @ConceptualJames called the "eye at the end of history." It's an omnipotent eye that looks back on history and judges everyone according to the strictest interpretation of woke ideology.

It's looking back and judging every moment of history, and every thought of every person for even the slightest hint of anything that is complicit with any system or structure that the woke think is oppresive.

When you internalize woke ideology and integrate wokeness into your thinking your own conscience becomes it's own little "unbearable searchlight of complicity" that ruthlessly searches your own mind for anything thought that goes against wokeness...

And once that happens you will end up censoring even your own thoughts in order to avoid the judgement of the "unbearable searchlight of complicity" AKA the woke eye of sauron.

There is only one way to avoid this: stop trying to appease woke activists...

The only way you end up letting your conscience get hijacked is if you try to appease wokeness, avoid conflict, and walk on eggshells. However, if you refuse to do that then thebwoke virus never gets a foothold in your thinking.

Speaking the truth is the antidote here.

By telling the truth and refusing to appease wokeness you avoid having to internalize woke ideology, and this will allow you avoid having your conscience hijacked.

So tell the truth and quit walking on eggshells. Don't let the voice of woke activists get in your head.

A new Will "Lia" Thomas is destroying puny women in swimming. As a man, he was a mediocre/bad swimmer. But as a fake woman, he's shredding their records.

A collegiate transgender swimmer is being compared to Lia Thomas after winning races and smashing a program record, prompting renewed calls for the NCAA to take action to ensure competitive fairness in female athletics.
Meghan Cortez-Fields, a senior at Ramapo College of New Jersey who swam for three years on the men's team, broke a school record in the 100-yard butterfly with a time of 57.22 seconds at the Cougar Splash Invitational held Saturday in Dallas, Pennsylvania.

Cortez-Fields also won the 200-yard individual medley with a time of 2:12.05. Four days earlier, the swimmer won the 100 butterfly and was part of the winning 200 medley relay in a meet against William Paterson University in Wayne, New Jersey.

...

Gaines said that Cortez-Fields' record-setting time would have been a nonstarter on the men's side.

"As a swimmer myself, I can attest to these times and what they mean," she told Fox News. "Fifty-seven seconds in the 100-yard butterfly for the men is atrocious, for lack of a better word. That's not competitive by any means."

She said policies allowing male-born athletes to compete against women based on gender identity are "only adversely affecting women."

"We don't see females going into men's sports and becoming record-smashers," Gaines said. "This is only going one way."

Tennis great Martina Navratilova also weighed in, saying on X: "Women's sports is not the place for mediocre male athletes who compete as women. Period."

Riley Gaines commented that it seemed very familiar to see a mediocre male similar suddenly blossom into a record-smashing "female" one.

NCAA male swimmer, Meg Cortez-Fields at Ramapo College, NJ, switched to the women's team, using their locker room & sharing hotel rooms with female teammates this season.

He won 2 women's events & erased a woman's name from the record books in Dallas, PA this weekend. @NCAA… https://t.co/L3QogY4vf0 pic.twitter.com/8qSqsOVNMX
— ICONS (@icons_women) November 20, 2023

By the way, this very stable person has a big tattoo on his mannish forearm of a female's body with breasts and long flowing hair. And a "dick and balls," as Megyn Kelly put it, bluntly.

And when I say "big," I mean big. The tattoo is oriented up and down his forearm so it takes up almost all the real estate of the underside of his meaty, muscular man-arm.

A 50-year-old man is not only competing against teenaged girls in swim meets, but -- of course -- changing into swimwear in their changing rooms, which one suspects is the real prize here.

The President of the National Women's Law Center fights for the right of men to beat the shit out of women in sport, and says that women can learn something important from losing to men in sports-- the important skill of "losing gracefully."

National Women's Law Center President Fatima Goss Graves, the liberal witness at the Title IX hearing, says that female athletes should "learn to lose gracefully" to biological men. pic.twitter.com/2YPqQDk0cQ
— Greg Price (@greg_price11) December 5, 2023

Hodgetwins @hodgetwins

Her husband works for the DOJ and is the one prosecuting Jan 6 protesters too, no shit.

Tells you all you need to know about these people

It's all one big incestuous gangbang of ugly people you wouldn't want to see naked even if you were in the Reverse Pornography industry, where you're paid to watch people f***ing.

The Bee: "I don't want my skull fractured by a man," says bigoted female karate tournament entrant who refuses to fight 250 pound opponent "Julianna."

"They hate when their own intersectional language is used against them."@Riley_Gaines_ joined @FoxNews to discuss her recent testimony before @GOPoversight & what happened after she called out Rep. Lee for saying that being pro-woman is transphobic! pic.twitter.com/fjxphmHCYd
— Independent Women's Forum (@IWF) December 7, 2023

Racist goes to Italy and declares everyone is racist because everyone there is white.

Cultural enricher says that Italy is racist because there are too many white people. pic.twitter.com/5t96pIBMaX
— RadioGenoa (@RadioGenoa) December 6, 2023

Too many Italians in Italy. Via Paul Chato, who makes fun of this Dumb Young Thing.

Close it up

Posted by Disinformation Expert Ace at 05:35 PM Comments