Climate Change Obsession is a Real Mental Disorder

link

Political correctness is the overarching mental disorder. It just manifests itself variously.

You'd think at some point the sheer absurdity of the hysteria would at least begin to break through the epistemic shields of the left. 

170 "Suspicious Activity Reports" Filed (By Multiple Banks) on Bidens

This is alleged to be very significant. Article says that two SARs would make it difficult to open a new bank account.

Republicans Pounce! On Hunter Biden Edition

Pouncey, pouncey Pubs

Taibbi: COVID Origin and the Death of Trust

link

"Trans" "Researchers": Women Pretending to be Men Should be Permitted to Keep Taking Testosterone During Pregnancy, Despite Risks to Fetus

"Is There a Doctor in the House?"

Z0MG CLIMATE CRISIS!!! GLOBAL BOILING!!!!!!!! IT'S HERE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

LOL

Seattle Loves Lenin, Construes Criticism of Him as "Defending Hitler"

The American left has lost its mind.

Progressivism!: Trans, Baby-Killing Death Row Inmate Moved to Women's Prison, Will Receive Fake Breasts at Taxpayer's Expense

Like Silence of the Lambs, but you're paying for the "transformation."

In California, unsurprisingly...but everywhere will be California soon enough...

How Liberals Turn Workers' Benefits Into Welfare

If it's temporary, it's likely not really temporary.

Lysenkoism Watch: The COVID Lab-Leak Deception

This is basically the same thing that's happening with:

• Climate change.
• ("Trans")gender ideology
• The "social construction" of everything
• BLM / police anti-black genocide / "systemic racism"
• Russiagate

In each case, the institutions captured by the left semi-believe what they're saying--in the way that the religious often semi-believe the miraculous tales told by their religion--then faith / motivated belief / political commitment fill the gap. Factions often cheat, but what's unusual about progressivism is that this kind of cheating is not a bug it's a feature. It's a principle--an ideal. This is political correctness--which stands opposed to ordinary, y'know, correct correctness...  With respect to science, it's Lysenkoism.

   Progressivism descends from Leninism, and so from Marxism. Belief in the unbelievable is a crucial component of that radioactive political pseudoscience. No surprise that it is a replacement for religion. Belief in the unbelieved--and unbelievable--is an important part of what it is to be a true believer. As others have said: you manifest your orthodoxy by manifesting your willingness to accept even the patently false. Look, anybody can believe (or quasi-believe) a plausible lie... It takes a true believer to believe a patently crazy one. Credo quia absurdum est.

   I'm sure you, like me, look on the vast array of insane views the left now rabidly, feverishly insists are true...and you wonder How can they honestly believe these things??  

   Well, the story of COVID origins provides the answer to all the other cases, too: they don't. 

   Or, rather: they semi-believe. They want to believe. And political dogmatism bridges the remaining gap.

Scumer's $2.2 Trillion Green Dream Tax Hike

Funny how all the blue-team hysterics about climate, COVID, racism, transism and, well, everything always add up to (a) higher taxes, (b) more government power, and generally (c) doing what the left has always wanted to do anyway...

   And don't forget: every dollar spent on bigger government is an investment in future blue-team control over our lives. More expansive government power is almost always co-opted by the blues. 

   I'm not against governmental solutions generally. Sometimes they're the only reasonable option. But they're always a deal with the devil. 

Michael Mann, Climate Pseudoscientist

Basically everything he says here is either weaselly or false or both:

Taibbi: Stacey Plaskett's McCarthy Homage

link:

You could almost hear RFK thinking: Iran? I recognized the incredulity because the same look came over my face when I was in that room, although he was dealing with something crazier than being called a “so-called journalist.”
The mind of the modern Blue-Anon politician — and Plaskett may be the purest specimen in the country now, surpassing even Adam Schiff — is like the last hole of a mini-golf course, where no matter what shot you hit, the ball ends up in the same bucket. The political equation is essentially [ANYTHING BAD = TRUMP = RACISM = RUSSIA INTERFERED = SHUT THE FUCK UP]. Even Joe McCarthy at his most boozed-out and paranoid didn’t see this many goblins flying around his head at the same time. Kennedy, Jr. tried to protest on a few points, noting for instance he had nothing to do with replacement theory, but arguing against this thought process is like trying to fight in a dream. The blows bounce off the madness-vortex. How does one answer the charge that protesting your own censorship means supporting covert Iranian information operations?
There will always be loony characters in politics — the Bush era was full of them — but this current crop of Democrats is unique. Where are they going with this? Or are they just this nuts?

The COVID-Origin Coverup

 

Manchin: Extremist Dems and Pubs Threaten America's Future

Agreed.

Manchin's examples of extremism are also well-chosen.

This is not a six-of-one, half-dozen-of-the-other situation.

The left has radicalized and spun out of control. Thus making basically any Democrat unacceptable. 

And the alternative may end up being the new, even loonier, Trump.

Crazy on the Right: True the Vote, 2000 Mules, and the Totally Stolen Election

Boy, there are some conservative sites (e.g. Instapundit) on which it is an article of faith that the 2020 election was stolen. They will absolutely not listen to reason. The only evidence they can produce is stuff like mathematical anomalies--which I agree was reason to look more closely. But none of it panned out. Another favorite is Dinesh D'Souza's 2000 Mules "documentary." I haven't seen it because you can tell it's bullshit just by reading accounts of it.

   Fortunately, True the Vote is being taken to task for its bullshit. 

   Kinda doubt it'll do any good. Dems are still singing the RussiaRussiaRussia song about 2016, even after Mueller. Hell, I whined about 2000 for years...though I do think that was a special case. I just never really saw the force of Scalia's central argument in Bush v. Gore. Though I think my main problem there was that I just kept trying to figure it out on my own instead of finding analysis by actual Constitutional lawyers. That was dumb.

COVID Lab-Leak: A "Trump Wacko" "Conspiracy Theory"

Oh and true...

link

NY Post: Summary of Evidence of Biden Corruption

I remain somewhat skeptical...but it doesn't look good for "the big guy"...

Truman on Oppenheimer

Droppin' A-bombs, droppin' F-bombs...

God bless America pic.twitter.com/rA5Y45q4Au

— joshua steinman (🇺🇸,🇺🇸) (@JoshuaSteinman) July 22, 2023

"So Friggin' Likely": Massive Media Deception re: COVID Origins

Here's the article instead of that interminable video.

Progressive Newspeak Dictionary: 'Front Hole'

These people are sick and crazy.

But for the record again: much more fundamental than their disdain for women is their disdain for truth. Even if they'd adopted a collection of lunacies that were good for women--or anyone else--it would all be predicated on madness.

Kamala Harris is Blatantly Lying About FL's Slavery Curriculum

Say it ain't so!

The Media Loved Whistleblowers Before...Now...Not So Much...

Whistleblowers were Time's "persons of the year" in 2002...but the MSM isn't so hot on them now that they're blowing the whistle on Biden...

Equity Contra Merit: NexGen Bar Exam Edition

In ten of fifteen years, you'll start finding yourself with lawyers, doctors, pilots, etc. who are the products of the woke/DEI remaking of academia and the professions.

And remember: the reason they stress "equity" and "privilege" is because the goals associated with those ideas can be achieved by lowering the achievement-level of the most accomplished. The old, liberal view that we should strive to lift up the lower-achieving didn't work out. Now it's time for the "Harrison Bergeron" strategy. Hence, obviously, merit is the enemy.

CA College Requires DEI Professions in Faculty Annual Reviews

More from the academic cult of Woketarianism.

"So Friggin' Likely"; or: Disinformation and the Suppression of the COVID Lab-Leak Hypothesis

Toldja.

Daniel L. Davis: Why Ukraine's Counteroffensive is Failing

This is consistent with the more seemingly factual content of just about everything I've read.

   Just about everything I see on places like Reddit tries to make it out that the Ukrainians are winning.

But that seems unlikely to me--FWTW.

   Though it seems to me that the Biden administration's approach is generally reasonable, I'm skeptical about it's rejection of negotiations. The Russians are dug in. They have air superiority (or maybe dominance). They're numerically superior. And now they're on defense. 

   Asked to bet, on the basis of my limited understanding, I would be against Ukraine making and keeping significant gains.

   Incidentally: did Ukraine not have a defensive line built along the Russian border? Though it seems that Russian air and artillery superiority would have made e.g. trenches less effective. (?)

CNN: Jack Smith Eating at Subway Sends a Message to Donald Trump

facepalm

"Bidens Pressured Burisma Founder Into Paying $10 Million Bribe to Get Ukrainian Prosecutor Fired, FBI Source Claims"

I have no idea what to think about all this.

   It still seems unlikely to me for no other reason than that it would--or so it seems--be so damn stupid. Biden is not smart. But could he possibly be this not-smart? Or do people really get away with such stuff often enough to make it not-not-smart? Biden is a buffoon. He's at least as buffoonish as Trump. So I can't rule it out--as I'd like to.

   The only things I have any confidence about are: the DoJ does not seem to be investigating this as energetically as they should; the MSM is covering it up (which is consistent with it being false); and if this were Trump, there would be multiple front-page stories every day on the NYT and WaPo screaming out details, speculations, exaggerations and declarations that the walls are closing in...

   But my priors are heavily weighted against such a caper by a President. Or even a Veep. Given the opportunity to bet, suppose I'd bet against it.

Conservatives on Climate Change

link

The Lab-Leak Theory Has Always Been The Most Plausible Hypothesis

As I've maintained pretty much since the beginning. 

   "Pretty much" because actually, there have been a few brief windows, after the release of new studies and information, during which it wasn't clear which hypothesis was mostly likely. But all of the attempts to push the zoonotic hypothesis turned out to be...well, attempts to push the zoonotic hypothesis.

   Refusal to acknowledge that the lab-leak theory was most likely has almost always been Lysenkoism, so far as I can tell--i.e., political correctness in science. For whatever reason, the LLH was deemed un-PC...probably because (a) the left basically likes China...seemingly as a part of its Russophobia, (b) Trump said that China did it, and (c) TEH RAZIZM!!!!

   (c) is just another instance of the left's free-form, improvisational theory of racism, according to which x is racist if anyone on the left gets at least a fleeting impression that maybe (i) there is something bad about x and (ii) x has something to do with race, but (iii) x is not about Caucasians / whites.

   Basically, the left cannot separate out political questions from questions of fact...and so it has adopted the theory that these cannot be seperated..in fact, it has a problem distinguishing all sorts of questions. Thus it can't recognize/acknowledge that these are different questions:

(1) Did a Chinese lab leak the Wuhan virus?

(2) Is it bad that the Chinese lab leaked the Wuhan virus?

(3) Are Chinese people bad?

So if you think that the answer to (1) is in the affirmative, to the progressive mind, that means that you think that the answer to (2) is in the affirmative, which means you think that the answer to (3) is in the affirmative as well.

   So if you believe the LLH, you're a razizt, bro.

The Parable of F-16s for Ukraine

Though I generally support the Biden administration's handling of the Ukraine/Russia situation, I tend to agree with this. Though, actually, I thought the original plan for Poland to send MiG-29s that we would replace with F-16s was the better plan--or at least the right way to get started--since the Ukes already know how to fly and maintain the Fulcrum. And we could have been training them on the Viper this whole time. But, then, easier said than done. Second-guessing is easy--and money is no object. 

16 Fake Michigan Electors for Trump Allegedly Tried to Overturn 2020 Election

Bat.

Shit.

Crazy.

Except, of course, if you believed Trump's ravings about the election, you'd pretty much be obligated to try some shit like this.

Trump Dead-Enders

They absolutely exist, and are nuts.

No link.

Just reporting back from some conservative blogs.

Almost all the Trumpistas I've met in real life think pretty much like me: Trump's kooky, but he did a surprisingly good job, and the other side has gone insane, so here we are. Or that's what we thought until he lost his mind after the election...

But there really are a lot of Trump cultists out there--at least on some of the red blogs (e.g. Instapundit). OTOH, r/conservative is about where I am: Please, God, don't make Trump our last resort...

But boy, COVID and the election hit the red team hard. You find people over there who devoutly believe that the vax is killing millions of people and that the election was stolen. (Me, I won't be surprised if we find out that the vax was a mistake for the young and healthy; and I think there was electoral cheating short of fraud--e.g. Zuck Bucks.) And they hate DeSantis...who is basically someone who has taken Trump's insights...but he's sane.

Anyway.

Almost Half of Millennials Want Jail Time for "Misgendering"

Totalitarians.

As one of Turley's commenters notes: if there were any such thing as "misgendering," it would be what the left does: insisting of certain men that they are women, and of certain women that they are men.

(That would actually be mis-sexing...but still a solid point. "Misgendering" would be calling a masculine person feminine or calling a feminine person masculine. Nobody does that, except as an insult.)

Defense Survey Reveals Age, Gender [sic], Party Divides

 link

Sex. Not "gender." Unless you're just using "gender" as a synonym for 'sex.' In which case: still 'sex.'

Anyhoo...

   The most depressing bit is even 53% of Republicans thinking that DEI will be good for even the military. 73% of Dems, but they've lost their minds about it.

   OTOH: the judgment of the majority may well be more reliable than that of lil' ol' me, of course. And I've never been in the military, so.

   But in general: DEI is very bad. And I'm moderately pro-affirmative action. Or: pro- moderate affirmative action.

   Seems that the China/Russia thing continues to be a partisan issue, with Pubs tending to think that China is a bigger threat, while Dems (and the kiddies) tend to think it's Russia Russia Russia. Hint: it's China. Or was until Ukraine. Now who knows? Russia has a lot more nukes. If that matters. Also: it's not so much China or Russia as it is the CCP and (Putin and the kleptocrats)...er...I think. Anyway. We're playing with fire in Ukraine...but as I've made clear, I have no better plan. On this score, I'm largely with the Biden admin. I barely even understand what's going on beyond Bad Vatnik tanks shoot Ukes...

   Speaking of which: it's still damn weird that the Russia/China thing has become so partisan...

[The greatest ally question: the UK, obvs. Props also to the Aussies. And: it is not Israel. And I'm an Israel fan--mostly. But they're not much of an ally.]

Jussim: SPSP Abandons Mandatory DEI Statements

link

"What The Freakout About Trans Women [sic] Breastfeeding [sic] Is Really About

I report, you decide.

NORKS Say They Had to Scramble Jets to Ward Off U.S. Aircraft

And by "scramble jets," they mean: push-start their two top-of-the-line Mig-19s.

Repairs to Begin on USS Connecticut at Puget Sound

link

All this time they've just been fixing the dry dock...

Repairs predicted to take 2.5 years...but who knows?

So 1/3 of our Seawolf-class boats will still be non-operational into 2026.

What a mess.

David Strom: News Stories Don't Even Make Any Sense Anymore

facepalm

Bidenomics and The Boom in DEI and ESG Jobs

As with the money spent on the Iraq war, this money would be better spent by putting it in a big fucking pile and burning it. Such money is not merely wasted...oh, would that it were merely wasted! It's being used to make the country stupider. It's not just wasted--it's spent destructively.

   Furthermore, it's giving universities and excuse for spending more money destructively in the future by building up more bullshit DEI/ESG programs...which then create their own demand, as we've seen. This will create a self-perpetuating ecosystem of bullshit well into the future.

   Progressivism is plague on the land.

Victim Studies is a Fake Discipline

link

Drag Activists Claim They Were Only Joking About Coming For Your Children

um...

   It seems mostly like to have been a joke...but a joke turning on an ambiguity. And they keep making this same joke...and no one on the right would ever get way with such a joke...not that they'd make it...

   There's the obvious and most horrible interpretation of "we're coming for your children." Then there's the less-horrible interpretation: basically we're going to convince your children we are right. This would not be an ambiguity to joke about even if there weren't decent reason to believe that the left is doing both...

   Just a side note: many progressives still refuse to acknowledge the obvious fact that Trump was making a humorous point when he said "Russia, if you're listening..." Now, I don't want to set the bar of rationality that low...but it does make me somewhat less inclined to be generous...

   Anyway. Probably basically a joke...that probably shouldn't be made.

National Progress Alliance Video Contest, Second Place: Joshua Helms, The Warrior

Hilariously worth watching:

Jerry Coyn and Luana S. Maroja: The Ideological Subversion of Biology

This is good.

Coyne started out about where I did, mainly pissed at the right and inclined to make excuses for the left. 

We both got better.

(Though, to be fair, since grad school I've recognized the radical left as the most dangerous view. I just stupidly thought we'd defeated it in the mid-'90s.)

Oregon K-12 Program: Math Is Racist Because It Recognizes Correct Answers

No matter how crazy you think these people are, they are actually crazier.

The Left's Campaign Against SCOTUS Expands to Smear Successful Litigants: 303 Creative Not A Fake Case

link

France is Burning

Not that anyone in particular is burning France!

Ha ha.

No.

It's just burning is all.

Democrat Might-As-Well-Be-Pro-Crime Policies Drag Parts of NYC into Chaos

Your blue future.

I don't know anything about the details of the CVS stabbing, though.

HuffPo: The White House Cocaine Story Is Really About Trump's Indictments

Yeah, yeah...HuffPo doesn't really count. Finding anti-Trump crazy in HuffPo is like finding antisemitism in the Protocols of the Elders of Zion... There are levels of crazy even below Slate and Vox... And Trump did give them an opening... He really does seem kookier than ever. 

Michael Bailey: "My Research on Gender Dysphoria Was Censored, But I Won't Be"

The transformer activists have tried to ruin Bailey's life ever since he published The Man Who Would Be Queen. They've groundlessly accused him of horrible and disgusting things--this is, of course, one of the progressive left's M.O.s, and the transformers/decepticons are the most vicious of them all. 

   Of course such character assassination is part of progressivism's overall strategy of shutting down discussion / debate of its ideas. The liberal (broadly construed) ideal is, of course: have a public debate and win it. But progressives are not liberals. 

   Nothing in American politics in my lifetime has been clearer than that "transgender" ideology is batshit crazy. And one consequence of it is rapid-onset gender dysphoria (ROGD). There is simply no significant doubt that ROGD is real. Nor is there any real doubt that social contagion is the explanation for most of the cases of transgenderism in the U.S. now. And if the data is made more prominent, it will make it more difficult for progressive "trans" activists to shut down the discussion. Transparency is their enemy; obfuscation one of their greatest weapons.

   What's going on in science (and "science") is just one chapter of what's going on in America more generally: leftist ideas are being shouted from the rooftops, criticism of them is being suppressed, and contrary ideas are rarely given a hearing, and almost never a fair one. Everything is being skewed in favor of the progressive left. Its ideas are spun to persuade, and criticism of them is shut down, misrepresented, and painted as "hate." As I've said for decades--since long before political correctness rose from the grave--if you get to control the skepticism setting...turning it down when your own view is being discussed, turning it up when your opponent's is...you can win (in the rhetorical sense) just about any debate. And that's what we're seeing now.

   The left doesn't have complete control over retractions--it can't force them at will. But it can plausibly threaten to do so. See e.g. not only this Bailey case but Tuvel's paper on transgenderism and transracialism in Hypatia, Gilley's paper on colonialism...and on and on...

Progressives are Bad At Reasoning

Where did this modified bat virus come from??

Well, one thing's for sure--it didn't come from the bat-virus research lab located in the same city where the virus first showed up in the population... That's one thing we can definitely rule out.

How come the violent crime rate spiked suddenly?? And right after we started rioting against the police and getting all those violent criminals put back on the street.

I guess it must have been the pandemic...somehow...

Ok, how on Earth did this bag of coke end up in the White House? Who could have carted that in? Like, one of the Joint Chiefs of Staff? The Secret Service? Pelosi was traipsing around in here the other day, wasn't she? At least we can rule out the President's known-coke-fiend, idiot and criminal of a son...he's obviously above suspicion...

Lockdowns: A Self-Inflicted Disaster

I am not an expert, of course, but this did seem discernible at the time...

We should have basically adopted the policies recommended in the Great Barrington Declaration. 

I suggested this in a department meeting and was shut down. I also said that we shouldn't be forcing vaxxes onto people, and probably shouldn't even be recommending them to young, healthy people. Again: shut down. And my department is pretty reasonable about most things. One of my colleagues recommended pressing the university to drop religious exemptions to the vax mandate. I objected to that, too. I wasn't shut down on that one, but also wasn't backed up.

   The university was mostly shut down in-person for the equivalent of an academic year, and the mandatory mask lunacy was kept in place almost to the end of Spring semester 2021. When the administration finally lifted it, many faculty screamed bloody murder. 

   Anyway.

Biden to Walk Diplomatic Tightrope at NATO Summit

Politico, so...

I wish I understood the situation, but sadly I do not.

Did the Skunk Works Reveal the Shape of its NGAD?

Looks like a shape we've been expecting.

The Bizarre Case of the "Breastfeeding" Dad

Lysenkoism is merely one manifestation of political correctness, which is the cornerstone of progressive leftism. Political correctness is the subordination of the epistemic (truth, evidence, reason) to the political. Specifically: to leftist political dogma. The phenomenon is by no means limited to the left...but the left has been perfecting it for a hundred years.

Autopsy Data on the COVID / Wuhan / Batflu Vax

In case I haven't made this clear: I think the vax is pretty damn safe. You don't need me to tell you this--the evidence is publicly-available, and I speak with exactly no authority on the subject. I won't be astonished if this turns out to be wrong, and I think it was insane to push it the way the CDC /gubmint/ media/ academic axis of evil pushed it. Utterly. Insane. 

   However.

   I do think it's safe.

   My view is basically that of Healthy Skeptic, who I've cited before but am now too lazy to look up: the vax isn't as great as the left religiously believes it to be, but it's not dangerous, as the right religiously believes it to be. (And hoo boy, are the righties dedicated to the proposition that the vax is SUPER-deadly...)

   That having been said...here's some shenanigans of a common leftie sort: a study of autopsy data in the Lancet concludes that lots of deaths in its survey were caused by the vax. Was it refuted? Of course not. It was immediately yanked. 

   The left doesn't debate.

   It censors.

   Trust The Science(tm), peasant!

   Actually: Trust the Lysenkoism...

Bernie: HOTTEST DAY EVER CONGRESS MUST ACT NOW D00M D0000M D000000MMMMM

I couldn't finish this nonsense (at the Grauniad, unsuprisingly).

Here's the only thing that giant pile of shit is good for: if you can get through it without laughing hysterically or hurling, then--and I say this from a place of love--you gotta read more about the subject.

   Here's a good short post hitting some of the important points. 

   Points as I'd put 'em:

   Not only do we no know that yesterday was the hottest day in 125k years, but we don't even know what the global temperature was yesterday. Figuring that out is damn hard. It also requires a lot of reasoning, modeling, and conjecture. At every point, there are opportunities to fiddle with the data. Guess which way it normally gets fiddled with?

   Temperature records get set all the time. There's a lot variance in temperatures, we haven't been keeping careful records that long. On an average day, lots of records are being set. A sufficiently fanatical and/or dishonest person or organization can often find a way to make things look alarming--in one direction or another.

   Go look at the charts at WUWT.

   Bernie's just lying or ignorant about extreme weather. (Not that he actually wrote the thing.) There's little or no evidence that AGW is causing more extreme weather. As for the Canadian wildfires: er, a lot of those were arson, you realize...right? 

   Yes, heat waves kill people. Cold kills a lot more people than heat. Note that those numbers are missing. Warming overall saves more people than it kills.

   The claim that there is a clear, observable link between climate change and the litany of problems he lists is simply false.

   It's like a Twilight Zone episode, watching this propaganda be pumped out, and seeing the "elites"/intelligentsia eat it up because they're too lazy, uninterested, and locked into leftist groupthink to investigate.

   Though, as I've noted, this isn't like gender psychopathy / men are women. At least it isn't outright war is peace...the sky is green...2+2=5... The climate issue is complicated and obscure enough that confusion is at least excusable.

   And, as always: I agree that there's a problem here. But hysteria just makes things worse. We don't have to fix it all right now--and we can't. The left is just using this as an excuse to implement their nefarious woke/socialist agenda. The left creates panic in order to herd people toward policies they'd never agree to otherwise. Nothing we do will matter much given that China isn't going to do anything. Panic can only hurt the West. It can't solve the problem, and can't even really mitigate it. Our options are (a) do nothing, (b) start moving judiciously in the direction of lower emissions, (c) panic, wreck our economy, increase the power of the soft-totalitarian left...all without solving the alleged problem.

"The Supreme Court is Waging War on Young People"

facepalm

[Incidentally, note the link to this story about how people are being influenced to have fewer kids by climate hysteria. Everything else in this stupid-ass story pales in comparison to that.]

Media Vaccine Hypocrisy

We went from Dems saying they'd never take the "Trump vaccine" to them virtually worshipping the thing, and weeping publicly because they couldn't vax their newborns. And, of course, many conservatives apparently think the thing is the devil. At least the left ended up on what is apparently roughly the right side of the issue, whatever the tortured twists and turns of their thinking. Vax mandates were insane, of course. But, so far as we know now, it seems that the red team was the stupider of the two. I've got very smart conservative friends who believe all that stuff about undertakers finding massive clots in all the corpses and whatnot.

   I myself got one J&J shot when the thing first became available. I'm in the age range such that it's probably smart for me to get another, but I have no particularly important co-morbidities. I'm not really refusing to get another. I'm just not actively getting one. But I'll have to rethink that this winter, I reckon.

"Degrowth" and Climate Alarmism

A view from the other side.

For the record, I agree that, if we thought more about it, we might recognize that throttling back consumption a bit wouldn't impede our happiness. So I'm all for making sure that idea is out there. I also--as I've made clear--think we should address the possibility that humans are contributing significantly to unwanted climate change. I'm fine with going nuclear--in fact, it's absolutely necessary if the alarmists are right. But the fact that they refuse to acknowledge this is one of the many indicators that they aren't serious--that it's a political view, not a scientific one. I'm not in favor of going whole-hog nuclear...I don't understand enough to be entitled to that opinion, for one thing. But that would pretty clearly be our only rational option if we really faced a climate apocalypse.

   But we probably don't.

   Pro tip: anyone who favorably mentions the Green New Deal is not serious, and probably not worth listening to.

HOTTEST RECORDED DAY SINCE...[checks notes]...Uh...1979...

I do take this stuff seriously, but continue to think it's being overblown--largely for political reasons. Blah blah blah.

Just to gesture at one small thing, you almost always see this sort of thing:

Rarely this sort of thing:

Happy 4th!

That is all.

African Swine Fever

STIG-MA!! STIG-MA!! STIG-MA!!

What happened to the stigma of naming diseases after places? All the lefties were screeching about that soon after the Wuhan virus was unveiled...

   Then the name 'Monkeypox' was also deemed stigmatic...stigmatizing...stigphobic...politically incorrect, and "M-Pox" was born. Way cooler! 

   But obviously something's going to have to be done about 'African Swine Fever'....that is NOT gonna fly...

2 Dead, 28 Wounded in Baltimore Mass Shooting

Anybody wanna bet me that it was Glock switches?

Bastiat's Window: When Saving a Child's Life for Free is Bad News

Word

The Grauniad: "The US supreme court has dismantled our rights but we still believe in them. Now we must fight"

tl;dr: REEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE
   What a mess.
   The left--and this includes many liberals, unfortunately--thinks everything they want is a right. And they don't really seem to understand the role of the Court. Affirmative action in admissions is not a right. Neither is forcing other people to pay off your student loans. Turns out you also don't have a right to force people to bake your cake--or design your website. SCOTUS is clarifying our rights, not creating nor destroying them. If you are passionate about forcing other people to pay off your student loans, then elect legislators who will pass the relevant laws. (couth You commie cough) But anyway. I realize that the reds do it too, to some extent, but the blues really do just evaluate decisions on the basis of whether or not they like their conclusions. Or maybe they're equally bad. Scary thought...

  Are the Supremes right about all these cases? I do not know. Hello--not a lawyer. Oh and: haven't read the decisions. Oh and: realistically, it's pretty unlikely that I'd be able to think about it more clearly than the Supremes. Though sometimes (e.g. Bush v. Gore) I have to say, I read and thought pretty hard about it, and thought they were wrong. But anyway.

   Aaaand of course abortion and guns make an appearance in the linked screed. No surprise. Ditto voting "rights" (not rights). Global warming shows up--a bold move, Cotton... The author doesn't really link that to SCOTUS. It's just an exhortation for Biden to declare a global warming emergency.

   Just really dumb stuff.

   Sadly, I have no confidence that the remnants of the blue center will reassert itself sufficiently. I fear that this sort of thinking will dominate the left for the foreseeable future.

Maryland Supreme Court Rules That Experts Can't Actually Tell Whether a Given Bullet Was Fired From a Given Gun

That's the epistemic/factual basis of the ruling, at any rate.

There's always been incredulity about this forensic practice in the back of my mind, but it didn't force itself to the forefront of my consciousness often enough. Because the idea is stupid. Sometimes apparently stupid things turn out not to be stupid...but this idea seems really, really stupid. As the story notes, it's often possible to match calibers and whatnot. But the best that can be done is probably to say that a bullet or a casing and a firearm are consistent--not that a particular bullet was fired by a particular firearm.

   My general, insufficiently-well-thought-out view of such forensic investigation: I'd be willing to bet that it's largely a load of horseshit, on grounds of confirmation bias alone. As I understand it, basically the cops go to a "forensic examiner" and say: We think this bullet was fired from this gun; was it? And that, boys and girls, is how you turn what could have been science into bullshit. To be reliable, this process would have to be blinded. You'd at least have to give the examiner several different guns to choose from. Better yet: several guns and several projectiles (or projectile fragments?). Better yet: you'd throw in a lot of dummy cases in which all firearms and all projectiles were known and none of the latter were fired from any of the former.

   I was on the warpath about this for awhile years ago, but it slipped away in the flood of bullshit we always seem to be facing.

   The Innocence Project is massively stupid in important ways--but they're right about this "tool mark"-matching BS.

   Of course it's possible that this sort of thing is really possible--in fact easy. I'm just kibbitzing here. You might recast these points as: if this stuff really is reliable, that needs to be established...and you should be pretty surprised if it can be.

France is Burning

Or, rather, Muslim and leftist rioters are burning it--including, among many other things, the largest public library in Marseille. 

The Four People Most Responsible for Our Conservative SCOTUS Majority

RBG, DJT, Cocaine Mitch, and, most of all, Harry Reid.

Planned Parenthood: Virginity is a "Social Construct"

facepalm

Ok look. Basically anyone who uses the term "social construct" unironically has no idea what he's talking about. It's a term so deeply and hilariously confused that using it is like dropping an incoherence bomb on any conversation. The term is used so chaotically and indiscriminately that it's hard to know whether to say that it means a lot of different things...or that it barely means anything at all.

   I could go on and on about this.

   Look, suppose we take the closest thing there is to a canonical definition of x is a social construct. According to that (quasi-)definition, it means: x would not exist if humans didn't exist. 

   Actually they really mean: if humans had never existed.

   Now, that's not what it means...and not just because it doesn't really mean anything... But I'm not going to go down that rabbit-hole right now.

   If that were the definition--which, again, it isn't--that would mean that everything human would be a "social construct." So: human femurs are "social constructs." Human teeth, brains, appendices, toes, eyeballs, neurons...everything about us would be a "social construct" on that definition. After all, if humans had never existed. Herpes zoster is a "social construct," as is any other virus or disease specific to humans. Do any other animals get Alzheimer's? If no: "social construct." And so on.

   So...uh...yeah, virginity would, on that--and let me again stress: absurd--definition be a "social construct"...but only because everything about humans would be. So, even granting them everything on this, it's highly misleading. But, then, that's what the term "social construct" is--a mechanism for equivocation. If you assert that "virginity is a social construct" in the way that Planned Parenthood did, you clearly mean to convey the idea that most other things about humans aren't. 

   In fact, virginity is a factual matter, like e.g. parenthood. It's a matter of degree, there can be certain fairly limited disagreements about who falls under the predicate and who doesn't. Does oral sex count? blah blah blah. Typical popomo lefty bullshit. There's some vagueness in almost every ordinary human idea. Is a pregnant woman a parent? Is the man who impregnated her one? Is he a father? What of a zygote immediately after fertilization? One can reasonably answer no to any of these questions, though yes would probably be the more common answer. If I snuck into one of Quine's lectures once, was I a Quine student? If I audited his class? If I audited but dropped after one class? Two?

   This is how the left reasons: we don't like the idea of virginity. So it's politically incorrect. So it doesn't exist. Because [incoherent pseudo-philosophical bullshit].

   Anyway.

   Is virginity is a social constructed?

   I dunno. Is the Jabberwock slithy?

Reavers Demonstrate for Child Sexual Mutilation

REEEEEEEEEEEEEEE