Saturday, September 02, 2023

Never Believe Your Own Propaganda

"With victory Mussolini became a prisoner of his own propaganda and believed that under his leadership Italy had created ‘an army of five million men with a forest of bayonets, an airforce so large that it would blot out the sun over Italy'. By 1938 he boasted of an army of 8 million ‘bayonets', whereas in reality the Italian Army was at best 1.5 million strong. Similar exaggeration surrounded Italy's much-publicised drive for autarky with statistics for industrial and agricultural production that were far in excess of Italy's limited resources."

-- The Second World War: Ambitions to Nemesis / Bradley Lightbody

Links - 2nd September 2023 (Climate Change)

Hot Air: No Global Warming for Eight Years - "Recently published data from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) shows that there has not been global warming for the past eight years. And NASA satellite data reportedly confirms that evidence, showing no global warming for eight years and five months, according to JunkScience’s Steve Milloy. But leftists are quick to warn people against drawing the obvious conclusion that the world isn’t about to become a burning ball of fire... Reuters actually issued a Feb. 3 “fact check” of the above Milloy tweet. The outlet can’t explain away the data, of course, but it hastened to assure readers that the eight years of global cooling are not a trend. Whole decades of such data must occur before we can stop expecting the imminent end of the world. Please fear, people!... Reuters ignores the fact that climate alarmists have in fact been wrong for decades — at least fifty years. But this time the “experts” are sure to be right. Your car is still killing the planet — trust Reuters. I like how we are not allowed to question scientists who extrapolate relatively minor temperature changes to predict the end of humanity and civilization, but we’re not allowed to “extrapolate” years of data to reach an obvious conclusion."

Biden Admin Pushes Solar Panels — While Looking to Block Sunlight?!

Don Braid: Danielle Smith won't sing the climate change tune, for good reason - "Whatever Alberta does, there’s always an objection. When the province got on side with carbon capture for underground storage, that was suddenly problematic.  For many of the climate policy types in Ottawa, nothing will be acceptable short of complete shutdown of the oil and gas industry.  Meanwhile, revenue spun off from oil and gas will help pay the massive subsidies for battery factories in Ontario — $13 billion in just one case."

Britain fires up coal plant as weather becomes too hot for solar panels to work efficiently - "Britain has started burning coal to generate electricity for the first time in a month and a half, after the heatwave made solar panels too hot to work efficiently... Alastair Buckley, professor of organic electronics at the University of Sheffield, said: “Both days were largely sunny in the morning, so a good part of the reduction in output will be due to the efficiency reduction from higher temperatures on Saturday compared to Friday. “Compared with a cool cloudy day, the cells might be a maximum of 25pc less efficient.”  Supply was also lower because of depressed wind speeds, which hit turbine output, and some gas power plants being shut for maintenance."
One climate change hystericist denounced this. Too bad he wasn't aware of the science (even ignoring how he didn't trust the experts)

Solar panels are feeling the heat too: How heatwave temperatures are hampering solar power - "Days of scorching sun are fuelling Europe’s grid with record-breaking amounts of solar power - but the current heatwave is actually bad news for solar panels... Solar panels absorb sunlight with their photovoltaic cells, with the photons soaked in by the panels knocking electrons loose from their atoms and forming an electrical circuit within the semiconductors of the panel, generating a flow of electricity.  Most solar panels are tested at a temperature of 25 degrees Celsius, an ideal temperature at which this process occurs within solar panels under optimal circumstances.  But above this temperature, no matter how bright the sun is shining, efficiency starts going south for the panels.  The heat causes an excessive number of the panel's electrons - the ones responsible for converting energy from the sun into electricity - to be excited, eventually reducing the panel’s generated voltage and its efficiency... For every degree Celsius more reported by a solar panel, its efficiency drops by 0.5 percentage point... There are, obviously, thermal solar panels too, which would not be affected by the increased heat. But these are much rarer panels, especially in homes, and are considered less reliable in generating electricity."

Spanish Leader Goes Viral After Pulling A Buttigieg With Fake Bike Ride - "Spanish leader Teresa Ribera went viral after she pulled a fake bike ride to a climate conference held by the European Union, a move reminiscent of U.S. Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg’s 2021 bike stunt.  Video surfaced on social media on Tuesday from the EU 2023 ES conference held in Madrid, Spain, that showed Ribera riding a bike to the conference. However, now Ribera is facing a backlash after it was revealed as nothing but reportedly a PR stunt... Ribera reportedly took a private jet and chauffeured cars to the conference — which is supposedly focused on dealing with the effects of carbon dioxide emissions on the climate — before getting out of the vehicle around 328 feet from the event and riding a bike the remaining distance to the venue. Ribera’s official title is the Minister of Ecological Transition and Demographic Challenge for Spain

Fast-food drive-throughs face future ban after idling vehicles linked to climate change - "Multiple councils in the US have recently imposed bans on fast-food drive-throughs after the much-loved feature used by restaurants and other businesses was linked to climate change.  Drive-throughs, which allow a customer to pull up to a business’s window in their vehicle while exchanging cash for goods, often fast food, are beloved for their speed and convenience. But they require waiting in a line of other cars, which all have their engines running.  Drive-throughs have recently been linked to vehicle noise, air pollution and litter, and several councils across the US have moved to ban restaurants from adding them to their business."
Of course, they can't possibly have a rule against idling. It's more important to wage a war on cars

WH Does Damage Control After Kamala Harris Claims 'Reducing Population' is Critical for 'Climate Change' - "the White House "corrected" the transcript of the speech, claiming Harris meant to say "pollution," despite the vice president not addressing the "error" while speaking."
When you say the quiet part out loud

A critical assessment of extreme events trends in times of global warming - "This article reviews recent bibliography on time series of some extreme weather events and related response indicators in order to understand whether an increase in intensity and/or frequency is detectable. The most robust global changes in climate extremes are found in yearly values of heatwaves (number of days, maximum duration and cumulated heat), while global trends in heatwave intensity are not significant. Daily precipitation intensity and extreme precipitation frequency are stationary in the main part of the weather stations. Trend analysis of the time series of tropical cyclones show a substantial temporal invariance and the same is true for tornadoes in the USA. At the same time, the impact of warming on surface wind speed remains unclear. The analysis is then extended to some global response indicators of extreme meteorological events, namely natural disasters, floods, droughts, ecosystem productivity and yields of the four main crops (maize, rice, soybean and wheat). None of these response indicators show a clear positive trend of extreme events. In conclusion on the basis of observational data, the climate crisis that, according to many sources, we are experiencing today, is not evident yet. It would be nevertheless extremely important to define mitigation and adaptation strategies that take into account current trends."
A peer reviewed article pointing out climate change hysteria

The weather isn’t ‘climate change’ | The Spectator - "The fires and Gotham’s eerie haze were due to wind-fanned lightning strikes in Quebec and a rare high/low pressure system across North America called an ‘omega block’ (don’t ask). Ironically, the real problem may be that Canada hasn’t been lighting enough fires. Government regulations regarding controlled burns have gnarled into a thicket. By the time the paperwork is completed, the narrow window of cool, windless weather ideal for safely incinerating highly flammable dead branches and dry brush has often passed. Fewer controlled burns mean more uncontrolled burns. Add to that: the country has no national firefighting service; provincial wildfire prevention budgets have been cut, and tend to be spent on protecting villages and towns; over the past 25 years, Canadian Forest Service staffing levels have plunged from 2,200 to 700.   But never mind those pesky details. Call it ‘climate change’, and all is forgiven. For politicians, climate has become the catch-all homework-eating dog. If President Erdogan neglected to blame this spring’s earthquake fatalities in Turkey on fossil fuel emissions – rather than the shoddy construction and corruption his administration has fostered – he was missing a trick. Given the ceaselessness of this mantra, perhaps we’ve finally discovered that scientific holy grail, a ‘theory of everything’ – a single formula that explains why anything happens anywhere (‘Because climate change!’). Yet for my entire life I have heard tell of hurricanes, typhoons, cyclones, earthquakes, floods, mudslides, tornadoes, volcanoes, tsunamis, hailstorms, droughts and, yes, wildfires ruining other people’s lives somewhere. We used to call these humbling outbreaks of arbitrary havoc ‘natural disasters’, but the expression is out of fashion now that every fit the planet throws is all our fault... now we’ve loaded the erstwhile ‘natural disaster’ with moral and political content galore. Without fail, news presenters explain every unfortunate weather occurrence as due to anthropogenic ‘climate change’. A while back, the media were obliged to dredge up some well-funded activist ‘expert’ to justify this claim, but not any more. The attribution of every rained-off picnic to human-induced ‘climate change’ is mindlessly appended to mainstream broadcasts as if the whole industry has the hiccoughs. Newscasters are safe in their surety that no one will ever demand evidence of a causal link between a drought in the western US and petrol-fuelled Land Rovers in Sussex. They’re safe in their surety that no one will ever object that, sorry, Bangladesh has suffered huge floods throughout its history, from which fewer people are dying than ever before. As we do not have an Earth control group – a second identical planet on which all humanity still gets around in donkey carts – they’re safe in their surety that blaming every cataclysm under the sun on fossil-fuel-driven ‘climate change’ is unfalsifiable.  A proposal: let’s bring back the distinction between climate and weather. Climate regards patterns across hundreds if not thousands of years. Check out the graph of global mean temperatures for the last 500,000 years, which resembles an ECG. With a periodicity of approximately 100,000 years, the planet’s mean temperature has steadily dropped to about 5˚C, then swooped up to between 10˚C and 12˚C, rising on virtually identical gradients each time (without the help of a single coal-fired power plant). We’re now atop another 20,000-year upward swoop – thankfully, since my forehand would be really crap if I had to chase the ball on a glacier. Industrialised modernity since 1880 takes up so little space on this graph that it’s indiscernible. That is ‘climate’. Accordingly, I even dismiss climate sceptics’ observation that, according to satellite readings, warming has nearly flatlined for the past 20 years, because in climate terms 20 years is meaningless. The media’s knee-jerk ‘Because climate change!’ is numbing in its repetition and suspicious in its constancy. As it smacks of propaganda, on a popular level the incantation backfires. I’d have more faith in the reliability of these incessant attributions if newscasters occasionally tacked on to, say, a report on a deluge, ‘This event had no connection with climate change. It happened to rain a shedload in one place, but that’s occurred for ever. While locals might take councils to task for allowing rampant house-building on a flood plain, otherwise this story has no moral or political content and mostly amounts to bad luck.’ But I’m not holding my breath."

Climate activists glue their hands on German airport runways; amputation seems only option - "Two climate activists from the “Last Generation" Group have taken the fight against climate change policies to a different level as they glued their hands to the runways of local airports in Hamburg and Düsseldorf causing widespread disruption in aviation operations. Moreover, the glue they used was a blend of concrete and epoxy resin which can result in their hands being permanently stuck, with amputation remaining the only option."
They're going to claim that politicians forced them to get amputated

Where more people will die — and live — because of hotter temperatures - Washington Post - "if cold was deadlier than heat, and the planet was getting hotter, global warming might actually save lives... Many studies that project future temperature deaths do not account for adaptation — not because they don’t believe humans will adapt, but because adaptation is hard to quantify. Those studies are likely to overestimate the number of temperature-linked deaths because the people in them act more like coral reefs than humans."
Presumably they won't get fact checked, since when non-leftists say something it is misinformation but if the leftist media say the exact same thing it's true

- "Critics pointed out the absurdity of Omar’s claim, as daily weather records were not kept until the 1800s."
Misogyny! Islamophobia!

Major blow for renewable energy industry as Vattenfall halts plans for Norfolk Boreas wind farm - "An energy company has stopped development on a major wind farm off the East coast, blaming rising costs for halting a project which would have powered 1.5 million homes.  The decision, announced in the Swedish firm's Vattenfall's quarterly results, comes at a cost of £415m and has prompted questions from unions about the future of similar projects elsewhere in the UK.  Vattenfall said a rise in costs of 40% had made the project unaffordable at the moment."
It must be the fault of the fossil fuel lobby, since everyone Knows that renewables are the cheapest form of generating energy! When will the subsidies come?

As Predicted, UK Offshore Wind Is Dead In The Water - "As one of the world’s biggest wind power developers halts its top UK wind project and warns about further cancellations, Net Zero Watch reminds ministers that they have been warned for years about this inevitable fiasco... Net Zero Watch, amongst others (see publications listed below), has long warned that the low CfD bids made in the UK had no basis in economic reality.  The capital and operating costs of wind power, particularly offshore are still very high.  This technology is unattractive and imposes very high system costs when compared to gas generation even at today’s elevated prices.  It is completely uneconomic if the gas prices continue to revert to their historic levels.  Net Zero Watch notes that Vattenfall has said it will be considering the future of all its wind projects in the Norfolk zone, with a total of 4.2 GW, placing pressure on the UK government to make extra support available to ensure construction and meet the targets for offshore wind.  Professor Gordon Hughes (University of Edinburgh), the author of many of the studies exposing the reality of wind power costs, said:
“It is obvious and now increasingly widely recognized that wind industry claims about costs and performance should not be taken seriously. Very high costs have been clear in the financial data for a long time, and are not the result of recent inflation and supply chain difficulties, though these may be making a bad situation still worse.”
Dr. John Constable, NZW’s Energy Director, added:
“It is critically important that the UK government does not succumb to the tacit blackmail of Vattenfall’s announcement. The wind experiment has failed. The consumer cannot be expected to continue propping up this unfolding disaster.“"

14m trees have been cut down in Scotland to make way for wind farms

Greta Thunberg on Twitter - "Week 256. We are currently shattering heat records all over the world. Last week we experienced the hottest days ever recorded, many days in a row. We are also experiencing record high sea level temperatures and record low ice levels. This is an emergency. #FridaysForFuture"
Climate Science Journal on Twitter - "The heat records have been "shattered" because ESA has started using Land Surface Temperatures, not air temperatures at 2m above the surface, which means they have altered the standards of the past records (which means they are not actually record temperatures, except on the short-term). ESA explains "the map shows the actual temperature of the land’s surface which is significantly hotter than air temperatures"."

Meme - Chou Samuel: "The Vostok Ice Core data is as simple as it gets. Temperature leads and not the other way around. "Post-industrial caveat" is no caveat at all since it is the exact opposite of historical causation. Been saying this for years but alarmist rather look at order literature analysis than the numbers themselves."
"Reference # 220626-003391
Help Center Status: Closed
Hi Gregory, 'Thanks for contacting us. Your account has violated the Linkedin User Agreement and Professional Community Policies. Due to the number the severity of these violations, this account has been permanently restricted."
"Average concentration by geologic period
Fig 1-12: The dangerous 140-million-year decline in CO2"
CO2 Coalition: "It is official. Our executive director, Gregory Wrightstone has been permanently banned from LinkedIn. The last straw apparently was one of the two charts posted yesterday. Both are shown below. Both are from data used by IPCC."

Meme - *field of wind turbines*
Nuclear: "Look what they need to mimic a fraction of our power"

Meme - Brynn Tannehill @BrynnTannehill: "People don't understand the impact of climate change. Take a look at this map. Anything above 90 degrees F means that outdoor activity is likely to be deadly. 95+, and you cannot survive outdoors, even if you're in the shade doing NOTHING. 1/n"
Trust the Science! Lots of people need to die since they're currently living in places no human is able to survive in

Tables turned on Just Stop Oil as climate banquet disrupted with rape alarms tied to helium balloons - "A banquet held by Just Stop Oil (JSO) protesters has been disrupted by practical jokers with rape alarms and helium balloons.  Video activists Josh Pieters and Archie Manners arranged for someone to infiltrate the protest group posing as an activist concerned about climate change.  The undercover mole took part in direct-action protests and was also invited to JSO's Beyond F***** Banquet where activists could “grieve for what will die, but also to celebrate what we have achieved”. After gaining entry to the 100% plant-based feast in a disused church, the mole set off the alarms which he had tied to the orange balloons, which floated out of reach and remained stuck on the ceiling.  While wondering what to do, one of the activists suggested the balloons could have been funded by the Daily Mail.  The pair lambasted JSO’s decision to throw a party instead of donating the money to the climate cause, adding: "Climate change is the biggest crisis facing our generation, but standing in the road infuriating ordinary people and hosting parties isn't working."... Before the protest could begin thea group of counter protesters wearing T-shirts saying Just Stop Pissing Everyone Off surround the activists and linked arms, preventing them from reaching the road. Mr Pieters and Mr Manners said they turned the tables on JSO because the group's methods are "putting people off the climate cause and the public are bored of posh people disrupting their day".  "I think it's fair we disrupt Just Stop Oil the same way they disrupt us," they added.  The pair also criticised JSO activists for drinking "coffee flown in from Peru in single-use cups" and for claiming that being arrested for their cause was "really empowering"."

Warming expert: Only decade left to act in time - "A leading U.S. climate researcher says the world has a 10-year window of opportunity to take decisive action on global warming and avert catastrophe.  NASA scientist James Hansen, widely considered the doyen of American climate researchers, said governments must adopt an alternative scenario to keep carbon dioxide emission growth in check and limit the increase in global temperatures to 1 degree Celsius (1.8 degrees Fahrenheit).  “I think we have a very brief window of opportunity to deal with climate change ... no longer than a decade, at the most,” Hansen said Wednesday at the Climate Change Research Conference in California’s state capital."
From 2006. I guess no one got the memo that it was already too late. Of course, climate change hystericists continue to pretend that the predictions of scientists are accurate

Experts Warn We Have Only 12 Years Left Until They Change The Timeline On Global Warming Again | Babylon Bee - ""If we don't take action, then in 12 years we will have to explain why the world hasn't ended and come up with a new number," one UN scientist warned. "This is a very serious threat, and we urge everyone to hand control of the economy to the government immediately before we have no more time left to change the timeline again."  The scientific consensus is that roughly 10-12 years from now, the world will be flooded with new doomsday predictions. This can all be avoided if we overhaul the economy and become socialists, according to non-political, unbiased sciencey type guys."

Meme - "TEMPERATURES IN 2017 *20-37 degrees*
COOLER TEMPS IN 2022 BUT IN I RED TO SCARE YOU *19-32 degrees*"

Don't overstate 1.5 degrees C threat, new IPCC head says - "The newly appointed head of the UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), Jim Skea, spoke to two major German news outlets over the weekend, soon after his appointment to the role.   Speaking to weekly magazine Der Spiegel, in an interview first published on Saturday, Skea warned against laying too much value on the international community's current nominal target of limiting global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius compared the pre-industrial era.  "We should not despair and fall into a state of shock" if global temperatures were to increase by this amount, he said.  In a separate discussion with German news agency DPA, Skea expanded on why.   "If you constantly communicate the message that we are all doomed to extinction, then that paralyzes people and prevents them from taking the necessary steps to get a grip on climate change," he said.   "The world won't end if it warms by more than 1.5 degrees," Skea told Der Spiegel. "It will however be a more dangerous world."   Surpassing that mark would lead to many problems and social tensions, he said, but still that would not constitute an existential threat to humanity."
Obviously he's been bought off by Big Oil. How come he doesn't Believe in Science?

The dirty business of medicine's carbon footprint – and what we can do about it - "Hippocrates’ famous decree, “First, do no harm”, is medicine’s most enduring mantra. So it is a tragic irony that while health workers strive constantly to cure sick patients, greenhouse emissions from healthcare are imperilling the lives of billions... Medicines are the major problem. Making them is currently a dirty business. For each pound earned, the global pharmaceutical industry has to emit 55 per cent more greenhouse gas than the automotive industry, according to a study in the Journal of Cleaner Production in 2019...  the NHS faces a struggle to cut the climate-warming effects of a crucial drug class: anaesthetic gases.  To go green, we may have to get used to staying awake and watching the scalpel"
Time to suffer in agony to "save the climate"

Meme - "npr HEADLINES
HOW IT STARTED
Insects Get a Tasty Makeover
These Pictures Might Tempt You To Eat Bugs
At Bug-Eating Festival, Kids Crunch Down On The Food Of The Future
Insects May Be The Taste Of The Next Generation, Report Says
Bugs: Not What's For Dinner - Until They're Tastier, Maybe
Maybe It's Time To Swap Burgers For Bugs, Says UN
Insect Cuisine Is All The Buzz
The Green Argument For Eating Cicadas (Plus A Few Recipes)
Your Ancestors Probably Ate Insects, So What's Bugging You?
The Joys And Ethics Of Insect Eating
Even Neil DeGrasse Tyson Is Now Munching On Bugs
Don't Bug Out! The Smithsonian Channel Is Going To Show You How To Cook Insects
HOW IT'S GOING
This right wing conspiracy theory about eating bugs is about as racist as you think"
If NPR says it, it must be true. Even if NPR said something opposite yesterday. A conspiracy theory is a truth that liberals hate

Fed gov’t memo shows hydro costs set to surge, caused by 'green' transition - "A staff memo to Environment Minister Steven Guilbeault states that ratepayers can expect higher costs for electricity.  According to Blacklock’s Reporter, the department of Environment declined to estimate the additional costs consumers and industries might have due to “green” electrification. “As the economy transitions to net zero by 2050, there will be increased demand for clean electricity to decarbonize other sectors such as transportation or buildings,” said the March 27 memo.   “Some experts are predicting that demand could double by 2050.”  “This expansion of clean electricity supply towards 2050 will increase costs,” said the memo.   The document was prepared for Guilbeault's testimony at the Commons Environment committee... In 2016, the Canadian Electricity Association submitted a report to the Senate Energy committee, showing that infrastructure costs in the electricity sector were estimated to be $350 billion... In a 2017 report Electricity Sector in a Carbon-Constrained Future, the Senate committee stated that they could not estimate the impact on ratepayers.  “Many Canadians could soon be paying higher electricity bills as the country tries to meet reduction targets for its greenhouse gas emissions,” said the report.  The department of Natural Resources warned of substantial increases in electricity costs due to the government's EV mandate. It is estimated that the mandate alone would lead to a 23% increase in overall electricity demand."
Damn greedy companies and capitalism! We all Know that renewable energy is cheaper!

Friday, September 01, 2023

Homosexuality and Child Sexual Abuse

We are constantly told that it is homophobic myth to say that homosexuals are more implicated in child sexual abuse than the population at large.

For example, the Southern Poverty Law Center, in "refuting" an article by Bryan Fischer, claims that it is a myth that "Homosexuals molest children at far higher rates than heterosexuals"; among other things, we get the claim that pedophilia is a separate sexual orientation from homosexuality and heterosexuality since "most of whom will prey on children of either gender", which is odd because we find that girls are 2-4 times more likely to be sexually abused than boys, and that childhood sexual abusers are overwhelmingly male and that "women are more likely to abuse boys while men are more likely to abuse girls". Given that men have more access to boys than to girls, one would then expect these men to then overwhelmingly sexually abuse boys, since, as we are told, they are attracted to children - not males.

So I decided to look into the data. 

The SPLC claims that Kurt Freund "concluded that homosexuals were not any more disposed to pedophilia than heterosexuals" in his 1989 Journal of Sex Research article, but they are either being mischievous or incompetent (quite possibly, both) - Freund et al's 1989 Journal of Sex Research article was Heterosexuality, Homosexuality, and Erotic Age Preference. It was about "Heterosexual and homosexual males who erotically preferred physically mature partners". While the paper itself does not even attempt to evaluate whether homosexuals are more or less disposed to pedophilia than heterosexuals, the literature review explicitly contradicts the SPLC's claims:

"An earlier study assessed the incidence of male sex offenders against female children vs. such offenders against male children (Freund, Heasman, Racansky, & Glancy, 1984). Approximately one-third of these individuals had victimized boys and two-thirds had victimized girls. This finding is consistent with the proportions reported in two earlier studies (Gebhard, Gagnon, Pomeroy, & Christenson, 1965; Mohr, Turner, & Jerry, 1974). Also, in a recent literature search (Cameron, 1985) which examined 17 more studies on sex offenders against children, the ratio of victimized female to male children was approximately 2:1. Interestingly, this ratio differs substantially from the ratio of gynephiles (men who erotically prefer physically mature females) to androphiles (men who erotically prefer physically mature males), which is at least 20 to 1 (Gebhard, 1972; Hirschfeld, 1920; Kinsey, Pomeroy, & Martin, 1948; Whitam, 1983)."

This part of the conclusion also contradicts the SPLC, concluding:

"Perhaps, the negative result of the present study supports an alternative hypothesis which focuses on homosexual pedophilia instead of androphilia, namely, that the development of pedophilia is more closely linked with homosexuality than with heterosexuality (Freund et al., 1984)."

A recent (2023) paper also refutes the claim that those who commit child sex abuse are not sexually interested in adults, only children (at least in men). In Pedophilia is associated with lower sexual interest in adults: Meta-analyses and a systematic review with men who had sexually offended against children, Schippers et al note that "people who have sexually offended against children (PSOC)... with pedophilia showed no sexual preference for children over adults" (the distinction between preference and interest is quite subtle). Perhaps one might still valiantly make a distinction between true pedophiles (those who are only sexually interested in children) and those who commit child sex abuse [similar to the gay vs men who have sex with men {MSM} distinction, even if the magnitude is much greater here], in order to claim that homosexuals aren't more likely to be involved in child sex abuse, but practically the distinction does not matter.

In any event, Freund, in a later 1992 paper, The proportions of heterosexual and homosexual pedophiles among sex offenders against children: an exploratory study, concluded after using phallometric test sensitivities that "the ratio of heterosexual to homosexual pedophiles was calculated to be approximately 11:1. This suggests that the resulting proportion of true pedophiles among persons with a homosexual erotic development is greater than that in persons who develop heterosexually". Note that this suggests that 91.7% of pedophiles/child sex offenders are homosexual.

Using these numbers, we can run some scenarios to explore whether homosexuals might be over-represented in child sex abuse. Of course, we need some base rates - if (for the sake of argument) 92% of the male population is homosexual, homosexual men would actually be *less* likely to abuse children sexually than non-homosexual men.

According to a range of estimates compiled by the Williams Institute at UCLA's School of Law, 0.7-2.5% of the population is gay/lesbian. Meanwhile, Michael Seto suggests that an upper limit to the proportion of the male population with pedophilia is 5% and a lower limit is 1%.

Based on these and Freund's numbers, we get the following (I have displayed intermediate workings in the interests of transparency):


In the various scenarios, gay men are 3-13 times more likely to be pedophiles than non-gay men.

Perhaps one could rerun the analysis by looking at MSM, instead of gay men, but MSM estimates are 0.03% to 6.5% of the population, so MSM would either be almost as over-represented or much more over-represented in the pedophile population compared to gay men.

Addendum:

Related:

Sexual Desire Among an Online Sample of Men Sexually Attracted to Children - "Sexual attraction to children occurs in roughly 3 to 9 percent of the population. However, most knowledge about such desires comes from forensic samples, and most studies fail to assess preferred sexual activity and sexual partner. A new multimodal assessment of sexual desire was used to investigate interest in consensual and nonconsensual sex with adults and children in an online sample of men sexually attracted to children (n = 101). Desires were compared across history of sex offending behavior and preferred gender of child victim. Men who have and have not acted on their sexual attractions to children reported similar levels of sexual desire. Men primarily attracted to girls reported greater desire for sex with adults than did men primarily attracted to boys. Results highlight the heterogeneity of men sexually attracted to children as well as possible distinctions across gender of children to whom they are primarily attracted."

Links - 1st September 2023 (General Wokeness)

‘Back to the Future’ Musical Cuts Movie’s More Problematic Elements - "The band member — “Marvin Berry” — is seen calling his “cousin” in the movie and holding up the phone so that Chuck could hear this mysterious kid play this rollicking new song. The implication, of course, was that rock & roll was invented by — Marty McFly. That wasn’t a good look in 1985, and it’s an even worse one now. The performance is replicated in the stage production, but even though Marty still plays “Johnny B. Goode,” that unfortunate phone call has gone the way of landlines.  Charles Berry Jr., Berry’s son, says he was unaware that the telephone gag was cut from the musical version. But according to Berry, neither that scene from the movie, nor anything else about the cinematic Back to the Future, bothered his father or anyone in the family, and he laughs off the appropriation accusations. “In my perspective, I know the facts,” he says. “My family knows the facts. The world knows the facts. It’s a movie. We didn’t think of any appropriations, didn’t think it was any rip-off. In fact, our stance was, ‘This is fantastic! Nearly 30 years later, this is in a movie!’ You can’t beat that.” Four decades on, though, Berry does still have to field questions about his dad’s fictitious “cousin Marvin.”  Other than the quintessential high school bully Biff, who’s like Shrek’s evil twin, the villains in the Back to the Future movie were Libyan terrorists, depicted as Middle Eastern caricatures in a VW van who seek revenge on Doc for bilking them out of their plutonium. When they find him, they shoot him dead.  In the musical, any and all international bad guys have been vanquished"
Nothing is safe

Meme - Dr. Katja Thieme @Katja_Thieme: "Hey, want to know one of my all time excellent parenting ideas? Let. Little. Children. See. Penises. And. Vulvas. Of. Various. Ages. And. Sizes. In. A. Casual. Normalized. Totally. Safe. Way. The world will thank you for it. And so will those children when they grow up."
Dr. Katja Thieme: "katjathieme.bsky.social #WritingStudies #GenreStudies #CanLit "The epitome of the hysterical left wing!" Pronouns on chest: she/they"
It's a right wing myth that the left wants children to see genitals

Meme - Scott Greer 6'2" IQ 187 @ScottMGreer: "Even though the jury acquitted this magical youth of murder, they still felt bad they convicted him of anything. It's increasingly difficult for juries to convict blacks for the murder of whites. Our culture demands juries sympathize more with the assailant than with the victim"
"THE BALTIMORE SUN
One juror, a woman, was in tears as she left the courtroom Thursday. She looked at the teen and mouthed "I'm sorry."
The Baltimore Sun @baltimoresun Jul 27
A Baltimore jury on Thursday found a 16-year-old guilty of manslaughter in the fatal shooting of a man who confronted a group of squeegee workers with a baseball bat last July. The jury, however, acquitted the teen of first- and second-degree murder."

Meme - "Blacks When you make fun of other races *happy*
Blacks When you make fun of them *Upset*
Whites When you make fun of other races *Upset*
Whites When you make fun of them *Upset*
Latinos When you make fun of other races *happy*
Lationos When you make fun of them *happy*"

Meme - ">be me
>be chinese
>be from singapore
>get darktide
>oh cool i can make characters any way i want
>make the ogryn look chinese, because im chinese
>named it with my anglicized chinese name
>gets heckled and called a racist by some white kid
>tried to talk in vc to reassure him that im chinese
>he assumed i was making an offensive accent
>why are westerners like this
>pic related"

Meme - "Getting accepted law school low l...
"HOW A 142 GOT ME INTO LAW SCHOOL" I TIPS FOR APPLICANT... Leah Thomas  *Black woman*
LOW LSAT SCORE I How to Get Accepted to a TOP LAW SCHOOL ItsKayYvonne *Black woman*
Getting Accepted Into Law School With A Low LSAT and GPA I Full... Law School Blueprint *Black Woman*
Low LSAT Score?! Low GPA?! How To Get Into Law School Narinah *Black woman*
please, DO NOT waste your time APPLYING TO LAW SCHOOLS ff... I la... Rey H. *Black woman*
How To Get Into Law School With Low GPA| I GOT INTO LAW... Lydia Renea *Black woman*:

Racism or legit concern? Father of biracial kids gets secret paternity test because one is darker - "Doubting the paternity of a child solely based on their skin color is an act rooted in racism, as it fails to consider the intricacies of genetic inheritance."
I know a case where the paternity was doubted based on skin colour... and the doubts were founded

Meme - Daniel Oles: "Huh...I wonder why Leonardo Di Vinci didn't get a Google doodle, but all of these other people did? Mysterious..."
On iFunny someone claimed they did something for his 553rd birthday. But that was in 2005, before they went woke. So that proves the point

Meme - Sarah Campbell: "After an earnest chat about "tone deaf" being offensive to the hard of hearing, my editing FB group are now having a woke circle jerk over "spineless": offensive to people with spina bifida. They suggested "weak" as an alternative, but someone with lupus was offended (really). Oh an apparently "gutless" is out cos what about people with ulcerative colitis?! Newspeak is gonna be fucking dry."

Jeremy Kauffman 🦔 on Twitter - "Did you know that the ADL considers 17% of the numbers between 0-100 hate symbols? 9, 11, 12, 13, 14, 16, 18, 21, 23, 28, 33, 38, 43, 52, 83, 88, 90 Try to avoid using numbers like this or people might think you're a bigot"

Meme - Soyjak in SS Uniform with Pride colours, BLM fist & Covid Vaccine Syringes: "Why can't you fascists just do what the government tells you!"

Meme - "Professionals are done code switching
By Ruiqi Chen, Editor at LinkedIn News
Code switching - or changing behavior and speech for others' comfort - is often used by Black people and other racial groups in majority-white spaces. Though remote work has provided a reprieve from constant code switching, many still feel the need to hide their true self in order to be taken seriously. Ina viral post on Linkedin, marketing manager Buku Ibraheem shares her decision to speak authentically, prompting other Linkedin members to detail their experiences. See her viral post below and join conversation by leaving a comment."
"I do not code switch at work anymore, stopped subscribing to that a long time ago. I be in meetings like "nah, that's hella dope." and sending emails like, "okay, bet." I am who I is."
Clearly racial differences in income are due to racism. And obviously in marketing, language is unimportant

Meme - "Someone just called my son "gay" and he responded "I'm straighter than the pole your mom dances on". I'm not intervening"
Liberals don't understand gaming culture and just dismiss it as "toxic", "migosynistic", "homophobic" etc

Meme - Kris Chievous: "Meh. Marginalized groups routinely get zucchini'd for calling out oppressive trends. That's different from when privileged jerks get zucchini'd for being gross and bigoted in public. And it's correct that the consequences should be different, because they are two very different choices based in two very different power dynamics."
Power relations means never having to say you're sorry

‘Kill the Boer’ Song Fuels Backlash in South Africa and U.S. - The New York Times - "“Kill the Boer!” Julius Malema chanted, referring to white farmers. The crowd in a stadium in Johannesburg on Saturday roared back in approval.  A video clip of that moment shot across the internet and was seized upon by some Americans on the far right, who said that it was a call to violence. That notion really took off when Elon Musk, the South African-born billionaire who left the country as a teenager, chimed in.  “They are openly pushing for genocide of white people in South Africa,” Mr. Musk, who is white, wrote on Monday on Twitter, the platform he now controls... Mr. Malema leads the Economic Freedom Fighters, a party that advocates taking white-owned land to give to Black South Africans. That has made his embrace of the chant all the more disturbing to some whites.  Despite the words, the song should not be taken as a literal call to violence, according to Mr. Malema and veterans and historians of the anti-apartheid struggle. It has been around for decades, one of many battle cries of the anti-apartheid movement that remain a defining feature of the country’s political culture... Bongani Ngqulunga, who teaches politics at the University of Johannesburg, recalled struggle songs from the apartheid days in which people proclaimed they were going to march to Pretoria, the capital city, or that Nelson Mandela would be released from prison the next morning. The people singing those songs were not actually planning to march to Pretoria, nor did they really think that Mr. Mandela was about to be released, he said. Similarly, he said, the phrase “kill the Boer” — the word means farmer in Dutch and Afrikaans — is not meant to promote violence against individual farmers. “It was a call to mobilize against an oppressive system,” Mr. Ngqulunga said... Mr. Malema, who thrives on provocation, projected a blasé attitude toward the criticism. “Bring it on small boy,” he wrote in a Tweet to Mr. Steenhuisen. Asked during a news conference on Wednesday about Mr. Musk’s comment, Mr. Malema responded: “Why must I educate Elon Musk? He looks like an illiterate. The only thing that protects him is his white skin.”  Mr. Malema emphasized a court ruling last year that said he was within his rights to chant “kill the Boer.”  “I will sing this song as and when I feel like,” he said.  Just over a decade ago, a South African judge ruled that the song was hate speech and prohibited Mr. Malema, then the leader of the A.N.C. youth league, from singing it. But after being booted from the party and founding the E.F.F., Mr. Malema sang the song publicly again. AfriForum, an organization that advocates for the interests of Afrikaners, descendants of South Africa’s white colonizers, took Mr. Malema to court.  Last year, Judge Edwin Molahlehi ruled that AfriForum had “failed to show that the lyrics in the songs could reasonably be construed to demonstrate a clear intention to harm or incite to harm and propagate hatred.”... Mr. Malema testified during that court proceeding that the lyrics should not be interpreted literally. The song, he told the court, was directed toward the government’s failure to address a disparity in land ownership between Black and white South Africans."
Calls to kill people from a certain race aren't racist when liberals hate that race. Meanwhile if you say it's okay to be white, it means you're racist
Violent rhetoric is good when it comes from "minorities"

Meme - "TRY THAT IN A SMALL TOWN.
News: RACIST AND INCITING VIOLENCE @
WokelyConect
KILL THE WHITE FARMER!
News: Just a song, don't take it literally"

Lorgaire on X - "Came across a strange conspiracy theory regarding this photo of a girl with 'human pups.' I've seen multiple claims (all without evidence) that this image is:
1. from the Folsom Street SF event (18+)
2. Photoshopped
*Young pre-pubescent girl holding Pride flag with 2 men dressed as dogs in leather fetish gear from Montreal Pride Parade 2019*
There is no evidence this image is from Folsom Street. We have multiple videos of this exact group of pups performing in front of/to children along the 2019 Montreal Pride Parade route. The odd thing is how resolved people are to lie about this image being 'debunked.'  When presented with photo/video evidence, they continue to claim the points above.
Here's a video where this group is performing in the main parade route where children are present (@ 28.48) Here's a video that covers the parade from a single position, where these pups/masters follow the same route as Trudeau. There is no 'adult-only' area for kink as some have claimed... Here's a video of the pup in the blue/orange mask receiving pets from a young girl. The timing of the uploads of these videos/photos coincides with the Montreal Pride parade on August 18, 2019.  We have evidence of this group performing with children present along the parade route, and videos that suggest this group is exclusive to Montreal. Until someone provides evidence for the claim the image is from a Folsom Street event or is somehow Photoshopped, we should not believe it has been 'debunked.'  If you're going to claim something is Photoshopped, at the very least provide the original image it's based on. Adding a couple details to the origins of this image. The earliest post I found was from Facebook. It was posted one day after the 2019 Montreal Pride Parade. This post references the original Facebook post of the image, which has now been deleted. I finally found the pup group, and they are using the picture (and art based on it) in their activism.
Here we go. The image is not from Folsom Street Fair. It is also not Photoshopped.  One of the pups says, "The pic was taken in 2019 at Montréal." He later links to the photographer, who has this photo on his profile. *different photo of young pre-pubescent girl holding Pride flag with 2 men dressed as dogs in leather fetish gear from Montreal Pride Parade 2019, clearly showing it's not photoshopped*"
When you short circuit NPCs' routines, they malfunction and continue to repeat the narrative
Addendum: Screenshot of 2019 post, with mirror / another link

Houston Community College faces $100M alleged racial discrimination lawsuit - "The lawsuit alleges that, under the leadership of Chancellor Cesar Maldonado and the Human Resources director Janet May, Hispanic people received preferential treatment.  A news release notes that the lawsuit “contains an actual email chain created shortly after Maldonado’s appointment, which states ‘Now we (Hispanic people) are going to receive preferential treatment.’”  “The Plaintiff is the victim of a well-developed, systematic, entrenched and wildly successful campaign of race and sex discrimination against top level Black employees at HCC. This dreadful ‘campaign’ has resulted in the dismissal, demotion and/or termination of Blacks at alarming disproportionate rates,” the lawsuit reads.  The news release says the suit alleges since Maldonado’s arrival, 90% of the longtime Black professionals at HCC have either been terminated or demoted, while there has been a 50% increase in Hispanic hires and promotions. The suit also claims while 90% of tenured and experienced Black employees have been displaced, only 10% of similarly tenured white employees have been displaced.  The news release says the lawsuit also alleges Maldonado and May used a variety of tactics to get rid of Black employees. “These tactics include, among many others: telling a black male that a white woman’s word was more truthful than his word; when a white person complains, believing them, but if a black person complains doubting them unless corroborated; ‘padding’ black employee personnel files with false complaints to be used later as pretexts for firing them; when black employees are accused of sexual harassment, believing the complainant – but if the complaint is made by a black person, doubting them until HHC can corroborate; using the term ‘transformation’ as a cover for getting rid of black employees; and forcing black employees to take leaves of absence without cause to later use as grounds to terminate the black employee,” the new release read."
The power of intersectionality!
When you run out of white people to villainise

Russia to Build Village for Americans Tired of Liberals: State Media - "Russia is floating an idea to build a village for hundreds of American and Canadian families who want to run away from the cultural climate in North America.  The village, slated for construction in Moscow's suburbs in 2024, is meant for conservative families who want to "emigrate for ideological reasons," said immigration lawyer Timur Beslangurov"

ms.pretty on X - "White people staring at me my biggest pet peeve... like yes we're free"
When they just hate white people

Meme - EmmaKate @monkeys4anarchy: "Tbh this is really insensitive, people have peanut allergies and gluten intolerances and you're out here acting like peanut butter and jelly sandwiches are a universal experience" the italianman @mustachetoilet: "who remembers eating these"

Meme - "Pride month in the Middle East. *stones*"

Meme - Godless Mom: "Book - "Women and minorities have the same rights as you"
Tom wearing MAGA Hat: *upset*"
"Then why are they complaining"
"But I thought we're still fighting for equal rights? Hmmmm"

Native American group threatens boycott 'similar to Anheuser Busch' if Commanders ignore name petition - "In a letter to the Washington Commanders Monday, the Native American Guardians Association (NAGA) demanded a meeting with the team’s new ownership to discuss a controversial name change.  The letter is the latest step in the organization’s “Reclaim the Name” campaign, which seeks to bring back the team’s previously retired “Redskins” monicker. A petition supporting the effort boasts over 60,000 signatures as of Monday night, a figure which matches the seating capacity of the Commanders’ FedEx Field. NAGA’s President of Global Impact Campaigns, Healy Baumgardner, told The National Desk Monday that the organization has repeatedly ignored such meeting requests... Though the name change was done in an effort not to alienate Native American football fans, NAGA says the majority of Native Americans feel disrespected by the change.  “In terms of changing the name Redskins, the Native American community was never asked how they felt about it”"

Ayishat Akanbi on X - "It’s naive to think that you wouldn’t have taken part in historical atrocities once considered normal if you embrace all the trendy ideas of today."

Meme - Salon @Salon: "Forget About "Latino" - why I'm all for "Latinx," and you should be, too"
Salon @Salon: "Stop using "Latinx" if you really want to be inclusive"

Political correctness: a tyranny of the minority - "The list of words you’re not supposed to say and opinions you’re not supposed to hold grows larger by the day. The rise of PC culture means that many people feel they have to walk on eggshells to avoid causing offence.  New polling from the Pew Research Center shows that the public has had enough. Majorities of people in the UK, the US and France beli

eve that people today are too easily offended... while those who are easily offended may shout the loudest, they do not represent the majority" ‘Most ethnic minorities are not woke’ - "Jilani: If you rolled back the clock by five or six years, you would primarily see woke ideas about race in fringe corners of academia or the media. But since then, there has been an escalation, to the point where we now see adherence to this ideology at high levels of corporate America, in substantial portions of the news media and even among some people in government. We have to mount an opposition to that. The majority of people just don’t buy into these ideas. But history has shown us that a small and committed minority can enact enormous and dangerous social change if there’s no organised pushback or resistance... One of the axioms of society is that if you hold any kind of power, you must use it responsibly. If you are head of a business, principal at a school, leader of a team at work or president of the US, you are expected to have a certain level of accountability for the power that you use and people place expectations on how you will use it.  But when you assign a whole group victimhood status, you remove those expectations. You deny them the ability to develop themselves and to obtain and exercise power. Growing up as someone from an ethnic-minority background, I really benefited from other people holding me to very high standards. But as John McWhorter has highlighted, in many school environments people are now saying that kids from certain racial backgrounds should not be expected to do things like mathematics in the same way as other kids. If that’s the expectation, these minority kids will never be able to develop themselves into the next Neil deGrasse Tyson. It will become a self-fulfilling prophecy, because they will develop a mentality which sees the world as stacked against them.  It’s also important to note that most people from minority backgrounds don’t adhere to this ideology. Most of them are not very woke. If you look at polling, it tends to be the case that Hispanic Americans, African Americans and recent immigrants are more patriotic than these progressive activists. I think a lot of them feel like this is a very patronising, dehumanising ideology that tries to describe their life through narrow categories rather than seeing the whole picture...   There is a media tendency to see interactions between white people and non-white people as governed by the racial identities of the two. People assumed that there had to have been some kind of racial hatred in these shootings. But not everybody walks around thinking of themselves as a member of a ‘racial group’, in opposition to another."

Millennials Are Not an Exception. They’ve Moved to the Right. - The New York Times - "Over the last decade, almost every cohort of voters under 50 has shifted rightward."
Clearly this shows that there's a huge Nazi problem, not that the left has gone bonkers

Jack Poso 🇺🇸 on X - "White people are the only ones who are supposed to hate their own race in order to be considered good people Whiteness is the only culture identified by those outside it and not those who are part of it And white culture is the only one where hatred of it is considered a virtue"

Meme - "Canada in the world's history books *Thomas the Tank Engine*
Canada in the Netherland's history books *Jesus*
Canada in Canada's history books *Monster Thomas*"

Debate Erupts at N.J. Law School After White Student Quotes Racial Slur - The New York Times - "The controversy over the use of a racial slur that has embroiled a public law school in New Jersey began with a student quoting from case law during a professor’s virtual office hours.  The first-year student at Rutgers Law School in Newark, who is white, repeated a line from a 1993 legal opinion, including the epithet, when discussing a case.  What followed has jolted the state institution, unleashing a polarizing debate over the constitutional right to free speech on campus and the power of a hateful word at a moment of intense national introspection over race, equity and systemic bias... a group of Black first-year students at Rutgers Law began circulating a petition calling for the creation of a policy on racial slurs and formal, public apologies from the student and the professor, Vera Bergelson.  “At the height of a ‘racial reckoning,’ a responsible adult should know not to use a racial slur regardless of its use in a 1993 opinion,” states the petition, which has been signed by law school students and campus organizations across the country... Any public use of a racial epithet can carry a risk of steep professional consequences.  The head of the journalism department at Central Michigan University was fired last year after using the same slur when quoting from a lawsuit. An Emory University law school professor was placed on administrative leave for more than a year after using the word in discussions with students about race.  Rutgers officials willing to talk openly about their opposition to the students’ demands have said that the school, as a public institution, has a greater obligation to safeguard students’ and teachers’ First Amendment right to free speech.  “I don’t think the Law School should have rules that are stricter than the Constitution of the United States,” said Dennis M. Patterson, a professor. Professor Lopez and his co-dean, Kimberly Mutcherson, said in a statement that the discussion underway had nothing to do with “stifling academic freedom, ignoring the First Amendment, or banning words.”  Rather, they said, it was about “how best to create classroom environments in which all of our students feel seen, heard, valued and respected.”... Samantha Harris, the lawyer representing the woman, said the school would be abdicating its responsibility to train lawyers if it encouraged professors to avoid epithets in all contexts.  “When you’re an attorney, you hear all kinds of horrible things,” said Ms. Harris, a former fellow at FIRE, the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education.  “You represent people who have said horrible things, who have done horrible things,” she said. “You can’t guarantee a world free of offensive language.”"
Clearly we need to rewrite history and pretend words were never said
Obviously if you use a word and get fired, that does not mean your free speech is threatened

Wednesday, August 30, 2023

Animal Men & Women

There're 2 photos that sometimes make the rounds classifying men and women by their genitals:


"Sheep Woman, Cat Woman, Buffalo Woman, Bear Woman, Wolf Woman, Antelope Woman, Deer Woman, Fox Woman, Dancing Woman
Fig 8.1. Nine Female Anatomy Types"


"Coyote Man, Pitbull Man, Bear Man, Pony Man, Horse Man, Elk Man, Deer Man, Ram Man, Dancing Man
Fig 9.2. Nine Male Anatomy Types"

Having seen it a few times, I decided to dig into them, and found that they came from The Sexual Practices of Quodoushka by Amara Charles.

As you can expect from the photos, the book itself is wild. It's also nonsense.

Links - 30th August 2023 (Left Wing Economics)

What Do Unions Do to Productivity? A Meta‐Analysis - "The impact of unions on productivity is explored using meta-analysis and meta-regression analysis. It is shown that most of the variation in published results is due to specification differences between studies. After controlling for differences between studies, a negative association between unions and productivity is established for the United Kingdom, whereas a positive association is established for the United States in general and for U.S. manufacturing."

Marxist Vegan Restaurant in Michigan Closes for Predictably Marxist Reasons - "After five years of business, Grand Rapids, Michigan's famously Marxist vegan sandwich shop is closing its doors due to bumps in the road toward what it hoped would be an egalitarian, worker-run business model. The Garden Diner and Café put Grand Rapids on the alternative diet map thanks to its widely acclaimed vegan, vegetarian, and raw food offerings. Unfortunately, the restaurant also proved the old adage that it doesn't matter how tasty your black bean patty is if you can't afford to pay your workers and it takes 45 minutes for you to put a sandwich together... Not only did the café struggle to pay its workers, part-owner Thad Cummings told local Michigan site MLive, but its Facebook page (no longer active) swelled with comments from angry customers who routinely complained of slow and spotty service, saying that they would sometimes wait nearly an hour for what we're assuming was a very passable vegan sandwich. And that's when it was open; thanks to a policy of setting hours by "group decision," the café didn't keep standard hours, as some users noted on its (four-star, for what it's worth) Yelp page... Although their food largely received praise, some people, particularly those of the "Redditor" variety, saw the restaurant's closure as an inevitable manifestation of Communism's flaws in practice. But not everyone was convinced that the restaurant was true enough to its proletariat stance; in August, it faced complaints after sending a free meal to the Grand Rapids Police Department, which some saw as a move that was just a little too chummy with a "nearly all-white police force in this era of police violence."... Which brings us to the real news here: Apparently, in Grand Rapids, you can rent a restaurant space—complete for three parking spaces—for a mere $1,650 a month"

Socialist-Themed Vegan Meat Company Learns Marxism Works Better in Theory Than Practice - "With products like Comrade Cluck (a plant meat, not actual chicken), No Evil Foods has had success casting itself as a “revolutionary” food company that embodies progressive values.  But the company is learning marketing progressive ideas is easier than implementing socialist-style economics.  For months, company leaders have been resisting a unionization effort by workers at their Weaverville, North Carolina plant...   Two of the union organizers were later fired, allegedly for violating social distancing and dress policies... Vox Media was forced to cut 200 bloggers at SB Nation after California passed Assembly Bill 5, legislation that forced numerous industries to change the status of workers from freelancers to actual employees.  Some astute observers pointed out that the firings came just a few months after Vox, a progressive media brand, had championed AB5 as a “victory for workers everywhere.”"

Asda 'shaming poor families' by putting cheap food in bright yellow packaging - "Asda has defended its new budget range of items after being accused of ‘shaming’ poor people with bright yellow packaging.  The chain recently replaced Smartprice products with new Just Essentials branding, its 'largest ever budget-friendly range', which is intended to help shoppers combat the rising cost of living.  It includes fresh meat, fish and poultry, bakery, frozen and cupboard staples as well as washing up liquid, toilet roll, shampoo and other toiletries and household essentials.  However, the bright yellow design of the new range has led some people to claim that it stands out too much and gives 'poverty markers' to shoppers... Asda said its customers were ‘loving’ the range.   A spokesperson said: ‘We don't understand why anyone would feel embarrassed for saving money and we are delighted by how much our customers are loving the new Just Essentials range, as shown by the great response and how they continue to add Just Essentials products to their basket every time they shop.’"
Product differentiation is discriminatory. So everyone has an even playing field, it's better to discontinue budget products
Companies need to spend money on design and marketing and absorb these costs and provide low prices at the same time
Ironically, we're told that poor people have a cognitive burden of poverty. But making things easy for them is bad because of "stigma"

Opinion: Ottawa, we have a problem: Is Canada’s economy heading toward disaster? - The Globe and Mail - "Canada has relied a lot on its natural resources to fuel growth. But look at how Argentina and South Africa, which also have an abundance of natural resources, ended up. Those two countries were the subjects of recent long reads in this newspaper and are very good examples for Canadian politicians of what not to do.  Yet Canada’s politicians seem to be making the same mistakes politicians in Argentina and South Africa did. They behaved as if their countries’ wealth was endless, and look where they are now.  Here are some critical mistakes that parallel those made by the aforementioned countries: The Canadian government has made it clear that it wants corporations to become benevolent organizations that put workers before shareholders. It favours taxing corporations and the rich and adding regulatory impediments to corporate activity. It is a big supporter of income redistribution at the expense of making the pie larger for everyone by investing in the expansion of productive capacity. It wants to regulate the economy and nudge corporations to submit to its social views and economic philosophy. Its policies discourage entrepreneurship and wealth creation and replace them with handouts to every significant lobby and activist group. The government increasingly seems not to understand how people get jobs and how they get by – and how heavily favouring environmental issues stirred up by activists over economic concerns kills jobs. Meanwhile, Canada has a productivity problem that has gotten worse over the past 10 years. Its GDP per capita has increased at a much slower pace than those of countries such as Australia, New Zealand, Britain and the United States since 1980 and particularly since 2015... The federal government has found ways to create jobs, however – just not in the right place. Between 2017 and 2022, it embarked on a hiring boom the likes of which Canada has never seen before, adding the same number of civil servant jobs as the U.S., a country with 10 times Canada’s population. Do we really need a hiring boom in the public sector?  In addition, Canada continues to suffer from overinvestment in another less productive sector of the economy: housing. Housing-related activity is bigger than any other sector of the economy, including manufacturing, mining, oil and gas and so on. Economic strategies that rely on real estate for growth are misplaced and need to be reconsidered. Fundraising and investments have to be channelled to more productivity-enhancing industries, such as robotics, cybersecurity and additive manufacturing, to name a few. And yet, looking at the government’s most aggressive pro-immigration policy, one has to realize that this is not going to happen any time soon! As a country, we need strategies that promote wealth creation and economic prosperity by moving away from the public sector, resources and real estate to other, more productivity-enhancing sectors of the economy and aim for expanding productive capacity as opposed to playing Robin Hood."
Of course, poor economic growth is the fault of capitalism, which has failed
I wonder what happened in 2015

Trade unionism has become an elite sport - "Data from the Department for Business, Energy & Industrial Strategy, released last week, revealed that only 12 per cent of private sector employees belonged to a trade union. But even more interesting was that in the public sector, where trade union membership is of a much higher proportion, membership has dropped below 50 per cent for the first time since the records began in 1995, and now sits at just 48.6 per cent. Now, only a minority of public sector workers are trade union members.  You can see how these unions have become detached from their purpose and from the people that most need representation. Far from the mass labour movements of the 1970s and 1980s, unions have become the playthings of a new public sector elite. This is illustrated by the fact that a larger proportion of union members now earn over £1,000 a week (17.7 per cent) compared to those on less than £250 a week (11.0 per cent). Unions are not speaking for those at the bottom of the pile. They are mouthpieces for a minority, people in some of the best paid public sector positions in the country. As a result of this shift, today, unions like the British Medical Association (especially the demagogues of the junior doctors committee) behave more like student socialist societies than membership associations concerned with achieving material improvements for downtrodden workers. They have been quite upfront that actually negotiating with the government is “no longer productive”. One member of the BMA’s ruling council described the junior doctor dispute as a “hugely important ideological-political moment” and said the BMA should situate itself “in a broader workers’ struggle.” This is hardly the language of a narrow body striving for fair pay and conditions. Rather, they behave more like a fringe political movement, determined to reshape our society without broader democratic consent...  Now the PCS is even threatening to go on strike rather than implement the government’s Rwanda deportation scheme, having already been part of the legal action that has delayed the programme, even if the Court of Appeal decides the scheme is legal. It’s extraordinary that civil service unions are willing to strike to prevent a democratic government from implementing policies because they disagree with them."

Meme - Erin Ekins @QueerlyAutistic: "I've come to the conclusion that the sole purpose of homework is to condition children into accepting that unpaid overtime and ridiculous hours and not even being able to escape work even in your own home are a normal things to expect in their future."
Maybe leftists hate homework because they just hate work

dina on Twitter - "If you think about it. People with glasses are literally paying to use their eyes. Capitalism is a bitch."
We're all oppressed by gravity too. Damn capitalism!

Meme - "Why doesn't Batman kill his villains??? Because Blackgate and Arkham are For Profit prisons he's protecting his investments stay woke"

Youth unemployment in Europe and the world: Causes, consequences and solutions - "Employment protection legislation (EPL) also affects youth unemployment. During the 1980s, European economies suffered from high rates of unemployment. Policy makers consequently introduced a wide array of reforms. A common measure has been to ease EPL for temporary (fixed-term) contracts, while leaving EPL for permanent contracts unchanged. These reforms have contributed to raising employment during upturns, but many of the new jobs have been temporary jobs (Bentolila, Boeri, Cahuc 2010). These temporary jobs are mainly held by youth (e.g. Ryan 2001; OECD 2004). During recessions, many of the temporary jobs were the first to be shed, hence creating youth unemployment (e.g. Boeri 2009). Indeed, during the recent great recession, youth have been hit particularly strongly and temporary contracts have become the dominant contract type for newly established contracts of young people (O’Higgins 2012). The problem of segmented labour markets is particularly severe in Mediterranean countries of Europe, most notably Spain."
One leftist claimed that you shouldn't have two tier labour markets. If leftists would rather young people be unemployed than be on temporary contracts (this also applies to other groups who are less favoured by labour markets), that's a great sacrifice that they're willing to have other people make for your left wing beliefs. Of course, he then went on to claim that young people should not work but be in education, and unemployment can be solved with a federal jobs guarantee. Given that the definition of youth in the EU is 15-29, he wants people to be in university for 11 years, not to mention the problem of paying for everything (money can always be printed, and greedy companies can be blamed for inflation)

'Ugly Produce' Subscription Boxes Have Ignited a Food War - The Atlantic - "Food-justice advocates argue that profit-based solutions are unequipped to do battle against food inequality, and that even well-meaning companies could do real harm to community organizations... the crop scientist Sarah Taber wrote a long thread arguing that ugly produce isn’t the problem or solution. “The food system is a hot mess but using ugly produce is one thing it’s actually really good at”"
Basically selling ugly produce is bad because it's capitalism

Why AOC's tax plan makes sense: It would help keep oligarchs in check. - "mostly popular these days among thinkers on the political left. The main reason to hike top tax rates, in this view, isn’t to keep the deficit in check; it’s simply to keep individuals from becoming too wealthy, because inequality is itself toxic for society."
Leftists don't love the poor - they just hate the rich

Queer Werewolves Destroy Capitalism: Smutty Stories... | Microcosm Publishing - "  Sexy, capitalism-defying adventures take you around the galaxy in this debut collection of five high-heat erotic short stories by MJ Lyons. A pack of werewolves tear through downtown Toronto to protest cruel treatment of workers, led by a werewolf & witch couple who are equally passionate about the cause and each other. From charnel landscapes to queer utopias, from the crepuscular cruising grounds of 19th century Paris to the urban werewolf hunting grounds of 21st century Toronto, from the tender to the consentacled, these tales of unapologetically queer, unabashedly smutty speculative fiction will thrill, titillate, and delight.
A male/male erotic short story collection from Microcosm’s Queering Consent series."

Bernie Sanders Doubles 2022 Income With Book Condemning Capitalism - "According to Sen. Bernie Sanders's latest annual financial disclosures, the Vermont Independent earned $170,000 in book royalties in 2022 for his recently-published best-selling book, "It's OK to Be Angry About Capitalism."  That's almost as much as the $174,000 salary that senators and House members collect each year.  Coupled with another $170,000 royalties payment from publisher Penguin Random House in 2020, Sanders has so far made $340,000 from the book."

Toronto's proudly anti-capitalist cafe is permanently closing - "One polarizing coffee shop in Toronto is set to officially close its doors at the end of the month.   The Anarchist, located at 190 Jarvis Street, describes itself as an "anti-capitalist, anti-colonial cafe, shop and radical community space on stolen land."   The coffee shop first opened up back in March 2022 and offers all the beverages and baked goods you'd expect to find at a cafe, with a side of radical books, art, stickers, jewelry, clothing, and tote bags.   "I hope by openly declaring the business as anti-capitalist I can motivate people to think and ask about what that means, and let those who are already anti-capitalists of one kind or another know that this is a place for them, where their politics, ideas, and identities will always be welcome," owner Gabriel Sims-Fewer previously told blogTO... "The Anarchist has been a huge success in every way I hoped, and has given me so much inspiration and education that I plan to put to use in future projects," the announcement reads.   "Unfortunately, the lack of generational wealth/seed capital from ethically bankrupt sources left me unable to weather the quiet winter season, or to grow in the ways needed to be sustainable longer-term," the message continues."
'Anti-capitalist' coffee shop shuts down in Toronto after only one year due to lack of income - ""It's been an amazing experience," The Anarchist’s owner Gabriel Sims-Fewer wrote on the cafe’s website, "connecting with so many great community members, sparking desperately needed debate, raising the blood pressure of Conservatives (that includes you, ‘anarcho-capitalists’ and ‘Libertarians’), fulfilling the dream of most service workers by not having to tolerate the presence of professional class-traitors (pigs and military), and experimenting with living and working in ways that don't enthusiastically embrace the pure misanthropy of Capitalism.”... He concluded, "F*ck the rich. F*ck the police. F*ck the state. F*ck the colonial death camp we call 'Canada.'"  According to the cafe’s website, in order to make coffee accessible to everyone and to prove that the business was not a capitalist venture, the shop had a "pay what you can" model that was subsidized by more expensive drinks.  The unsuccessful model came under fire when The Anarchist first opened, as critics claimed it was hypocritical to charge high prices for inexpensive beverages."
Of course, this is the fault of capitalism

How to Avoid Eviction and Still Get a Tenant to Move Out - "Offering “cash for keys” can avoid eviction by getting your tenant to move out voluntarily. While this may not be the most immediately appealing of methods for handling tenant turnover, it is one of the more effective means of doing so. That said, it is going to cost you. However, it will likely prove to be worth it if you need the tenants out of the property as soon as possible.  Also, it is as simple as it sounds. Through this method, you will be paying your tenants to leave your property. In turn, this will allow you to avoid the lengthy eviction process and even save money in the long run. Follow these steps below when offering “cash for keys” to avoid eviction"
Damn homeowners refusing to rent out their properties and worsening the housing crisis!

Full article: Do rent controls and other tenancy regulations affect new construction? Some answers from long-run historical evidence - "The (re-)introduction of tenancy regulation in the form of rent controls, tenant protection or supply rationing is back on the agenda of policymakers in light of rent inflation in many global cities. While rent controls promise short-term relief, economists point to their negative long-run effects on new construction. This study presents new long-run data on both rent regulation and housing construction for 16 developed countries (1910–2016) and finds that more restrictive rental market legislation generally has a negative impact on both new housing construction and residential investment. This is especially true for strict rent controls and housing rationing measures in the post-1960 period. Tenancy security can on average also dampen construction activity. The negative effect is overall less significant and strong in magnitude than expected and may have been offset by exemptions for new construction, by compensating social housing construction and by a flight of new construction into the owner-occupied sector. Still, on average, rent controls came at the cost of less construction activity."

Why Canada might just need a tenant revolution - "landlords—who are operating in a mostly unregulated market, where rent controls are becoming weaker and weaker—are also benefiting... There are folks, particularly in the real estate industry, actively lobbying for things to stay the same. An unregulated housing market benefits them enormously... we talk about housing as if it’s only a matter of supply and demand. The logic goes that if we build more housing units, housing will become more affordable. The answer is always to build more housing, and the corporate developers become the solution. So, the government drops regulations and provide more subsidies to the developers. But we’ve built more housing and prices continue to rise...   We need to politicize the housing debate in Canada... We’re a rich country. Government, at all levels, has shown it’s capable of mobilizing massive amounts of resources when the political will is there. When we decide a project is of national importance, we’ll buy a pipeline, we’ll create CERB overnight, we’ll fund the development and deployment of a vaccine."
If you're deluded about the world, your solutions are not going to work. Debt does not matter to leftists

Meme - Ontario Tenant Rights: "What is a fair amount of cash to ask for keys?"
"35,000 Especially if they're selling Or say they're going to sell. After moving costs. All the other issues regarding moving. The increased rent And extra fees for moving your internet and other utilities. If they say no offer 40,000."

Condo owner must also pay up for tenant's disruptive behaviour, tribunal says - "Varun Sriskanda, a board member with the advocacy group Small Ownership Landlords of Ontario (SOLO), said tribunal decisions that "unfairly penalize" landlords for a tenant's actions could have a chilling effect on condo owners seeking to rent out their units.  "Landlords are going to be very, very careful with who they let into their condominium units. It's going to create stricter renting requirements within a market that's already very difficult to rent in," Sriskanda said.  "Landlords who have condominium units are going to ask to see references from another landlord that has a condo.""

Florida investor reveals secret to removing house squatters - "he was tipped off to a statute that allows cops to remove illegal occupants if landlords sign an affidavit saying they’re squatters... Sam got a call from a cop who told him that under a little-known Florida statute, squatters can be removed with a signed affidavit as long as the squatter is a transient trespasser and not a former renter... “She was cursing me out the entire time,” he said of one of the squatters. “As they passed us, they would scream and curse and she said, ‘I’m going to find you’ and other horrible things.”  Sam discovered that one of the squatters, Shaneria Josey, has faced nine evictions. Sam contacted her previous landlord, who said Josey poured concrete down his property’s pipes after she was evicted but before she was out of the home.  The damage cost the landlord $150,000."

The Meme Policeman - Posts | Facebook - "How about an economy where you don't need 2 jobs and a side hustle to pay the rent"
"Most would be surprised to see how few actually work multiple jobs. Out of ~155M full and part-time workers, just 7.1M hold multiple jobs, 4.6% of the workforce. And that’s been fairly steady... there’s never been a smaller percentage of multiple job holders... There’s a frequent narrative that people need to work multiple jobs just to pay the bills. If that’s the case, there’s certainly not too many who end up doing so, despite it being easier than ever to find work. So either people are just not paying their bills, or exaggerating the situation."

Meme - "When your "workers' party" is full of spoiled hipsters instead of workers"

Townhall.com on Twitter - "KJP: "If you buy a car, you are expected to pay the monthly payment...It's that simple."
Joe Concha on Twitter - "How about graduate students who take out student loans?"

American Enterprise Institute - "A new report from the The Brookings Institution , a left-leaning think tank, and authored by University of Virginia  Professor Sarah Turner explains that the pause on student loan repayment—which has now been going on for over three years, since the onset of the covid crisis—has benefited affluent borrowers the most. This isn’t a surprise to anyone familiar with the data on student loans, which shows that the largest debts are held by high earners. But might come as a surprise to voters who were sold this plan as helping a group of economically-needy Americans... A nuanced solution to the real problem of student loan unaffordability would simply improve the existing programs to support and relieve borrowers with low income relative to their payments due. That’s much less sexy than the ideas that Democrats have been selling on the campaign trail—which is probably also why it isn’t really on the table"
What pleases noisy activists on Twitter doesn't benefit everyone

‘Financially Hobbled for Life’: The Elite Master’s Degrees That Don’t Pay Off - WSJ - "Recent film program graduates of Columbia University who took out federal student loans had a median debt of $181,000.  Yet two years after earning their master’s degrees, half of the borrowers were making less than $30,000 a year.  The Columbia program offers the most extreme example of how elite universities in recent years have awarded thousands of master’s degrees that don’t provide graduates enough early career earnings to begin paying down their federal student loans, according to a Wall Street Journal analysis of Education Department data... Lured by the aura of degrees from top-flight institutions, many master’s students at universities across the U.S. took on debt beyond what their pay would support... At New York University, graduates with a master’s degree in publishing borrowed a median $116,000 and had an annual median income of $42,000 two years after the program, the data on recent borrowers show. At Northwestern University, half of those who earned degrees in speech-language pathology borrowed $148,000 or more, and the graduates had a median income of $60,000 two years later. Graduates of the University of Southern California’s marriage and family counseling program borrowed a median $124,000 and half earned $50,000 or less over the same period... Undergraduate students for years have faced ballooning loan balances. But now it is graduate students who are accruing the most onerous debt loads. Unlike undergraduate loans, the federal Grad Plus loan program has no fixed limit on how much grad students can borrow—money that can be used for tuition, fees and living expenses... Columbia grad students who borrowed money typically held loans that exceeded annual earnings two years after graduation in 14 of the school’s 32 master’s degree programs tracked by the Education Department, the Journal found. In about a dozen Columbia master’s programs, the majority of recent graduates weren’t repaying the principal on their loans or took forbearance... Debt counselors recommend students not borrow more than they will earn right out of school. Yet about 38% of master’s programs at top-tier private universities in the U.S. failed that test... At least 43% of the people who recently took out loans for master’s degrees at elite private universities hadn’t paid down any of their original debt or were behind on payments roughly two years after graduation... Universities, which receive their tuition up front, have an economic incentive to expand graduate degree programs and face no consequences if students can’t afford to pay the federal loans after they leave.  “They’re not really held accountable for the myth they’re selling to students,” said Ozan Jaquette, an associate professor of higher education at the University of California, Los Angeles’s Graduate School of Education and Information Studies. His doctoral dissertation was on the growth of master’s programs. “We should not be giving federal-aid dollars to these programs that systematically saddle students with high debt,” he said... “We were told by the establishment our whole lives this was the way to jump social classes,” he said of an Ivy League education. Instead, he said he feels such goals as marriage, children and owning a home are out of reach.  During a car ride last year with three friends from the film program, Mr. Black said, they calculated they collectively owed $1.5 million in loans to the federal government. “Financially hobbled for life,” he said. “That’s the joke.”"
Education makes society better off, so all education should be free for as long as someone wants to and we should even pay people to study, and we can pay for this by confiscating billionaires' wealth