Links - 11th July 2023 (2 - Vegans & Cyclists [including Bike Lanes])

Combining 2 insufferable demographics:

Meme - "The lamb here is supposed to be great"
"Oh. I'm a vegan. I wish I could tune out that moral voice inside me that says eating animals is murder, but I guess I'm just not as strong as you are."
"That's because you need protein. I'll have the lamb"

PETA on Twitter - "Cows are friends, not food 💗"
FAROUQ on Twitter - "Name one cow you’re friends with"

Monkeys enslaved by cruel coconut farmers who make them work in chains to meet growing demand for trendy vegan milk - "But the horrors don't stop there - according to Peta, the creature's sharp front teeth are often removed to stop them from biting themselves or the farmers."
"Cruelty free"

Vegan landlord seeks tenants for $5,750 New York apartment. Meat eaters need not apply - "Lerer’s ex-husband, who co-owns the building and is also vegan, claimed they had refused to rent to meat-eaters who cook since buying the property in 2007. “It’s not about discrimination,” Motti Lerer said. “You have to fit into the building.”  According to the New York Post, the broker said that the tenants are welcome to order meat and fish-based takeaways, but the meals cannot be cooked on-site... Putting dietary restrictions in a rental contract is very common in India. In many states, landlords refuse to entertain tenants who consume non-vegetarian food.  In recent years, these rules have led to many prospective tenants being forced to undergo extensive and stressful hunts for places they are able to rent."

Celebrity chef John Mountain bans vegans from Fyre restaurant ‘for mental health reasons’ - "A celebrity chef has “banned” vegans from his restaurant after reportedly receiving a negative review from a customer who criticised the lack of plant-based options.  On Tuesday, Chef John Mountain revealed on the Facebook page for his restaurant Fyre that the eatery would no longer be catering to vegan diners. According to Mountain, the decision to ban vegans from the Perth, Australia, restaurant was due to “mental health reasons”.  “Sadly all vegans are now banned from Fyre (for mental health reasons),” the post on the restaurant’s Facebook reads. “We thank you for your understanding. Xx.” The post also included the caption: “Yep. I’m done.” and the hashtags #vegan, #not, #pleasegoelsewhere, #veganfreezone, and #nomorevegans.  The decision allegedly stemmed from a bad review posted by a vegan customer, with Chef Mountain telling PerthNow that a customer had reached out to him to ask if there were any vegan options at the restaurant, and that he’d promised he would accommodate her.  “A young girl reached out to me and said she was coming to the restaurant… and asked if there were vegan options,” he said. “It was my only shortfall… I said I would accommodate her, I said we had gnocchi, vegetables… and that was that.”... the woman wrote a complaint to the restaurant on Facebook the following day, in which she’d criticised the $32 vegetable dish that had been her “only option”.  The woman’s message also reportedly read: “I think it’s incredibly important nowadays that restaurants can accommodate everyone and to not be able to have actual plant-based meals shows your shortcomings as a chef. “I hope to see some improvements in your menu as I have lived in Connolly for quite some time and have seen many restaurants come and go from that building and none of them last. If you don’t get with the times, I don’t hold out faith that your restaurant will be the one that does.”... The chef also claimed that, as a result of the woman’s complaint, his restaurant was flooded with negative one-star reviews on Google, which he said “really hurts the business”.  “F*** vegans seriously… I’m done. At the end of the day, it’s not what I want to do, they can f*** off,” he added... Mountain also claimed that customers should “know what they’re getting from me,” as he has previously written a cookbook titled Pig. “I once wrote and sold a book called Pig which had pork recipes. People know what they’re getting from me,” he said. “I understand where vegans are coming from but my job is to make food taste as good as I can and I can’t always cater to everybody’s dietary requirements.”... The restaurant has also received a flood of positive reviews on its Facebook, where many have praised both the food and the staff, while others have applauded the restaurant’s “principles” and “ethics”."

Meme - "Johnson BBQ in Plant City Florida just released a t-shirt with their favorite yelp review. Epic.
1 star
No vegan food here"

Actually, Raising Beef Is Good for the Planet - WSJ - "People who advocate eating less beef often argue that producing it hurts the environment. Cattle, we are told, have an outsize ecological footprint: They guzzle water, trample plants and soils, and consume precious grains that should be nourishing hungry humans. Lately, critics have blamed bovine burps, flatulence and even breath for climate change... cattle are key to the world’s most promising strategy to counter global warming: restoring carbon to the soil. One-tenth of all human-caused carbon emissions since 1850 have come from soil, according to ecologist Richard Houghton of the Woods Hole Research Center. This is due to tillage, which releases carbon and strips the earth of protective vegetation, and to farming practices that fail to return nutrients and organic matter to the earth. Plant-covered land that is never plowed is ideal for recapturing carbon through photosynthesis and for holding it in stable forms.  Most of the world’s beef cattle are raised on grass. Their pruning mouths stimulate vegetative growth as their trampling hoofs and digestive tracts foster seed germination and nutrient recycling. These beneficial disturbances, like those once caused by wild grazing herds, prevent the encroachment of woody shrubs and are necessary for the functioning of grassland ecosystems.  Research by the Soil Association in the U.K. shows that if cattle are raised primarily on grass and if good farming practices are followed, enough carbon could be sequestered to offset the methane emissions of all U.K. beef cattle and half its dairy herd. Similarly, in the U.S., the Union of Concerned Scientists estimates that as much as 2% of all greenhouse gases (slightly less than what’s attributed to cattle) could be eliminated by sequestering carbon in the soils of grazing operations.  Grass is also one of the best ways to generate and safeguard soil and to protect water. Grass blades shield soil from erosive wind and water, while its roots form a mat that holds soil and water in place. Soil experts have found that erosion rates from conventionally tilled agricultural fields average one to two orders of magnitude greater than erosion under native vegetation, such as what’s typically found on well-managed grazing lands. Nor are cattle voracious consumers of water. Some environmental critics of cattle assert that 2,500 gallons of water are required for every pound of beef. But this figure (or the even higher ones often cited by advocates of veganism) are based on the most water-intensive situations. Research at the University of California, Davis, shows that producing a typical pound of U.S. beef takes about 441 gallons of water per pound—only slightly more water than for a pound of rice—and beef is far more nutritious.  Eating beef also stands accused of aggravating world hunger. This is ironic since a billion of the world’s poorest people depend on livestock. Most of the world’s cattle live on land that cannot be used for crop cultivation, and in the U.S., 85% of the land grazed by cattle cannot be farmed, according to the U.S. Beef Board. The bovine’s most striking attribute is that it can live on a simple diet of grass, which it forages for itself. And for protecting land, water, soil and climate, there is nothing better than dense grass"

Lab-grown meat could be 25 times worse for the climate than beef | New Scientist - "They found that the nutrient broth used to culture the animal cells has a large carbon footprint because it contains components like sugars, growth factors, salts, amino acids and vitamins that each come with energy costs. For example, energy is required to grow crops for sugars and to run laboratories that extract growth factors from cells. Each component must also be carefully purified using energy-intensive techniques like ultrafiltration and chromatography before they can be mixed into the broth.  This “pharmaceutical-grade” level of purification is required so that there are no contaminants such as bacteria or their associated toxins in the broth, says Risner. “Otherwise the animal cells won’t grow, because the bacteria will multiply much faster,” he says."

Has the vegan bubble burst? Sales stagnate in UK as brands withdraw plant-based products - "When the dairy-free brand Oatly launched a range of vegan ice-creams, including chocolate fudge and hazelnut swirl, in October 2019, it hoped to entice consumers with flavours described as “unashamedly indulgent”.  The range – described by fans as “silky” and “creamy” – was part of what food experts described as a “gold rush” to tap into the vegan market, including “vegfurters”, vegan mayonnaise and marbled plant-based steaks. One analysis found nearly a quarter of all food products launched in 2019 were labelled vegan.  But it appears the boom-time for some vegan products may now be over. While Oatly’s range of oat drinks enjoys high demand, the Swedish company confirmed last week it was withdrawing its ice-cream tubs from the UK market... Oatly’s 500ml ice-cream tubs, sold in supermarkets for £4.50, are the latest casualty in the vegan sector. Nestlé announced in March it was withdrawing its plant-based Garden Gourmet and Wunda brands from sale in the UK, saying the products, including a split-pea-based alternative milk drink were “not viable” in current market conditions. Innocent Drinks, owned by Coca-Cola, announced in March it was discontinuing its dairy-free coconut, almond and hazelnut smoothies after disappointing sales. Sausage maker Heck announced earlier this month it was reducing its range of meat-free products from 10 to just two.  While it is claimed the global vegan market may be as worth as much as £50bn by 2030, sales of many products in the UK have flatlined or fallen. The challenges have been compounded by the cost of living crisis – with vegan products often more expensive than competing meat or dairy products – and an overcrowded market. Clive Black, a retail analyst at investment group Shore Capital, said the vegan market had been overhyped. He said: “The real market is nowhere as big as some people hoped and some people ramped up. Reality is dawning.  “We looked with some incredulity at the number of companies that were drawn into this space and the amount of shelf space that was given to it in supermarkets. There will be some winners, but the numbers will be relatively small because we’ve been through a bubble.”... The challenges in the marketplace in the UK and overseas are reflected in values of the leading specialist vegan food manufacturers, which in some cases have plummeted. Shares in meat-free brand Beyond Meat have crashed, down from more than $230 after it went public on the Nasdaq stock exchange in May 2019 to about $11. The meat-free market in the US is described by experts as “stagnating”."

Meat is crucial for human health, scientists warn - "Meat is crucial for human health, scientists have warned, as they called for an end to the “zealotry” pushing vegetarian and vegan diets.  Dozens of experts were asked to look into the science behind claims that meat eating causes disease and is harmful for the planet in a special issue of Animal Frontiers.  They warned that it is difficult to replace the nutritional content of meat, arguing that poorer communities with low meat intake often suffer from stunting, wasting and anaemia driven by a lack of vital nutrients and protein... researchers argue that unprocessed meat delivers most of the vitamin B12 intake in human diets, plays a major role in supplying retinol, omega-3 fatty acids and minerals such as iron and zinc, as well as important compounds for metabolism, such as taurine and creatine. In one paper published in the issue, experts found no good evidence to support red meat being dangerous below intakes of 75g per day, and argued that the link between red meat and disease vanished when part of a healthy diet, suggesting it was the rest of the diet that was fuelling health problems. Dr Alice Stanton, of the Royal College of Surgeons in Ireland, one of the authors of the review, said: “The peer-reviewed evidence published reaffirms that [the 2019 Global Burden of Disease Risk Factors Report] which claimed that consumption of even tiny amounts of red meat harms health is fatally scientifically flawed.  “In fact, removing fresh meat and dairy from diets would harm human health. Women, children, the elderly and low income would be particularly negatively impacted.”... The new edition includes a declaration signed by nearly 1,000 scientists across the globe arguing that livestock farming was too important to society to “become the victim of zealotry”.  The Dublin Declaration includes signatories from the universities of Cambridge, Edinburgh, Bristol, Belfast, Newcastle, Nottingham, Surrey as well as several scientists from Britain’s world-leading agricultural and farming university Harper Adams. “Livestock-derived foods provide a variety of essential nutrients and other health-promoting compounds, many of which are lacking in diets even among those populations with higher incomes,” the declaration states.  “Well-resourced individuals may be able to achieve adequate diets while heavily restricting meat, dairy and eggs. However, this approach should not be recommended for general populations.”  The researchers warned that those who need to eat animal products included young children, adolescents, pregnant and lactating women, women of reproductive age, older adults and the chronically ill. Dr Wilhelm Windisch, a farming nutrition expert at the Technical University of Munich, said: “Farmed and herded animals maintain a circular flow of materials in agriculture by using and upcycling large amounts of materials humans cannot eat, turning them into high-quality nutrient dense food.  “One-size-fits-all agendas, such as the drastic reductions of livestock numbers could incur environmental and nutritional consequences on a massive scale.”"

For 2 million years, humans ate meat and little else -- study - "The results, which were published in the Yearbook of the American Physical Anthropology Association, have implications not only for how we see the past, but also for our modern diets, Barkai maintained. He cited the fad Paleolithic diet, which assumes prehistoric humans ate vegetables, fruits, nuts, roots, and meat — making those foods the most natural for consumption... “For many people today, the Paleolithic diet is a critical issue, not only with regard to the past, but also concerning the present and future,” Barkai said. “It is hard to convince a devout vegetarian that his/her ancestors were not vegetarians, and people tend to confuse personal beliefs with scientific reality. Our study is both multidisciplinary and interdisciplinary.”  The researchers blended genetics, metabolism, physiology, morphology and archaeology of tool development to resolve the question of whether Stone Age humans were specialized carnivores or generalist omnivores. “So far, attempts to reconstruct the diet of stone-age humans were mostly based on comparisons to 20th-century hunter-gatherer societies,” explained fellow TAU researcher Miki Ben-Dor. “This comparison is futile, however, because two million years ago hunter-gatherer societies could hunt and consume elephants and other large animals – while today’s hunter-gatherers do not have access to such bounty.” The team examined the acidity of our stomachs, which is high even for predators, indicating a meat diet in which the acid would provide protection from harmful bacteria.  They also looked at fat’s structure in human cells: Similar to predators, human fat is stored in large numbers of small fat cells, whereas in omnivores it tends to be the other way around.  They further cited the human genome as evidence. “For example, geneticists have concluded that ‘areas of the human genome were closed off to enable a fat-rich diet, while in chimpanzees, areas of the genome were opened to enable a sugar-rich diet,’” Ben-Dor said.  Further archaeological evidence supports their hypothesis, they argued, including the study of stable isotopes in the bones of prehistoric humans that point to consumption of meat with a high fat content, likely from large animals... The researchers believe humans only began moving toward a diet that is much more plant-based some 85,000 years ago, possibly as a result of a decline in larger animals as a food source."

Vegan family writes letter to neighbours requesting they close their windows when cooking meat - "A vegan family has been called “entitled” after they sent a letter to their neighbours asking them to close their windows when cooking meat.  The neighbourhood dispute began in Perth, Australia, when a Burns Beach resident claimed that the smell of meat wafting from their neighbour’s home was making the plant-based family “sick and upset”."

New York City stores are locking up Spam and other foods amid shoplifting surge - "Cans of Spam, a cooked pork product that retails for $3.99 per 12-ounce tin, appeared to be encased in an antitheft container at a Duane Reade store in Manhattan... The COVID-19 pandemic has also led to a rise in retail crime, due in part to the increase in online shopping. Thieves have become more brazen in stealing from stores because they can sell items online"
Of course, liberals claim that if you see someone stealing food, you didn't

Stop hating on bicyclists and share the road - "Ultimately, hate of bicyclists comes from the same place as racism, sexism, homophobia and transphobia: a desire to cling to the status quo power arrangements that favor some over others...   The answer, of course, is to support protected or separated street infrastructure that will allow people on bicycles to go places safely"
They're getting more and more obnoxious, and then pretending to be persecuted when others push back

Two women arrested after cyclist jumps onto moving car’s bonnet in Katong - "The police have arrested two women – a driver and a cyclist – after an altercation where the latter jumped onto the bonnet of the driver’s car near the i12 Katong shopping mall... A 39-second video on Facebook page Beh Chia Lor – Singapore Road shows the female cyclist obstructing a grey car in the three-lane road.  Other cars can be heard honking as the cyclist, wearing a yellow top and blue helmet, speaks on the phone as she blocks the grey car before hopping onto its bonnet as the vehicle tries to go past her... According to Chinese-language newspaper Lianhe Zaobao, the owner of a nearby massage shop had heard the arguing for more than five minutes amid traffic...   The cyclist initially refused to get off the car and continued screaming, the stallholder said, adding that the woman got off only after some persuasion."
Caught on camera: Cyclist hangs on bonnet of car as it moves off - "  According to a lawyer interviewed by 8world, the actions of both parties appear to violate traffic laws which may constitute criminal offences. Besides the possible offence of reckless driving on the part of the driver, the lawyer added that the cyclist could also be found guilty of contravening laws against public order."
The dash cam video of the altercations between a female cyclist and a female driver at Katong : SingaporeRaw
Cyclists: a menace all over the world

'Bike swerving': A new, dangerous pastime for kids police say must stop - "The accident last Thursday was almost the disaster Little Ferry police have been bracing for — a teenage bicycle rider, intent on emulating the tricks so popular on social media, popped a wheelie and steered toward an oncoming car on Marshall Avenue.  He meant to veer away at the last moment. He failed.  Surveillance video given to the Record and NorthJersey.com by borough police shows the rider, a 15-year-old boy from Ridgefield Park, tumbling to the pavement after colliding with the white Mercedes’ front bumper. He was lucky to escape with only minor injuries.  Still, the recording illuminates the dangers of “swerving,” the internet fad in which kids — mostly male — charge their bikes at oncoming cars and angle away just before impact. They ride in groups, often straddling the road and blocking traffic, with individual riders breaking off to challenge passing vehicles. The kids record the tricks and post them to social media as part of the burgeoning “Bike life” movement... Most of the riders are Black and Latino, younger than 18 and live in poor neighborhoods.  Many have said they view "Bike life" as an alternative to the more dangerous street life. “You can’t ride your bike and deal drugs at the same time,” said Rich Isaacs, a 23-year-old who organized a ride last summer... Walters, of Little Ferry, said an August incident devolved into violence when a group of juveniles riding in the middle of the road allegedly surrounded a motorist’s car after he honked at them to move, according to police reports. The driver got out of the car and a fight ensued... The Ridgewood Police Department also faced backlash this summer from a local civil rights group after a viral recording captured two of its officers wrestling a 15-year-old New York boy to the ground during another rideout.  Police issued the boy four summonses and freed him when his parents arrived. It might be hard for older people to understand why children, most of whom belong to the social-media-centric "Generation Z," would risk their lives to impress nameless internet followers.   But experts said kids who've grown up with their eyes welded to cell phone screens rarely distinguish between online and offline life. And the fleeting fame they attain through a viral bike trick is every bit as concrete as a more lasting achievement in the real world... “Happens all the time in front of the 7-Eleven on Main Street,” one man wrote. “I told them all to get out of the road and they started yelling at me, cussing me out, and following me on my afternoon walk. Glad to hear something’s being done!”  “It happened to me, and it was terrible,” another woman wrote. “You’re so afraid to hit them, but they try to get close and taunt you on purpose.”"
Damn motorists and the racist police on their side!

This is why bike lanes are working - "The Kent Street cycleway moves 34 per cent of the people using that road in the morning peak, but takes up 25 per cent of the road space. The College Street cycleway, which the government proposes to rip up, moves 20 per cent of the people on 20 per cent of the road space"
Bike lanes don't clog up our roads, they keep London moving - "The new protected cycle lanes that opened last year in London can move five times as many people per hour as a main carriageway lane in the most congested parts of our city. At peak times, the new cycling infrastructure moves an average of 46% of people along the route despite occupying only 30% of the equivalent road space. Just two weeks after opening, the east-west and north-south cycle superhighway roads were moving 5% more people per hour than they could without cycle lanes – and that number is increasing as more cyclists are attracted to the routes."
These studies ignore the fact that putting in bike lanes probably worsened traffic during peak hour. Also it assumes that without bike lanes, cyclists will not cycle at all: a convenient assumption when you're lobbying for goodies

What is the best cost-benefit analysis of cycling investments? - "what are the best cost-benefit studies of urban investments in bicycle lanes and other bicycle-friendly policies?  They have to take into account the opportunity cost of the land for bike lanes, the cost of cycling deaths and injuries, and the costs of slower vehicular traffic.  Counting those variables in addition to the rather considerable benefits of cycling is hardly a genius-level move, right?  Funny that, I can’t seem to find such a study!  But I am not an expert.  I am sure there are many such studies, so I am opening comments to all of you, so that I may pull in the appropriate references.  I will then read the best study or studies, and report back.  And if by some freak chance of nature no such studies can be found, what should we infer from that?"
I have never been able to find a proper cost-benefit analysis on bicycle lanes. I even looked at more than half the comments on here. All the CBAs out there myopically look at construction costs (not to mention tons of other methodological issues), which stacks the deck in favour of bike lanes. And other studies are on *cycling*, not bike lanes (one can cycle without a bike lane). The closest I've seen is from Todd Litman of the Victoria Transport Policy Institute, which at least honestly tries to list the holistic costs of bike lanes, but there're no numbers to weigh against the deck of the cyclist lobby
Someone made the point that "The opportunity costs of cycle infrastructure in most cases is wider roads, but for the most part narrower roads cause people to drive more slowly and therefore more safely. This is the hidden reason why Fairfax County (for instance) is so big on bike lanes lately." This only applies to wide roads though Another pointed out that a good way to do it is if "bike lanes are put into the existing breakdown lane"

Bloor bike lanes boost cyclist traffic by 36%, increase drive times, says city - "Drivers who travel westbound on Bloor Street during the evening rush hour have seen just over eight minutes added to their commute. In the morning, the drive is taking approximately four minutes longer for people travelling eastbound."
This is evidence that bike lanes can worsen congestion

Installing Bike Lanes in Busy Cities: The #1 Tip to Prevent Traffic Congestion - "According to a report detailed by FiveThirtyEight, bike lanes do not cause traffic jams if they are constructed in the right locations. Just look at Minneapolis, considered by Bicycling magazine to be the ‘best city for biking in the US’ for several years running. Despite the fact several months of the year are freezing in Minneapolis, the city decided to add 45 miles of bike lanes in 2010 and 2011.  FiveThirtyEight compared congestion levels before and after bike lanes were added. They did so by looking at the Average Annual Daily Traffic (AADT), measured by black pneumatic tubes or sensors placed on roadways to track traffic. Minneapolis maintains records of AADT for the same roads over the years. This allowed researchers to compare roadway congestion before and after bike lanes were added.  You might be thinking—but, wouldn’t fewer traffic lanes automatically increase vehicle congestion? To prevent faulty results, AADT is converted into an estimated number of cars on the road during peak traffic times. This number is then divided by the road’s capacity, giving us what traffic engineers refer to as volume-to-capacity (V/C) ratio.  V/C ratios between 0.5 to 0.75 indicate mild or moderate congestion, while V/C ratios between 0.75 and 0.9 indicate heavy congestion. Heavier congestion levels show roadways are at capacity and motorists have little to no room to switch lanes. We all know what it’s like to be stuck in traffic… it sucks. Adding bike lanes to roads with high V/C ratios will only make the problem worse.  Looking at the results from Minneapolis, it’s clear that taking away a motor lane in exchange for a bike lane increases the estimated V/C ratio in rush-hour traffic. Post-bike lane installation, busier streets show noticeably less room for vehicles to navigate between lanes. Although, these changes are not significant enough to increase congestion or further slowdown traffic... An important take away from Minneapolis is that bike lanes do not lead to increased congestion when installed in the right places. You don’t want to add bike lanes to a street that is already at or near capacity because taking away a lane will lead to some increase in congestion. On the other hand, adding bike lanes to streets that are under capacity can produce favorable results without adding to traffic issues... In 2010, New York’s Department of Transportation added a protected bike lane to a 1-mile stretch of road in Brooklyn, Prospect Park West. One of three vehicle travel lanes was removed to make room for the new protected bike lane...The city had collected plenty of data before adding the bike lane. This data was compared to new data collected after the bike lane was installed. The result? V/C ratios did increase during peak traffic times—morning and afternoon. Yet, none of these changes were significant enough to throw the street over capacity during rush hour. Additionally, it was found that commute times did not change after the bike lane was added. Largely, because Prospect Park West was under traffic capacity prior to the addition of the bike lane."
In the 2 instances here, they were installed on non-busy roads (a comparison with the claims above about bike lanes being more efficient at peak hour in London and Sydney) is instructive)

Study: More Bike Lanes Needed to Reduce Traffic Congestion
The bike lobby claims is that bike lanes *reduce* congestion, which is a very strong claim. This study is touted as claiming that bike lanes reduce congestion, but it is just based on modelling (which we have learnt from covid is often dodgy). Basically the result depends on people switching modes of transport - which we know isn't guaranteed

Safety and Bike Lanes-- Study Finds Inverse Relationship - "Do protected bike lanes make cyclists safer? According to a study conducted by the University of Nebraska, they do not. According to its thesis, protected bike lanes lead to an increase in serious cycling accidents. The reason is because bike lanes do not eliminate conflict at intersections, where the most serious accidents occur, and in fact can cause cyclists to feel a false sense of security and ride faster through the intersection. These effects are amplified on busy streets with many intersections and curb cuts... In sum, the study finds that riding in a bike lane doubles the likelihood of a cycling accident and riding in a cycle track, like the one proposed for Connecticut Ave, increases the likelihood 400%, or 5x, above that."
Some protected bike lanes leave cyclists vulnerable to injury - "Bike lanes separated from the roadway by physical barriers make cyclists feel safer and encourage more people to ride. But a new IIHS study shows that protected bike lanes vary in terms of injury risk. Factors such as the number of driveways or alleys intersecting the lanes and whether the lanes are one- or two-direction affect the likelihood of a crash or fall...   For the new study, IIHS collaborated with George Washington University, Oregon Health and Science University and New York University... Compared with a major road with no bike infrastructure, the risk of a crash or fall was much lower on two-way protected bike lanes on bridges or raised from the roadway — for example, within greenways. In contrast, the risk of a crash or fall on a two-way protected bike lane at street level was much higher than that of a major road.  One-way protected bike lanes differed little from major roads in terms of injury risk."
Bike Lanes Don’t Make Cycling Safe - "Forester estimated that accidents on bike lanes are 2.6 times higher than on roadways, because bike paths are more dangerous. He forecast more car-bike collisions, because it is difficult to make intersections between cycle lanes and roads as safe as normal roads. Almost 90 percent of urban accidents were caused by crossing or turning—either by the cyclist failing to obey the rules of the road or the motorist turning into the cyclist...   Writing about California plans for bike lanes, Forester stated, “Nobody with traffic-engineering training could believe that [bikeway] designs that so contradicted normal traffic-engineering knowledge would produce safe traffic movements.... If these designs had been proposed for some class of motorized traffic—say, trucks or motorcycles—the designers would have been considered crazy.”  Jan Heine, editor-in-chief of Bicycle Quarterly, wrote, “Any barrier that separates the cyclist visually from other traffic effectively hides the cyclist. This is counterproductive to safety. Moving cyclists out of the roadway altogether, on separate bike paths, is even more dangerous, because drivers don’t look for (or cannot see) cyclists off to the side.” He continued, “On streets with frequent intersections, separate paths only make cycling less safe. I wish those who advocate for them would look at the data and stop asking for facilities that will cause more accidents.”...   In many urban settings the safest place for a bike is in the middle of a car lane, with bike lights and a helmet lamp for the rider, cycling behind vehicles rather than beside them. Naturally, cyclists have no place on urban or interstate highways. Cyclists should operate with the same rules as motor vehicles, stopping at STOP signs and traffic lights, and signaling when they turn...   Despite their dangers, bike lanes are proliferating...   Cities are spending millions of dollars on bike lanes. That money could be better used for other purposes, such as app-based intelligent transportation systems that would connect drivers, pedestrians, and cyclists, and alert them to potential crashes.  Bike lanes give cyclists and drivers a false sense of security, leading to increased accidents. Cyclists should be aware that the term Protected Bike Lane is an oxymoron, a contradiction in terms. It’s time to change."
The bike lobby gets it backwards - we can encourage cycling without lobbying for bike lanes, and it may even be safer for them. They just want bike lanes to feel special
Of course, the bike lobby will now demand bike lanes that are totally independent from traffic

Addendum: The relationship between separated bicycle lanes and bicycle crashes in Denver, Colorado. - "previous research has proven that separated bicycle lanes cause more crashes... a separated bike lane is estimated to increase the average number of crashes by 117% compared to a shared road. The second result showed that a cycle track facility is estimated to increase the average number of crashes 401% compared to a bike lane facility"
This is the University of Nebraska study

Portland needs more political pressure following large drop in cycling numbers - "A new city of Portland, Oregon report indicates a large drop in cycling numbers in 2022, a trend that should be of great concern to many.  For as long as bicycle-friendly cities have been ranked in the United States, the city of Portland, Oregon has been near the top. In a 2021 Forbes ranking, Rose City was a solid number two tucked lovingly behind San Francisco. And, although it might still rank just as highly, which is the point of all the infrastructure and outreach, its numbers are going in the wrong direction to levels that haven’t been seen since 2006  According to the report: “Overall, Portland bicycle traffic in 2022 dropped more than a third compared to 2019, to levels not seen since approximately 2005-2006 (Table 1). This is based on a comparison of people counted at the 184 locations that were counted in both 2022 and 2019.”...   The troubling trend has PBOT searching for answers... One thing that hasn’t changed in the past 20 or 30 years ago is the need to exert political pressure on decision-makers. And that pressure, according to Johnson, should be directed away from cute neighborhood green routes and positioned directly at taking space away from cars and giving it to more vulnerable road users.
Weird. I thought if you build bike lanes and infrastructure, they will cycle more. No wonder the cyclist lobby ignores facts and just puts political pressure in lobbying for benefits

New eco-friendly routes get ONE biker for every 400 motorists on road - "New eco-friendly cycle lanes are seeing one biker for every 400 vehicles, spelling embarrassment for the Government's £250million 'green transport revolution'.   Bikes make up just 1.75 per cent of total traffic on roads which lost a carriageway to a cycle-friendly route, new research has shown.   Of the 34,726 vehicles counted on eight adapted roads in Bradford, Brighton, Bristol, Gloucester, Hull, Birmingham, Liverpool and Southampton, just 608 bikes were seen. The research suggests that cycle lanes may be doing more harm than good by increasing congestion levels and making pollution worse.  The Department for Transport has promised to spend £2billion on cycle lanes in the next five years... But critics say the measures have blocked emergency response vehicles and brought gridlock to towns and cities across the country... New research conducted by The Sunday Telegraph counted the amount of bikes on these newly-introduced lanes in eight cities - compared to the number of motor vehicles.  The survey was conducted at the morning and evening rush hours - for a total of five hours - and there were no adverse weather conditions that may have put cyclists off.   In Bradford - where an entire lane of a three-lane road was lost to a bike route - a massive 12,306 motor vehicles were counted - compared to just 31 bikes.  Traffic jams of up to 30 minutes were also reported at these peak times - with 30-car queues seen.  In Harrow in London, one cycle lane has seen just 98 cyclists per day in October. Others in the same borough saw 77 and 61 cyclists every 24 hours throughout the same month... Transport Secretary Grant Shapps this week admitted that cycle lanes brought in during the pandemic are blocking emergency vehicles and causing chaos for motorists... An academic study also concluded that if current Government spending on schemes to encourage more people to get on bikes continues for the next ten years, there would be an increase of no more than one per cent in the number of people using a bike.  The report found that for every £4,915 spent in cycle lanes in London, there is likely to be an increase of one 'commuter cyclist'.  The cost for inner London boroughs would come to £6,153 for every extra bike user, while the amount for outlying areas would be £4,174, the report in the respected Economics And Human Biology journal said."
This disappeared from The Telegraph, so I took a while to find it
This is the only full quantification I've been able to find which lets us see how popular cycling lanes are compared to driving. This needs to figure in to cost-benefit analyses about bike lanes
But of course, the cope is that you need more of them for them to be used. The problem is that if you build a lot of them and they're still not used, there will be more excuses and you'll be even more into the red

Exclusive: Cyclists shun roads designed to be bike friendly in £250m scheme - "The locations were chosen because there was no heavy rain or winds or freezing conditions which could have deterred cyclists from taking to the roads"

Does new bicycle infrastructure result in new or rerouted bicyclists? A longitudinal GPS study in Oslo - "Well-connected bicycle infrastructure networks are widely accepted to be an important factor for increasing the level of bicycling in urban environments where motorised and active transport modes must co-exist. However, little is known about the extent to which new bicycle infrastructure results in changes of route amongst existing bicyclists as opposed to changes in the mode of transport. This article addresses the route-mode research gap through a panel study in which participant travel behaviour (n = 113) is recorded with a smartphone Global Positioning System (GPS) application. The study observes short-term changes to route and mode choice of participants before and after the establishment of a contraflow bicycle lane in Oslo, Norway. Video and radar-based traffic counting are used as supplementary methods to affirm bicycle volume changes in the broader population.  The bicycle lane intervention resulted in a shift in the preferred route in the neighbourhood. The intervention street saw increased numbers of bicycle trips taken whilst the two nearest parallel routes in the same neighbourhood witnessed a decrease. For bicycle trips taken on the intervention street, the mean deviation from the shortest path increased (from 171 to 221 m, p < .05). Bicycle counts based on video observations also support the route shift finding. Bicycle modal share did not significantly increase when comparing the panel sub-group exposed to the intervention (n = 39) with a quasi-control group (n = 47) who were not exposed but had made at least one trip in the near vicinity of the intervention in both time periods.  This natural experiment study provides evidence to suggest that route substitution from nearby streets and paths can explain more of the change in bicycling levels than modal shifts to bicycling in the short term following the opening of the bike lane."
Bike lanes don't actually make more people cycle - they just shift routes so it looks like they're very successful, because fewer cyclists use other routes. Ironically, this is a mirror of the myth of induced demand that the bike lobby (who overlap highly with the anti-car lobby) keeps trying to push. Projection is at work again!

13 important points in the campus & K-12 ‘critical race theory’ debate

13 important points in the campus & K-12 ‘critical race theory’ debate 

"5. Most of the divisive concepts bills aimed just at K-12 are probably constitutional, given that legislatures have a lot of power to decide curriculum. That doesn’t mean they are above criticism...

6. Banning specific curricular materials like The 1619 Project in public K-12 schools, whether or not you agree with doing so, is within the power of the government in many states...

7. Misleading reporting has muddied the waters.  

People’s opposition to the bills has led them to seeing ghosts that aren’t there and to exaggerate the threats of even problematic bills.

FIRE opposed Florida SB 264 (which, while not explicitly an divisive concepts bill, has been swept up in the conversation) on the grounds that its extremely broad granting of rights to surreptitiously record professors would create a massive chilling effect in the era of “gotcha” videos. I was surprised to see that when the bill went viral, it wasn’t for that provision, but for something that wasn’t in the bill at all: an alleged mandatory political registry of students and professors...

8. Proponents and critics of the divisive concepts bills are largely talking past each other on the issue. 

Proponents of the bills see them as banning sessions where preteens are made to apologize for their race privilege, or where biracial children have been told that one parent probably physically abused the other due to their oppressor status. They look at sections in the bills that ban teaching mandatory guilt, genetic essentialism, and racial superiority and wonder — and assume — that opponents of the bills must be proponents of teaching those concepts.

On the other hand, critics of these bills see bans on the 1619 Project, and vague clauses that arguably reach any discussion of slavery, and interpret them as a highly politicized mandate to teach a certain view of history intended to soften the horrors of slavery and minimize historical racism. They see those who support such laws as wanting children to learn a jingoistic and propagandized version of history. While some on each side are undoubtedly acting in bad faith, the majority are motivated by sincere and valid concerns, and both proponents and opponents are motivated to ignore the valid points of their opposition. 

Each side’s distorted impression of the goals of the other side, and of what’s actually in the bills, has been an unfortunate side effect of the media coverage. Those listening to left-leaning outlets and pundits could be forgiven for thinking that the bills outright ban discussion of slavery. Those listening to right-leaning outlets and pundits could be forgiven for having no idea of the breadth and vagueness of a lot of the clauses in these bills, and the chilling effect they may create with teachers making good faith attempts to comply. The media coverage of these bills has been largely lacking in deep-dives into the actual text of the bills, instead relying on broad characterizations of their intent and the motivations behind those introducing them...

Most of what these bills prohibit are speech or patterns of behavior by teachers that even many of the critics of these bills would find problematic, and arguably would already run afoul of laws prohibiting racial discrimination and harassment. For example, North Carolina’s HB 324, mentioned above, prohibits public K-12 schools from “promoting” the following concepts:

(1) One race or sex is inherently superior to another race or sex.

(2) An individual, solely by virtue of his or her race or sex, is inherently racist, sexist, or oppressive, whether consciously or unconsciously.

(3) An individual should be discriminated against or receive adverse treatment solely or partly because of his or her race or sex.

(4) An individual’s moral character is necessarily determined by his or her race or sex.

(5) An individual, solely by virtue of his or her race or sex, bears responsibility for actions committed in the past by other members of the same race or sex.

(6) Any individual, solely by virtue of his or her race or sex, should feel discomfort, guilt, anguish, or any other form of psychological distress [...]

These bills are a reaction to legitimately concerning documented cases of K-12 students being singled out due to their race and made to participate in exercises that are, arguably, racially discriminatory. I was disturbed to read some of the examples in my co-author — and FIRE colleague — Bonnie Snyder’s forthcoming book Undoctrinate: How Politicized Classrooms Harm Kids and Ruin Our Schools—And What We Can Do About It, such as:

1. A biracial high school student in Las Vegas was allegedly singled out in class for his appearance and called derogatory names by his teacher. In a lawsuit, the student’s family alleges he was labelled an oppressor, told denying that status was “internalized privilege,” and told he needed to “unlearn” the Judeo-Christian principles imparted by his mother. When he refused to complete certain “identity confession” assignments, the lawsuit claims, the school gave him a failing grade. He has had to attend counseling. 
2. Third grade students in California were forced to analyze their racial and other “identities,” rank themselves according to their supposed “power and privilege,” and were informed that those in the “dominant” culture categories created and continue to maintain this culture to uphold power.
3. Parents in North Carolina allege that middle school students were forced to stand up in class and apologize to other students for their “privilege.” 
4. Buffalo public schools teach students that all white people perpetuate systemic racism and are guilty of implicit racial bias. 
5. Elementary children at the Fieldston School in Manhattan were sorted by race for mandatory classroom exercises.  
6. A head teacher in Manhattan was caught on tape acknowledging that the curriculum at his school teaches white students that they’re inherently “evil” and saying, “we’re demonizing white people for being born.”...

9. Legislation is not the only way to address the aforementioned concerns...

Much of the behavior proscribed in the divisive concepts bills refers to patterns of discriminatory behavior that would probably already be illegal under federal anti-discriminations laws like Title VI, which bars discrimination on the basis of race, color, or national origin in educational programs that receive federal funding...

10. Critical race theory isn’t a perfect term for the problematic behavior these bills are trying to address...

Like it or not, the acronym “CRT” as commonly used in 2021 doesn’t refer to the foundational texts and authors in the academic movement. It’s a shorthand for certain ideas that have filtered (in reductive forms or not) from CRT thinkers into the mainstream, including in bestselling books like “White Fragility” and “How to Be an Antiracist”...

many if not most of the bills ban teaching of these concepts, rather than critical race theory itself. Arguing that the bills are bad purely based on the semantics that they are not referring to “true” CRT is little more than deflection. Arguing that the term “CRT” as applied to the bills is a misnomer may be correct, but it won’t persuade anyone that the bills, or the concerns underlying them, should be abandoned. (Additionally, if the bills were banning something that isn’t actually taught in K-12, why bother with any pushback?)...

11. The California ethnic studies curriculum helps demonstrate what the proponents of these bills are afraid of.

After being vetoed last year for its casual anti-Semitism (along with other issues, such as ignoring a number of other ethnicities), California approved its model “ethnic studies” curriculum for K-12 in March. It looks exactly like what you’d expect it to look like after four revisions attempting to make it just barely not overtly anti-Semitic enough to pass. In its first iteration, the Los Angeles Times called it an “exercise in groupthink,” noting that it largely adopted radical talking points, while Bret Stephens of The New York Times described it as “tendentiously racialized,” asserting that it “magnifies differences” and “encourages tribal loyalties.” Most notoriously, the existence of Jews was omitted from the curriculum, a curious decision for a course that purports to address bigotry but manages not to mention the group most targeted by hate crimes, per capita...

12. What is the deeper cause of this battle? A breakdown in societal trust and trust in expertise, particularly along partisan lines."

Links - 11th July 2023 (1)

Wanted bald man caught - because he queued for a haircut - "Police caught a “prolific” shoplifter who had tried to evade arrest by hiding in a barbers - despite being bald.  Officers grew suspicious after spotting the hairless 46-year-old queueing for a trim.  He was then escorted off the premises.  The criminal, who has not been named, later admitted to stealing 16 bottles of hair products from Boots in Beeston, Nottinghamshire"

Physics Needs Philosophy / Philosophy Needs Physics - Scientific American Blog Network - "Ancient astronomy—that is, everything we know about the Earth being round, its size, the size of the moon and the sun, the distances to the moon and the sun, the motion of the planets in the sky and the basis from which modern astronomy and modern physics have emerged—is a direct descendent of philosophy. The questions that motivated these developments were posed in the Academy and the Lyceum, motivated by theoretical, rather than practical concerns. Centuries later, Galileo and Newton took great steps ahead but they relied heavily on what had come before... Newton was explicit about his debt to ancient philosophy, Democritus in particular, for ideas that arose originally from philosophical motivations, such as the notions of empty space, atomism and natural rectilinear motion. His crucial discussion about the nature of space and time built upon his discussions with (and against) Descartes.  In the 20th century, both major advances in physics were strongly influenced by philosophy. Quantum mechanics springs from Heisenberg’s intuition, grounded in the strongly positivist philosophical atmosphere in which he found himself: one gets knowledge by restricting oneself to what is observable. The abstract of Heisenberg’s 1925 milestone paper on quantum theory is explicit about this: “The aim of this work is to set the basis for a theory of quantum mechanics based exclusively on relations between quantities that are in principle observable.” The same distinctly philosophical attitude nourished Einstein’s discovery of special relativity: by restricting to what is observable, we recognize that the notion of simultaneity is misleading. Einstein recognized very explicitly his debt to the philosophical writings of Mach and Poincaré. The philosophical influences on the conception of general relativity were even stronger. Once again, he was explicit in recognizing his debt to the philosophical arguments in Leibniz, Berkeley and Mach. Einstein claimed that even Schopenhauer had had a pervasive influence on him. Schopenhauer’s ideas on time and representation are perhaps not so hard to recognize in Einstein’s ideas leading to general relativity... philosophy provides methods leading to novel perspectives and critical thinking. Philosophers have tools and skills that physics needs, but do not belong to the physicists training: conceptual analysis, attention to ambiguity, accuracy of expression, the ability to detect gaps in standard arguments, to devise radically new perspectives, to spot conceptual weak points, and to seek out alternative conceptual explanations. Nobody puts this better than Einstein himself: “A knowledge of the historic and philosophical background gives that kind of independence from prejudices of his generation from which most scientists are suffering. This independence created by philosophical insight is—in my opinion—the mark of distinction between a mere artisan or specialist and a real seeker after truth.” It is sometimes said that scientists do not do anything unless they first get permission from philosophy. If we read what the greatest scientists had to say about the usefulness of philosophy, physicists like Heisenberg, Schrödinger, Bohr and Einstein, we find opposite opinions to those of Hawking and Weinberg. Here is a second argument due to Aristotle: Those who deny the utility of philosophy, are doing philosophy... when Weinberg and Hawking state that philosophy is useless, they are actually stating their adhesion to a particular philosophy of science.  In principle, there's nothing wrong with that; but the problem is that it is not a very good philosophy of science... One reason for the relative sterility of theoretical physics over the last few decades may well be precisely that the wrong philosophy of science is held dear today by many physicists... In the post-Heideggerian atmosphere that dominates some philosophy departments, ignorance of science is something to exhibit with pride"

Meme - "Avatar is a movie about a guy who betrays his entire planet just so he can clap some alien cheeks"

S’porean teacher refuses to move out of Bukit Timah rented landed house for 1.5 years, judge orders him to pay double rent - "The landlord, Amirul Akbar bin Abdul Kadir, was a Turkish Airways pilot during the trial.  He sued Lye Kok Leong, an enrichment teacher, to recover his property and the rental and penalties owed to him."

NTU student who climbed into 15-year-old girl's bedroom to have sex with her gets jail - "A student from Nanyang Technological University (NTU) repeatedly had consensual sex with a girl nine years his junior, climbing up water pipes to enter the teenager's bedroom... the accused got to know the victim in 2014, as they were in the same cell group in church. They became friends and began dating in October 2017, when the victim was 15.  They first had consensual sex on Oct 26, 2017, when the victim went over to the accused's room after his roommate had left.  They had sex a few more times after this, but broke up in December 2017 after the girl's parents found out about the relationship. However, they remained in contact, with the accused giving the teenager a phone to communicate with him behind her parents' back.  They also continued to have sex even though they had broken up, said Deputy Public Prosecutor Grace Teo... They had consensual sex, said the prosecutor. The victim then fellated the accused, and he left through the window.  Court documents did not reveal how the offences were uncovered, only that the victim's father called the police on Jan 24, 2018, reporting that his daughter had had sex with a student from NTU on several occasions.  The prosecution asked for at least 20 months' jail. She said that the accused had exposed the victim, who was a virgin, to the risk of pregnancy and sexually transmitted diseases... Mr Sudheesan said his client and the victim were "star-crossed lovers".   He said the unfortunate episode started after the victim first kissed the accused, shocking him. They started talking and realised that they had feelings for each other, said Mr Sudheesan.  They then discussed the matter and bought condoms together."

Are Billionaires Hotter? Economists Study Whether The Ultra-Rich Are More Attractive. - "Billionaires with larger net worths didn’t earn significantly higher attractiveness scores than less well-heeled members of the three-comma club, according to the paper, which was co-written by Barnard College distinguished scholar Daniel Hamermesh and economist and Australian member of parliament Andrew Leigh. However, ultra-rich people may be better-looking than their less wealthy peers: The researchers matched the billionaires to similarly aged college professors whose looks were appraised by six undergraduates in a 2003 study, and billionaires earned a slightly higher rating on average, a result the study’s authors called a “loose comparison.”... Hamermesh has spent decades researching how beauty impacts economic fortunes, a surprisingly robust corner of study sometimes known as “pulchronomics.” Attractive people tend to earn more money, secure more favorable loans and report higher levels of life satisfaction than less good-looking peers, and some research suggests beauty can help people get ahead in politics, business, sports and academia, Hamermesh says. However, this “beauty premium” doesn’t appear to boost billionaires’ fortunes: “This group is so extreme that within it, nothing matters to raise you from a $2-billionaire to a $50-billionaire”... Yes, beauty is subjective, and the NBER study is based on just 16 college students’ assessments. Still, Hamermesh believes these panelists’ answers are reliable because they tend to align with each other in most cases. In other words, Hamermesh thinks beauty is in the eye of the beholder, but “we tend to behold it very similarly.”"

Comparing and Contrasting the Visual Styles of the Batman Movies

Robert Pattinson’s gritty iteration of Batman highlights just how bad the Marvel movies are - "Not only do the movies have grit, the storylines are fully formed and the characters are complex. Rather than the half-baked, open-ended tripe of Marvel movies, which always feel like filler – a means to get to the next stage of the story, instead of just getting to the point there and then – the Batman films are all solid movies in their own right. They all tie in nicely with each other, but each individual instalment is considered and masterfully executed... Rather than being an all-singing, all-dancing illusion, he is flawed and enigmatic, and viewers have no choice but to be invested in his character.

Too many minions spoil the plot - "If you’re thinking of creating a massive conspiracy, you may be better scaling back your plans, according to an Oxford University researcher.  While we can all keep a secret, a study by Dr David Robert Grimes suggests that large groups of people sharing in a conspiracy will very quickly give themselves away... Dr Grimes initially created an equation to express the probability of a conspiracy being either deliberately uncovered by a whistle-blower or inadvertently revealed by a bungler. This factors in the number of conspirators, the length of time, and even the effects of conspirators dying, whether of old age or more nefarious means, for those conspiracies that do not require active maintenance.  However, the equation required a realistic estimation of the chances of any one individual revealing a conspiracy. Three genuine conspiracies were used to provide this – including the NSA Prism project revealed by Edward Snowden... Dr Grimes calculated that hoax moon landings would have been revealed in 3 years 8 months, a climate change fraud in 3 years 9 months, a vaccination conspiracy in 3 years 2 months, and a suppressed Cancer cure in 3 years 3 months. In simple terms, any one of the four conspiracies would have been exposed long before now. He then looked at the maximum number of people who could take part in an intrigue in order to maintain it. For a plot to last five years, the maximum was 2521 people. To keep a scheme operating undetected for more than a decade, fewer than 1000 people can be involved. A century-long deception should ideally include fewer than 125 collaborators. Even a straightforward cover-up of a single event, requiring no more complex machinations than everyone keeping their mouth shut, is likely to be blown if more than 650 people are accomplices."

America's only metric road - "Only three nations do not use the metric system today: Myanmar, Liberia and the United States. But calling America a nonmetric nation is somewhat of a misnomer. The United States has given more than an inch even though it might not have gone the whole nine yards.  Consider that Coke bottles are sold in liters. So is wine. Medicine, in milligrams. Food nutrition labels are metric. And what about a 100-meter sprint or a 5K race?...   In 1975, Congress passed the Metric Conversion Act, which declared metric as the preferred system of the United States, and the U.S. Metric Board was created to implement the conversion.  America began testing road signs in kilometers under President Jimmy Carter, who supported efforts to go metric. Interstate 19, which connects Tucson, Arizona, to Mexico, was one of them and today remains the only highway in America with distances posted solely in kilometers... International business interests may once again provide rationale for going metric. Hawaii and Oregon have recently introduced metric legislation, a reflection perhaps of those states' relationships with Pacific trade partners, tourism and efforts to build a high-tech workforce, says Elizabeth Gentry, metric coordinator for the federal National Institute of Standards and Technology.  "Major opportunities for metrication have occurred when emerging technologies or new products enter the U.S. marketplace, developed from the bottom up using metric measurement practices," Gentry says...   Gentry says metric adoption is not a one-time event in America, but rather a process that is happening over time.  "Consumers are often unaware of the level of metric use because gradual changes have taken place around them over time," she says.  Marciano ends his book on the metric system with this thought: Think of America as preserving important ways of thinking that human beings used for centuries.  "If we get rid of our measures, we will never bring them back. To be for a metric America is to be for a global monoculture.""

The battle of the standards: why the US and UK can’t stop fighting the metric system - "What made this signpost noteworthy was that it had come to the attention of a vigilante group known as Active Resistance to Metrication, or ARM. Their motivation? To stop the adoption of metric units in the UK and preserve the country’s traditional imperial measures. Their method? Waging a guerrilla war against metric road signs and signposts: unscrewing them in the dead of night, stowing them in hedgerows, or amending them using paints and stickers... The slow march of the metric system might have continued unabated if it hadn’t been for a bunch of bananas. In the year 2000, a market-stall owner in Sunderland named Steve Thoburn sold the fruit in question to an undercover trading standards officer, pricing them using pounds and ounces (25p for a pound) and so contravening an EU directive that all loose goods should be sold using metric. Thoburn’s scales were confiscated, and along with four others accused of similar crimes, he was convicted in 2001 of breaking the law. The case raised the question of weights and measures to national prominence, and the traders were dubbed the “Metric Martyrs” by the press... The judge overseeing the appeal described the fruit at the heart of the case as “the most famous bunch of bananas in English legal history.”... When the UK voted in 2016 to leave the European Union, one BBC reporter identified this dispute over weights and measures as a watershed moment for Brexit: an event that “helped turn public opinion against EU membership, giving critics something tangible to point to that affected people’s everyday lives and for which Brussels appeared responsible.” The grievance remained, even though the European Union relented on the issue. In 2007, in fact, the EU told the UK it could keep using imperial measures wherever it liked. As Günter Verheugen, EU industry commissioner, said at the time: “I want to bring to an end a bitter, bitter battle that has lasted for decades and which in my view is completely pointless.” Today, the UK is almost entirely metric but retains dual units on some food packaging and imperial measures in areas of life too culturally embedded to suffer change. There are still miles, yards, and feet on road signs; most people still measure their height in feet and inches, and newborn babies’ weights are announced in pounds and ounces (even if they’re recorded in metric). Polls show no one wants to give up pints in the pub or imperial road signs, and earlier this year, in a cynical but well-calculated bit of political theater, the then-embattled prime minister, Boris Johnson, launched a consultation on the prospect of a greater return for imperial units in the UK... the US is definitely much more metric than it first appears. After all, the federal government has relied on metric units to define feet, pounds, and ounces since 1893, judging metric standards to be the product of an unimpeachably rigorous scientific process. Many commercial products in the US list measurements in both metric and customary units, the better to appeal to international markets; numerous industries are metric, like auto making and pharmaceuticals; and the US military is mostly metric, to better work alongside international forces.

Cow tosses terrified holidaymaker into air and stamps on him - "A farmer has been fined after one of his cows tossed a terrified holidaymaker into the air and stamped on him as he tried to crawl away... A Health and Safety Executive (HSE) investigation established that cattle with young calves were being kept in a field with a public right of way across it.   Cattle with young calves are known to be protective and unpredictable and can pose a risk to walkers, especially to those with dogs. Farmers should not put cattle with young calves in fields with a public right of way."

Pensioner urinating on a train track is killed by a flying cow that was hit by a carriage - "A pensioner was killed by a flying cow after the animal was hit by an express train and flung 100ft through the air in India. Shivdayal Sharma, 82, was urinating on a train track in the indian region of Alwar when the animal struck him, killing him instantly."

Moscow nanny who decapitated girl, 4, 'to be freed after just five years in psychiatric ward' - "A nanny who decapitated a four-year-old girl then carried her head through the streets shouting 'Allahu Akbar' will be free after just five years in a psychiatric ward, reports claim.  Gyulchehra Bobokulova, 43, has been 'cured' of the 'chronic psychiatric disorder' that led her to kill Anastasia Meshcheryakov and parade her head in Moscow, Russian doctors claim.  Horrifying footage shows burka-clad Bobokulova clutching the severed head of Anastasia - known as Nastya - and shouting 'I am a terrorist' outside Oktyabrskoye Pol metro station in Moscow... Bobokulova claimed she conducted the brutal killing to get revenge on Vladimir Putin for bombings in Syria... The court ruled that Bobokulova suffered from paroxysmal paranoid schizophrenia but the mother said she was 'sane' and 'cheerful' before she was influenced by extremist ideologies on the web."

The Paintings of Geometric Cows in the 19th Century UK - "The early 19th-century livestock art of the UK portrayed corpulent paintings of cows, sheep, and pigs. The commercial paintings and prints often came with information like the animals' size measurements and the farm owner breeding techniques.  According to animal studies professor Ron Broglio, the size of the animals was exaggerated in the paintings to show the idealized animal shape. The cows were portrayed in a rectangular shape, the pigs in football shape, and sheep as oblong."

'Cow Hug Day': How India's plan to rebrand Valentine's backfired - "The declaration of February 14 as “Cow Hug Day,” had come in a statement Monday from the Animal Welfare Board of India, which called cows the “backbone of Indian culture and rural economy.”  The cow is “the giver of all, providing riches to humanity” due to its “nourishing nature,” said the agency, a statutory body that advises India’s Ministry of Fisheries, Animal Husbandry and Dairying.  It said the push to hug cows was part of an effort to promote “Vedic” or sacred Hindu traditions, which it claimed have been eroded by Western influence...  the idea appears to have been dropped.  For days, media outlets have been mocking the government’s plan, publishing satirical cartoons showing cows running away from amorous men, while internet users have delighted in posting videos of violent encounters between beast and man... An agency for the protection of cows, known as the Rashtriya Kamdhenu Aayog (RKA), was set up in 2019 by the Ministry of Fisheries, Animal Husbandry and Dairying.  Two years later, the RKA was forced to indefinitely postpone a national “cow science” exam after the curriculum prompted widespread criticism over its unscientific claims about the animal. Among several unproven claims, the 54-page exam study guide stated that large-scale abattoir activity leads to major earthquakes, suggesting that pain emitted by mass slaughter could generate enough stress to trigger a seismic reaction.  Without providing evidence, it also stated that native (Indian) cows produce the best quality of milk, compared to “exotic cows.”...  During Modi’s 2014 election campaign, he promised to end a “pink revolution” – a phrase he used to describe the slaughter of cattle.  Other BJP lawmakers have taken it one step further.  “I had promised that I will break the hands and legs of those who do not consider cows their mother and kill them,” said Vikram Saini, a legislator for the state of Uttar Pradesh, at an event in March 2017."

Meme - "Greatest personal injury case I've ever heard: Chris Goodnow, an estimated Valley attorney, has picked up a client who is suing a sex toy company. Said client purchased a butt plug that was advertised as "100% silicone". Client wears butt plug to MRI appointment. Much to client's dismay, butt plug in fact has a metallic core. Butt plug is accelerated at the speed of sound ip into client's chest cavity. Described in memo as an "anal rail gun". Client survived with major injuries."

Meme - "Japanese snake girl drawing in 1773
Japanese snake girl drawing in 2023"

Kekma.net - Screamer Wiki - "clicking ENTER forces the web browser into fullscreen, play two extremely loud sound effects of World's Loudest Orgasm, changes your cursor into a picture of a mutilated penis in the shape of a swastika, and plays a video of a man squatting in a bathtub full of blood, forcing a large, bloodstained industrial screw down his urethra in the middle of the page. The page background also changes to two brightly flashing images: a man whose face was smashed by a bear, and a surgical image of a man who held a firecracker for too long.  Prior to March 13, 2020, the video at the center of the site was a medical recording of pork tapeworm cysts being pressed from a human liver, and the background images went through various iterations. The most infamous pair was a photoshop of interracial porn made to look like a man having sex with an exploded corpse, and a supposed movie prop of a zombie baby with a penis photoshopped over the top of it. This image was removed when the creator began having concerns that the source was a mislabeled medical image, rather than a dummy. It was replaced by a Chinese dog skinning, and various other photoshops.  By October 2020, the site had changed to its final phase, briefly including the original liver cyst video by mistake."
Shock sites are so 2000s

Free unlimited in-flight WiFi across all cabin classes on SIA flights from Jul. 1, 2023 - "The enhanced WiFi offering will be available virtually across the entire aircraft fleet and almost the entire global SIA route network. "

Amazon.com: Live, Laugh, Lobotomy T-Shirt : Clothing, Shoes & Jewelry

Journalist plugs in unknown USB drive mailed to him—it exploded in his face - "five Ecuadorian journalists have received USB drives in the mail from Quinsaloma. Each of the USB sticks was meant to explode when activated.  Upon receiving the drive, Lenin Artieda of the Ecuavisa TV station in Guayaquil inserted it into his computer, at which point it exploded. According to a police official who spoke with AFP, the journalist suffered mild hand and face injuries, and no one else was harmed.  According to police official Xavier Chango, the flash drive that went off had a 5-volt explosive charge and is thought to have used RDX. Also known as T4, according to the Environmental Protection Agency (PDF), militaries, including the US's, use RDX, which "can be used alone as a base charge for detonators or mixed with other explosives, such as TNT." Chango said it comes in capsules measuring about 1 cm, but only half of it was activated in the drive that Artieda plugged in, which likely saved him some harm"

Texas teacher fired for turning middle school classroom into 'fight ring' - "A substitute teacher in Texas is under investigation after she allegedly turned her classroom into a cage match and encouraged students as young as 12 to fight each other.  Natally Garcia, 24, was immediately fired after the incident at Kimbrough Middle School in Mesquite... Shocking footage from inside the classroom shows desks pushed into a circle to create a “fight ring” while 12- and 13-year-old students duke it out, leaving some battered and bloody... Garcia outlined rules for the children to follow and told one to keep watch at the door while the fights occurred.  In the video, Garcia can be heard telling her class that she “does not want this on record” and threatening to confiscate cellphones if students had them out.  The clip shows at least four students fighting each and a timer can be heard going off at different points during the melees, Garcia shouting “30 seconds” before one fight began."
This is the best article I could find on this, with details and a photo

Sri Lankan wins lawsuit against NHS as midwives fail to explain why she needed to feed her son due to language barrier - "A Sri Lankan refugee who could not speak English has won a legal battle against the NHS after her child was brain damaged after hospital staff did not explain the importance of feeding a newborn.  Nilujan Rajatheepan was in good condition when he was delivered by caesarean section at King George Hospital in Goodmayes, Essex in July 2009.    His parents are Tamil refugees from Sri Lanka and his mother, Sinthiya, was 21 when Nilujan was born and spoke only very few words of English.    When the community midwife visited the family at home after the birth, Nilujan was pale and lethargic, having not been fed for more than 15 hours.    His hypoglycemic state resulted in catastrophic brain injuries. Nilujan, now eight, has cerebral palsy with severely impaired physical and cognitive function.    On Friday in London, Judge McKenna ruled that Barking, Havering and Redbridge NHS Foundation Trust was liable.  He ruled midwives failed to hire an interpreter to tell her to feed her baby and the eight-year-old is now in line for multi-million-pound NHS compensation because midwives were negligent in failing to tackle the language barrier...   She was anxious that Nilujan was "crying continuously", but the judge said: "Her attempts to draw attention to her concern in this regard were effectively ignored."  The ward was busy and Mrs Rajatheepan, of Lavender Place, Ilford, had "a propensity simply to smile at people when she caught their eye."  She had, "albeit timidly", approached the midwive's station in a bid to draw attention to her concerns, but the judge said she was "ignored".  Midwives gave her "false reassurance" by "repeating the mantra that it is perfectly normal for new born baby's to cry.""
Apparently it's unreasonable to expect parents to know that they need to feed their children. And yet, if you propose needing a licence to have a child, people get upset

How do you pull transcripts from youtube "shorts." : youtube - "right click on the short and click on copy video url. open the url in a new tab. You will have access to the transcript now."

Meme - Emily Nussbaum @emilynussbaum: "Why do chefs hate brunch?"
Julia Callahan @pesty1079: "Anthony Bourdain has a great bit on it in Kitchen Confidential and he says basically everything is very time consuming and not fun or interesting to cook and hollandaise is stored at the exact right temperature to be absolutely foul."

He caught his daughter hugging a boy and her reaction is priceless. : MadeMeSmile

The Case for Sleeping With Stuffed Animals as an Adult - "In a 2017 survey of US adults commissioned by Build-A-Bear (so, yes, possibly biased), 40% of respondents who own, or once owned, a stuffed animal said they still slept with one... Though there is no robust scientific literature on the effect of stuffed animals on adult sleep, several studies have shown that plush companions can help adults self-soothe. A 2016 study observed that holding a stuffed animal during group therapy allowed college students to better comfort themselves. The act of hugging has also been associated with stress relief, and a 2013 study found that interacting with a huggable communication device lowered stress hormones in blood and saliva"

Links - 10th July 2023 (2 - Capitol Riot)

🇺🇸Travis🇺🇸 on Twitter - "Happening Now:  According to a new Senate report the FBI had plenty of intel on what would happen on Jan 6 but decided not to disclose the information to the Capitol police and local law enforcement.    According to the investigation the FBI received multiple tips and even photographs.  Before the protest the FBI even sent internal emails that said no serious threat exist.    Either the FBI is incompetent and failed to do their job, or they knew people would go into the Capitol and let it happen to use it against Trump, or maybe both are true.    Which do you think?"

‘Opposite of unity’: Democrats’ identity politics pushes US towards conflict akin to Lebanese civil war, professor warns - "It’s the Democrats’ ideology-driven policy labeling the opposing camp ‘domestic terrorists’ and not Donald Trump’s legacy that's pushing America closer to a civil conflict, Canadian evolutionary psychologist Gad Saad told RT.  What happened during the storming of the Capitol by an angry mob earlier in January was “wrong” and “criminal,” Saad told an RT podcast hosted by Ben Swann. It still does not warrant flooding Washington with tens of thousands of National Guard members for President Joe Biden’s inauguration, said the professor at Concordia University in Montreal.  Neither does it warrant labeling literally every single Trump supporter a “domestic terrorist” – something Saad believes the Democrats are very much inclined to do now. Despite retaining the House and getting a majority in the Senate as well as winning the White House, the Democrats are still acting as if on the defensive... “It is not enough to win. You have to destroy the enemy. They should not exist,” the professor explained, adding that the Democrats and their supporters apparently believe that no “sane” person could support Trump and those that still do should literally be “deprogrammed” to see him as evil.  Now, according to Saad, the Democrats and at least the most ardent of their supporters believe there is no way of treating Trump supporters other than “pathologizing them.”  Instead, it is the Democrats themselves that are in the thrall of “ideological parasites” or “idea pathogens”... Stoking fears and anger in society is not a sustainable reality, nor a sound political strategy, Saad warned. Promoting intolerance of any group within a society for political or other reasons could end up in a disaster, said the professor, calling for a healthy discussion instead of “hysteria.”... Saad said he saw something similar back in Lebanon, where society was divided along sectarian lines and was eventually thrown into the abyss of a 15-year-long civil war that resulted in estimated 120,000 fatalities in a country with just over 6.8 million people.  “Lebanon was organized and continues to be organized along religious tribes... everything in Lebanon is viewed through the prism of one’s religious identity and look what happened to Lebanon”... Saad believes it's not the statements by former president Donald Trump or his legacy that is driving America towards greater disunity, but the “progressive” identity politics professed by the Democrats.  “Identity politics is by definition an opposite of unity, because it ghettoizes us into tribes – political, sexual orientation or skin color ones. It is an opposite of a unifying message”"

Michael Shellenberger on Twitter: "The FBI & Democrats say the whistleblowers who testified today are "a threat to our national security,” but they're not. Rather they are honorable public servants who are being attacked for exposing abuses of power related to January 6.
Why the FBI And Democrats Are Attacking Whistleblowers
FBI says it won’t release Jan 6 surveillance video because it would show too many undercover government agents and informants
by @galexybrane  & @shellenberger
The FBI whistleblowers who testified before Congress today are not actually whistleblowers, say the FBI and Democrats. Rather, they are disloyal Americans who undermined investigations into the January 6, 2021 riot at the Capitol Building in Washington, D.C.  “My [Republican] colleagues have brought in these former agents, men who lost their security clearances because they were a threat to our national security,” said Del. Stacey Plaskett (D-V.I.), the ranking member of the House weaponization subcommittee. “Who out of malice or ignorance or both have put partisan agenda above the oath they swore to serve this country.”  But there is no evidence that any of the FBI whistleblowers are or were ever a threat to national security. One of them, Marcus Allen, won two medals fighting in Iraq and Kuwait. Another, Garret O’Boyle, served in the Army in Iraq, worked as a police officer, and graduated with honors in criminology and law.  Democrats pointed out that the FBI had revoked the security clearances of two whistleblowers, Allen, and Steve Friend, earlier this month. That news came in a letter that Christopher Dunham, the acting assistant director of the FBI, sent to the House Judiciary Committee last night.  The FBI claimed that Allen “expressed sympathy for persons or organizations that advocate, threaten, or use force or violence, or use any other illegal or unconstitutional means, in an effort to prevent federal government personnel from performing their official duties.”  But neither FBI nor Democrats presented evidence that Allen, Friend, or the other FBI whistleblowers who testified participated or even sympathized with the January 6 riot at the U.S. Capitol Building. “I was not in Washington D.C on January 6, played no part in the events of January 6, and I condemn all criminal activity that occurred,” said Allen.  Others suggested the FBI agents were exaggerating. “You all have employment grievances,” said Rep. Gerald Connolly. “That doesn’t make you whistleblowers… We’re listening to sad tales of certain individuals,” said Rep. Debbie Wasserman-Schultz. “These individuals have been determined not to be whistleblowers.”  But the FBI agents testifying followed the legally required whistleblower protocols within the FBI and were not fringe agents. Allen, for example, was the 2019 Employee of the Year for the Charlotte Field Office.  Friend, a Special Agent at the FBI for eight and half years, O’Boyle, and Allen all said they made protected whistleblower disclosures and yet were retaliated against by the FBI. Allen was suspended without pay in January 2022. O’Boyle was transferred to a new unit, moved his family across the country, and was placed on an unpaid suspension the first day he arrived.  For decades after the FBI was caught spying on Martin Luther King, Jr. and abusing its powers for political ends, Democrats emphasized strong constraints on domestic spying and the importance of whistleblowers. Now, Democrats are savaging these former public servants as threats to national security. Why is that?"
Whistleblowing is only good when it helps liberals' ends

To the Blackpilled types, explain why the Ratio for The Marvels is so bad? It's over 50% disliked. : KotakuInAction - "variety.com/2021/politics/news/trump-protesters-riot-capitol-video-1234879939 Facebook took down his "go home" because they WANTED it to get bad so they had a excuse to block him"

Tulsi Gabbard: Domestic-Terrorism Bill Is ‘a Targeting of Almost Half of the Country’ - "She said the proposed legislation could create “a very dangerous undermining of our civil liberties, our freedoms in our Constitution, and a targeting of almost half of the country.”  “You start looking at obviously, have to be a white person, obviously likely male, libertarians, anyone who loves freedom, liberty, maybe has an American flag outside their house, or people who, you know, attended a Trump rally”"
From 2021

Meme - Kyle Griffin @kylegriffin1: "NBC News: Jan. 6 Committee's Rep. Zoe Lofgren says Secret Service officers Ornato, Engel, and the driver of the SUV that wouldn't take Trump to the Capitol, have all retained private counsel. @NBCNews"
Jo @JoJoFromJerz: "Fishy as fuck."
Damin Toell @damintoell: "As a Super Follower, I want the rest of your normie followers to please know that hiring counsel in response to being investigated by the government is not only not fish but also very smart."
Frank Babbitt @Frizzy1563: "It's smart when you've done something wrong. Totally unnecessary if you haven't and are willing to be honest."
Ironic. Liberals keep going on about how the legal system is biased against "minorities" and they are persecuted and need to fight back with as much legal counsel as they can get

Meme - *Everything on fire*
"BURNING, RIOTING, AnD MURDER IN CITIES ACROSS AMERICA FOR OVER A YEAR 2020-2021"
Democratic Donkey pointing at puff of dust: "US. CAPITOL JAN 6, 2021"
"FIRE!"

Tucker Carlson Capitol riot video: The Fox host is right about Jan. 6 in one way. - "while Carlson is sometimes effective at the lies he tells, he has seemed out of his element with these specials, his strident act showing signs of strain as he attempted to course-correct the conclusion the majority of the country has drawn about Jan. 6... the video footage he’s dwelled on does accurately reflect what I witnessed on Jan. 6 myself. I personally followed people from the Trump rally at the Ellipse and into the Capitol. By the time I got there, it had already been breached. The lawn was swarming with MAGA hats and Pepe flags. The Capitol police officers I saw were overwhelmed, standing near the entrances of the building looking helpless as people squeezed in to see the inside of the building for themselves... In my own initial dispatch, I wrote, “They were having fun, entertaining themselves. The priority seemed to be to have their friends take selfies with them inside the Capitol.” I saw a lot of people who treated the insurrection like a party"
When the media are forced to admit what is patently obvious

Twitch removes PogChamp emote: 'We can't in good conscience continue to enable use of the image' - "t has responded to a tweet from fighting game personality Ryan "Gootecks" Gutierrez by removing Twitch's immensely popular PogChamp emote, which depicts his face.  In the tweet, Gutierrez called for "civil unrest" on behalf of one of the rioters, a woman who was shot and killed by law enforcement inside the Capitol. Gutierrez referred to her as "the #MAGAMartyr" and characterized her death as an "execution." Twitch viewed the statement as a call for further violence by the pro-Trump mob."
MissBehavin After Twitch-Strip: 3-Day-Ban Lifted & Still Partner - "The female Twitch streamer MissBehavin, who bared her private parts live in front of the cam, now only gets a 3-day ban & is still a Twitch partner. Others, however, are permanently excluded for much less!"
Amazing how explicit TOS violations only get a slap on the wrist
Of course if you support the BLM riots, Twitch doesn't do anything

Meme - "YOUR OUTRAGE IS MANUFACTURED
BLM RIOTS
LEFT WING VIOLENCE
Lasted 7 Months
Condemned Mostly By Republicans
Encouraged By Media And Politicians
Police Force Used
23+ People Shot Dead
700 Officers Injured
150+ Fed. Buildings Damaged
Hundreds Of Small Businesses Destroyed
No Outrage
CAPITOL RIOT
RIGHT WING VIOLENCE
Lasted Several Hours
Condemned By All Republicans And Democrats
Encouraged Only By Fringe Political Groups
Police Force Used
1 Person Shot Dead
14 Officers Injured
One Federal Building Damaged
No Small Businesses Destroyed
Nationwide Outrage"

John Cardillo on Twitter - "Trump told the protesters to go home. Find me one video of a prominent national Democrat doing that when leftists riot and destroy cities."

Dennis Michael Lynch - Posts | Facebook - "Millions of people are frustrated over this election.  Many thousands of them went to the nation's capital to voice that frustration.  Sadly, there are a few bad apples who took it too far.  However the media will try to lump 74,000,000 with a handful of over-the-top protesters.  What we must ask ourselves is why an entire country of conservatives gets lumped into a bad narrative carried out by a handful of people, but when the wildest of BLM members burn down cities, loot, shoot, and attack old people the media separates them apart from the entire movement.  Violence and law breaking is never an option, but neither is the biased reporting."

In Bombshell Report, Tucker Carlson Alleges Bank of America Is 'Acting Like an Intelligence Agency' - "BoA allegedly combed through the financial records from its more than 60 million customers looking for those who “fit a specific profile.”...  The problem, according to Carlson, is that no one in law enforcement or the Biden administration is explaining who fits the bill for being a political extremist.  "We're starting to believe they're not defining it for a reason""

When Reporting Becomes a Defense for Rioting | The New Yorker - "John Sullivan made a habit of blurring the lines between activism, advocacy journalism, and opposition research... “If everyone has equal claim to being a reporter, regardless of intent or track record, what it means in practice is that law enforcement won’t be able to tell the difference,” Lucy Dalglish, the dean of the University of Maryland’s journalism school, told me. “Suddenly, you have a situation where anyone can do any crazy thing—like break into the Capitol building, for instance—and then, when the cops show up, they can just take out their phone and say, ‘Hands off, I’m a documentarian.’ ” One of the people who invaded the Capitol on January 6th was Nick Ochs, a Proud Boy from Hawaii, who was later arrested for unlawful entry. “We came here to stop the steal,” Ochs said on a live stream the day of the siege. That night, however, Ochs told CNN that he had entered the Capitol as a professional journalist. He was associated with a far-right new-media collective comprising audio and video talk shows, published on YouTube and other platforms. The name of the collective was Murder the Media... “Fuck that shit,” Sullivan says. “Push!” Several times throughout the video, he can be heard saying, “I got a knife.” (He now claims that he didn’t actually have a knife: “I used that to navigate myself to the front of the crowd.”)... Sullivan and his lawyers may end up arguing that some of his actions on January 6th—shouting support for the mob, for example—were acts of newsgathering, necessary for Sullivan to get as far as he did. This theory would be less helpful, presumably, in explaining away some of Sullivan’s other actions, such as encouraging the invaders to push forward or claiming to have a knife."

Michael Tracey on Twitter - "Myanmar political leaders, including Aung San Suu Kyi, detained by the military, her party says"
"So funny that US elites now think it’s a “coup attempt” when a bunch of conspiracy-addled looney tunes temporarily disrupt a legislative proceeding, meanwhile in other countries the concept usually implies that the military has arrested the entire political leadership"

HuffPo reporter claims Capitol riot was '1000 percent worse' than 9/11 - "HuffPo's senior White House correspond S.V. Dáte not only compared the Capitol riot on Jan. 6 to 9/11, but he suggested that the former inflicted greater damage on the soul of America than the latter did... The Sept. 11 attacks are cited as the deadliest terrorist act in world history and the most devastating foreign attack on United States soil since Pearl Harbor in 1941."

A History of Attacks at the US Capitol - "while the Capitol was built to house legislative governance, it has also been the site of violence in the form of fire, break-ins, fistfights and shootings."
So much for the "unprecedented" violence of the Capitol riot

Ben Sixsmith on Twitter - "*As I evict someone* Why don't you just build your own house? Also, you're banned from my friends' construction company, home improvement retailer, and bank."
On Parler

James Lindsay - Posts | Facebook - "People are now asking (demanding) Cloudflare to deny Parler DNS services and DDOS protection."

Escape The Echo Chamber - Posts | Facebook - "Federal prosecutors are trying to hold a man in jail without bail for his part in the Capitol riot. He’s been held 14 weeks despite having no history of violent crime, didn’t go into the Capitol building, and isn’t associated with any extremist groups. First, prosecutors said he’d killed an officer with a fire extinguisher. He hadn’t. Then they indicated it was his bear spray that triggered the officer’s death. No bear spray was used and the officer died of natural causes unrelated to the riot."
One Blue Anon follower refused to believe the official reports saying that the fire extinguisher claim was dubious, as well as the official autopsy report. So much for "post-Truth"

The left's 'urge to purge' response to the Capitol assault - "It’s an unbalanced, cynical and fundamentally anti-democratic drive.  Notably, they want to expel the 140-plus Republicans in Congress who objected to certifying President-elect Joe Biden’s win.  “I believe the Republican members of Congress who have incited this domestic terror attack through their attempts to overturn the election must face consequences,” declared Rep. Cori Bush (D-Mo.). “We can’t have unity without accountability.” Well, purging your opponents is one path to “unity,” we guess. Democrats are particularly targeting Republicans they’ve always most disliked: House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy, Sen. Ted Cruz (Texas) and Sen. Josh Hawley (Mo.), who was the first to announce he’d object to the results.  Much of the media are aiding and abetting them in their purge project. The Houston Chronicle has called on Cruz to resign; Simon & Schuster canceled Hawley’s upcoming book citing “his role in what became a dangerous threat to our democracy and freedom.” (The point of Hawley’s book, “The Tyranny of Big Tech,” seems pretty relevant after Twitter banned not just the president but also many of his supporters, and a Big Tech cartel moved to shutter the conservative-popular social-media app Parler.)  Bush last week introduced legislation that aims to use the 14th Amendment to expel GOP members. It says those “who sought to overturn the 2020 Presidential election violated their oath of office to uphold the Constitution.” That amendment bans from office anyone who has “engaged in insurrection or rebellion” against the Constitution. It was written to ensure members of the Confederacy — real traitors — couldn’t hold office.  Cruz, Hawley & Co. were well within their rights to object to electors, and constitutional scholars agree. They committed no crime against the Constitution. Democrats have done the same thing themselves. Then-Vice President Biden was interrupted 11 times during certification of Trump’s win in 2017. “The electors were not lawfully certified, especially given the confirmed and illegal activities engaged by the government of Russia,” Rep. Jim McGovern (Mass.) said in objecting to Alabama’s votes. “People are horrified by the overwhelming evidence of Russian interference in our election,” Rep. Barbara Lee (Calif.) said in objecting to Michigan’s votes. Rep. Jamie Raskin — a Maryland congressman just named to the House impeachment team — also objected to certifying Trump’s election. More hypocrisy: Demonstrators occupied Wisconsin’s state capitol for weeks in 2011 to protest Gov. Scott Walker’s collective-bargaining bill, with some surrounding and heckling a state senator at one point. Democrats have gone out of their way after the US Capitol attack to call that a peaceful protest.  New York’s own Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez is on board with the purge, of course, saying: “If we allow insurrection against the United States with impunity, with no accountability, we are inviting it to happen again.”  More, as she said on an Instagram livestream, she and some colleagues are looking at how to “rein in” the media: “It’s one thing to have differentiating opinions but it’s another thing entirely to just say things that are false,” she . . . explains. You know who she expects to decide what’s false and not merely a differing opinion.  It goes on: Private groups promise to compile lists of those who served in the Trump administration, to prevent them ever working in polite society again.  This is madness: How much longer until they come for the more than 74 million people who voted for Trump?"
Addendum: Related: Cancelling a book about censorship

Nikole Hannah-Jones Calls For 'Deprogramming' Republicans - "Hannah-Jones responded with a vague call to look toward an undefined “history,” declaring that “there has to be consequences” based on how you vote. She then decried the push towards a quick “reconciliation” between the left and right. The so-called journalist painted Trump supporters with a broad brush, lumping the Capitol rioters in with average Republicans who voted based on policy.Her only explanation of why anyone would possibly vote for Trump was that the “white labor force” voted for his policies to keep themselves more powerful than “Muslims, Latinos and Black Americans.” By inventing exclusively racist intentions of her political enemies, Hannah-Jones said every Trump-voting Republican merits “punishment” before they can be allowed to re-enter polite society and have a chance at reconciliation."

POLITICO - Posts | Facebook - "Thousands of National Guard members were forced to vacate the Capitol today and are now taking their rest breaks outside and in nearby parking garages. “Yesterday dozens of senators and congressmen walked down our lines taking photos, shaking our hands and thanking us for our service. Within 24 hours, they had no further use for us and banished us to the corner of a parking garage. We feel incredibly betrayed”"
When their use was done

Americans Abandoning Free Speech Better Brace for the Consequences - ""We need to shut down the influencers who radicalize people and set them on the path toward violence and sedition," argued columnist Max Boot in The Washington Post. His solution? Carriers should drop Fox News and other conservative cable news outlets if they don't stop spreading "misinformation." Boot also believes that "Biden needs to reinvigorate the FCC" to impose British-style controls over the news—never mind that the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) doesn't have the authority to regulate cable outlets that it has over broadcasters that use public airwaves...   Challenging the value of unrestrained speech and debate has become something of a cottage industry. After the ugly exchanges that erupted in the Capitol riot, CNN pointed out that "questions emerge about unrestrained free expression, long championed by First Amendment theorists as a benefit to society, no matter how ugly and hateful." The network quoted scholars who conclude that the Internet and free speech protections make it too easy to exchange bad ideas.  None of these fans of speech restrictions explicitly advocate suppression of activists or ideologies; they favor controls on what they claim are false, extremist, or misleading communications. But they don't explain why reversing speech protections would accomplish their goals when misinformation existed long before modern jurisprudence, filling the pages of the country's newspapers and fueling political contests despite legal peril. Nor do they explain why they're so eager to hand more control over speech to government officials who have a historically rocky relationship with truth... Obama, too, had a problem telling the truth about issues ranging from health care to government records and earned "the lie of the year" label from PolitiFact in 2013. Government officials even lie to each other, as then-Director of National Intelligence James Clapper did to Congress to conceal the inconvenient truth about domestic surveillance by the NSA.  Protections for free speech, it's worth pointing out, aren't some perfect counter to false and extreme ideas. Instead, they're a recognition of core individual rights. But they're also a pragmatic acknowledgment that putting government agencies in charge of suppressing misinformation just gives one team of bullshit artists an advantage over their less-powerful competitors.   Some fans of speech suppression think they've found a solution in privatized muzzling...   After evolving First Amendment jurisprudence made it safer for print media to criticize politicians, then-President Franklin Delano Roosevelt infamously held radio licenses hostage in return for positive coverage. "It did not take long for broadcasters to get the message," historian David Beito wrote for Reason in 2017. "NBC, for example, announced that it was limiting broadcasts 'contrary to the policies of the United States government.'"  That practice has become increasingly popular as a means for governments to evade accusations that they're muzzling critics.   "Of course, Twitter is a private company," Russian opposition leader Alexey Navalny cautioned after the tech giant suspended Donald Trump's account in the wake of the Capitol riot. "But we have seen many examples in Russian and China of such private companies becoming the state's best friends and the enablers when it comes to censorship."   The ultimate risk is that respect for free-wheeling speech is devalued in the eyes of many as a thing to be cherished in itself. Instead, it may become a resented obstacle to be worked around by innovators who aren't bound by allegedly archaic legal protections. They can then feel virtuous in suppressing expression they consider bad, or hateful, or an example of "misinformation."  If popular support for free speech continues to erode, it's difficult to see how legal protections survive for long without foundations in the wider society. A culture of free speech can't prevail if the culture comes to prefer censorship. Eventually, people who've come to believe it's better to challenge "bad" ideas not with other ideas but with a muzzle will erase or reinterpret protections for speech.   Then, government officials with wish lists of expanded powers ready to go will eagerly step in to save the country from "influencers who radicalize people." The influencers will take their communications to underground channels or else adopt the martyr role of dissidents. And officials will try to suppress misinformation from those influencers in favor of misinformation of their own."

Meme - Blm Emily ACAB: "What happened in DC last night was horrible. These terrorists broke into the capitol and were being violet towards these poor police officers"

Antifa Activist Dan Baker Sentenced to Three Years for Online Posts and a Flyer - "Tallahassee antifascist activist Dan Baker was sentenced to three years in federal prison. According to the FBI, Baker had posted threats of violence and kidnapping online in the run-up to January 20, the date of Joe Biden’s inauguration...   Baker, 34, is a yoga instructor, EMT in training, and an active antifascist organizer in the Tallahassee area. He was involved in last year’s Black Lives Matter protests in Tallahassee"
Proof that Trump supporters are violent!
I love the hamster wheel spinning to justify the double standards

FBI Arrests Activist Daniel Baker Over Posts About Police Abuse and Self Defense - "The closest thing to a non-self-protective pledge of violence is an Instagram post where Baker writes "If you don't take up arms against trump them (sic) you are coward"...   "If nothing else, Baker's case shows how easily the martial climate that has prevailed since the Capitol riot can be turned on unrelated individuals who hold vastly different beliefs," suggests Branko Marcetic at Jacobin."

“A serial killer of civilisations”: a history of climate change

“A serial killer of civilisations”: a history of climate change | HistoryExtra

"'[Renewables halted] in the 80s and then restarted in the early 90s. The lesson of this was that you know unless there's uh consistency in the pushing of the development of renewables, uh they aren't going to develop on a timeline as fast as they might. This leads to an important point. 

The battle for climate change was lost in the early 90s. If the decade of the 80s was lost because the signal couldn't really be detached from the noise and because of uh Ronald Reagan just not being interested in the issue as an administration, not being interested in the issue, in the 90s the scientific knowledge about the dangers of climate change had advanced sufficiently that we we should have been doing something about it back then. 

But the key factors that happened were that one the issue became politicized uh as the fossil fuel lobby began to realize that uh this was a likely a a threat to the fuels’ preeminence but secondly the industrialization of emerging nations, what was going to power them? This was the issue. If you recall in the early 90s, what China was just beginning its industrialization. The Federal Reserve dates uh it to 1988. So it was on, in 1990 China admitted from, uh fossil fuel emissions were a little less than half of the U.S emissions right? India much less than that. Uh the two largest nations on the planet. People knew back then that if China industrialized with coal it was going to have an impact on climate, they had the fourth largest coal reserves in the world. And so everybody was talking about leapfrogging technologies. I remember this. 

And at the same time there was the beginning of the Kyoto process, the the process to come to some sort of an international agreement to contain greenhouse gas emissions. But China and India were resisting being held to the same restraints as the industrialized world ,because they were saying why should, you use coal, why shouldn't we? And why should, and you're the ones who have caused the problem, we didn't cause the problem. So we should be exempt. In any case all the developing nations were left out. The consequences of that, we're living with today, because China and India did industrialize. And China going from half our to greenhouse gas emissions, now is twice our greenhouse gas emissions and uh India is now the third largest greenhouse gas emitter in the world... 

The European nations actually tried to hold to their commitments. They did so in part through accounting trickery. Um for instance the uh modernization of of East Germany once they were reunified was a tremendous benefit for uh for uh Germany and meeting it's it's, um its goals… 

Why didn't China try to power its uh modernization industrialization through uh renewables rather than coal?... the U.S was giving them mixed messages. At the same time we were saying in meetings with them you've got to try uh renewables, we were pushing coal and still using coal to power our, a lot of our electrical generation and then there was an argument that has been offered today which was that renewables just weren't ready to supply the uh to step in at a cost-effective basis. To a degree that is true but in the book I use the analogy of a football coach who shoots his star player in the in the leg and then benches him because he's not able to play. The the reason renewables weren't ready was that we had a start and stop relationship with promoting renewables. 

Most of the renewable energy strategies used, that we're using today whether it's solar, wind power, tidal power, were discussed back in the 19th century. And the early 20th century, in that era of at the end of the Victorian era when there was this tremendous technological hubris, steam-powered cars, electric cars were all invented. Uh solar power being used for agriculture in Egypt, wind power. And Thomas Edison um wanted to harvest the uh energy of the gulf's coast, the Gulf Stream which moves within 15 miles of the Atlantic coast at some points and he wanted to put impellers on the bottom of the Gulf Stream and generate electricity that way. So all these ideas, there was a veritable Renaissance and then what happened? 

Well something better came along. That something better was oil… it's a fabulous fuel, the energy packed, that's highly transportable, it can turn into, all can power all sorts of different technologies, um and be turned into all sorts of kinds of lubricants and everything else, so it's this wonderful stuff… we had another opportunity in the early 90s and this is in the United States more than Europe I think. But power plants generally have a life of about 30 years, so a whole generation of power plants was reaching the end of their lives that were powered by coal in the uh in the US in the  early 90s. What would power the next?

And so that everybody saw this, well let's let's move to renewables. Well at that point natural gas was very cheap and the turbines were getting that much more efficient for making power through natural gas, so essentially a new generation of power generation was installed with another 30-year life, postponing the dates for a lot of transition to renewables down the road, another generation… 

The issue became politicized and when an issue becomes politicized um it's, the message doesn't matter. The facts don't matter if the messenger is deemed as illegitimate then nothing gets through. And of course we saw that today with covid denial, you know even as people are dying of the disease denying that it exists...

They devised this playbook and the playbook was, you know, dispute the science, attack the scientists’ motives, say there's no consensus, say it's unsettled, because actually if you can, that we need more study of the problem, and then say it is going to cost jobs and say it is, uh, going, that we have time. Most importantly that we have time.'"

 

The cognitive dissonance is amazing. Renewables are a failure so the solution is to double down even more

The key is to pretend that you hold the gospel truth and that anyone who disagrees is politicising the issue

"Accounting trickery" is anything that doesn't ruin the economy since that is the real aim
The comparison with covid is so ironically perfect, given covid hysteria and how liberals politicised it and ignored (and still ignore) the science

Ironically, the climate change hystericist playbook (like the covid hystericist playbook) is to pretend the science is settled, attack the scientists' motives, say there's a settled consensus, claim we don't need more study of the problem, pretend it will add jobs and claim we have no time since the world is ending (even though the prophecies are continually falsified)