Links - 8th July 2024 (1 - Climate Change)

Biden's twisted logic: funding anti-Israel radicals to save the planet and fight inflation - "Somehow or other in the twisted logic of BidenWorld, fighting inflation requires “green” spending that also funds anti-Israel hate.  That’s right: Under “environmental justice” grants funded in the so-called Inflation Reduction Act, the Biden Environmental Protection Agency awarded $50 million to the Climate Justice Alliance, whose website proclaims, “The path to climate justice travels through a free Palestine.”  A video even lays out “an anti-colonial framework to show how Climate Justice and the liberation of Palestine are connected”: namely, the usual blather about “settler colonialism,” white supremacy, imperialism and militarism.  Mind you, the EPA made the grant in December, months after Hamas’ Oct. 7 atrocities — which the CJA has never bothered to condemn, though by Oct. 20 it was already calling for a cease-fire...   CJA’s 90-member network includes such groups as the NDN Collective, Grassroots Global Justice Alliance and DemilitaRISE — which oppose “imperialism” and aim to defund the police, the criminal justice system and the military... Team Biden aims to grab every buck it can for its allies on the flimsiest of pretexts and no matter how much debt it’s piling on to the next generation nor how much inflation it causes.  Yet somehow, they claim the other team is the threat to democracy."

SHULMAN: A degree in nature? It's certainly better than anthropology - "The Hay Festival, one of the biggest literary events in the world, has just dropped finance firm Baillie Gifford, its main funder, after a fringe environmental group objected to the minuscule amount of the firm's investments in fossil fuels. Edinburgh Book Festival has now followed suit. If things continue along this path and every sponsor is jettisoned for any trace of investments that somebody doesn't agree with, there'll ultimately be no events where writers and artists can promote their work. It would be a world with far fewer exhibitions and diminished national galleries. And it would be even more difficult for up-and-coming creatives to gain any kind of visibility.Big-name signatories such as writers Sally Rooney and Naomi Klein are successful enough not to require the exposure that an artistic jamboree such as Hay affords, but there are countless small names who not only hope to sell some books there, but enjoy talking about the works that have taken them years to write and some people may ultimately buy."

Bjorn Lomborg: We need to research geoengineering alternatives to net-zero carbon reduction - "Harvard’s researchers weren’t attempting anything so grand. They simply wanted to launch a single high-altitude balloon that would release a tiny amount of particulates high above Earth. Their experiment would have gathered data showing how particles disperse and how much sunlight they reflect. It’s only prudent to investigate other policies that could address parts of the problem of climate change. Even the United Nations admitted in 2019 that “there has been no real change in the global emissions pathway in the last decade,” despite the 2015 Paris Agreement. Since then, greenhouse gas emissions have continued to reach new record highs with “no end in sight to the rising trend,” according to a new report from the World Meteorological Organization . We’re simply not in a position where we can afford to ignore any pathway to solving climate change. Unfortunately, as The Harvard Crimson reported, pressure from climate activists made this impossible for the scientists. Even high-profile campaigner Greta Thunberg criticized the first planned tests in northern Sweden. Then the Indigenous Saami Council — whose land the tests would be above — suggested firing a single balloon into the sky bore “risks of catastrophic consequences.” Politicians jumped aboard the bandwagon, including Sweden’s former foreign minister, who declared geoengineering was “ crazy ,” while young activists pushed academic funders to cut off such research. In addition to the activists, the project’s lead researcher points a finger at a “vocal minority” of scientists who agree with campaigners that geoengineering could provide an excuse not to cut fossil fuels by highlighting another possible solution to climate change. The Saami Council opposed the Harvard experiment because the research “could compromise the world’s necessary efforts to achieve zero-carbon societies.” That isn’t science, it’s dogma. The idea that there is only one correct policy — cutting carbon emissions to zero in a short time frame — is absurd, and especially so when this sole policy is failing globally. Geoengineering could be a very useful innovation, even if it harbours risks. It is the only feasible way humanity has ever identified to cut temperatures quickly. If we were to see the West Antarctic ice sheet starting to slip into the ocean — which would be a global disaster — no standard fossil fuel policy could make any significant change. Even if all nations cut their emissions to zero in a matter of months, which is not actually possible, temperatures would not come down but would only stop going up. In contrast, geoengineering could, in principle, end the global temperature rise at a low cost. Its price tag over the 21st century is in the tens to low hundreds of billions of dollars, compared to standard policy costing tens of thousands of times more . Of course, the world shouldn’t start pumping particulates into the atmosphere anytime soon. But we need to know whether this technology works and what negative impacts might be. We need such research partly because some countries and maybe even the world community may eventually want to consider using this approach but also because its cost is so low there is a risk that a single nation, a rogue billionaire or even a highly energized nongovernmental organization could deploy the technology on its own . We need to make sure the world knows the ramifications. That requires research. Both the scientific journal Nature and the Obama administration have endorsed research into geoengineering. Even the Biden administration has offered measured support . Humanity needs to know what works and what problems might arise in future. Politicizing climate research for fear it might lead to politically unfavoured outcomes is bad for the world."
Climate change hysteria is not about preventing climate change. The left don't actually love science

Computer models show heat waves in north Pacific may be due to China reducing aerosols
Damn carbon emissions warming the planet!

Meme - "I WANT TO FIGHT CLIMATE CHANGE"
"BE HONEST"
"I AM BEING HONEST"
"BE HONEST"
"I WANT COMMUNISM"
"THANK YOU"

How Jacinda Ardern left New Zealand on the brink of blackouts - "Sir Keir Starmer is standing by a pledge to ban new drilling in the North Sea, despite New Zealand abandoning a similar policy amid blackout fears.  Labour’s manifesto, due out on Thursday, will feature a pledge to block all new licensing for oil and gas as one of its key energy policies... The ban was announced by former prime minister Jacinda Ardern in 2018. “The world has moved on from fossil fuels,” Ardern proclaimed at the time.  New Zealand’s trailblazing policy, which was the first of its kind, became a key inspiration for the Labour Party’s own plan.  However, some in the party are now questioning the commitment after New Zealand resources minister Shane Jones last weekend denounced its own ban as a disaster – and revoked it.  It followed three years of rising energy prices that have left 110,000 households unable to warm their homes, 19pc of households struggling with bills and 40,000 of them having their power cut off due to unpaid bills, according to Consumer NZ. Since April the situation has further deteriorated: Transpower, the equivalent of our National Grid, warned that the nation was at high risk of blackouts.  New Zealand’s shift to renewables meant it no longer had the generating power to keep the lights on during the cold spells that mark the Antipodean winter, said Transpower, as it begged consumers to cut their electricity consumption. The threat to New Zealand’s energy security comes despite the fact that geologists have discovered billions of cubic metres of natural gas in the seabeds around the country.  Sean Rush, a leading New Zealand barrister specialising in petroleum licensing law and climate litigation, called the oil and gas ban “economic vandalism at its worst in exchange for virtue signalling at its finest”. Rush warned Labour off a copycat policy, saying: “There will be no benefits to UK energy security by banning new exploration drilling. You will simply disown an industry in which the UK has been world-leading.”  Jones said last week: “Natural gas is critical to keeping our lights on and our economy running, especially during peak electricity demand and when generation dips because of more intermittent sources like wind, solar and hydro.”  Such warnings are echoed by energy experts in the UK, where over 75pc of total energy consumed still comes from oil and gas.  Half comes from UK waters – but it too will drop off a cliff if Labour implements a ban on new drilling, warns the industry. Offshore Energies UK (OEUK), a trade body, says there are about 280 active oil and gas fields in UK waters – of which 180 are due to shut down by 2030.  Without new ones to replace them, UK gas production is predicted to more than halve by the end of the decade.  Jenny Stanning, director of external affairs at OEUK, says exploration is essential to simply slowing the decline in output.  “The New Zealand experience shows how important it is for countries to carefully manage energy transition and energy security. We will need oil and gas for decades to come so it makes sense to back our own industry rather than ramping up imports from abroad.”"
Naturally, the green lobby blames blackouts on insufficient investment in renewable energy
Not like NZ wasn't warned in 2019 of the negative impacts in general, but more specifically they cannot import LNG so all their natural gas is domestic, and the government reports that "restricted local gas production" led to higher gas prices

Peter Dutton accused of 'extraordinary act of vandalism' - "Opposition Leader Peter Dutton said he would dump Australia's 2030 target to cut emissions by 43 per cent from 2005 levels, should the coalition win the next federal election. 'Walking away from Australia's Paris commitments at a time when more action rather than less is needed would be an extraordinary act of vandalism against the future of the people and places we love,' Senator Pocock said... Climate groups warn going back on Australia's targets could hamper investment as the nation transitions to a cleaner economy... The coalition is proposing to introduce nuclear energy as the pathway to reducing emissions... Australia's ban on nuclear power would also have to be overturned in a lengthy process. Nuclear reactors in the country would contribute to worse climate outcomes, according to Solutions for Climate Australia. 'Nuclear is a worrying distraction from getting on with the urgent job at hand: replacing polluting coal and gas with the sun and wind technology we have right now,' the group's senior campaigner Elly Baxter said."
Of course, destroying the economy isn't "vandalism"
Investment based on government dirigisme, is "sustainable", apparently
When you ignore the science because of left wing neuroses and the left wing agenda

Adam Pankratz: Just Stop Oil's deranged Stonehenge attack goes beyond mere idiocy - "It’s not easy to pinpoint the very first instance of art vandalism, but one of the first notable acts was activists glueing themselves to a painting called My Heart’s In The Highlands in Glasgow at the end of June, 2022. Subsequently, in October, 2022, Van Gogh’s Sunflowers became one of the first to have tomato soup thrown on them . Numerous other instances followed, with even the Mona Lisa getting her dose of vitamin C from another rogue tomato soup can this past January . In the above instances the paintings ultimately survived behind protective glass. In March, however, the portrait of Lord Balfour at Cambridge University was seriously damaged when, not being behind glass, it was slashed and sprayed with red paint to protest his involvement in the creation of Israel. Cultural vandalism has moved on from just the environment to politics more generally. In so far as lasting damage goes, Stonehenge ultimately will fare much better than other, more fragile, works of art. It is mercifully quite difficult to seriously harm 25-ton blocks of rock. And yet, in their defacement of Stonehenge, the Just Stop Oil loons have managed to disgrace themselves even further than they had previously. For despite the demented nature of the soup protests, the sad reality is that in our current cultural moment, it is relatively easy for activists to justify vandalizing objects of European cultural value under the name of oppression or colonialism. To the protesters, the fact that the environment is now under threat is merely an extension of, what is to them, illegitimate ideas such as capitalism created by malicious white men of yore. And so, a little vandalism directed at European art is just par for the anti-capitalist course... In Stonehenge, Just Stop Oil is attacking an object of our shared humanity. It is vandalizing a sacred temple of the ancient and indigenous people of Britain. It should, in that regard boil the blood of every sane person that these activist-vandals feel empowered and justified in their actions. This is no longer a representation of “the other side of the debate” but a cult of eco-religious extremism that should be met with equal force the other way... The past years have been characterized by a majority of people being brow beaten, threatened, cancelled and cowed because a screaming band of activists demanded society conform to their extreme views. The evidence that these baying hordes must be repulsed and shut down is now beyond any doubt. In Stonehenge, the collective cultural legacy of the world was assaulted. It’s time to just stop, Just Stop Oil and their ilk."
Tolerating left wing lunacy means you invite escalation

New study suggests EVs are supercharging an impending environmental crisis - "Besides lithium and cobalt for the batteries driving electric vehicles, another valuable material is needed to make all the cars that need to hit the roads in order to fulfill the Biden administration's lofty EV transition goals.  However, a newly published study by Cornell and University of Michigan professors suggest that there might not be enough to go around. As per a new study titled "Copper mining and vehicle electrification" by Cornell professor Lawrence M. Cathles and University of Michigan Earth & Environmental Sciences professor Adam Simon, copper cannot be mined quickly enough to make the wires and other components needed to fulfill the current goals toward renewable energy. In a statement, Simon argues that much more copper is going to be needed for all the wiring that goes into the newfangled electric cars that are at the center of the environmental policy, as well as the new wires that will deliver the electricity from the grid to juice them up. “A normal Honda Accord needs about 40 pounds of copper. The same battery electric Honda Accord needs almost 200 pounds of copper. Onshore wind turbines require about 10 tons of copper, and in offshore wind turbines, that amount can more than double,” said Simon. "[...] the amount of copper needed is essentially impossible for mining companies to produce.”... According to Simon, much of the problem lies in the bureaucracy that takes place in between when a new copper mineral deposit is discovered and a permit to mine and extract copper is actually issued; which can take a whopping 20 years — enough time for electric vehicle technology to evolve, or worse: disappear.   Their study finds that in order to meet the needs of EV adoption on a global scale, up to six new copper mines need to be operational over the next few decades, with up to 40% of their output reserved for just EV-related materials. As per Simon and Cathles' data, the world's copper mines will need to produce 115% more copper than has been mined in all of human history up until 2018 in order to meet demand. As a fan and an adopter of renewable energy and EVs, Simon is disappointed by this realization. "I’ve got solar panels, batteries and an electric vehicle," Simon said. "I’m fully on board with the energy transition. However, it needs to be done in a way that’s achievable." His suggestion falls in like with automakers like Volkswagen, Honda and even Lamborghini and Mercedes-Benz — whom are focused on producing gas-hybrid vehicles while in the midst of an EV sales downturn... “We know, for example, that a Toyota Prius actually has a slightly better impact on climate than a Tesla. Instead of producing 20 million electric vehicles in the United States and globally, 100 million battery electric vehicles each year, would it be more feasible to focus on building 20 million hybrid vehicles?”"
Clearly this is funded by the fossil fuel industry and must be dismissed

US Olympic and other teams will bring their own AC units to Paris - "The U.S. Olympic team is one of a handful that will supply air conditioners for their athletes at the Paris Games in a move that undercuts organizers' plans to cut carbon emissions... “As you can imagine, this is a period of time in which consistency and predictability is critical for Team USA’s performance,” Hirshland said. “In our conversations with athletes, this was a very high priority and something that the athletes felt was a critical component in their performance capability.”  The Washington Post reported earlier this month that Germany, Australia, Italy, Canada and Britain were among the other countries with plans to bring air conditioners to France. Olympic organizers have touted plans to cool rooms in the Athletes Village, which will house more than 15,000 Olympians and sports officials over the course of the games, using a system of cooling pipes underneath the floors.  The average high in Paris on Aug. 1 is 26 degrees Celsius (79 degrees Fahrenheit). The objective is to keep the rooms between 23-26 degrees (73-79 degrees Fahrenheit). The rooms will also be equipped with fans.  “I want the Paris Games to be exemplary from an environmental point of view,” Paris mayor Anne Hidalgo has said about the plans for the Olympics. According to the International Energy Agency, fewer than 1 in 10 households in Europe has air conditioning, and the numbers in Paris are lower than that. The study said that of the 1.6 billion AC units in use across the globe in 2016, more than half were in China (570 million) and the United States (375 million). The entire European Union had around 100 million."
The French grid is mostly nuclear anyway, so this is a great metaphor for climate change hysteria

B.C. strata fines owner more than $11K for installing heat pump

‘Rolling spy vans’? Canada weighs possible security threat of Chinese EVs - "“A modern electric car is more software than anything else. And because of that, there are always going to be concerns that could we end up in a hostile situation, more than we already are with China. Could they just turn the cars off remotely?” he said. The former head of Britain's MI6 spy agency, Richard Dearlove, recently expressed similar worries, warning the world should be "very concerned" by Chinese EVs. "The car could be switched off by the manufacturer. How many cars would it take to block circulation of traffic in a major western city?" he said... A spokesperson for China’s foreign ministry said the review “overstretches the concept of national security” and is discriminatory. But Beijing has reportedly barred certain American EV brands like Tesla from Chinese government compounds over its own security concerns over what data the U.S. automaker can collect."
But of course, if you think Western countries might do the same thing, you're a paranoid conspiracy theorist who has fallen prey to misinformation

Junk Science Week — Ross McKitrick: EV mandates don't make economic sense - "According to “energy transition” and “net-zero” enthusiasts, the future looks bright for electric vehicles (EVs). Though not so bright, it seems, that the federal and some provincial governments haven’t had to offer at least $15 billion in subsidies to prompt carmakers to develop Canadian production facilities, as well as lavish subsidies to get people to buy EVs. And since even that isn’t enough to bring consumers around, a Trudeau government mandate now requires that all new light-duty vehicles sold in Canada must be electric or plug-in hybrid by 2035. In other words, the government is banning traditional internal combustion engine vehicles (ICEVs). The fundamental problem is that EVs cost more to make and operate than most consumers are willing to pay. In a 2016 submission to the Quebec government, which was then considering an EV mandate of its own, the Canadian Vehicle Manufacturing Association warned that its members were then losing between $12,000 and $20,000 per EV sold. Since then, the situation has only gotten worse, with Ford Motor Co. reporting first quarter 2024 losses of US$132,000 per EV. What will be the economic consequences of a national EV mandate in Canada? In a new paper forthcoming in the peer-reviewed Canadian Journal of Economics, I develop and run a detailed inter-provincial model of the Canadian economy, including the auto sector. I argue that during the phase-in period the sector will raise the price of ICEVs and earn above-market rents on them, but that won’t cover the losses on the EV side so the industry will go into overall losses by the late-2020s. The losses will be permanent unless and until EV production costs fall enough that a mandate is unnecessary. In short, the 2035 mandate is affordable only if it’s not needed. If it takes a mandate to force consumers to choose EVs over ICEVs, the mandate will destroy the Canadian auto industry. The mandate sets up a race between regulation and technology. Some aspects of EV production are getting cheaper — batteries, for instance. Others, such as specialty metals used in motors, are sole-sourced from China and are not getting cheaper. Other user costs are rising, especially electricity, for which we can thank two decades of green energy madness. Taking all aspects together, suppose EV technology improves so quickly that by 2035 consumers are absolutely indifferent between an EV and an ICEV, meaning the mandate is costless thereafter. Getting to that point would still impose Canadian auto industry losses that total $140 billion compared to the no-policy base case. As of 2031 the losses in real GDP and industrial output compared to the base case would average more than $1,000 per worker across Canada. As of 2035, greenhouse gas emissions would fall by just under three per cent relative to the base case, but the abatement costs reach about $2,800 per tonne as of 2030. And that’s the best-case scenario... Economic outcomes relative to the no-policy base case as of 2035 include a 4.8 per cent reduction in real GDP nationally (8.9 per cent in Ontario), 2.6 per cent lower real earnings per worker, 137,000 fewer jobs, 10.5 per cent lower auto demand and 16.8 per cent lower capital earnings. Greenhouse gas emissions would fall by just under six per cent against the base case as of 2035 but at a cost of more than $3,400 per tonne, 20 times the 2030 nominal carbon tax rate , which represents the government’s estimate of the social costs of greenhouse gas emissions. These are unprecedented costs, but then again we have never before proposed to ban the production and purchase of one of the most popular consumer products of all time. A large part of our economy is organized around making and using gasoline-powered cars. It should not be surprising that the government outlawing them would have harsh and far-reaching economic consequences... We could ban computers and make people read books instead — book publishing would boom. We could ban all forms of transportation and make people walk. Think of how much money they’d save, and the opportunities this would open up for shoemakers... No one had to force the public to abandon land lines for cellphones, or vinyl records for CDs and then online streaming. When superior products appear, people switch voluntarily. An EV mandate may be affordable by 2035 — but only if the product quality and user costs have progressed to the point that people want to switch anyway, in which case the mandate is not needed."
Capitalism has failed! Time for more regulation

United Nations the greatest organizational perpetrator of junk science - "History will record that the United Nations has established itself as the greatest organizational perpetrator of junk science in modern times, if not of all time, with current UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres destined to be singled out for his personal contribution to the distorted UN climate alarmism. Since his appointment in 2019, Guterres and the UN have lived up to our standard formal definition of junk science. It occurs when scientific facts are distorted, risk is exaggerated (or underplayed) and “the science” adapted and warped by politics and ideology to serve another agenda. That definition encompasses a wide range of activities among scientists, NGOs, politicians, journalists, media outlets, cranks and quacks who manipulate science for political, environmental, economic and social purposes. It also nicely captures the entire United Nations’ climate crusade and the work of its institutional creation, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). But no single official can top Guterres as a purveyor of IPCC hype and doom, a living embodiment of Hans Christian Andersen’s fabled emperor who believes he is fully, stylishly dressed but in fact has no clothes. Guterres, a former Socialist Party prime minister of Portugal (1995-2002) and president of the Socialist International (1999-2005), was in typically ridiculous form on June 5th when he delivered a speech at the Museum of Natural History in Manhattan, at an event billed as “A Moment of Truth” and a “special address on climate action.” Guterres talked about a planet on a “highway to climate hell,” rehashing a line he used in 2022 in Egypt at the COP27 climate conference: “We are on a highway to climate hell with our foot still on the accelerator.” Guterres also has no qualms about mixing and mangling metaphors. He simultaneously told the Manhattan audience that humans are “like the meteor that wiped out the dinosaurs, we’re having an outsized impact. In the case of climate, we are not the dinosaurs. We are the meteor. We are not only in danger. We are the danger.” The longer Guterres rambles on, the more confusing, contradictory and senseless the metaphors become: “We are playing Russian roulette with our planet. We need an exit ramp off the highway to climate hell. And the truth is … we have control of the wheel.” Other Guterres’ climate spins include: “Humanity has opened the gates of hell” and “become a weapon of mass extinction.” And: “We must go into emergency mode and put out this five-alarm fire.”... UNEP was cobbled together in 1972 as the brainchild of Maurice Strong, the late Canadian global environmental schemer, who famously mused about a fictional environmental crisis that leads a group of global insiders to decide the only hope for the planet is “that the industrialized civilizations collapse.” The current “de-growth” movement is a version of deindustrialization that reflects Guterres’ off-ramp from the highway to hell. In fact, the word “de-growth” appears 28 times in the IPCC’s sixth and latest Assessment Report... “Climate-related natural disasters are becoming more frequent, more deadly, more destructive with growing human and financial cost.” Not true. And: “The number of weather, climate and water-related disasters has increased by a factor of five over the past 50 years.” Also not true. When it comes to policies to deal with his fantastic vision of planetary destruction, Guterres aligns with Maurice Strong’s de-growth agenda"

Links - 7th July 2024 (2 - Pro-Crime Policies)

Why the Media Are Mum About White Flight 2.0 - "It’s no secret people have been fleeing America’s cities for the past three years. According to the Economic Innovation Group, a bipartisan public policy organization, more than two million people left our cities between July 2020 and July 2022. In the year since, the exodus seems to have slowed but continues.  However reluctantly, the media have acknowledged the flight. What they have not acknowledged is its “whiteness.” Yet, “white” it has overwhelmingly been... Sixty or so years ago, the media showed no such restraint. Writ large, they were eager to define that first great urban diaspora with the pejorative “white flight.”... One reason he and his fellow travelers can smear less righteous whites so casually is that they know little, if anything, about the people who fled... Every one of the fifty or so people I interviewed for my book, Untenable: The True Story of White Ethnic Flight from America’s Cities, knew precisely why he or she left.    To my surprise, many of the Times readers reacted to this op-ed much as I did. Said one, “I suppose I should be used to it by now, but I still find it kind of astonishing to read an analysis of white flight which doesn’t even mention the word ‘crime.’”   At least twenty respondents shared their own personal stories of flight. These people were able “to articulate exactly why they moved” — brother beaten, sister’s hair set on fire, neighbor shot, grandmother threatened, kids bused and bullied. The imagery is precise, and it comes from experience, an experience about which Boustan, like Wise, seems oblivious.    “I see that the author studied/worked at Princeton, Harvard & UCLA, all located in exclusive areas that are primarily white,” observed one reader. “So if she is claiming to be an expert on white flight, I wonder … has she actually LIVED somewhere deeply impacted by white flight?” For Boustan, and for other great minds of the genus “antiracist,” the answer is almost surely “no.” That first great wave of “white flight” is likely something they read about in Sociology 101. They don’t know the neighborhoods involved or the people affected and, more to the point, they don’t care to know.   Now the second wave, the ongoing one, that’s a different story. The fugitives are their friends, neighbors, co-workers, and maybe even themselves. In the 1960s and 1970s, blue-collar workers were the ones forced to move, usually with great reluctance. In the 2020s, blue-collar workers were the ones forced to stay. Plumbers and pipe fitters and policemen cannot do their work “remotely.”   A constant in the discussion of white flight, then and now, is the disingenuousness of the chroniclers.  In his analysis of the phenomenon for the liberal Brookings Institution, William Frey concedes that the cities suffering the greatest numeric losses “aside from Chicago … tend to be coastal or near coastal cities.”   Frey cites New York, San Francisco, Los Angeles, San Jose, Philadelphia, Washington, and Boston, but he shies from asking what these cities have in common. Yes, Virginia, they are among America’s most proudly blue.    True, COVID-19 was the primary driver of population loss, but it was not the disease itself that caused people to leave. Nor was it the density of a given city’s population. People fled Los Angeles just as readily as they fled New York City. On the COVID front, what drove people from these leftist strongholds were two related phenomena: the hysteria generated by the liberal media and the draconian response to that hysteria by local authorities. Those who can flee oppression, flee. Even the woke.   To anyone paying attention, which excludes most of the major media, crime was also a driving factor. With the police in blue cities handcuffed during and after the George Floyd summer of 2020, murder rates shot up at a pace not seen since the 1960s. For the woke to protest crime, however, was to sound altogether too MAGA. Better to just add a wing to that summer cottage and call it home.   Despite the evidence, analysts such as Frey and Benzow and journalists of all stripes have buried the natural lead — the progressive response to crime and COVID is what caused white flight 2.0. Tampa and St. Petersburg are coastal cities, but they gained population each of the last three years.   In a textbook case of willful blindness, the reporters responsible for a February 2022 New York Times article refused to notice the elephant poking through its very subhead: “Although some of the fastest growing regions in the country continued to grow, the gains were nearly erased by stark losses in New York, Los Angeles and San Francisco.”  As is obvious, of course, these were their own people hightailing it out of Dodge. Given their affinity with the fugitives, the Times reporters can only extend their sympathy. They decline to use the term “white flight,” let alone “racist” or “racism,” and, in a shocking turn of events, fail even to remind us that women and minorities must surely have suffered most...   If nothing else comes from their self-inflicted misery, young progressives should gain a better understanding of the proverbial crazy uncles, the ones who famously haunt their Thanksgiving dinners. Maybe, just maybe, they weren’t such racists after all."

Meme - Prof. Grace Lavery @graceelavery: "I don't think *anything* should be a crime. I think prisons should all be opened, everyone set free, and cops abolished. I don't think the criminalization of harm helps anyone heal, and I don't think it can produce anything like justice."

Meme - iamyesyouareno @iamyesyouareno: ""Men did nothing" Because men know what happens when they do something."
Caryn ann Harlos @carynannharlos: "On train again, abusive drug addled bum started yelling at a woman. Men did nothing."
*Daniel Penny in handcuffs*
This is some level of entitlement

Meme - "So, while we give our heartfelt thanks to the NSW Police Inspector who single handedly shot and killed the Bondi attacker, the NSW Greens are out calling for disarmament of frontline NSW Police. You can't make this stuff up!"
"65. Ensure that general duties police do not have as part of their standard appointments either Tasers or guns with these weapons reserved to specialised units and teams who can deploy as needed.
66. Remove Tasers from the NSW Police Force until additional safeguards are in place, for Taser use to ensure that only specially trained squads can use Tasers, that they only use Tasers as a substitute for firearms in situations of serious threat of violence to a person, and that Tasers are not used to enforce compliance in non- serious situations. Safeguards should include:"
When you don't even want the police to have tasers. Telling.

Gwynne Hogan on X - "Speaking of NYPD's reluctance to provide basic info, like the reason they started chasing a driver that ran later into woman in a crosswalk killing her. "The driver make an unspecified traffic violation, cop sources said, declining to go into detail.""
Rafael A. Mangual on X - "Person decides not to pull over for police. Takes off. Loses control and hits pedestrians. NYC reporters: “How can we blame the cops?”"

wanye on X - "A group of people went running around Chicago to beat up random strangers in unprovoked group assaults, but nobody reported it, so good news for the crime stats!"
CWBChicago on X - "Video via @CitizenApp shows a group jumping a man at 39 South State yesterday afternoon. Several people reported being randomly attacked by the group along Michigan Avenue and near Millennium Park. No arrests, no formal police reports located. #Chicago"

Dane on X - ""He had been arrested and released over 67X for violent crime in Texas and was currently out on (no bail) with 2 violent felonies still to be adjudicated"  "My mom was 80 years old," said Rosalie's son, Chuck Cook. "She was disabled. She shuffled with a cane. She was the prototypical grandmother, reading glasses down on her nose, knitting needles by the side of her rocking chair."  "If I could sue a judge, I would do it," Cook's son, Chuck Cook, told Fox News. "There is no accountability."  After being arrested for violent crimes at least 67 times in the past, on May 16, 2020, a total stranger, Randy Lewis, saw Rosalie Cook from across a parking lot and made a decision to fatally stab her outside a Walgreens as she was about to return home with some birthday cards.  Lewis tried to steal her car but was shot and kiIIed by a police officer. Rosalie is survived by 10 grand and great-grandchildren.  I'm going to say it again, WHERE'S ROSALIE'S GOLDEN CASKET, STATUES,  A NATIONAL DAY TO REMEMBER HER FATE, WHERE IS IT? WHERE'S THE STREET NAMED AFTER HER, WHERE'S THE GOFUNDME WITH MULI-MILLIONS FOR HER SURVIVING FAMILY, WHERE IS IT?"
Curtis Howell on X - "Think about that!! 67 times! At what point is enough, enough? Once, twice, 10 times?? SIXTY-SEVEN TIMES! If that’s not an indictment of a broken justice system, I don’t know what is!"

LILLEY: Trudeau Liberals trying to scare voters to protect convicts - "Should Canada be tougher or more lenient on those who commit heinous crimes? Ask most Canadians, and they will have little sympathy for Paul Bernardo, Russell Williams, Luka Magnotta or Alexandre Bissonnette who carried out the Quebec City mosque massacre. Yet, if you ask judges, the people who run Canada’s prison system or the Liberal politicians who appoint these folks, the answer is always that we should be more lenient... The latest message is that Poilievre wants to strip you, the average Canadian, of their Charter protected rights and freedoms. Now, unless you are someone convicted of killing multiple people, you don’t have to worry."

Teen had been charged 84 times before murdering Emma Lovell outside her Brisbane home - "A teenager jailed for murdering a Queensland mum after breaking into her home north of Brisbane on Boxing Day had never spent a day in custody despite racking up an astonishing 84 convictions since he was 15.  North Lakes woman Emma Lovell was stabbed to death outside her home after the teenager, then 17, entered through the unlocked door before attempting to get away from a struggle with the mum of two and her husband Lee on the night of Boxing Day back in 2022.  In the ensuing scuffle, Ms Lovell suffered a fatal stab wound to her heart, while Mr Lovell was also stabbed in the back and kicked in the face.  That teenager, who has since turned 19 in custody, was sentenced to 14 years’ jail on Monday for Ms Lovell’s murder.  It can be revealed that this is his first stint in custody despite racking up convictions over a 2.5 year period in the lead-up to the North Lakes carnage...  the teenager had been convicted of 84 offences related to break-ins or attempted break-ins of homes or cars.  The first was committed in May 2020 – when the teenager was just 15.  Sixteen of them involved unlawful entry or attempted entry of premises – two of which involved homes with the families still inside.  “On one occasion, you were confronted by an owner and you fled,” Justice Sullivan said.  “On another occasion, you were confronted by a dog inside the home.  “Commonly, the purpose of your unlawful entry was to obtain car keys to allow you the use of cars which would then be stolen.”  Eleven offences in the teenager’s record were for unlawful entry or use of vehicles.  Despite the staggering number of entries, he was never placed in custody – instead being sentenced to probation orders lasting anywhere between three to nine months.  Justice Sullivan said those probation periods involved weekly meetings with a Youth Justice case worker that lasted from 45 minutes to an hour. “(You would) participate in a module-based program known as Changing Habits and Reaching Targets,” Justice Sullivan said.  “This was a research-based program, which sought to directly target your property offending behaviours with a view to reducing your future offending.”  The teenager was on one such probation order at the time he murdered Ms Lovell... the teenager was on probation and had arrived at the Lovells’ home armed with an 11.5cm knife... Justice Sullivan said the teenager lied that he had slept from 9pm that night, and told police: “My aunty lives in Zillmere. You go ring her, I’ve got a f**king alibi from 9’oclock to now.”  While detained outside the residence, the teen laughed... the teenager still attributed his offending to his substance abuse and the physical struggle. “This demonstrates, at least to a certain extent, that you lack a willingness to confront the consequences of your own actions,” Justice Sullivan said."

17yo teen had been charged 84 times in 2 years before murdering Emma Lovell outside her Brisbane home. : r/australian - "I've delivered Changing Habits and Reaching Targets (CHART) to young offenders as a social worker in a previous role. What a waste of time that was, I was so vocal about what a substandard resource it was."
"You fail to understand the real purpose of these programs   It’s to extract taxpayer wealth from criminal offenders and redirect it towards certain racketeering activities   Nobody really cares what happens to Tyrone Walker Boney after their ninth aggravated break enter and steal in company"
17yo teen had been charged 84 times in 2 years before murdering Emma Lovell outside her Brisbane home. : r/australian - "Haha, gaoling people is one thing but you could instead employ 4 or 5 parole staff to 'supervise' each offender while they're out 'rehabilitating' in the community before needing a conclave of clinical forensic psychologists to report on their progress, you need to think bigger!"
17yo teen had been charged 84 times in 2 years before murdering Emma Lovell outside her Brisbane home. : r/australian - "It's by design and intended. It's very simple, you allow crime to breed out of control, it destroys the social fabric of an area, people move out, property prices lower, certain people buy up all the property, start enforcing the law again, clear out the criminals, redevelop it with government grants for low-income housing, sell it as a boutique gentrified living  See: Redfern, Kings Cross, Newtown, Eveleigh, Newtown...
If a teacher does anything, they will get in trouble.  If the parents do anything, they will get in trouble - through DoCS, now FaCS.  Now? If the police do anything? They will get charged themselves by the innumerable charitable legal services who treat police as the criminals for attempting to enforce the law upon violent offenders..  So they have learned not to enforce the law and started resigning en masse around the COVID years, taking a nice little PTSD claim on their way out the door. Good on them. Have you noticed that the highways are a little different in the last few years?"

Retailers use police-like investigation centers to fight theft. Shoppers pay the price
eigenrobot on X - "the substance of this article is "retailers are building private security apparatuses to efficiently counter organized theft operations" the tone is "won't someone please think of the thieves guilds""
If you don't let organised criminal gangs steal your stuff, you are evil

The Chicago City Council is pushing to keep ShotSpotter technology, despite Mayor Brandon Johnson's effort to get rid of it - "In a protest vote to curb Mayor Brandon Johnson’s power, the Chicago City Council passed a measure Wednesday aimed at saving a controversial gunshot detection technology contract Johnson plans to nix.  After the vote, Johnson was dismissive of the stunning rebuke of his authority — arguing the measure lacks clarity and doesn’t overturn his decision to end the city’s contract with the gunshot technology company SoundThinking, formerly known as ShotSpotter... The technology by the company SoundThinking, formerly ShotSpotter, was first piloted by Chicago police in 2012, and later greatly expanded in 2018. Johnson campaigned on getting rid of it, arguing it’s expensive, ineffective and leads to the over-policing of Black and brown Chicagoans.  But a coalition of some of the council’s more conservative members, along with some members whose wards have long been plagued by gun violence, led the charge for keeping the technology. Those council members argue it’s an effective policing tool Chicago needs, and beat back an attempt to send the measure back to committee. “This is something my community needs,” said Ald. Monique Scott, who said she’s had four mass shootings in the 24th Ward since being elected. “So this is safe for the DNC, but not for my constituents?”"

Meme - Josh Kruger @JoshKrugerPHL: "Today, I learned there is apparently a "crippling crime wave destroying all cities" according to Stephen Miller, which includes presumably Philly. My house is not on fire and chaos is not reigning in the street. I saw a man get a parking ticket yesterday. My trash got picked up."
"Philadelphia Journalist Josh Kruger Found Shot and Killed After Home Invasion. Police said Kruger was shot multiple times by a person with a gun who entered his home and opened fire in the early hours of the morning"

End Wokeness on X - "Homicides per 100,000 in El Salvador:
2015: 103
2016: 81.0
2017: 60.2
2018: 50.4
2019: 35.8
2020: 21.2
2021: 18.1
2022: 7.8
2023: 2.4
2024: 2.0
Crazy what can happen when the people doing the crime are taken off the streets."
Wilfred Reilly on X - "Read this again. The decline - which occurred alongside no change at all to Internet-popular variables like "levels of racism" or "genetics of the population" or "GDP per capita" - was from 103/100K murders to year to TWO/100K murders per year. Common culturalist W. YOU CAN LITERALLY JUST ENFORCE THE DAMN LAW."
Why left wingers hate Bukele so much

Crémieux on X - "Thanks to its gang crackdown, El Salvador closed out 2023 as one of the safest countries in the Americas.  That safety hasn't gone away.  As of a few days ago, El Salvador is doing better than it was this time last year."

Thread by @NeilPatelTDC on Thread Reader App – Thread Reader App - "After just returning from Bukele's inaugural in El Salvador it's glaring just how truly dishonest the American coverage is. Here is the essential true story of what just happened in El Salvador. You will not find it in a single American corporate media outlet. It's a huge reason why they are failing. The US helped screw up El Salvador and all of Central America by ousting dozens of governments when it suited our interests. As a result of these and other forces, El Salvador was left in ruins and wracked by a 12 year civil war between communists and the government followed by more than a decade of dominance by rival gangs originally from the US with roots in satanism. These gangs terrorized the small nation for more than a decade. They use torture and dismemberment and even human sacrifice as a matter of course. They brought El Salvador the world's highest per capita murder rate. They took huge extortion payments from virtually every business crippling the economy. All this is our business because it resulted in a huge exodus of migrants to the US. Under new President Nayib Bukele virtually every gang member has been put behind bars in a brand new prison he built in only 7 months. He has the highest adult prison rate per capita in the world now. The murder rate went from a peak of 103/100,000 population per year all the way down to 2.4/100,000 population per year. This means El Salvador went from having the highest murder rate in the world to a lower murder rate than the US. Once the gangs were all locked up, the economy started coming back to life. The streets are now vibrant and safe. Most importantly for us, Illegal immigration to the US virtually stopped and in fact many law abiding Salvadorans who fled to America are returning home. The MS13 Salvadoran gang members still in the US prefer to stay in the US and torture our citizens rather than return to face actual justice back home. Salvadorans rewarded Bukele for saving their country with polls showing him to be one of the world's most popular leaders with high 80s popularity. He won reelection with similar numbers and now has virtually all of the legislature as well.  His inaugural address celebrated the victory and committed to focus on rebuilding the economy now that the multi decade crime problem has been fixed. His is the only solution offered to date that could actually help fix the immigration system of the US. Other countries are flying in to learn what he did and try to replicate it."

Meme - Libs of TikTok @libsoftiktok: "A woman pulled up to a hospital in DC with her 55-year-old mom and went inside to get a wheelchair. 22-year-old Kayla Kenisha Brown then jumped in the driver’s seat, sped off, and crashed into a building. The passenger then died.  A DC prosecutor just dropped the m*rder and kidnapping charges.  No photos of the driver. I wonder why…"

Judge Finds Probable Cause in Fatal Carjacking, Defendant’s Release Denied - "Kayla Kenisha Brown, 22, is charged with unarmed carjacking for allegedly stealing a motor vehicle from a woman with the woman’s mother, 55-year-old Leslie Gaines, inside the vehicle on June 3 at the MedStar Washington Hospital Center on the 100 block of Irving Street, NW.   According to court documents, Brown crashed the vehicle into the United States Attorney’s Office on the 600 block of D Street, NW, and attempted to flee the scene with the vehicle’s keys in her hand. However, a Metropolitan Police Department (MPD) officer was able to stop her, and she was placed under arrest.   Gaines, who suffered from multiple sclerosis, was found unconscious and unresponsive at the car crash scene, as per court documents, and was transported to a local hospital, where she succumbed to her injuries... Judge Raymond asked if the detective knew of any witnesses at the site of the car crash who were interviewed by the detective or any of his colleagues regarding whether or not the victim was alive. The detective was unsure, stating all he knew was that the victim was unresponsive and not breathing, requiring CPR.  Following the detective’s testimony, defense attorney Slyvia Smith argued that there was “very weak evidence” for this case to be considered a carjacking, saying that the vehicle was not taken in a violent manner.   Smith also argued that it could not be determined whether Gaines was alive when the car was taken. The prosecution disagreed saying, “If your mother had passed away in front of you, you would not get out of the car and wait in line.”   A June 4 autopsy was conducted, but the manner and cause of death has not yet been determined. Despite this, Judge Raymond told the parties she found probable cause for the carjacking and that the victim was alive when the car crashed.  Smith disagreed, stating “It’s incredibly weak with respect to a carjacking.”  She also argued for her client’s release, stating she has no criminal history, is a high school graduate, and is working on building a business.  “The jail is a dangerous place… [Brown] is not a person that needs to be detained,” asserted Smith."

The last few weeks proved our justice system is a JOKE. Let's break it down. - YouTube -"First son Hunter Biden was found guilty on several federal gun charges of course folks on the left were pretty excited too because like CNN claimed it shattered Trump's persecution narrative. Now granted Hunter should have been on trial for money laundering and for tax evasion and for selling influence and for operating as an unregistered foreign agent and a few other things but hey I'm sure any of the rest of us would have been given a free pass on such things too... Washington DC. Robberies there are up 67%, homicides up 35%, vehicle thefts up 82%. So you got to figure that the police chief there is facing serious media scrutiny and a public pressure to resign. Or yeah starting around like a celebrity at the local Gay Pride Fest, that's totally reasonable too... in Washington state where three kids just got arrested for leaving skid marks on a gay rainbow flag that had been painted on a public road. Now while I might take the position that if you don't want your stuff driven on by tires maybe the middle of the road isn't the place to put it, who can blame Spokane for wanting to maintain Law and Order? I mean that's just who they are. It's not like this is the same city and state that recently let a bunch of leftwing folks stage a mini revolution and set up an autonomous zone in the middle of the city and go without bathing for months. That's free speech... US attorney Matthew Graves. He's serious about the rule of law. That's why he put this woman 71-year-old Rebecca the praying grandma Lavrenz in prison for up to a year. She entered the Capitol building unlawfully on January 6th. And Graves isn't putting up with outlaws like that. No, he'll only put up with outlaws like 22-year-old Kayla Kenisha Brown, who carjacked 55-year-old Leslie Marie Gaines and killed her... Grandma following a big crowd of people into the Capitol Building, off to prison. Young car thieves who kill Grandma after carjacking them, I mean, look, let's show a little grace. We all make mistakes
Crimes against the regime are serious. Prosecuting petty things like murder is racist

Innocence project legal director’s romance turned to blackmail threats - "A Bay Area attorney who works to free innocent people from prison is facing an extraordinary predicament after exchanging intimate texts and videos with a convicted murderer who then tried to blackmail her.  “I recorded every phone call, kept every text. And copies of every video. You can try to clean it up. But you’ll never practice law again. Your career is done,” Marritte Funches, who is incarcerated in Sterling, Colo., wrote to Paige Kaneb, legal director of the Northern California Innocence Project, in an email.  Funches demanded “2 million dollars. After taxes. In a trust that belongs to ‘me.’ ” If Kaneb didn’t comply, he said he would release the texts and videos to a news outlet — the San Francisco Standard. Additionally, Funches threatened to recant critical testimony in one of Kaneb’s biggest cases, according to Stuart Hanlon, a spokesperson who reviewed messages and audio recordings that Funches sent to Kaneb, and made some of them available to the Chronicle."

Tori Dunn killing: B.C. premier calls on Ottawa to review bail laws - "B.C.'s premier is calling on the federal government to take a closer look at how its bail law is being applied after a Surrey woman was killed in her own home earlier this month.  Premier David Eby spoke about Tori Dunn's death at a news conference Monday, calling her a "remarkable person."...  "Something went wrong here. Something went wrong," Eby said Monday. "An individual who was charged with a serious crime was brought in front of the court, the Crown said, ‘Please don't release this person, they're likely to offend, it will compromise the public's confidence in the justice system,’ and the judge applying the law decided to release that person where he allegedly went out and murdered another person. Something obviously went wrong here.""

Surveillance captures man wandering Surrey neighbourhood on night Tori Dunn killed - "While on bail on robbery charges, the 41-year-old is accused of stabbing a woman near a Surrey SkyTrain station three weeks before Dunn’s homicide."

Nearly half of 124 arrested by Ontario carjacking task force were on bail: police - "Nearly half of the 124 people arrested by Ontario’s carjacking task force were out on bail, police say, with many being released again after their latest arrest.  The Provincial Carjacking Joint Task Force, which operated from September 2023 until March, saw 124 arrests made and 749 criminal charges laid, police said... "law enforcement is just one part of the solution. It’s really concerning that 44 per cent of those arrested were out on bail at the time of their arrest, and 61 per cent were subsequently released on bail yet again.”       Johnson later noted that 36 of the 124 people arrested — around 29 per cent — were young offenders, with 47 per cent of them reoffenders... Johnson said that it’s a “complicated issue” as to why minors may commit car thefts, with one possible reason being the “low risk, high payoff.”  “There’s a lot of money to be made,” he noted, and said some criminals target young people who may want to make money.  “The lack of potential consequences might be a driving factor as well. And frankly our court system, rightly so, gives gives people second chances, and sometimes third and fourth chances. …  “Thankfully in this country, people are given a second chance. But when it’s when it’s multiple times, it is frustrating, for sure.”"
The fact that 100% were not let them out on bail again shows the power of systemic racism

Suicide of the Liberals

Tellingly, from October 2020, on how and why liberals enable the far left, even though they will be its targets (e.g. commies always scornfully proclaim that they are not liberals), why left wingers fall to the moralistic fallacy (that what is morally offensive must be wrong), why they don't want solutions to problems (instead wanting Revolution instead), on the justification of left wing violence, left wing preference falsification and so much more about left wing ideology:

Suicide of the Liberals

"Between 1900 and 1917, waves of unprecedented terror struck Russia... 

How did educated, liberal society respond to such terrorism? What was the position of the Constitutional Democratic (Kadet) Party and its deputies in the Duma (the parliament set up in 1905)? Though Kadets advocated democratic, constitutional procedures, and did not themselves engage in ­terrorism, they aided the terrorists in any way they could. Kadets collected money for terrorists, turned their homes into safe houses, and called for total amnesty for arrested terrorists who pledged to continue the mayhem. Kadet Party central committee member N. N. Shchepkin declared that the party did not regard terrorists as criminals at all, but as saints and martyrs. The official Kadet paper, Herald of the Party of People’s Freedom, never published an article condemning political assassination. The party leader, Paul Milyukov, declared that “all means are now legitimate . . . and all means should be tried.” When asked to condemn terrorism, another liberal leader in the Duma, Ivan Petrunkevich, famously replied: “Condemn terror? That would be the moral death of the party!”

Not just lawyers, teachers, doctors, and engineers, but even industrialists and bank directors raised money for the terrorists. Doing so signaled advanced opinion and good manners. A quote attributed to Lenin—“When we are ready to kill the capitalists, they will sell us the rope”—would have been more accurately rendered as: “They will buy us the rope and hire us to use it on them.” True to their word, when the Bolsheviks gained control, their organ of terror, the Cheka, “liquidated” members of all opposing parties, beginning with the Kadets. Why didn’t the liberals and businessmen see it coming?

That question has bothered many students of revolutionary movements. Revolutions never succeed without the support of wealthy, liberal, educated society. Yet revolutionaries seldom conceal that their success entails the seizure of all wealth, the suppression of dissenting opinion, and the murder of class enemies. Lenin, after all, was by no means the only bloodthirsty Russian radical. In 1907, Ivan Pavlov—not the Nobel prize–winning scientist, but one of the brightest theoreticians of the especially violent ­Maximalists—published The Purification of Mankind, which divided humanity into ethical races. In this analysis, exploiters, vaguely and broadly identified, constituted a race, “morally inferior to our animal predecessors,” which must be exterminated, children and all, by the morally superior race, whose best members were the terrorists themselves. Remarkably enough, this program evoked no indignation, among other Maximalists or even among other socialists, however moderate. Another prominent Maximalist, M. A. Engel’gardt, argued for a red terror that would kill at least twelve million people. As if anticipating the Khmer Rouge, one anarchist group sought to establish equality by killing all educated people.

And yet the liberals refused to use their position in the Duma to make constitutionalism work. They would not participate in determining the government budget but confined their activities to denouncing the government and defending terrorists. Even when Pyotr Stolypin, the most capable chief minister ­Nicholas II ever had, offered to enact the entire Kadet program, the Kadets refused to cooperate. Evidently their professed beliefs were less important than their emotional identification with radicalism, of whatever sort.

In one memorable scene, the hero of ­Solzhenitsyn’s novel November 1916, Colonel Vorotyntsev, finds himself at a social gathering principally of Kadet adherents, where everyone repeats the same progressive pieties. He soon grasps that “each of them knew in advance what the others would say, but that it was imperative for them to meet and hear all over again what they collectively knew. They were all overwhelmingly certain that they were right, yet they needed these exchanges to reinforce their certainty.” To his surprise, Vorotyntsev, as if under a spell, finds himself joining in. It requires an effort to remind himself that what these progressives say about “the people,” whom they do not know at all, contradicts everything he has learned from his acquaintance with thousands of common soldiers. When Vorotyntsev ventures the slightest discordant observation, “just . . . one little thing . . . they were all on their guard. They fell silent, as they had been speaking, in unison, and their silence was aimed at the colonel.” He retreats and, as if hypnotized, repeats progressive pieties with the rest.

What is this strange political hypnosis? Vorotyntsev gives ground and holds his peace, “not because he felt he was wrong, but out of fear of saying something reactionary,” a word Solzhenitsyn italicizes to suggest that, in other cultures and periods, a different term of opprobrium will play the same role. Soldiers who are brave under fire cower before progressive opinion. For a long time, Vorotyntsev cannot bring himself to voice counterarguments, “and he despised himself for it. . . . It was a contagious disease—there was no resisting it if you came too close.”

At last, Vorotyntsev finds it in himself to resist. Soon after, he discusses the encounter with Professor Andozerskaya, who explains that she, like professors at many universities today, “must choose every word so carefully.”

In educated Russian society . . . by no means every view may be expressed. A whole school of thought . . . is morally forbidden, not merely in lectures but in private conversation. And the more “liberated” the company, the more heavily this tacit prohibition weighs on it.

One prominent Kadet, Peter Struve, did break with “liberated” opinion. He pointed out the absurdity of liberal intolerance and the suicidal insanity of backing bloodthirsty revolutionaries. After the Bolshevik takeover, he blamed liberals for the disastrous consequences they might have prevented.

Struve was not entirely alone in trying to alert educated society. In 1909, he joined six other thinkers to publish Landmarks: A Collection of Essays on the Russian Intelligentsia. In addition to Alexander Izgoev, another prominent Kadet, the contributors included Nikolai Berdyaev, Sergei Bulgakov, and Semyon Frank, who would reshape Russian Orthodox theology; legal scholar Bogdan Kistyakovsky; and literary critic Mikhail Gershenzon, who edited the volume. One of the most important documents of Russian thought, Landmarks is a must for anyone investigating the mentality of the intelligentsia.

Landmarks caused unprecedented scandal. It went through five editions in about a year, and the fifth included an appendix listing more than two hundred books and articles answering (mostly vilifying) it. If the contributors aimed to promote reasoned dialogue, foster intellectual tolerance, and sway liberal opinion away from automatic radicalism, they failed spectacularly. Most Kadets dissociated themselves from the book, and the party leader Milyukov toured the country to denounce it for betraying the sacred traditions of the Russian intelligentsia. The volume’s unforgivable sin, Frank explained, lay in its

criticism of the basic sacred dogma of the radical intelligentsia—the “mystique” of revolution. This was regarded as an audacious and quite intolerable betrayal of the age-old sacred testament of the Russian intelligentsia, the betrayal of the tradition handed down by the prophets and saints of Russian social thought—Belinsky, Granovsky, Chernyshevsky, Pisarev.

To follow the volume’s argument, one needs to grasp how the contributors used the words “intelligentsia” and “intelligent” (member of the intelligentsia). “Intelligentsia” is a word that originated in Russia, where it was coined about 1860. Used in its strict, proper, or classical sense, it means something entirely different from its English equivalent. To be an intelligent it was by no means sufficient (or even necessary) to be well-educated. And if by “­intellectual” one means a curious person thinking for himself or herself, then intelligent was close to its opposite.

Three characteristics identified a classical intelligent. To begin with, an intelligent identified primarily as an intelligent, rather than by his social class, profession, ethnic group, or other social category. No one would have considered Tolstoy an intelligent, for example, in part because he used his title “Count.”

Unless an intelligent was wealthy or, like Lenin, could become a professional revolutionary living at his party’s expense, he had to work, but as a matter of honor he did not take his profession seriously...

At the extreme, an intelligent followed the prescripts of Sergei Nechaev’s “Catechism of a Revolutionary” and “severed all ties with the civic order,” renouncing family and even his own name. Of course, very few went so far, just as very few medieval Christians became monks, but Nechaev’s prescription remained the ideal—the ideal of what Frank called “the monk-revolutionary.”

The Landmarks contributors mention a second characteristic of intelligents: their devotion to a special set of manners, including dress, hygiene (deliberately poor), hair style (the famous “short-haired lady nihilists”), prescribed and taboo expressions, and a set of sexual practices that the Landmarks contributors describe as puritanical dissoluteness (debauchery practiced as a rite) fueled by “nihilistic moralism.”...

Most important, and of greatest concern, was how intelligents thought. An intelligent signed on to a set of beliefs regarded as totally certain, scientifically proven, and absolutely obligatory for any moral person. A strict intelligent had to subscribe to some ideology—whether populist, Marxist, or anarchist—that was committed to the total destruction of the existing order and its replacement by a utopia that would, at a stroke, eliminate every human ill. This aspiration was often described as chiliastic (or apocalyptic), and, as has been observed, it is no accident that many of the most influential intelligents, from Chernyshevsky to Stalin, came from clerical families or had studied in seminaries. For Struve, the mentality of the intelligentsia constituted a cruel parody of religion, preserving “the external features of religiosity without its content.”

An intelligent could not be a believer, which is another reason no one would have considered Tolstoy (let alone that conservative Dostoevsky) an intelligent. They accepted atheism on faith, were spiritually devoted to materialism, and proselytized determinism. They based these commitments on “science,” a word they used to mean not a disinterested process of discovery based on experiment and evidence, but—and here the reason became perfectly circular —a metaphysics of materialism and determinism.

Still worse, intelligentsia “science” entailed an assertion that the world worked by blind, purposeless force and yet, as if guided by providence, was guaranteed to progress in human terms and reach moral perfection. (As people say today, the arc of history bends toward justice.) Berdyaev quoted theologian Vladimir Soloviev’s paraphrase of “the intelligentsia syllogism”: “Man is descended from the apes; therefore love one another.” In the same spirit, Bulgakov observed that “the intelligentsia asserts that the personality is wholly a product of the environment, and at the same time suggests to it that it improve its surroundings, like Baron Münchausen pulling himself out of the swamp by his own hair.”

If there was one “philosopheme” (Struve’s term) shared by intelligents it was the assumption that all questions must be judged politically. Thus, one could discredit a scientific theory not by logic or evidence but by calling its implications “reactionary” (“and what don’t we call reactionary!”). The Soviets banned, at one time or another, genetics, relativity, and quantum theory—not on criteria from their respective disciplines, but on the basis of their supposed incompatibility with “dialectical ­materialism.”

Such politicism disparaged philanthropy as “a ­betrayal of all mankind and its eternal salvation for the sake of a few individuals close at hand.” During the famine of 1891–92, when Tolstoy and Chekhov engaged in famine relief, Lenin advocated hoarding food to bring revolution closer (“the worse, the better”)...

Intelligentsia ethics appalled the Landmarks essayists. If everything is political, then the cruelest means are not only permitted but obligatory. What is more, the very tactics the revolutionaries condemned became acceptable when the revolutionaries themselves used them. The argument that comes naturally to liberal-minded people—what if the shoe were on the other foot?—was rejected in principle. For an intelligent, there is no other foot.

In Solzhenitsyn’s August 1914, when young Veronika criticizes revolutionaries for doing just what they condemn, her intelligentsia aunts are shocked. Why,

the unfeeling girl was equating the oppressors of the people with its liberators, speaking as though they had the same moral rights! . . . Let him [the intelligent] kill. . . . The Party takes all the blame upon itself, so that terror is no longer murder, expropriation is no longer robbery.

Such thinking is a “major convenience,” Gershenzon observed, because “it remove[s] all moral responsibility from the individual.”...

Gershenzon famously remarked that “in Russia an almost infallible gauge of the strength of an artist’s genius is the extent of his hatred for the intelligentsia.” Russia’s greatest contribution to world culture—the literary tradition of Tolstoy, Turgenev, Dostoevsky, and Chekhov—could not have existed had these writers written to political formula. On the contrary, the Russian novel of ideas critically examined everything the intelligentsia stood for—the simplicity of human psychology, the easy division of people into good and evil, the supposition that life’s meaning is already known, and the reduction of ethics to politics—and showed how mistaken and dangerous such ideologies are...

Most liberals proudly donned the uniform. This tragedy almost guaranteed the intelligentsia’s eventual seizure of power and the terrible reign that followed. For the Landmarks contributors, liberals’ attachment to illiberal movements derived from a psychological complex favoring conformism.

Though some liberals recognized their differences from the radicals, most acted like intelligentsia wannabes who were unwilling to acknowledge, even to themselves, that their values were essentially different. Socialized to regard anything conservative as reprehensible—and still worse, as a social faux pas—they contrived ways to justify radical intolerance and violence as forced, understandable, and noble. They had to, since the fundamental emotional premise of liberalism—hostility to those ignorant, bigoted, morally depraved people on the right—almost always proved more compelling than professed intellectual ­commitments.

Casting “unworthy, furtive glances at who liked what,” Berdyaev observed, these liberals illustrated how “moral cowardice develops, while love of truth and intellectual daring are extinguished.” Captivated by public opinion, they signed petitions they did not agree with and excused heinous acts, always observing the rule: Better to side with people a mile to one’s left than be associated with anyone an inch to one’s right. Educated society knew that one could not just abolish the police, as the anarchists demanded, and that socialism would not instantly cure all ills, but they assured themselves that progressive opinion must be right...

They warned, as Dostoevsky had in The Possessed, that to the extent that a society’s educated class comes to resemble an intelligentsia in the Russian sense, it is headed for what we now call totalitarianism—unless others muster the strength to resist it.

One sometimes hears that “the pendulum is bound to swing back.” But how does one know there is a pendulum at all, rather than—let us say—a snowball accelerating downhill? It is unwise to comfort oneself with metaphors. When a party is willing to push its power as far as it can go, it will keep going until it meets sufficient opposition. In the French Revolution, terror was eventually stopped by “Thermidor,” and then by Napoleon. But in Russia, Stalin proclaimed “the intensification of the class struggle” after the Revolution, entailing an unending series of arrests, executions, and sentences to the Gulag. What meets no resistance does not stop."

Related: Violent Protest and the Intelligentsia - WSJ

Links - 7th July 2024 (1)

What Is Sugar Really Doing to You? - "JENA: They saw that the prevalence of diabetes was about 50 percent higher in that group that was exposed to more sugar when they were young. And, it wasn’t just diabetes, they found elevated rates of cholesterol arthritis. And they also looked at measures of laboratory markers of chronic inflammation. and levels were about 33 percent higher in people who had been exposed, to more sugar. And the other thing that is interesting is they didn’t find much difference in the total caloric intake of these individuals much later in life. This is people who had similar total calories, but more of those calories were coming from sugar. So it does speak to this broader question which is, what is the composition of calories that we get as opposed to the total number of calories, that we take... they also looked at, measures of human capital accumulation. We can think of that in economics as how much education you get and economic wellbeing. What they found there was that on average, the cohorts who were exposed to this period of greater sugar, they were less likely to complete post-secondary education by about 20 percent. They did not find any effect on the probability of being employed, but that exposure to sugar was associated with the reduced likelihood of working in a skilled profession and having above median wealth by the time you were, let’s say 50 to 65. If you believe these results as being causal, the argument would be that it’s related to the health behaviors that develop, the health outcomes that then develop, and the effects of health on education and wealth."
So much for a calorie is a calorie

Meme - Joseph Bronski @BronskiJoseph: "How does personality effect income? Contrary to popular belief, conscientiousness and extraversion don't have much of an effect. Agreeableness is harmful to income, and openness matters the most, because of its correlation with IQ.  Smart, disagreeable people make the most."

Meme - Timothy Snyder @TimothyDSnyder: "6/11. Once named, fascism can be defeated. Indeed, once named it can be easily defeated."
Jesse Singal @jessesingal: "This is such a good tweet"
Quetzal Writes @QuetzalThoughts: "What's funny about that thread is at no point does he give even a remote outline of what Fascism is. So per his terms, he failed in even this meager endeavor of definition"
JamesT @jamespthomas92: "It needn't be defined, only named. Disagreeing with this tweet is fascism. Named and defeated. Check mate."

Jade Hamnett's answer to During the Holocaust, is there evidence of even a single SS soldier who stopped and said: 'This is immoral, I can't do this'? - Quora - "My Grandad was held as a prisoner of war in Germany and spoke highly of a member of the Nazi party. While being held as a prisoner local Germans of high regard could take prisoners out for the day to use them as labourers. This one particular man often took my Grandad and over time they developed a kind of friendship. When meeting other Germans in the street it was customary to say, “Heil Hilter.” This man instead responded with the usual German greeting. My grandad eventually asked him why he was one of the first to sign up to the Nazi party in his town, but didn’t use the greeting. He explained he could see what was coming. Eventually he began to tell my grandad small details like to watch out for certain birds in the woods that made a lot of sound, and gave him a compass. He never said it was to help him escape, but it was clear what the intent was.  Later my grandad managed to make an escape"
So much for all "Nazis" being bad

Meme - "r/SingaporeRaw
lol was banned from ask Singapore when I asked why new citizens don't serve NS
So I posted this today morning, it got a lot of comments & then got banned lol. Is there anything wrong with my post ?
r/askSingapore
Why Male new citizens & PRs are exempted from NS
So I saw this Reddit with regards to why SG needs conscription with so many people supporting NS. In that case why not enlist well bodied new citizens & PRs. After all they are two years ahead meanwhile locals need to defend them. Worst is they get to enjoy freebies as someone who has served this country. It's seems like people who contributed to the previous Reddit article have no skin in the game ( don't need to serve NS/ no reservist To me that's free riding. Prove me wrong
PS : I was a second gen PR who served & got citizenship"

One Night Cough Syrup: Most Dangerous Ingredients & Why - "More than a hundred years ago, cough syrups were an unregulated industry, which meant manufacturers could (and did) add just about anything to their cough remedies...
Opium
Morphine
Heroin
Chloroform"

Pizza delivery driver shoots, kills man after robbery attempt: Reports - "Police said that two people, including the armed victim, tried to rob the driver at gunpoint, ordering him to hand over money...  his brother, Ameer White, confirmed with WTHR that it was 21-year-old Areyeh. White said that he and his brother are residents at the complex, and his brother was at his girlfriend's apartment at the time of the incident. He questioned why the delivery driver was armed in the first place.  "If you were the pizza delivery guy... why were you armed?" White asked."
If you have a defense against thugs trying to rob you, you are a bad person

Hypocrisy and Public Life - "La Rochefoucauld famously said that "hypocrisy is a tribute vice pays to virtue." This is often understood to mean that the hypocrite who says one thing but does another, says what he says because he knows it is right. The hypocrite possesses the knowledge that his behavior is wrong or sinful, and so speaks the truth, even while not living it... But is hypocrisy really nothing more than the inability of persons to live up to their own moral code? No. Hypocrisy does not just involve disconnect between word and deed; it involves dissimulation, falsity in how one acts. The hypocrite does not merely make assertions he believes to be true about morality while failing to abide by them. He also makes false assertions, often by his deeds. He deceives others by creating the appearance of virtue while succumbing to vice. Creating this appearance may, of course, take a great deal of work; consider what is involved in maintaining the illusion-to one's spouse, one's children, and others-that one is being faithful in marriage, if one is actually having an affair.   This makes hypocrisy, just in itself, morally bad for the hypocrite... The form of hypocrisy that seems most especially egregious is that in which the "tribute" paid to virtue is entirely specious. The agent simulates virtue in this case not because of a recognition that the appearance of vice can corrupt or harm others, or because he is still somehow allied with virtue, but because the appearance of virtue brings with it certain rewards."

Meme - "Most to Least Common 4-Digit PIN Numbers
3.4m analysed from multiple data breaches
*common numbers* people using the same two pairs of numbers
using their birth year (19xx)
using their birth date in MM/DD or DD/MM format
4321
1234
1701"

Meme - Woman: "Promise me you'll never change"
Man in red vest, white tee and blue pants: "I promise"
*Woman in wedding dress at wedding, Man in red vest, white tee and blue pants*

Meme - "There will be no "collapse" the way some of these people think of it. It's not going to be like the movie "Dawn of the Dead" or whatever where one day suddenly shit hits the fan and prices skyrocket and everyone begins to riot and the SS comes marching down the street to kill everyone. There will be no "happening." It's far more insidious than that. Read the poem "The Hollow Men" by TS Eliot and you'll understand. You'll just notice that every day simple things will become a little more expensive. Everyone's homes and apartments will start to get smaller. Your work hours will get longer, but your pay will decrease. You'll see family and friends less, and find that in time you care less about them. Every day you'll find yourself lowering your standards for everything: work, food, relationships, etc. Job security will no longer exist as a concept. You'll notice houses and apartments shrinking. People will start hanging on to clothing longer and longer. Less people will get married, even less will have children. People will engross themselves in technological distractions and fantasy while never truly experiencing the real world. Whatever dream people used to have about what their lives were going to be will become for them a distant memory. The only thing left for them will be the reality of their debt and their poverty. And every minute of every day they will be told, "You are stupid, ugly, and weak, but together we are free, prosperous, and safe." That is the collapse. The reduction of the American man into a feudal serf, incapable of feeling love or hate, incapable of seeing the pitiful nature of his situation for what it is or recognizing his own self worth."

'The Simpsons' Producers Remove Classic Michael Jackson Episode - "The Simpsons episode “Stark Raving Dad” is considered one of the most iconic episodes from the show’s early run — but it will now be harder for fans to view.  Michael Jackson infamously provided a voice for the episode, which aired as the show’s Season 3 premiere on Sept. 19, 1991. His involvement was uncredited, and only rumored to be Jackson’s voice until it was finally confirmed to actually be him, years later. But now, following the extensive allegations of sexual assault by Jackson as chronicled in the HBO documentary “Leaving Neverland,” “The Simpsons” producers have decided to pull the episode from rotation... Jackson voiced the character Leon Kompowsky, who meets Homer Simpson in a mental institution. Simpson brings home the character, a large white man who claims to be Michael Jackson. Ultimately, Leon helps Bart Simpson celebrate his sister’s birthday by singing one of the show’s most memorable tunes, “Happy Birthday Lisa.” Jackson didn’t actually sing on the episode; Kipp Lennon mimicked Jackson’s voice on all of the episode’s songs."
Michael Jackson Didn't Sing In The Simpsons - "Michael Jackson was refused permission by his label Sony Music to sing on ‘The Simpsons’... the iconic singer handpicked an impersonator to fill in his parts. Kipp Lennon recorded the track, and later went on to provide Jackson’s singing voice in the Stateside mini-series ‘The Jacksons: An American Dream’."

Has anyone ever gained superpowers in real life after an accident? - One place-1 - Quora - "Jason Padgett. He was a party guy who hated school and got really bad grades. One day, two men savagely attacked him and robbed Jason outside a bar, leaving him with a severe concussion.  This damage turned him into a math genius and made him learn fractal geometry, which he had never learned before. He then became a renowned mathematician.
Derek Amato. At 39, he hit his head after diving into a pool. He was diagnosed with a concussion and 35% hearing loss. After that Derek started seeing black and white keys on his head and out of nowhere started playing the piano like an expert and eventually became a composer.
Ben McMahon. He was in a car accident in 2015 and was in a coma for a week. When he woke up, he spoke perfect Chinese, even though he had only learned the basics in childhood.
Tony Cicero. He was struck by lightning while making a call in a phone booth. Within days, he became addicted to music, which wasn't the case before. After experimenting with the piano, he became a musical artist who composes his own music."

The Supreme Court’s Surprising Term | The New Yorker - "During a time when the country has been starkly divided on matters ranging from the pandemic to the Presidency, the Court has largely avoided partisanship."
From 2021. But despite the fact that the liberals vote in lockstep, the left still claim that this is fascism, ideological bias and imposing conservatism on the country

Meme - "PILOT LOUNGE *Braille translation*"

Meme - "Kids imagining what life would be like at 40. I am forty. I have wrinkles and grey hair and I would have a walking stick to helo me walk. Rita Monaghan, 9
l am forty. I am turning old. I just left work because I cannot manage going up and down hills. I know I will soon die. Jennifer Turner 8"

Meme - "东北冷面 Northeast cold face"
Meme - "紅油抄手 Red oil is copied by hand"

The Australian town where people live underground - "as you venture further along the highway, more of these mystery constructions emerge – piles of pale earth, haphazardly scattered like long-forgotten monuments. Every now and then, there is a white pipe sticking up from the ground next to one.   These are the first signs of Coober Pedy, an opal mining town with a population of around 2,500 people. Many of its little peaks are the waste soil from decades of mining, but they are also evidence of another local specialty – underground living... In the winter, this troglodyte lifestyle may seem merely eccentric. But on a summer's day, Coober Pedy – loosely translated from an indigenous Australian term that means "white man in a hole" – needs no explanation: it regularly hits 52C (126F), so hot that birds have been known to fall from the sky and electronics must be stored in fridges... In Coober Pedy, subterranean buildings must be at least four metres (13ft) deep, to prevent their roofs collapsing – and under this amount of rock, it is always a balmy 23C (73F). While above-ground residents must endure oven-hot summers and frigid winter nights, where it regularly dips to 2-3C (36-37F), subterranean homes remain at perfect room temperature, 24 hours a day, year-round.   Apart from comfort, one major advantage of underground living is money. Coober Pedy generates all its own electricity – 70% of which is powered by wind and solar – but running air conditioning is often impossibly expensive. "To live above ground, you pay an absolute fortune for heating and cooling, when it's often above 50C (122F) in the summer", says Jason Wright, a resident who runs Riba's. On the other hand, many underground homes in Coober Pedy are relatively affordable. During a recent auction, the average three-bedroom house sold for around AU$40,000 (£21,000 or US$26,000). Though many of these properties were extremely basic or in need of renovation, there's a large gap between these valuations and those in the nearest major city, Adelaide, where the average house price is AU$700,000 (£361,000 or US$457,000). Other benefits include zero insects – "when you get to the door flies jump off your back, they don't want to come into the dark and the cold," says Wright – and a lack of sound and light pollution. Oddly, the subterranean lifestyle might also provide some protection against earthquakes... There are several reasons why making dugouts in Coober Pedy is uniquely practical. The first is the rock – "It's very soft, you can scratch it with a pocket knife or your fingernail," says Barry Lewis, who works at the tourist information centre... Furthermore, the sandstone is structurally sound without supports, so it's possible to make (literally) cavernous rooms with high ceilings, in any shape you like, with no additional materials. In fact, tunnelling in Coober Pedy is so straightforward, many locals live in elaborate, luxury dwellings, with underground swimming pools, games rooms, expansive bathrooms, and high-spec living rooms. One local has previously described his subterranean home as "like a castle", with 50,000 tumble bricks and arched doorways to every room... However, the feats at Cooper Pedy would not be possible everywhere. One major challenge with any underground structure is damp. Of the many rock dwellings that have been inhabited by humans, the majority are in dry areas"

Can You Really Make Ice Cream Outdoors with Your KitchenAid Stand Mixer? - "This winter, TikTok user @salepepesalsaverde proposed an interesting idea: that if you live in a cold place and own a KitchenAid stand mixer, then you can use it outdoors as an ice cream maker. His video shows a mixer sitting out on a snowy porch, churning away at an ice cream base. It seems like a clever way to harness the power of Mother Nature, but does it really work? I consulted Amanda Neal, lead recipe developer in Food Network’s test kitchen, to find out...   Remember, though: Just because you can try this at home doesn’t mean you should. A KitchenAid costs hundreds of dollars, so you should think twice about testing its limits."

Jay in Kyiv on X - "How Russia used an erotic model to gain control of then implode Austria's intelligence agencies and recruit dozens amongst the German and French political class to do the bidding of Putin's regime."
Noah Smith 🐇🇺🇸🇺🇦 on X - "China's spy model is basically "make all the stuff in the world and have it report on everybody" Russia's spy model is basically "hot chicks""

Computer Memory: 640K Ought to be Enough for Anyone – Quote Investigator® - "Bill Gates is the one of the richest men in the world, but that does not mean that he correctly foresaw the future. In the early days of the personal computer industry Gates supposedly said the following about the IBM PC:       640K ought to be enough for anyone."

Bill Gates Still Believes Speech Will Replace Keyboards - "Bill Gates has been an incredibly successful businessman, but that doesn’t mean he’s particularly good at predicting the future of technology. Remember his claim that spam would be gone within 2 years… which he made in 2004? However, if there’s one prognostication that Gates just can’t let go of, it’s his belief that speech recognition will replace keyboards as the preferred input device for computers. He’s been saying it for years and years and years, without much to show for it. I had thought (hoped?) that he’d realized maybe he was wrong on this one, but apparently not. In a recent speech, he’s insisting that speech recognition (and touch screens) will start to surpass keyboards as the input method of choice for many people. I was going to go back and put together a list of the times he had predicted that in the past, but it appears that Matthew Paul Thomas already did that a few years ago. Note that his earliest predictions (starting in 1997) were that speech would surpass keyboards within a decade."
From 208

Hold The Mayo: Town Changes Its Name To 'Miracle Whip' - "Mayo, Florida is a tiny town with less than 1,500 residents that sits between Jacksonville and Tallahassee. The small community drew national attention when town officials announced their plan to scrap their name and go with the Kraft Heinz-owned mayonnaise-alternative... The news shocked some residents, however that was the plan. It was all a prank the Kraft Heinz promotions team and Mayo's officials came up with as part of a branding campaign to reportedly raise money for the city's beautification projects."

Meme - Andrew Schiavone @aschiavone: "Eating alone in school: Wow I feel so self-conscious I'm miserable
Eating alone now at work: This is the most relaxing part of my day"

Bless Them! Why Do Dogs Sneeze When They Play?

Meme *Bike fall meme*
People
Having a baby
I have no time for myslelf. I'm so tired. I dont even know who I am anymore. I can't do things I enjoy anymore. You can't imagine how hard it is"
Keywords: I have no time for myself

Meme - "Mom: Did you defrost the chicken?
Me and my siblings: *Lee Hsien Loong and PAP senior members looking stunned*"

Meme - "Cosplay = Free Sex
All female cosplayers at this year's New York Comic Con are prostitutes. They have been paid for with your admission fees and are free to use. Not all female NYCC Fans are prostitutes, so be respectful and only use cosplayers for sex.
Thank you, and have fun!"

2 S'pore men stalk woman at drinking place, tail her, offer to send her home, then sexually assault her - "Noticing two women were "very drunk" at a drinking place, two Singaporean men decided to follow them when they left — all the way to a bus stop and once even waited for them outside a restroom without their knowledge.  When they saw several taxi and private hire vehicle drivers refusing to pick the women up because of their drunken condition, the duo offered the women a ride home.  The women agreed after some cajoling.  One of the women was sexually assaulted by the men at her home... It took a while before Lee's friend realised he had dropped his handphone in the victim's apartment.  Fearing they would be identified, the men returned to the apartment to try and retrieve the handphone.  They were unsuccessful, as the victim had already called the police"

No clean getaway: Woman breaks into Ohio home, cleans, leaves, gets arrested - "Police in suburban Cleveland say a woman who owns a cleaning service broke into a house and washed the dishes, took out the trash, and vacuumed, before leaving a handwritten bill with her name on it.  Sounds like a case of OCD: obsessive cleaning disorder.  Police in Westlake say Sue Warren of Elyria broke into a home last week and began tidying up, but she didn't take anything. They say she then wrote out a bill for $75 on a napkin and included her name and address. One officer says Warren told him she does it all the time. Only now, she's in jail on a burglary charge."

Meme - "Rdj with different role in different movies  *looking different*
Rock with different roles in different movies *looking the different*"
The Rock always plays the same type

Younger generation of ABCs making being asian their entire personality. : r/aznidentity - " Has anyone noticed that now the younger generation of asians have started making being asian their entire personality?  I personally have a few theories on why this is but the main one is that i think as asians have become more popular more people want to “become” asian (e.g., RCTA and asian fishing) and its had a somewhat similar effect on young ABCs where they want to play into the “aesthetic” that comes with being asian.  I have started noticing it with my younger sister (14) especially who constantly posts about how nice it is to be asian and romanticising it. I’m in no way saying that we shouldn’t be proud of our heritage because we should be but the way she talks about only wanting asian friends and how she only follows asian influencers leaves a bad taste in my mouth as it feels like she feels superior to others because she is asian. For context, my sister has only been back to china 2x in her life and has never actually learnt to speak or write chinese.  I don’t think she’s alone in this either though. I’ve seen it in people my age too (20) but i’ve noticed it more in the younger generation.  Has anyone else noticed this?
edit: Someone in the comments described this perfectly, i’m saying that my sister is the “#Keshi #09 #Boba #Ulzzang” type of asian."

Meme - *original meme mocking commies who are made to shut up and dig instead of being a queer video game streamer*
American with "I love work" button and Overtime Application: "I don't understand, I thought I was going to be working 80-hour weeks to get ahead of my neighbors, in the rat race! I want to work more and get rich!"
French guard with French republic badge and rifle: "GO TO THE BEACH WITH YOUR WIFE"

Meme - "Roomba sitting in a chair watching a human sweep the floors in Roomba store. It's happening"

Meme - Ricky Gervais @rickygervais: "The world began to crumble when feelings started overruling facts."
Marc from Flint @mutt1126: "Fact: you're a millionaire who sits in his tub all day, tweeting in hopes of taking peoples tweets to use in your comedy because you haven't said anything funny in almost 2 decades."
Ricky Gervais @rickygervais: "*Multimillionaire"