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Tuesday, August 29, 2023

Links - 29th August 2023 (Feminism)

Meme - "GeNdEr ROleS ArE a SOciAl ConStRucT
In the animal kingdom, males and females often take on different roles when it comes to reproduction. Most animals take on "conventional" sex roles, where males compete for access to females, females can afford to be choosy about a partner, and then take on the majority of the parental duties in raising offspring. *hyenas*"

Amit Mehta's answer to Why are feminists big bullies? - Quora - "Yes, many feminists are bullies. I would say the majority of online feminists. The problem is that most of these people have no idea what they are doing is bullying and because feminism is a protected class, they get a free pass to act however they want with no consequences.  Trying to get people fired for saying things you don't like? Bullying.  Labeling others as misogynistic, sexist, or homophobic based on limited knowledge of that individual and then openly mocking them as a group when it's denied? Bullying.  Trying to get people to quit "harmful" activities such as playing videogames with sexualized women by insulting these men and calling them misogynistic or woman haters? Bullying.  Those terms, "sexist," "misogynistic," "racist," I see being used everywhere, for everything. They are used to describe things that are not remotely hateful. They are not even really descriptors, but insults. Feminists use these words to silence debate and cut off the flow of ideas in any discussion.  It's very similar to how the word 'gay' was used when I was in school. If you were having an argument with someone and they called you gay, that was it, argument over. 90% of people just become defensive about their heterosexuality.  Calling someone sexist has the same result. It's no longer about the argument, now it's about the word. "I'm not a sexist! I don't want to be branded as sexist!" Bang. Discussion over. And just like bullies, once Feminists know you care about being called a sexist they will keep using the word over and over, and continually bring up how you "hate" them as if they personally know you [they don't].  So are feminists bullies? Many are, many aren't. But Feminism as a whole is OK with bullying, and Feminists never speak out against their own when it is done to others. No Feminist says "It's not cool to call someone a sexist just because he wants to talk about underlying problems with the female sex."  And that's the real problem. No one sees it as bullying to insult people, shut down their ideas based on nothing, get people fired, and attack their personal identity as a good person because you think the wage gap isn't real. And when a culture of bullying has become pervasive at is it, the result is that men and women both start not to care for feminism anymore.  Feminists in quora use BNBR Policy to shut down each and every critic.  This is what I receive from Pro-feminist Quora Moderators when I pointed out hypocrisy of a very popular Feminist writer on Quora."
"Quora Moderation has flagged your content as not complying with a policy on Quora:
see woman as people, not as objects you claim on a quest.
Same goes for Women..They objectify men in to various categories yet they don't want men to do the same. Why don't you behave what you preach? I read most of your answers and you dismiss every issue of a men in to MRA Conspiracy. I have no idea how in earth you become a top writer on quora with such ridiculous answers"

Meme - "I'm pregnant but my husband doesn't know that he is not the dad. What do I do?"
Veena Vinod Indian Feminist: "Nothing wrong in that as few people said. It is your body and it is completely your wish whom to allow to touch your body. Being your husband he will have the responsibility to take care of your child even if he is aware that he is not the dad. Nobody can question you and the law is there to support you. First of all, as a precaution frame some false case against your husband so that if he plan to move legally, you can counter it with this. Physical torture, Mental torture, Dowry harassment and there are many more ways you can lock him from his activities. Contact any female lawyer and make sure she is a feminist so that she can help you more sincerely. If he act more smart, then go for a divorce and claim good alimony and maintenance so that he cant marry again with his financial capability. You can live happily with your child and your lover or you can live just with your child. Being a feminist, I wish you all success for your fight against the men."
Indian feminism is especially toxic

Singapore Airlines' Kebaya-Clad Flight Attendants Have "Distinctly Fetishistic, Orientalist Undertones" Says Leading Rights Charity - "A number one ladies rights and gender high quality organisation says the long-lasting sarong Kebaya uniform worn by feminine flight attendants at Singapore Airlines for the reason that Seventies has “distinctly fetishistic, Orientalist undertones” and has urged the airline to turn out to be extra “diverse and inclusive”.  The sarong Kebaya uniform was initially designed by Parisian couturier Pierre Balmain in 1968, and the colorful batik motif design has turn out to be a cornerstone of the Singapore Airlines model ever since.  During the identical interval that Balmain unveiled his uniform design for Singapore Airlines, the ‘Singapore Girl’ – the picture of a younger and single feminine flight attendant – was born as a key advertising technique for the airline. The Singapore Girl picture has endured via the a long time and at the same time as lately as 2019, the airline stated that the Singapore Girl and “her gentle, caring ways” had been nonetheless related in the best way that Singapore Airlines portrayed itself to the world.  “The airline industry has a history of sexist practices that objectify women while putting up barriers to their being able to earn a living,” stated Singapore’s Association of Women for Action and Research (AWARE) on Saturday.  “The image of the ‘Singapore Girl’—a cornerstone of SIA’s branding—has long been criticised… the fantasy of a beautiful, kebaya-clad woman serving a (presumably male) passenger’s every whim having distinctly fetishistic, Orientalist undertones,” the highly-respected charity group continued in a collection of tweets."
When you need to justify your own relevance. If they wore Western clothing this would be erasing local culture. If they wore Chinese clothing this would be racism and Chinese supremacy

Women who kill their newborns are deeply unwell, so why are they being tried for murder?
Feminism means women have no agency, are always victims and should not be treated equally by the justice system. But then again, the left think there's nothing wrong with abortion at 40 weeks, so infanticide is just a step further
Comment by a woman: "Saw a recent true crime documentary about a woman who fatally stabbed her husband - seemingly 'unprovoked' and with pre-meditation - ie she was carrying a knife. Initially she was arrested and convicted of murder - because that's what it was... but then some unrelated female attorney started questioning what drove this woman to murder? Like, why would a woman unalive her husband (seemingly unprovoked) and could we find some reason to sympathise? I mean, we should. Right? Turns out she had been with the husband since 16 (he was 24) and the husband was demonstrably a controlling, gaslighting, cheating pr*ck - granted. After an appeal (mitigating circumstances) she had her conviction overturned and was released. Based on back of newer U.K laws prohibiting 'coercive control' - those laws seem a slippery slope to me... Anyhoo, it occured to me that would never happen for a man. Noone would attempt to empathise with a guy who 'finally had enough' and unalived his wife. She could be the biggest cow in the world, he'd still be a bloody misogynistic murderer - according to the rabble Anyhoo two. No alternate viewpoint was presented, everyone seemed happy she was released, even some of his family... but I still thought it was actually an injustice"

Meme - Definitely Not Commie Gibberish of the Day: "*Devious scheme to break into Capital One Arena with my mates and play a 3 hour game of pickup basketball intensifies* Seriously though, who's gonna tell Shitlib women that money doesn't just fall out of the air when you start playing games?"
Women in Power: "If the rules of the sport, the playing time, and the venues are the same stadiums, women deserve equal pay."

JiDion banned from all NBA related events for sleeping at WNBA game - "JiDion is a prominent YouTuber who is best known for his over-the-top pranks, which sometimes take place at high-profile sporting events... he laid down on some courtside seats and took a nap – blanket, pillow, and all.  However, he ended up getting booted out of that game, as well – and subsequently banned from “all NBA-related events” by staff.   JiDion’s fanbase has seemingly taken to the comments section on the WNBA’s official Instagram account, as a result of his latest pranks, spamming sleeping emojis to match the title of JiDion’s video: “Don’t Sleep on the WNBA!”"

The Death of Eros - "A decline in commitment isn’t the only reason for the sexual recession. Today one in eight adult Americans is taking antidepressant medication, one of the common side effects of which is reduced libido. Social media use also seems to play a part. The ping of an incoming text message or new Facebook post delivers a bit of a dopamine hit—a smaller one than sex delivers, to be sure, but without all the difficulties of managing a relationship. In a study of married eighteen- to thirty-nine-year-old Americans, social media use predicted poorer marriage quality, lower marital happiness, and increased marital trouble—not exactly a recipe for an active love life.  If these were the only causes, the solution would be straightforward: a little more commitment, a little less screen time, a few more dates over dinner, more time with a therapist, and voilà. But if we follow the data, we will find that the problem goes much deeper, down to one of the foundational tenets of enlightened opinion: the idea that men and women must be equal in every domain. Social science cannot tell us if this is true, but it can tell us what happens if we act as though it is. Today, the results are in. Equality between the sexes is leading to the demise of sex... the benefits of marriage receded as women’s earning power rose relative to that of men...  Though women had often entered marriages for financial reasons, many nonfinancial benefits followed, including the formation of a stable, intimate relationship with a spouse and the sense of purpose that comes with raising a family. These are things that no job—however lucrative—can deliver...   For the typical American woman, the route to the altar is becoming littered with failed relationships and wasted years. Take Nina, a twenty-five-year-old woman my team interviewed in Denver. Petite, attractive, and faring well professionally in her position with an insurance company, Nina was nevertheless struggling when it came to relationships. She had a history of putting men she valued as confidantes in the “friend zone.” With these men, a sexual relationship seemed too risky. If it went awry, she’d lose not only a potential mate but also a valued friend. On the other hand, if she didn’t know the man well, she was willing to have casual sex while hoping for something more.  After several years, this approach had taken its toll: an abortion, depression, and a string of failed relationships. Nina now believed that a marriage ought to begin as a friendship... In her 2013 book Hard to Get, Leslie Bell, a sociologist and psychotherapist, tries to understand the lives of women like Nina. She laments that the skills they developed “in getting ahead educationally and professionally have not translated well into getting what they want and need in sex and relationships.” When it comes to relationships, their “unprecedented sexual, educational, and professional freedoms” have led to “contradictory and paradoxical consequences.”   Nonsense, I say. The only contradictory and paradoxical thing here is the unrealistic expectation of so many that the financial independence of women would have wholly positive effects on the dance of the sexes... Since 1992, there has been a 100 percent growth in the share of men and nearly 275 percent increase in the share of women who masturbate at least weekly.  Even those who marry are having trouble in the bedroom... equality is the enemy of eros. Differences between men’s work and women’s work—between breadwinner and homemaker, father and mother—are increasingly viewed as arbitrary and oppressive. And yet this loss of everyday oppositions between men and women has made Americans less, not more, attractive to each other. It was not supposed to be this way. Some sociologists have guessed—or perhaps hoped—that men who are willing to take on traditionally female household tasks might enjoy more active sexual lives with their wives—quid in the kitchen for quo in the bedroom... do men who do a greater share of the housework enjoy more sex? No. In fact, they’re penalized in the bedroom. Husbands who do little or no housework had sex with their wives nearly two more times per month than did husbands who do all of it. Meanwhile, doing a greater share of traditionally male work around the house—mowing the lawn, fixing things—correlates with more sex. Men and women are not attracted to sameness, but to difference. We long for what is missing in ourselves. Needing each other makes us want each other... We cannot have both eros and strict equality between the sexes. Saving one requires sacrificing the other."
The feminist answer, of course, is even more feminism, despite what the Nordic paradox teaches us

The Bad Science Behind Campus Response to Sexual Assault - The Atlantic - "some schools have come to rely on the work of a small band of self-styled experts in the neurobiology of trauma who claim that sexual violations provoke a disabling, multifaceted physiological response. Being assaulted is traumatic, and no one should expect those who have been assaulted to have perfect recall or behave perfectly rationally, but this argument goes much further... the absence of verbal or physical resistance, the inability to recall crucial parts of an alleged assault, a changing story—none of these factors should raise questions or doubt about a claim. Indeed, all of these behaviors can be considered evidence that an assault occurred... In her 2012 talk, Campbell acknowledged that she is not a neuroscientist, but rather is translating others’ work... Janet Halley, a professor at Harvard Law School, has written of the intended effect of the training on recipients: “It is 100% aimed to convince them to believe complainants, precisely when they seem unreliable and incoherent.”... I talked with Richard McNally, a psychology professor at Harvard and one of the country’s leading experts on the effects that trauma has on memory, about the assertions Campbell made in her presentation. He first said that because assaults do not occur within the laboratory, “there is no direct evidence” of any precise or particular cascade of physiological effects during one, “nor is there going to be.” But there is plenty of evidence about how highly stressful experiences affect memory, and much of it directly contradicts Campbell... it’s almost the opposite: “Extreme stress enhances memory for the central aspects of an overwhelming emotional experience.”... Notably, survivors of recent horrific events—the Aurora movie-theater massacre, the San Bernardino terror attack, the Orlando-nightclub mass murder—have at trial or in interviews given narrative accounts of their ordeals that are chronological, coherent, detailed, and lucid... Campbell’s claim that a sexual-assault victim’s memory consists of completely accurate but disorganized fragments contradicts fundamental scientific knowledge of the nature of memory... All the experts I spoke with expressed concern about the malleability of memory, especially when people are being encouraged to clarify murky experiences. A 2015 study by the education insurance group United Educators, examining 305 claims of sexual assault at 104 schools, found that about 40 percent of students delayed reporting an assault (there are many valid reasons why they might do so, including fear of stigma). The average delay was 11 months, and “in most cases, the victim labeled the incident a sexual assault only after talking with friends or attending prevention training.” Elizabeth Loftus, a professor of psychology and social behavior at UC Irvine, has done pathbreaking work on memory manipulation. When I described to her what’s now being taught to administrators and students, she said it sounded disturbingly like a return of “recovered memory” theory, with some neurobiology thrown in “to give luster” to the argument... many therapists were implanting false memories in vulnerable people, resulting in baseless accusations that tore families apart... Loftus also talked about the effects of drinking on memory. She said that with alcohol-induced memory fragmentation, attempts to reconstruct events are “very vulnerable to post-event suggestion.” This can include someone, especially an authority figure, labeling a consensual act as rape. She said it’s then easy for exaggerated, or even entirely false, memories to be created, ones that feel completely real. “This is extremely worrisome,” she told me. “The universities are under enormous pressure to do something about sexual assault, and they sometimes fill these offices with people whose bias and agendas lead them to create victimhood.”... Tonic immobility might occur in people, but science hasn’t definitively shown this yet. Even if it does occur, we cannot say with any certainty that it affects nearly 50 percent of sexual-assault victims, as Campbell claims is likely in her presentation. Tonic immobility’s frequent precursors in prey animals—physical restraint combined with an imminent threat to life—do describe some instances of rape. But the conditions that lead to many sexual-assault complaints on college campuses—alcohol combined with miscommunication—do not fit this template... Lawyers for accused students are starting to challenge the way such ideas about trauma may bias campus adjudications"
As usual, feminist science is nonsense
A followup to The Uncomfortable Truth About Campus Rape Policy - The Atlantic

The Question of Race in Campus Sexual-Assault Cases - The Atlantic - "He said students are pushing their boundaries and that many hook up with a partner of a different ethnicity for the first time. But then, “if there is any kind of perceived injury—emotional or physical—when you cross racial lines, there’s likely to be more animus. It needs to be talked about and hasn’t been.”... In 2015, in The New Yorker, Jeannie Suk Gersen, a Harvard Law School professor, wrote that in general, the administrators and faculty members she’d spoken with who “routinely work on sexual-misconduct cases” said that “most of the complaints they see are against minorities.” For two years I have received a daily Google Alert on college sexual assault. It captures only those cases that make it into the news, and is not a comprehensive or statistically valid measure. But it is illuminating. Usually the reports don’t disclose race, but sometimes it is mentioned, and if the accused is named, it’s often possible to determine his race through photo searches or other online information. Black men make up only about 6 percent of college undergraduates. They are vastly overrepresented in the cases I’ve tracked... In several recent civil lawsuits against their schools, male students found responsible in campus tribunals for sexual misconduct have made the racial aspects of their experience explicit... In the 2013–14 academic year, 4.2 percent of Colgate’s students were black. According to the university’s records, in that year black male students were accused of 50 percent of the sexual violations reported to the university, and they made up 40 percent of the students formally adjudicated. During the three academic years from 2012–13 to 2014–15, black students were accused of 25 percent of the sexual misconduct reported to the university, and made up 21 percent of the students referred for formal hearings. Fifteen percent of the students found responsible for assault in those years were black. During that same three-year period, Asian students, who constituted a little more than 3 percent of Colgate’s student body in 2013, were more than 13 percent of the accused, 21 percent of those referred for hearings, and 23 percent of those found responsible"
To liberals, it only matters when "minorities" suffer

'Ride me all day for £3' bus advert to be REMOVED following outrage over topless posters - "A bus company plans to remove posters showing a topless woman holding a sign saying "Ride me all day for £3" – less than 48 hours after launching them.  New Adventure Travel Ltd (NAT), based in Cardiff, South Wales, posted photos of the new advert on its Facebook and Twitter accounts this morning, showing the half-naked woman in a sultry pose, barely hiding her modesty with the provocative slogan...   It later emerged today that the company also uses a topless photo of a man in its advertising campaign – but critics still say it's sexist."
Sexism is anything feminists don't like, even if it's equality

Mayim Bialik Defends Sexual Harassment Comments - "Bialik wrote about some of the “self-protecting” choices she made as a young actress to counteract the industry’s culture of complicity. “I have decided that my sexual self is best reserved for private situations with those I am most intimate with,” she wrote. “I dress modestly. I don’t act flirtatiously with men as a policy.”"
If you say you lock your house door to deter burglars, that's victim blaming. The only ones who can make burglary less likely are burglars

Shannon Hale on Twitter - "When a guy says, "You're not like other girls," he's admitting that he has a generally low regard for your entire gender but is willing to make an exception for you. This is not a compliment. Girl, run."
Of course, this sort of take comes from the people who hate men

Opinion | Maternal Instinct Is a Myth That Men Created - The New York Times - "New research on the parental brain makes clear that the idea of maternal instinct as something innate, automatic and distinctly female is a myth, one that has stuck despite the best efforts of feminists to debunk it from the moment it entered public discourse."
Patriarchy is so powerful it affects animals too
Naturally, the evidence presented for the claim lives up to usual feminist standards

Chrissie Hynde takes aim at provocatively-dressed feminists - "Feminists who don’t like being treated “like hookers” should “put some clothes on” according to Chrissie Hynde.  The Pretenders singer did not hold back in a recent interview, saying a woman who “walks around looking like a sex worker will probably be treated like one”.  In an interview with the Sydney Morning Herald, the musician said: "How you dress and how you present yourself to the world is totally how people will treat you.""

i/o on Twitter - "Despite the fact that women are soon expected to earn 60% of all college degrees, American universities and colleges continue to offer about 10 times more female-only scholarships than male-only scholarships."

Study Finds Women Are Less Likely to Fulfill Child Support Obligations - "Using 2011 Census Bureau data (the most recent year available), the report found that 32% of custodial fathers received none of their court ordered child support. In comparison, 25% of custodial mothers received no payments."
Damn patriarchy!

Stick is not a deadly weapon: Supreme Court reduces jail term of wife accused of beating husband to death - "The Supreme Court on Tuesday modified a murder conviction to that of culpable homicide not amounting to murder after noting that the weapon of attack was a stick, which the Court opined was not a deadly weapon"
If it were the other way round, Indian feminists would be upset

BBC to tackle high proportion of women prosecuted for licence fee evasion - "The BBC has set out plans to reduce the high proportion of women being prosecuted for licence fee evasion, after suggestions that the charge is sexist.  The measures including free debt advice and allowing all unlicensed households to spread payments, underlining the BBC’s determination to save the licence fee, which was frozen by the government at £159 until 2024.  Campaigners, including a woman who threatened to apply for a judicial review of the licence fee system on the basis of sex discrimination, said the changes did not go far enough.  Figures released last year showed that women made up 76% of the 52,376 people convicted in 2020 over TV licence evasion. The figures have been seized on by politicians opposed to the BBC’s funding model. During last summer’s Conservative party leadership contest, Liz Truss said: “What I’m very concerned about on the TV licence fee is how many women have ended up in prison for non-payment, a disproportionate number.”  Full Fact pointed out that no one can be imprisoned for failing to pay the licence, only fined, and that while women were more likely to be fined for failing to pay the fee, since 1995 twice as many men as women have been jailed after failing to pay fines."
When women break the law, the law is sexist

Breast is Best…But Not Everywhere: Ambivalent Sexism and Attitudes Toward Private and Public Breastfeeding - "Although breastfeeding is encouraged by the medical community, many women do not breastfeed because of perceived social sanctions. This experiment examines the level of positive evaluations, negative affect, and normalcy accorded a woman who is breastfeeding. 106 undergraduates and 80 older adults from the Midwestern U.S. were shown photos of a woman breastfeeding in public or private. It was hypothesized that the breastfeeding mother would be seen more positively when breastfeeding in private than in public, and that this response would be moderated by participants’ familiarity with breastfeeding, gender, and levels of benevolent and hostile sexism. Results supported these predictions. Three explanations for the negative view of public breastfeeding are discussed: familiarity, sexist attitudes, and hypersexualization of the breast."
Clearly patriarchy is why women are more opposed to breastfeeding than men and to encourage breastfeeding we need to shame creepy misogynistic men who think public breastfeeding is inappropriate

Meme - StaceyCKS @StaceyCKs1: "I took my 11 yo daughter to get a drink at Starbucks. We watched an incredibly handsome construction worker walk across the parking lot and into the store. Do you know what that little girl said to me? “I don’t know what he fixes, but mine is broken.”"
Karyn B Jules @simetra7: "What if it was your 11 year old son who said that about a young woman who walked into the store? I thought we were teaching boys not to objectify girls? Or does that only apply to boys?"
Anthony McEvoy @makivoi: "Funny thing is I read her story and just smiled…then I read your comment and thought….yeah you are absolutely right. Then I assumed your a man with a grudge…..Now I’m feeling guilty for my thoughts about these tweets and feel I need psychotherapy to sort out my “issues”."
Power relations means never having to say you're sorry
Clearly the second person has internalised misogyny

Nurse Lucy Letby found guilty of murdering seven babies on neonatal unit - "A nurse has been found guilty of murdering seven babies and attempting to murder six other infants while working on a hospital's neonatal unit between June 2015 and June 2016.  Lucy Letby - who was in her mid-20s and working at the Countess of Chester Hospital at the time of the murders - is now the UK's most prolific child killer of modern times."
Families of Lucy Letby’s victims vow to continue search for answers on why she killed - "The killer nurse launched a grievance procedure against the paediatricians which found she had been “discriminated against and victimised”, and they were forced to write her an apology letter."
Revealed: the files that show how Lucy Letby was treated as a victim - "an apology from the hospital and the doctors was not all the 33-year-old got. She was also to be offered a placement at the world-famous Alder Hey Children’s Hospital in Liverpool and was to be given support for a master’s degree or advanced nurse training... Some doctors were threatened with misconduct investigations and their attempts to escalate their worries were met with angry responses. One nurse described the consultants as conducting a “witch-hunt” against Letby... She also had an alleged close relationship with a married registrar. He had driven her home the night one of the babies died, and it was claimed in court that many of her actions were motivated by a desire to be noticed by him. Records showed she had searched for his wife on Facebook, and had sent him heart emojis in a WhatsApp message... she raised a formal grievance against the trust for victimisation and discrimination. She said she felt she had been singled out, moved away from the job she loved, and the hospital trust had not been honest about doctors’ allegations against her. Her Royal College of Nursing (RCN) union representative emailed hospital bosses outlining “grave concerns” about her treatment. Letby was demanding to know the grounds for an investigation into her practice... Doctors who had raised concerns about her being a baby killer, including Brearey and Jayaram, were forced to sit through interviews, along with their union reps, where an investigator grilled them about Letby’s bullying complaint. By now, the relationship between seven senior consultants and the hospital’s management had deteriorated. The doctors felt they had not been listened to and police needed to be brought in... The grievance process had found no evidence to justify calling in the police. In fact, it found the doctors were at fault for suspecting her of murder. “This behaviour has resulted in you, a junior colleague and fellow professional, feeling isolated and vulnerable, putting your reputation in question,” the grievance inquiry told Letby. “This is unacceptable and could be viewed as victimisation.” The report said the hospital would aid her professional development by supporting her wih a master’s degree or an advanced neonatal course. She was also offered weekly welfare meetings with a senior nurse"
Damn misogyny!
Leftists will still claim unions are always good. Except police unions, of course

Hospital bosses ignored months of doctors' warnings about Lucy Letby - "When a new medical director and deputy chief executive, Dr Susan Gilby, began work the month after Letby's arrest, she was shocked at what she found.  She says her predecessor, Mr Harvey, had warned her she would need to pursue action with the General Medical Council, the doctor's regulator, against the neonatal unit's consultants - those who had raised the alarm"

Great spoof of articles about nothing from content farms

 
""Why Sabine's hairstyle is different from Shin's in Ahsoka"

Fans have noticed that the character of Sabine appears to have a different haircut than her mysterious adversary, Shin-Hati.
 
Given that both characters come from different backgrounds, it is not surprising that they express their personal style differently through their 'dos.
 
Although we know much of Sabine's history on the show Rebels, we don't know exactly why she chose to grow out her hair after the final season of Rebels concluded. We know even less about the motivations of the dark force user Shin Hati, but given that she sports aggressive bangs she might be a lil crazy.
 
It is possible that Sabine and Shin visit different hairstylists, or even that Shin had her bangs done by her companion Baylan Skoll.
 
Anyway I can't do this anymore but this is journalism now"

Monday, August 28, 2023

Links - 28th August 2023 (including Threads)

Meta's Twitter clone launches, immediately censors anyone with unapproved thoughts - "Yep, just censoring a factually true story about cocaine being found in Joe Biden's White House because the poster posted real pictures of Hunter Biden doing cocaine and implied there might be a connection.  At least it's non-partisan, right?... So it censors you for posting facts that might make people in power look bad, tries to dissuade you from following one side of the political aisle, and tracks everything you do.  And on top of that, it doesn't work...
'Meta is already too powerful. One company controls what much of the public is allowed to see. And if Threads succeeds, it will have 80% of the global market outside of Russia and China, according to one industry insider. As such, it's reasonable to expect that Meta will censor precisely the same way the large news media corporations, including the New York Times, and corporate advertisers want it to. More censorship is what the mainstream news media, big corporations, and their celebrity pitch people have been demanding.'
Shellenberger also notes an important distinction between Elon Musk's Twitter, which has the policy of only censoring as national laws deem fit, and Meta/Facebook, which censors according to the woke ideology of the religious zealots who control the company. But hey, at least Big Brother is "friendly.""

I swapped my Twitter addiction for Threads – it was full of the same sniping rubbish - "If you leaned out of the window this morning, you might have heard a strange noise, somewhere between a chirrup of curiosity and a weary groan. It was the sound of millions of people waking up and seeing that yet another new Twitter rival had arrived to compete for their attention: Threads.  Since Elon Musk bought Twitter for $44bn last year and started making eccentric management decisions, there have been several mooted successors: Mastodon, Bluesky, meeting up with your friends in real life. But none has achieved lift-off. For all its faults, old and new, Twitter has remained Twitter.  Threads might be different. It has come from Meta, Mark Zuckerberg’s Facebook parent company, so there is plenty of heft behind it... For a few happy hours, it had a prelapsarian quality, a reminder of what social media was like when everyone approached it in a spirit of fun and optimism. I was reminded of joining Twitter in 2009, the vague feeling of looking around like a child in the playground. People posted earnestly about being happy to be on Threads and not on Twitter. This time, they pondered, it could all be different. We could join arms around the world and sing songs of freedom. Ed Balls had an instant hit by reprising his “Ed Balls” name-search tweet. Some jokes work on any platform.  It didn’t last. By lunchtime, people were already settling into the old familiar routines: sniping, bullying and posting whatever desperate rubbish they thought might get engagement. Celebrities were being peppered with abuse. Those who had big followings elsewhere quickly accumulated them. Newspapers were linking to articles. People you’ve never heard of were showing off and brands were using it to fish for engagement. What’s your favourite Farrow & Ball paint? Where has the best hamburger in London?... Although Zuckerberg’s attempt to pioneer virtual reality – the Metaverse – has yet to bear fruit, he has a remarkable track record when copying rivals. Instagram Stories was a version of Snapchat’s format, while Reels defanged TikTok. If he can get Threads to stick, he will find himself, between WhatsApp, Instagram and Threads, presiding over a good chunk of the world’s attention. Clearly he wants to be “master of messaging”. To judge by the rubbish being spouted on Threads already, what’s less clear is why he would want to."

Deleting your Instagram account is the only way to delete your Threads profile

Threads: Mark Zuckerberg’s safe space - "The similarities between the two rival apps are so stark and so noticeable that Twitter has threatened to take legal action against Meta. Meta has hardly tried to hide the similarities, either. Earlier this week, Zuckerberg posted his first tweet in over a decade. It was of the Spiderman meme – where two men in exactly the same Spiderman outfit point at each other, unable to tell the real thing from the imposter. Besides, ripoffs of other platforms are not unknown at Meta. For instance, Instagram Stories are a shameless copy of Snapchat, while Instagram’s Reels feature is an obvious imitation of TikTok. So, with all its similarities to Twitter, why would anyone feel the need to move over to Threads? The main draw for the great and the good is that Threads is promising a more sanitised social-media experience. This is what Zuckerberg rather creepily refers to as its commitment to ‘friendliness’... There have been other, similarly sanitised alternatives to Twitter in recent years, of course. Until Threads came along, Mastodon was the refuge of choice for many of Twitter’s self-exiled blue checks. With Mastodon, you can join a server which connects you to people with similar interests and identities. Some random examples of servers include those for Scottish people, for Freemasons and for people with a ‘furry’ fetish. This allows for a curated internet experience with only like-minded people. A newer alternative is Spill, set up by ex-Twitter employees, which is an invite-only app for ‘marginalised groups’, such as the ‘black community’ and the ‘queer community’.  What both of these apps lack is the scale that’s needed to make a social-media platform thrive. For all the elites’ hissy fits about Twitter, the size of the audience there has kept even the most demented enemies of Musk coming back for more. Threads, some hope, will soon be able to offer a similar-sized audience, but with a kinder, gentler user experience.  Of course, the only way to maintain such ‘friendliness’ is through censorship; through the harsh application of rules, community guidance and codes of conduct. This means the deletion or downgrading of posts that are seen as unkind or unfriendly. Indeed, on Threads’ first day of operations, users already reported having their posts taken down, mainly for political reasons. Some accounts say they are being blacklisted or greylisted. When you try to follow a ‘problematic’ person on Threads, you might be warned that their account has ‘posted false information’ or has violated ‘community guidelines’. Censorship techniques that have been honed by Meta on Facebook and Instagram are already being zealously deployed on Threads... Certainly, many of the fiercest critics of Musk-era Twitter have been clear that what they want is more censorship. From the very day Musk took over last year, every inch Twitter has taken towards greater free speech has sent the Twitterati into spasms. For loosening up the rules on what people can tweet, Musk was accused of empowering fascism. For restoring the accounts of formerly banned users, he was accused of having blood on his hands. And for shaking up Twitter’s verification system, for allowing ordinary people to get themselves a blue tick, he was accused of enabling disinformation and conspiracy theories. So low is the liberal elite’s view of free speech nowadays that any rolling back of censorship is presented as a mortal threat to society.   This is what explains all the excitement over Threads. The tweeting classes are desperate for a return to the censorious, pre-Musk status quo. They yearn to be protected from the free expression of the masses. They want social media to be a safe space again. They want Big Tech to be their Big Brother.  The fight for a free internet is clearly far from over."

Instagram’s Threads Engagement Has Already Dropped off - "Threads has already seen a drop in daily active users and time spent on the app since its record-breaking debut... On Tuesday and Wednesday, the platform’s number of daily active users were down about 20% from Saturday. Meanwhile, the time spent on the app by users has plunged by 50%, from 20 minutes to 10 minutes... “The backing of Meta and the integration with Instagram likely gives Threads a much higher flood than other services, but it will need a more compelling value proposition than simply ‘Twitter, but without Elon Musk.’”

Meme - "Day 170 of "Twitter will collapse next week bro, trust me."
lan Miles Che... @stillgr...: "Zuckerberg has already lost."
"twitter
threads
Interest over time"

Zuckerberg Implies Less Than Half Of Threads Users Have Stuck Around - "70%. That is how much user engagement on Threads had fallen two weeks after its launch, according to data released by market intelligence firm Sensor Tower last Friday. Daily active users on the site dropped to around 13 million users, down from 44 million in the week it launched while average time spent on the app dropped from 19 minutes to four."

Meme - Physiognomy Check: "The people who forgot that they hated billionaires as soon as Zucc announced a replacement safe space for the one Elon took from them suddenly realize that it was never actually for them in the first place."
Joshua: "Well, capitalism ruined this app already, time to go home"
shan horan @shanhorandraws: "This screenshot from threads made me nauseous"
backstreetboys: "Oh my god, we're back again"
mcdonalds: "hi from grimace say it back plsss"
ellendegeneres: "Welcome to Gay Twitter!"
netflix: "Threads is kinda like Love is Blind cuz everybody is all about the engagement!!!"

Meme - Mistress Matisse @mistressmatisse: "If you're a sexworker, think VERY carefully about joining Threads, because here's what Mark Zuckerberg did to me: I had a FB account as Mistress Matisse, but FB scraped my legal name from somewhere else and then changed my displayed NAME on my account without notice/consent. Yep."

Meta’s Threads traffic continues to plunge | Fortune - "The latest data reports from Sensor Tower show the daily active user count for the Twitter-like social media channel have dropped 82% since its breakthrough launch on July 5, CNN reports, citing data from Sensor Tower. The numbers are as of July 31... The average time spent has dropped from 19 minutes at its peak to just 2.6 minutes. And instead of opening it 14 times a day, current users only check in about three times now.  The numbers show that the slowdown in users isn’t slowing down for the Meta property. Just two weeks ago, traffic was down 70% from Threads’ launch.  Twitter users have remained steady at 200 million."
I don't even see liberals crowing about how much of a success Threads is anymore. Even they can't deny the problems

Meme - Christopher Bird @mightygodking.bsky.social: "BROKE: this is the Year of the Four Twitters
WOKE: this is microblogging's Warring States Period
INSTAGRAM TUMBLR THREADS VK KOO BLUESKY TARINGA MASTODON SPILL TWISTER
(RESERVED FOR FUTURE RACIST TWITTER CLONE)
GETTR PARLER GAB
TRUTH SOCIAL
2ND MASTODON THAT HATES FIRST ONE
POST SPOUTIBLE QZONE
3RD MASTODON SOMEHOW
WEIBO"

Is It Ritual? Or Is It Children? Distinguishing Consequences of Play from Ritual Actions in the Prehistoric Archaeological Record - "This paper identifies a significant interpretive issue for prehistoric archaeology: distinguishing adult ritual actions from the activities of children in the archaeological record. Through examining ethnographic accounts of recent hunter-gatherer children and reconsidering archaeological patterns and assemblages in light of these data, we explore how the results of children’s play can be—and likely have been—misinterpreted by archaeologists as evidence for adult ritual behavior in prehistoric contexts. Given that children were a significant component of past hunter-gatherer (and other) societies, the fact that the material components of their activities overlap tremendously with items used in adult rituals must be routinely considered by archaeologists if we are to reconstruct robust understandings of past peoples all over the globe."

It’s 2022 and the Magic Mouse still charges from the bottom
Why did they have to design it like this : mildlyinfuriating - "Apple is often about the design aesthetic, in this case, by making it impossible to use while plugged in, any photo of it in use will be wireless, clean, thus maintaining their branding."

Baldur's Gate III Boasts 'Tender, Consensual' Sex With a Bear - "Baldur's Gate III developers Larian got its livestream banned on TikTok after it revealed a spicy scene with a bear."
New Baldur's Gate 3 Trailer dropped : KotakuInAction - "I don't ever want to see "she's actually a thousand year old vampire" made fun of again after they all justified "he's actually a druid in bear form".  Don't get me wrong, this is funny as fuck. But as usual SJWs are being complete hypocrites."
"The funniest part is to know people who like this shit are the same ones who think sexy women in games are gross lol"

Meme - Priest: "Without us you'd still be I worshipping the Sun!"
Native: "Dude... the Sun is real"

SG Speaker of Parliament Tan Chuan Jin insults Jamus Lim: "Fucking Populist". : SingaporeRaw
PARL | Speaker of Parliament - "In carrying out the duties in the House, the Speaker must remain impartial and fair to all MPs."

Jack Claxton's answer to No lying: did you regret having children? - Quora - "Yes.  My son is 27, suffering from chronic depression, in a low-paying dead-end job without the faintest idea of how to get out of it. His life is an unending continuum of unhappiness and dissatisfaction.  If I knew that he would develop like this, I would not have had him. I would not want to bring a person into this world outside of his own volition, if I knew that he would experience no joy in his existence.  I was under the impression that almost all living creatures had at least the capacity for joie de vivre, and I assumed that it would be so for my child, as well.  Sorry, son. I don’t know what to do."
Naturally, there were some people blaming the father

Meme - "THE CUP PROBLEM
Walking down the street you come across an evil beggar, who has no faults prohibiting him from working, he is only lazy. In front of him is his cup filled with money hes grifted off of innocent good-hearted hardworking christians. The Categorical imperative states that kicking the cup while walking past is the night thing to do. But, the man is of an ethnicity which lacks any agency, he will learn no lesson from this thus rendering your actions morally evil, but if you do not kick the cup sending his change flying across the sidewalk and into the gutter, he will use it to fund organized crime. Do you kick the cup?"

The Little-Known Legend of Jesus in Japan - "On the flat top of a steep hill in a distant corner of northern Japan lies the tomb of an itinerant shepherd who, two millennia ago, settled down there to grow garlic. He fell in love with a farmer’s daughter named Miyuko, fathered three kids and died at the ripe old age of 106. In the mountain hamlet of Shingo, he’s remembered by the name Daitenku Taro Jurai. The rest of the world knows him as Jesus Christ."

Father claims mystery death of ‘healthy’ son, 29, found naked in Chinese foot massage parlour related to illicit sex service, rejects US$69,000 payout - "A father in China has rejected a 500,000-yuan (US$69,000) compensation offer from a massage parlour where his son’s naked body was found, claiming the business is a front for a brothel and did not seek medical help in time.  The man’s 29-year-old son, surnamed Yan, died mysteriously at a foot massage parlour in Wuhan in central China’s Hubei province... Yan’s father also claimed the parlour delayed seeking medical help for his son and reporting the incident to the police.  After viewing surveillance footage from the parlour, Yan’s father said: “At 19:43, the staff noticed something unusual. They came to my son’s room very flustered. They were wearing white gloves, carrying a plastic bag, and went in and out four times. What exactly were they doing in there?”... a preliminary investigation by local police has ruled out any criminality."

Final moments of Bradley Lyons' life tortured by Australian Freedom Fighters with a chainsaw - "A ruthless gang of drug-fuelled vigilantes menaced an innocent father with a chainsaw while trying to force a confession out of him for crimes he did not commit, in a brutal torture and murder that shocked Australia.   Father-of-eight Bradley 'BJ' Lyons was tortured and executed after being betrayed by his meth-addled wife Jana Hooper, who falsely accused him of sexually assaulting her daughters... Thorn had been the leader of a vigilante gang with a very specific hatred for paedophiles. Such was Thorn's hatred for paedophiles, he tattooed the gang's name, Australian Freedom Fighters, across his entire back and posted photographs to Facebook... Stefani forced the barrel of the shotgun into Mr Lyons' mouth and threatened to kill him if he didn’t confess to the sexual assault allegations.  CCTV shows Harvey and Smith run from the home, with Smith falling out of the getaway vehicle driven by yet another mate, Jayden Ball.  Mr Lyons was eventually dragged out of the boot of Thorn's car to an old shed on his property where things went from bad to worse for the terrified dad.  The court heard Thorn was giddy with excitement.  'I could see Bert getting really turned on and getting some sort of pleasure from this,' Ms MacFarlane told the jury... One account had the men sawing Mr Lyons' hand off.   The jury was told only 93 per cent of Mr Lyons' skeleton was recovered, with both feet, bones from his hands and a neck bone missing... Mr Lyons was made to wait while a shallow grave was dug.   When it was ready, Thorn blasted Mr Lyons in the leg with a .410 shotgun cartridge.   On his knees, another shot was put into the back of his skull.   Bottom would later lead police to the burial site, which had a large log dragged over it.   A single shotgun cartridge remained at the scene.   The court heard the men had celebrated their crime, holding a party at Thorn's property in which Mr Lyons' own wife and children attended."
Who are Australian Freedom Fighters: Lakes Entrance dad murdered by leader of ped hunter group - "Stefani lied to Thorn that Hooper’s children had confided in him about the allegations.   Adding fuel to the fire, he further falsely claimed Mr Lyons had intentionally drugged and raped his own wife... Hooper told numerous people that her husband had sexually abused some of her children, had returned to heavy drug use and had 'spiked her drugs'.  The court heard she claimed to a friend that Mr Lyons was part of a 'paedophile/child pornography ring' and put pictures of her children on the dark web.  When Mr Lyons' brother asked about him, Hooper told him he had told her that if he ended his life she would get $380,000.   Again she repeated alleged sexual abuse of one of her daughters.   They were claims she made again to detectives when they came knocking on December 11 that year."
This won't stop the virtue signalling anti "pedo" squad

Are the Kids Al(t)right? - "the editors of this august journal asked me to contribute a piece on the “alt-right.” I hesitated, for a number of reasons, at least two of which are relevant here.  First, I did not then—and still do not—quite know what the “alt-right” is. That is to say, I know what the term means to the Left and to the mainstream media (apologies for the redundancy): “anyone to my right whom I can profitably smear as a Nazi.” But so far as I can tell, even many who consider themselves “alt-right” can’t agree on the term’s meaning, or on who or what qualifies. Furthermore, some of those least afraid to accept the label insist that the underlying phenomenon is dead, having immolated itself in Charlottesville in August 2017. Why bother writing about something that no one can define and whose most prominent proponents claim is defunct?  Second, in looking into this a little, I found plenty of books about the alt-right but none by the alt-right."
From 2019

Identical twins are handed $1.5M in damages after being falsely accused of cheating in medical exam - "A pair of identical twins have been handed $1.5million in damages by a college in South Carolina after it wrongly accused them of cheating in a medical exam through signaling, as a court ruled their answers were identical because their minds were connected. Kayla and Kellie Bingham, 30, were initially enrolled at the Medical University of South Carolina (MUSC) in 2016 to fulfill their dreams of one day becoming doctors. Now, six years later, after suing the medical school for defamation, the two sisters were compensated for having their reputations damaged after a jury ruled in their favor... It also wasn't the first time that the daughters of South Carolina Republican state Representative Kenny Bingham had tested together and scored similarly.   The twins had received the same SAT scores despite testing on different days and locations and were also graded within a fraction of a point of each another in high school. Both of them had been registering similar answers to test questions since the first grade.A professor, who taught both siblings in college before their enrollments in medical school, noticed these striking similarities and wrote about them in a letter defending the twins. He said they had both submitted the exact same answers - right or wrong - on an exam that he oversaw in 2012, despite making them sit at opposite ends of the classroom.  Professor Nancy Segal, a psychologist and behavior geneticist, specializing in the study of twins at California State University, Fullerton, also came to the Kayla and Kellie's defense and even testified in court for them... She also said that cheating complaints filed against twins are 'common' in higher education... In spite of coming up with a staunch defense, the twins were not able to prove their innocence and appealed to the college's dean, Raymond DuBois, who cleared them of any wrongdoing a week later.   Nonetheless, the two sisters' credibility and reputation had already been damaged by then. They became unpopular on campus and had been labelled 'academically dishonest' by their peers.   Their names also ran in local and state media outlets, which prompted them to be isolated from friends and to be 'disinvited' to two weddings... Since dropping out of medical school, both sisters have moved on to become lawyers and scored similarly on the LSAT before eventually graduating in 2021.   They're now co-workers at the same law firm, where they take on defamation cases similar to the one that they first experienced six years ago."

Incredible moment young opera fan stands up during soprano’s Verdi performance to... - "A star soprano was stunned, as a young opera fan stood up during her Verdi recital to be the Alfredo to her Violetta.  When a young Verdi fan noticed his favourite star soprano was without a duet partner, he boldly stood up and sang the tenor part from the audience.  The acclaimed operatic soprano Lisette Oropesa was singing Violetta’s ‘Sempre Libera’ (Always Free) from Verdi’s La Traviata, as an encore for her recital at the Verdi Festival in Parma, Italy.  In the opera’s staging, the tenor playing Alfredo is usually off stage, as if he were singing to Violetta from beneath her balcony outside.  As this was a solo recital, no tenor was present. Liu Jianwei, a student at the Conservatorio Giuseppe Nicolini di Piacenza and long-time fan of the Cuban-American soprano, was there to watch the performance."

Violinist Plays Unplanned Duet With Pianist At Suntec, Passers-By Stop To Enjoy Beautiful Music - "Finding herself drawn to his music, she asked for permission to play music with him. He agreed, and they played a duet of Golden Hour by JVKE.  The music was so beautiful that passers-by stopped to enjoy the performance."

87% of classic video games are ‘critically endangered’, it’s claimed - "The Video Game History Foundation, in partnership with the Software Preservation Network, has claimed that 87% of classic video games released in the United States are “critically endangered.  A study conducted by the two groups found that across a sample of games released prior to 2010, a small fraction of them were still in circulation from re-releases.  For example, from the sample of Commodore 64 games tested, only 4.5% of them were still purchasable on a modern digital storefront.  Across the Gameboy family of systems, only 5.8%. This figure was far higher prior to the shutdown of the WiiU and 3DS Eshop, which resulted in the only games available for those systems largely being locked behind Nintendo‘s online service. “Imagine if the only way to watch Titanic was to find a used VHS tape, and maintain your own vintage equipment so that you could still watch it,” the study said.  “And what if no library, not even the Library of Congress, could do any better — they could keep and digitize that VHS of Titanic, but you’d have to go all the way there to watch it.  “It sounds crazy, but that’s the reality we live in with video games, a $180 billion industry, while the games and their history disappear.”  The study looked to grant further exemptions to libraries and organizations when it comes to preserving video games. Currently, most archives and permitted to digitally preserve content, but in order to play this old content legally, there is an expectation for fans to maintain sometimes decades-old equipment.  The piece of legislation that dictates how classic games are preserved and accessed, the Digital Millennium Copyright Act  (DMCA) is to be reexamined in 2024."

Parents made a surprise for their daughter. : MadeMeSmile

Mum pulled toddler out of daycare over 'no touching' rule - "A furious mother has revealed she pulled her three-year-old daughter out of pre-school because staff continued to break her 'no touching' rule.  The mum explained her daughter isn't 'a snuggler' and will only happily hug her mother, father and grandmother.  She despises being cuddled or touched by other people, and always has, the mother explained in a post on Kidspot."

Paganism: everything you wanted to know

Paganism: everything you wanted to know | HistoryExtra

"‘Did Christians invent the concept of paganism and was this the only word that they used to describe people other than Christians?’

‘Christians certainly invented the term paganism in order to describe people who weren't Christians. Until that time there wasn't any polarity between or antagonism between religions and so there was no need for a general term for a different and other, a wrong kind of religion. It was Christianity that brought in this concept. But it certainly wasn't the only term that Christians used for people who weren't Christian it was used by those whose main language was Latin. Those whose main language was Germanic used the term Heathen instead. And later on Latin speakers used the term infidel. And there were some who deeply rooted in biblical language who used the term Gentile, meaning people who weren't the True Believers, taken over from the Old Testament... Paganism has always had a negative connotation to Christians. It was coined to mean people who are wrong, people who haven't got the point, haven't got the message, haven't been converted, the others. And so although it sometimes used in early days neutrally, in other words these people are not bad in themselves, just got the wrong religion. There's always been a stigma attached to it. Only recently, the last few hundred years has it become redeemed by people who have dropped out of Christianity or never had Christianity and are looking for older traditions...
 
There are three things that really distinguish pagans from Christians apart from not being Christian. One is that they tend to believe in a lot of different goddesses and gods even if some of them think that they're all reflections of one big Central being, they still have different faces and they include the feminine. There’re goddesses as well as gods, are goddess as well as a god. Second is that nature is seen as something inherently Divine, it has Divinity within it. It's spiritually embodied, it's animate, it's got live spiritual forces actually within it as opposed to being something created by something outside it or some body outside it. And the third difference is that pagans don't really believe most of them. That goddesses and gods give Commandments or morals to humans, or give them rules or monitor their behavior. Indeed to many pagans, Divine beings aren't terribly interested in humans. They got their own stuff to do. And you need to attract their attention... 
 
If something goes wrong for you, you already want something, then you choose a goddess or God who's really expert in that particular thing and then you will make them an offer. You'll say if I manage to win the heart of the woman I love, O Venus then I shall build an altar to you and I shall burn expensive incense on top of it so you can enjoy the fragrance. And then you wait to see what happens. And if the love of your life throws her arms around you, you build the altar to Venus, you burn the incense and you put an inscription on the side of the altar explaining why you've done all this. it's a whole opposite belief system from thinking that you're created and monitored by a deity who then scores you according to how well you're behaving and decides the fate of your soul as a result of that’...
 
‘On the whole Christians worried a lot more about sex, than pagans did. There were pagans who were just as celibate or austere as many Christians but there was from the beginning a strong strain in Christianity which felt the world was coming to an end. That matter was inherently rather evil and suspect, that the world was a place that had gone wrong. And the best we could hope for was to get out of it and get to heaven’...
 
‘Were elements of paganism absorbed into the Christian faith in these earlier years? Perhaps festivals, rituals, beliefs, anything like that at all’
 
‘Lots of things got absorbed into Christianity from paganism. Physical things, the basic shape of Christian churches is taken over from Pagan town halls and they're filled with altars, hangings, incense, flowers. Hymns, or at least songs. And prayers, all of which have been taken from paganism. But they're wrapped around a completely different theology. Christianity is definitely not just paganism in a different dress. It's a different kind of religion. But, uh, festivals are often adapted, particularly those that mark the changing of the seasons. They're turned over to Saints from goddesses and gods. And even the gestures by which people pray with raised arms are taken from paganism. So there's an enormous amount of borrowing but it's, it's external stuff. It doesn't alter the fundamental difference in the new religion'...
 
‘We have a willful lack of knowledge about why early Christians did all sorts of things. The only thing approaching a mandate or a philosophy that we have for taking over things from paganism and Christianity, is from Pope Gregory the Great. In a letter he wrote to a missionary to England at the beginning of the 7th Century. In which he says, take over the Pagan temples and turn them into churches. Take over the Pagan festivals and make them Christian. Two things are problematic about this. The first is that such an order is very rare among early Christian leaders. The second is there's no sign that the missionaries paid any attention. We just don't find Anglo-Saxon temples underneath medieval churches, anywhere. And where you do find what probably are Anglo-Saxon churches, temples rather, that they've been burned to the ground. And Gregory had sent an earlier letter saying torch them. He changed his mind later but it's his earlier directive that seems to have been followed and his later one ignored. It's in Rome itself, Gregory's own place, that after a few hundred years Pagan temples really are, turned into Christian churches. But then you don't find yourself with very few exceptions going into the entrances of actual Pagan temples. It's more that the stone platforms, the foundations have been used to build churches after the temples had been demolished’...
 
‘To an impartial observer, Hinduism and Shintoism in particular look pretty well exactly like ancient European paganism except they're still around. If you go into an ancient Roman Temple around about 2 000 years ago it's pretty well the same architecture, rituals and atmosphere you get in a Hindu temple in India at the present day. So there is a distinct kinship, a similarity. But modern Hindus are very keen, most of them are not, being associated with modern pagans in the west. They see themselves as a continuous, ancestral, non-western World religious tradition’...
 
‘There are two types of popular misconceptions surrounding paganism. All of them held naturally enough by people who don't really know pagans or, know anything about paganism. There's a soft and a hard form. The soft form is the pagans are people who get naked and dance. And this is simply because, in traditional Christian views of paganism, pagans do the things that Christians would never do, like take their clothes off and then dance. Uh, as a matter of fact, some Modern pagans actually have taken off their clothes and danced but it's not actually a central and informing theme of paganism. It's living out the myth of, a joy of celebration of life without shame for the human body. But as said it's not central to ancient or modern paganism. 
 
The harder misconception of modern paganism is that it's about blood sacrifice. This is because ancient paganism often was. Simply because most people didn't eat meat, most the time, they couldn't afford it. And so a festival was an excuse for a barbecue. And people would gather together, an animal or a group of them would be provided from public funds, and humanely slaughtered. It was actually a rule that if an animal brought for sacrifice showed fear or unwillingness, the ritual couldn't happen. It had to be completely unafraid and die without any pain, instantly. Otherwise it wasn't acceptable. And then the indigestible bits were offered up to the deities and the people barbecued and ate everything else. So it's a consecration of a barbecue. Uh, in modern times that doesn't happen because we can afford, if we wish, to eat meat, fish, high protein foods all of the time. 
 
And also the attitude to nature has changed. Instead of the natural world being something incredibly big and mysterious and overwhelming and terrifying, it's something we're trying to rescue from ourselves a lot of the time. And so the need that you need to buy off the deities or propitiate has completely gone. And with it the need to offer up any sacrifices. Relations between modern pagans and their deities really are more like respectful interactions between friends. One side of the transaction of which is more powerful. Or at least better informed and universal than the other side’"

Sunday, August 27, 2023

Links - 27th August 2023 (2 - Climate Change)

Yager: COP27 – after 50 years, UN-led environmental central planning is failing - "terrifying people about climate destruction and organizing conferences to prevent it have become one of the main reasons for the UN’s existence.   The first COP was held in Berlin in 1995, a dedicated climate event conceived at the 1992 Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro. This was followed by the Kyoto Protocol for a global emissions trading system in 1997, $100 billion annually in climate mitigation funds for developing countries in 2009’s Copenhagen Accord, and the Paris Agreement in 2015 which set a maximum acceptable global temperature increase and the emission reductions required to achieve it.    The UN’s pivot from protecting the peace to protecting the planet began in 1972 in Stockholm. When it was created in 1945, the founding charter opened,  “…to save succeeding generations from the scourge of war, which twice in our lifetime has brought untold sorrow to mankind.”   But by 1972, the countries the founding nations united to protect themselves against – Germany and Japan – were members.   Environmental concern was a growing political issue. A quarter century of peace and prosperity following the Second World War gave the wealthy west the time and money to worry about less immediate issues than employment and security.    For the UN, protecting the planet would maintain financial and public support and vastly expand its mandate.   Who would dare call that a bad idea?...   Before Stockholm, the Sierra Club was about protecting hiking trails. Greenpeace opposed nuclear testing and saved whales. The Pembina Institute resulted from a sour gas blowout near Lodgepole.   Half a century later these outfits are all climate all the time. They are the official conscience of COP gatherings, reminding attending politicians that no matter what issues they may face at home, do what they say or climate disaster is inevitable.    So began the gradual subordination of elected governments of sovereign nations to unelected and unaccountable organizations.    And why we get Antonio Guterres continually telling us what to do and think and how to live our lives. Don’t forget 2021’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change report, which Guterres called “a code red for humanity.”"

Meme - "THE NEW YORK TIMES
SUNDAY, AUGUST 10, 1969
FOE OF POLLUTION SEES LACK OF TIME
Asserts Environmental Ills Outrun Public Concern
By ROBERT REINHOLD
PALO ALTO, Calif., Aug. 5 - "The trouble with almost all environmental problems," says Paul R. Ehrlich, the population biologist, "'is that by the time we have enough evidence to convince people, you're dead." While Dr. Ehrlich is gathering that evidence in his laboratory at Stanford University, he is wasting no time trying to convince people that drastic action is needed to head off what he foresees as a catastrophic explosion fueled by runaway population growth, a limited world food supply, and contamination of the planet by man. "We must realize that unless we are extremely lucky, everybody will disappear in a cloud of blue steam in 20 years," the 37-year-old scientist said during a coffee break at his laboratory. "The situation is going to get continuously worse unless we change our behavior."
Trust the Science!
We've all been dead for over 3 decades. We just don't know it yet
When I brought up the long history of failed predictions of climate doom, a climate change hystericst accused me of being a "science illiterate who doesn't understand how science works, evolves and is continuously updated" and to "start with getting your GED and then come back and join the adults when you have a basic understanding of science." Clearly Popper and Kuhn were science illiterates who didn't understand how science works and need GEDs to join the adults. Classic example of scientism

Democratic Donor Arrested and Charged With Setting Destructive Wildfire - "Edward Fredrick Wackerman of Mariposa, Calif., has been arrested on suspicion of aggravated arson, arson that causes great bodily injury, and arson causing damage or destruction of inhabited structures, the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection, also known as Cal Fire, said"
Maybe this was good because he was trying to "raise awareness" of climate change

Meme - Steve Milloy @JunkScience: "Not the narrative: June 2023 so far is cooler than June 1981 in the US. 140% more industrial era atmospheric over the past 42 years has not produced promised warming. Climate is a giant hoax."
Dave Telvick @DaveTelvick: "To a climate alarmist, cooling is just weather. Heating is climate change..."

Canada’s burning because of bad forest policy, not climate change - "The IPCC, in its latest omnibus climate report, only assigns “medium confidence” to the idea that climate change has actually caused increased “fire weather” in some regions around the world. This, mind you, after desperately seeking to tie real-world events to increasing greenhouse gas concentrations for some 40 years now. In addition, many reports have shown that while fire activity is on the rise in some regions, we’re still not seeing an overall increase when considering the total areas burned at the global level.  As the Royal Society, an independent scientific academy in the United Kingdom, summarizes in a 2020 blog post updating its 2016 research on global wildfire extent, “Fire activity is on the rise in some regions, but when considering the total area burned at the ground level, we are not seeing an increase an overall increase.” The 2016 report was more explicit, finding: “Instead, global area burned appears to have overall declined over past decades, and there is increasing evidence that there is less fire in the global landscape today than centuries ago.”...  Is it clear that Canada’s fire issues are climate-driven? Unless one believes that inverse correlations suggest causality, the answer is no. That’s according to a 2020 study in the journal Progress in Disaster Science where authors Tymstra et al. show a fairly sharp declining trend in the number of fires (annually) over time, and a mixed record of areas burned, though the authors note an apparent increase in areas burned over the last two decades.   In fact, as average atmospheric temperatures have risen from 1970 to 2017, Canadian forest fires have declined sharply in number and show little obvious trend in areas burnt. Crucially, Tymstra’s study also finds that wildfire management policy in Canada comes up short. “A major barrier in Canada… is the inadequate funding to support the vision of an innovative and integrated approach to wildfire management. Mitigation funding has followed wildfire disasters but not at the same level to mitigate flood and earthquake disasters. Despite the increasing occurrence of wildfire disasters in Canada, funding to support wildfire prevention, mitigation and preparedness have not kept pace with the increasing need to mitigate the impacts from wildfires, and be better prepared when they do arrive.”    More specifically, Tymstra et al. find that Canada has failed to fund the proactive management of forest fires sufficiently and is not poised to do better moving forward"
Blaming it on climate change means you're not to blame

The countryside's rising cost of living by Best of Today | Podchaser - "‘How do you get the power from the sea to the places inland which need it? Here in East Anglia National Grid is proposing 112 mile long power line. That would mean 50 meter high pylons running through Norfolk Suffolk and Essex Countryside. The debate here echoes one throughout the country how to balance our need for renewable energy with the intrusive infrastructure needed to supply it’...  
‘We moved here because we love the views and never thought that we'd be, that will be threatened’...
'I've had people in tears. One friend who is going to have pylons right outside her, well outside her garden, she will be looking out on pylons. And she is in tears. She hasn't slept since this has happened and we love living here and the nature and the wildlife are parts of the life that we've built here and that's now threatened'... ‘One of the the gripes that we have with this project however is that the energy is being transported through our counties and is, most of it is going to end up being used in greater London. We're not actually going to get any benefit from this project but a lot of people in London are going to be able to run their kettles... underground is an option and cost shouldn't necessarily be an issue for the National Grid. They make a lot of operating profit’...
‘You must know, you know that name very well. NIMBYs’...
‘A lot of people that have joined our campaign that will not see a pylon and it won't actually affect them but they know people that it will affect. Also they do walk these lanes, they walk through the countryside and in essence our village will be nestled between two rows of pylons.’
‘And not just ours’"
To ram through the climate change agenda, dictatorship is needed
Other people can pay unlimited amounts to save the environment. Just not us
Creditably, someone else interviewed later talked about the cost of intermittency and transmission for renewables

BBC Radio 4 - Best of Today, What are we doing to tackle climate change? - "‘Kemi Badenoch said its unilateral economic disarmament tackling Net Zero which is frankly economic illiteracy'...
'The price of renewable power is about a quarter of the price of gas. And if we want to avoid the ups and downs of fossil fuel uh the fossil fuel prices and if we want to avoid being at the mercy of petrostates and dictators like Putin then we need to act on a green energy sprint'...
‘The reason why energy bills have gone up. it's not because the green levies’
‘But would you say that that it would be fair to get rid of that? World prices are spiraling so in the short term at least’
‘No not without replacement because if you do that you will, what you will do is you will drive up energy bills because it is those green levies that are helping to deliver the renewable power that we need for our country’"
The agenda cannot be challenged. Of course western countries committing to Net Zero will magically make everyone else do that too, since of course seeing this, everyone will want to cripple their economies too, so no one should be scared they will be left behind
Amazing. No one called out the lie about green energy being cheaper
Weird. If renewable energy is so cheap, why do you need green levies to fund it?

BBC Radio 4 - Best of Today, Labour defends donations from Just Stop Oil backer Dale Vince - "‘Everyone hates you. I'm a North London liberal and a cyclist. You're harming the cause... Is it possible Mr Vince that you are harming the cause that you think you're supporting?... The Labour Party's enemies are now trying to say, ah look, those are the sorts of people'...
‘I think it is a desperate uh stretch for the right-wing press and Tory MPs actually to be saying there's a link here, this money should be given back. Look, the money's not dodgy. I'm not dodgy. It's all tax paid. I'm completely transparent. Almost the only person in the political sphere giving money that will talk about it on camera. The Tories get all kinds of dodgy money through offshore companies and it's, and it's just not clear who's giving them money that's not happening here.’...
‘They could make the same sort of allegations that people do about Tory donations that there's a link between money and influence and policy. Are you saying there's no link between your one and a half million pounds to the Labour Party and the fact that it's just about to announce that it opposes is any new oil or gas exploration in the North Sea?’
‘Yes, there is no link of the kind that you're referring to, actually’"
Ahh... direct action. And whataboutism! As usual, conflict of interest is never a problem for the left when it benefits them

14m trees have been cut down in Scotland to make way for wind farms - "NEARLY 14 million trees have been chopped down across Scotland to make way for wind turbines.  The Scottish Government expects to be generate 100 per cent of its electricity from renewable sources this year – but concerns have been raised about finding a balance between green energy and sustaining forests.  Now statistics, released by Forestry and Land Scotland, show that 13.9 million trees have been axed to make way for 21 wind farm projects since 2000."

Solid state batteries: Toyota has history of talking big on EV breakthrough, but not delivering - "Reports this week from major media outlets say Toyota has made a breakthrough on solid state batteries that could revolutionise the future of electric vehicles. But the claims should be taken with a grain of salt: Toyota has a history of unfulfilled big promises on batteries going back over a decade...   Toyota’s track record of battery spin was picked up today by climate and energy researcher Ketan Joshi, who posted screenshots of Toyota’s unfulfilled battery claims going back to 2009."

Road trips lose power as charger outages leave northern Ontario EV drivers stranded - "Some electric vehicle drivers in northern Ontario say the charging network between Thunder Bay and Sault Ste. Marie is failing those who don't drive Teslas.  CCS and CHAdeMO fast chargers in Marathon, White River and Wawa were down for most of June; the Ivy location in White River has been out of service since mid-April... McEwan set off on a road trip to Halifax last month in his new Ford F-150 extended range vehicle.   He topped up his charge in Nipigon and Terrace Bay, but the Petro-Canada app listed the company's chargers in Marathon in Wawa as out of service.  McEwan decided to get his car juiced up instead at the Ivy charger in White River. But when he got there, he discovered the charger was down too.  "Do I go forward, where I have enough power to get to, but not past [Wawa]?  Or do I go backwards and hope I have enough [charge] to make it back to Terrace Bay?" he asked.  Complicating the risk assessment was the fact mobile phone service is spotty between cities in parts of the region, meaning a person with a dead battery could easily find themselves at the side of the road with no way to call for help. In the end, McEwan pressed forward to Wawa, but was unable to find a working charger.  So he booked a room in a hotel and arranged a tow truck to get his vehicle to Sault Ste. Marie the next day.  "I was talking to the tow truck driver and he said, 'Oh this happens a lot because it has been down for at least two months,'" he said... "People would be losing their minds if gas stations all went down in this whole area — that's the reality of EVs right now.""

Canadians less keen to buy EVs, despite government policy push: Study - "Canadians are less keen to purchase electric cars in 2023 than they were a year ago, according to a consumer survey out Thursday, despite a government policy push for widespread adoption of zero-emission vehicles.  J.D. Power’s Canada Electric Vehicle Consideration (EVC) Study, the second annual report on the topic, found that 66 per cent of Canadians said they were unlikely to consider buying an electric vehicle for their next car purchase – higher than the 53 per cent of respondents who felt that way in 2022...   For Canadians, “range anxiety” – or fears about driving distance per charge – was the most-cited worry about buying an electric vehicle. The high upfront purchase price of the vehicles came in at second place, and availability of charging stations came third."

LETTER: Don't drink electric vehicle 'Kool-Aid' - "I was travelling to South Carolina last week in my electric hybrid car and thinking about going back to the same non-electric model of the same car I had previously owned.  What was really bugging me was the electric motors never engage at highway speeds and I’m carrying all that extra battery weight. The extra 30 horsepower the electric version has over the standard gas 300-hp engine has less performance than the gas model because of the extra weight. There is no savings or payback for folks that drive highways year round. Anyone can confirm this on YouTube, which shows comparison testing.  The first night, we got to Virginia and I looked out the back window of my hotel room and there were 10 Tesla chargers all occupied and most drivers were sitting there reading a book. There were several other vehicles waiting for access to chargers. We went for dinner and an hour and a half later we came back and half of the same cars were still charging. Those cars were probably on their second charge of the day if they were covering the kind of distances I was covering. You can’t leave yourself on a commercial charger and go to sleep for the night. You’ll wake up with your car towed. So, I guess the answer is a bio break every two hours? Not the way I want to travel.  Tesla has a J.D. Power score near the bottom in the automotive industry for reliability... My friend’s model S got three years before it required battery replacement. Google ‘Tesla battery replacement costs’ and get informed...   Only about five per cent of lithium batteries are recycled and no one wants to take them because to transport them is a fire risk and old lithium ion batteries are classified as toxic... New York is considering banning electric bikes because they are a huge contributor to fires in people’s homes."

Using Electric Vehicles as Grid Storage: Another Green Fantasy - "electrification requires, well, electricity.  Lots of it.  And it requires that electricity to be available at all times. Greens envision most of that electricity will come from wind and solar power, along with hydrogen-burning generators that don’t yet exist and battery storage to meet the demand for power when the wind doesn’t blow and the sun doesn’t shine.  Recognizing that building enough battery storage facilities will be prohibitively expensive, a new push has developed: using electric vehicles as a source of back-up power storage to meet electricity demand. It’s called “vehicle-to-grid” (V2G) technology and means using the millions of electric vehicles that consumers and businesses will be forced to buy to supply electricity to the grid when wind and solar do not. Proponents claim it will make the electric grid stronger and more reliable, and provide a quick path to the “net-zero” future that supposedly will save the planet.    But like other green energy fantasies, the math doesn’t add up... Suppose that, on a cold winter’s day in 2050, all 3.5 million EVs are connected to the state’s power grid.  None are being driven and all are fully charged.  And suppose that improved battery technology means each provides an average of 100 kWh of electricity.  That’s 350 million kWh in total, or 350 gigawatt-hours (GWh).    Sounds like a lot.  According to the most recent forecast prepared by New York Independent System Operator (NYISO), which oversees operation of the state’s electric generating plants and transmission system, total electricity demand in 2050 will be just under 200,000 GWh.  That’s an average of 540 GWh per day.  So, on an average day these EVs could provide around 15 hours of electricity.  But extra electricity will be most needed on cold, windless, and cloudy winter days, which are not uncommon for New York.  According to NYISO, electricity demand on such a day will peak at almost 45 gigawatts.  If that load persisted for an entire day, it would be over 1,000 GWh of electricity.  Suppose, though, total electricity consumption on a peak day is just 50% higher than an average day, or around 800 GWh.  Then those 3.5 million EVs could supply enough back-up electricity for just 10 hours.   In reality, of course, not all of those EVs would be connected to the power grid.  Many would be in use.  And not all of them would be fully charged.  If only 50% of total EVs are available to supply electricity to the grid, they would supply just five hours of back-up.  Moreover, once those batteries were drained, they would have to be recharged.  Were a second consecutive cloudy, windless day to occur – again, not uncommon in New York – millions of EVs would sit useless in garages and parking lots.     Then there is the cost of the infrastructure needed for V2G.  Getting power from all of those parked EVs to the grid will require all sorts of new technology, which will cost billions of dollars. It will require upgrading local distribution systems – the poles and wires running down the street.    And what happens if consumers and businesses don’t want their EV batteries drained by the local electric utility? So far, few EV owners are signing up for managed charging programs that allow their local utilities to control when EVs can be charged in exchange for rate reductions. Then again, will EV owners ultimately even have a choice?"
Reliability is a big problem with renewables. Relying on individual consumers to cover base load is a fool's errand

Have You Ever Tried Pulling a Camper with an Electric Truck? The Real Costs and Benefits of Ottawa’s EV Revolution - "buried deep within the government’s own regulatory filings is the stark admission that electric trucks are very, very bad at towing and hauling. So bad, in fact, that if the true cost of towing with an EV were included in Ottawa’s own cost/benefit analysis, it would turn the entire result on its head, flipping an allegedly positive outcome into a negative one.  This is not the only disturbing conclusion to be found tucked away in the government’s official assessment. A close reading of the document reveals numerous other costs – higher taxes, more accident fatalities, less consumer choice – that are otherwise ignored in the federal calculations but will still ripple throughout Canada’s economy and society. The shift to an allegedly zero-emission world is going to be vastly more expensive, disruptive and restrictive than the Trudeau government admits... No car can ever be considered “zero-emission” given the continued necessity of gas-fired electricity throughout the country as well as diesel back-up power in remote areas plus the ample emissions entailed in mining and transporting the materials required to manufacturer EVs... New Year’s Eve is not a date typically associated with major government announcements, which suggests Ottawa is not particularly interested in having Canadians read the contents of its EV scheme too closely... Proper methodology suggests making a policy decision only after it has been established that a proposal makes sense on a financial basis. Instead, the Trudeau government announced its intended policy first and only later published a cost/benefit study to see if it makes sense. This document proves it does not... It beggars the imagination that EVs (which currently cost approximately $13,000 more than equivalent gas-powered cars) will be only $3,300 more expensive three years hence. Ottawa is counting on economies of scale and technological innovations that have not yet been achieved to reach its goals. It seems wishful thinking. Furthermore, the federal analysis does not take into account the massive increase in demand for the minerals and other materials used to create EV batteries, which will almost certainly increase the overall cost of the vehicles... [subsidies]  are not included in the cost/benefit analysis, but will fall on Canadian taxpayers nonetheless. As this C2C analysis explores in more detail, the higher purchase price is only one of multiple new multi-billion-dollar cost categories that the transition to EVs will impose on Canadians. In addition, an earlier C2C story looked at the impact EVs will have on government revenues, given the disappearance of the gas tax and the expected appearance of new taxes and/or road fees. One way or another, we will be paying much more for EVs than Ottawa admits... The federal government assumes most EVs will be charged at home, at night, when electricity costs are cheaper. This is based on U.S. evidence that 80 percent of EV owners currently charge at night. But even if the 80 percent figure is correct today, this is likely because existing EV owners have self-selected for ease of charging vehicles at home. That will not be true when everyone is forced to switch. What will happen to the millions of people who currently park on the street? They cannot run hefty charging cables across public sidewalks to their cars. Nor is it reasonable to expect older buildings to be retrofitted with accessible parking/charging spaces. Many vehicles will have to be charged at higher-speed public chargers during the day, at considerably higher cost... the calculation does not include installation costs, which can be several times the actual cost of the chargers themselves... As for electricity costs, upon which the entire EV mandate hangs, the government’s Impact Statement assumes a whole-of-country switch to EVs will only increase electricity consumption by a paltry 2.6-4.8 percent... Natural Resources Canada states, “the total annual additional electricity required due to EV charging…represents approximately 3.4%, 16.1%, 22.6% of today’s domestic electrical power demand for 2030, 2040 and 2050 respectively.”... The Liberal government has no plan to pay for all these required charging stations... the Ford F-150 Lightning has a maximum payload of 2,000 pounds (907 kilograms). The “extended-range” model has an even smaller payload of 1,800 pounds due to the extra weight of its additional batteries. By comparison, a gasoline-powered F-150 V-8 can carry 3,325 pounds...  pulling a trailer with an electric truck means a dramatic drop in carrying capacity and a doubling of required recharging stops. If you are hauling a boat to the cottage, this likely means stopping every hour or two for a half-hour recharge – if you can get a spot at the recharging station during congested cottage season... Under Ottawa’s new proposed rules, PHEV sales are to be capped at 20 percent of all vehicles in 2028 and beyond. As these will be the only trucks on the market with any reasonable towing capability, we can expect demand will be high. This will presumably push their cost up even further... ratcheting up of vehicle prices, as the federal Impact Statement observes, is “expected to have a disproportionate impact on low-income households.” It will thus become more difficult for low-income families to afford a vehicle. This is bad news, given ample evidence that having access to a car is crucial to finding and keeping a good job and escaping poverty. The news gets worse. “Low-income households are also more likely to live in rental units, which…may not be suitable for at-home charging equipment”"

As electric vehicles become more common, experts worry they could pose a safety risk for other drivers - "Tests performed by the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety (IIHS) show EVs hold up well in a simulated crash. Their batteries make the vehicles heavier, offering better protection to the passengers inside, but that extra weight — hundreds to even thousands of pounds — has traffic safety advocates concerned about the potential risk to other drivers.  "I think it does present significant challenges for safety," National Transportation Safety Board chair Jennifer Homendy told CBS News. "If you think about an impact in a crash with a lighter vehicle with a pedestrian or a cyclist or motorcyclists, it's going to have a much different outcome than we've seen in the past. Terribly tragic.""
Liberals want to ban pickup trucks because they are more dangerous than normal cars. So...

Electric vehicle drivers get candid about charging: 'Logistical nightmare'

Meme - The Meme Policeman: "This Green New Deal meme completely strawmans this MIT tweet, as it was actually a part of a longer thread and article where scientists make a solid point about the pitfalls of solar. It has absolutely nothing to do with “infinite electricity,” here’s the breakdown.
Solar produces lots of electricity in the middle of a sunny day, but little to none at other times. It doesn’t have the ability to throttle up and down according to need, like fossil fuels or nuclear, it’s only available when it’s available.
Thus, supply and demand drops its value at peak generation, when there might be an over abundance of electricity in the grid. Sometimes even to a negative value, which means they actually have to pay other grids to accept their surplus electricity (too much electricity is a major problem in a grid).
This phenomenon caused California’s avg solar wholesale prices to fall 37% relative to the avg electricity prices for other sources since 2014. So far, heavy solar subsidies and the rapidly declining cost of solar power has offset the falling value of solar electricity in California.
But this will likely change as CA attempts to go from 19% solar to 60% in the next 2 decades. It’s estimated the avg wholesale price for solar will drop 85% relative to other sources by then, decimating the economics of solar farms. No one will want to build them, absent huge and wasteful subsidies.
It has nothing to do with “infinite electricity” or capitalism, that’s a total strawman. It has to do with the reality (aka science) of how solar and economics work. People don’t want a bunch of electricity midday and none at night, they want it on demand throughout the day, and solar doesn’t deliver that....
As usual, Green New Deal claims they love science and that no one should ever disagree with a scientist, except when scientists contradict their agenda. Then, they’re happy to elevate a left wing activist account with no science expertise above MIT scientists"

World Atmospheric CO2, Its 14C Specific Activity, Non-fossil Component, Anthropogenic Fossil Component, and Emissions (1750–2018) - "After 1750 and the onset of the industrial revolution, the anthropogenic fossil component and the non-fossil component in the total atmospheric CO2 concentration, C(t), began to increase. Despite the lack of knowledge of these two components, claims that all or most of the increase in C(t) since 1800 has been due to the anthropogenic fossil component have continued since they began in 1960 with “Keeling Curve: Increase in CO2 from burning fossil fuel.” Data and plots of annual anthropogenic fossil CO2 emissions and concentrations, C(t), published by the Energy Information Administration, are expanded in this paper. Additions include annual mean values in 1750 through 2018 of the 14C specific activity, concentrations of the two components, and their changes from values in 1750. The specific activity of 14C in the atmosphere gets reduced by a dilution effect when fossil CO2, which is devoid of 14C, enters the atmosphere. We have used the results of this effect to quantify the two components. All results covering the period from 1750 through 2018 are listed in a table and plotted in figures. These results negate claims that the increase in C(t) since 1800 has been dominated by the increase of the anthropogenic fossil component. We determined that in 2018, atmospheric anthropogenic fossil CO2 represented 23% of the total emissions since 1750 with the remaining 77% in the exchange reservoirs. Our results show that the percentage of the total CO2 due to the use of fossil fuels from 1750 to 2018 increased from 0% in 1750 to 12% in 2018, much too low to be the cause of global warming."

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