These Are The Crazy Years a Blast From the Past from July 17 2013

250 thoughts on “These Are The Crazy Years a Blast From the Past from July 17 2013”

1. To people in the STEM disciplines: scientists, engineers and such, words are a means of communication, most useful for the dissemination of facts, statements of perceived truth.
   For those trained in the liberal arts: psychologists, lawyers, and senior educators, words are tools useful to manipulate and control other people.
   I pint out in passing that a significant majority of elected politicians began their adult life in the field of jurisprudence, aka lawyers.
   Progressive socialists have taken over just about every aspect of the liberal arts disciplines and made major inroads into much of STEM sadly. But as they deny reality to elevate their twisted world views with a religious fervor they are compelled to excoriate and demonize any of us who have the temerity to point out that they do indeed stand before us in the Emperor’s new clothing, glorious to their thinking but invisible to the rest of us, those lying eyes yet again.
   Certainly, the Gods of the Copybook Headings can be denied and refuted for a time. It just takes large sums of money, shrill yelling, and eventually violence against all deniers, but eventually reality wins. And does so with force proportional to the length and severity of the efforts to deny them.
   Or to turn a phrase, buckle up cupcake, it’s gonna be a bumpy ride.

   1. The longer you deny the Gods of the Copybook Headings the angrier and more intense they get. The Tranzi/SJW types have NO idea what they’re playing with…

      1. TheGods of the Copybook Headings actually don’t care, one way or another. It isn’t THEIR doing if you pile up overdue bills on Ann kinds of accounts.

         1. Point taken, they’ll let you go to hell in your own handbasket if you want.

            1. Those who the Gods of the Copybook Headings send to Hell, they first allow to weave their own handbaskets?

   2. well, in social sciences when your pet theory is wrong your project fails and you can find something else to blame it on, In STEM when your pet theory is wrong the bridge collapses and kills people

      1. Or your program crashes, or your switching power supply goes up in a shower of sparks and fire, or your plane crashes, or your ROV implodes at the bottom of the ocean leaving just a few pitiful remnants bobbing to the surface hours later.

         That is the difference between engineering and what RAH called the ‘fuzzy studies’ — there is a clear difference between ‘works’ and ‘fails’ that no amount of bullshit can conceal. Leftoids can’t handle engineering. Either the uncompromising principles of physics scare them away, or they stop being Leftoids.
         ———————————
         How can Leftoids create a better world when everything they do makes this one worse?

         1. Sadly no. They just start thinking they can reprogram humans like machines

            1. It might be more correct to say that a subset of the sort of people who study engineering either a) know so little about human beings that it isn’t obvious why humans are not infinitely re-programmable blank slates b) went into tech because they are wannabe technocrats, but never study the tech deeply enough to understand its limits. Plus, engineering education quotas would be expected to result in people trained in engineering who are not interested enough in it to really understand it. Some of these people would have firmer mental habits from mental indoctrination in primary and secondary school.

               OTOH, really excellent engineers know their area of practice, what tools hold inside that area, and what types of problems are outside that area of practice. So there is a no true Scotsman argument potentially impacting the definition.

               1. More than a few get a god complex. Those tend to be ones that do this carp

   3. One of my favorite quotes about judges and lawyers is from Mencken:
      “In nothing did the founders of this country so demonstrate their essential naivete than in attempting to constrain government from all its favorite abuses, and entrusting the enforcement of those protections to judges; that is to say, men who had been lawyers; that is to say, men professionally trained in finding plausible excuses for dishonest and dishonorable acts.” — H. L. Mencken

2. Sarah, I’m wondering if Heinlein knew what a crazy year was.
   And this morning we learn a computer repairman in Delaware got a laptop months ago and was never paid for it…then the Feds got it…but not before the repairman made a copy of the hard drive and dropped it off with Rudi Giuliani’s lawyer. Now it’s made its lonely way (or another copy of it has) to the New York Post. Much interesting email thereon. Appears it belonged to a guy named Hunter…

   1. And aren’t they just fascinating. Nice to see my local paper doing so well. Even the slimes has mentioned it.

      1. Posit:

         A) The Democrats are really to jettison Grandpa Gropes and go with Harris.

         or

         B) The Democrats are ready to take the loss this year, so they can spend the next four years lying about why they lost and just MAYBE come up with a ticket popular enough to make their fraud machine marginally believable.

         1. I think it’s more likely that they are really just that corrupt and stupid. I doubt very much there’s any planning or thought, just reactions. One of the signs of psychopathy that is along with lack of impulse control.

         2. Embrace the healing powers of AND
            While I have faith in their never ending depths of stupidity, I also will not discount their planning for both cases (see Pelosi’s nonsense for dropping Joe should they win) and even with his winning, they are willing to jack up the riots to stoke change, though getting a loss allows them to really crank them up to 11 and use them as a lever for their desired outcome.

            1. I’m with you. Yes, they are losing – badly – but that is just fodder for yet another assault on us.
               They will press ahead with multiple attacks, from different angles, and pray for at least ONE volley to hit.
               Think of it as Shotgun Warfare.

               1. more like poo flinging and hoping something sticks (~_^)

         3. Democrats are counting on their social media arm to suppress the story, which both Twitter and Facebook are doing by censoring the NY Post article, even when posted by the Post itself on its accounts, and are outright barring people from tweeting it or posting it.

            Democrats believe that they can lie cheat and steal sufficiently with the help of the tech monopolies to push Biden over the line and take control of the Senate. They could care less about Biden himself, it is about getting gaining full control of the Federal government so they can ensure there will never be a meaningful election ever again and they can ram identity-group based communism down the country’s throat. They are so obsessed with doing this that they WILL try to effectuate a military coup if Trump wins or the election is disputed. We know this because their scenario for doing this was cooked up by the very highest levels of the Democratic Party establishment given Podesta’s involvement. BLM and Antifa will be used as paramilitary, and their brick throwing rampages through the suburbs of Wisconsin are not even close to the level of violence they are going to inflict on and after election day.

            The limousine liberals and never-Trumpers will cheer them on right up until the point they are lined up against the wall or marched up to the guillotines.

         4. Never underestimate their confidence in their ability to lie, deflect and obfuscate their way out of anything. Their protective air support in the MSM creates a belief in their invulnerability that they’re unable to shake.

            For a real laugh (assuming you aren’t paywalled) try the Wall Street Journal‘s Best of the Web Today column:

            Collusion Theory Promoters Attack New Biden Story
            Media rivals target New York Post report on Burisma.
            News consumers should be gratified to know that the New York Times has decided it will demand the highest journalistic standards—at least from its crosstown rivals. Just three days after a Times writer formally announced that the newspaper is transitioning “from the stodgy paper of record into a juicy collection of great narratives,” Times staff is now attacking the juiciest narrative of the 2020 campaign.

            [SNIP]

            If the New York Times and other media outlets in 2016 had made the same effort they’ve made in today’s attempt to poke holes in the Post report, the bogus Russia collusion story would have died before Donald Trump even took office.
            –

            1. We keep going back to the misperception that Newspapers (and their modern analogs) were EVER neutral. That idea is one of the biggest lies the Left ever sold us, and has paid them vast dividends. I have listened to the Right whine about ‘Media Bias’ for DECADES, and only a few conservatives have ever stepped up and even tried to start media to support Conservative viewpoints.

            2. It’s *always* been about The Narrative. At least in the past most places had battling narratives, such as newspapers published from varying perspectives. Media conglomeration changed that so the moguls could drive the story. The New Media are changing that, returning somewhat to the status quo ante, which is why the MSM is fighting them so hard.

               1. Originally yes. Now “New Media” is simply conspiring with legacy media to silence stories that reflect badly on Democrats or leftist ideology in general;

                  1. But you don’t *have* to depend on Twitter and Facebork for news.

                     1. Not to consume, but many businesses need to have access to have viable ability to communicate their existence. Furthermore, especially with the government mandated lockdowns, people need access to those platforms to DISCUSS news and events, especially those who are seeking a wide reach, such as candidates for political office. This is particularly true when the majority of traditional media outlets are marching in lockstep to either silence or demean said candidate(s).
                        The reason Trump tweets so much is that traditional media for the most part, if they cover what he says at all, simply distorts and twists it so that it means the opposite of what he actually said.

                        1. Including writers, yes….

                        2. > people need access to those platforms to DISCUSS news and events

                           I discuss them on places like here, or some forums.

                           > especially those who are seeking a wide reach

                           Being exemplars of probity, obviously Twitter or Facebook wouldn’t lie about their reach…

                     2. Indeed, that Fascistbook and Twits censors something is an indication for people to share the hell out of it.

                        Behold the power of this fully armed and operational Streisand Effect.

   2. It is less a matter of whether Heinlein knew what a crazy year was than it is a matter of what his readership would believe a crazy year to be.

      Methuselah’s Children was published in 1941 — before we knew about the Nazi death camps or the Nazi & Japanese “experimentation.” Had RAH possessed a time window and been able to observe and accurately report our present to his readers they’d have dismissed it as too fantastic.
      –

      1. It didn’t help that the WWI Allies had spread all kinds of anti-hun propaganda that turned out not only to be false, but to be ridiculous in retrospect. A sizable minority of people who were paying attention had a pretty good idea of what the Nazis were doing to the Jews, but it sounded too much like the more extreme WWI propaganda.

         1. Oh, so much this. When I was in college, I went for a deep dive in the microfiche stacks for a semi-national newspaper. (Umm … mostly because I wanted to read Terry and the Pirates in the original…) but it happened over and over again. A story during the late 1930s and in the war years of some horrific German atrocity against the Jews … and invariably, in the ‘letters to the editor’ would be the letters reminding readers about how Americans were taken in by horrific atrocity stories in WWI. (Yes, there were horrific German atrocities in WWI – but the most horrific and over-the-top atrocity stories did turn out to be figments of a propagandists’ imagination.)
            Of course, when the Americans, Russians and British did begin liberating concentration camps in early 1945, and it turned out that the most imaginatively depraved paid Allied propagandist had not even come close to what the Nazis had done – and which there was photographic proof of — yeah, the shock among readers of that newspaper was off the charts.
            Me – I’ve been skeptical of newspapers ever since.

            1. Always be skeptical of the News. Read Mencken on his newspaper days and you’ll see why. The Left won a great victory when they promulgated the fantasy that ‘journalists’ had some ethical responsibilities to report ‘unbiased’ news. A journalist’s responsibility is always, Always, ALWAYS to follow the editorial policy of his paper.

               1. I read Mencken’s Newspaper Days when I was in my 20’s. I never forgot how they concocted the story about the arc lights and why they survived it.

                  Big tech has an open anti trust case and there are literally trillions of dollars at stake. People will kill for a buck, what might they do for that. They’re all in. They have to be.

                  One good thing that has come from all of this is that All my obligations toward the state are dissolved if they manage to put Don Biden or spank me baby in the White House. Under Obama I still had to respect the office if not the man and the notion of government of, by, and for. If they manage to steal this, not a bit will be left. They can make me obey, up to a point, but they won’t get any cooperation from me.

                  1. 1. That’s exactly what I was thinking of. The big fellah knew.

            2. Also why General Eisenhower was so adamant about getting those atrocities documented and witnessed.

      2. But what the Nazi’s and Japanese was predictable if one simply paid attention to the Nazi’s admiration for Margaret Sanger and the other “progressive” eugenicists in the USA and if one paid attention to Japanese culture, particularly that of the class that was taking power. The warning signs were all there.

         1. US Progressives literally wrote the book. Blood for the blood god as number 2 son says.

   3. FBI got it in DEC 2019 and did NOTHING.

      1. If you’re wondering if these agencies still work for us, you have your answer.

         1. And if you were wondering whether there’s anything in our “system of laws” that will change their behavior, you also have your answer.

3. Crazy Years, hell. Some days I’m afraid this is the Year of the Jackpot.

   1. I’ve been very afraid of that.

   2. Crud I’d forgotten that story. You really had to go and think that didn’t you Mr Chupik? Lets not attract any more attention of the Old Ones please.

      1. “Lets not attract any more attention of the Old Ones please.”

         Do you read Sutter Cane?

         1. I am unfamiliar with Sutter Cane. My limited knowledge of the Old Ones comes out of a few Lovecraft stories I’ve read as well as Mr Correia’s Monster Hunter series and our hostesses contribution to that oeuvre (including juvenal shoggoths 🙂 ).

            1. A reference to this:

               https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0113409/

               1. Ok a kind of B movie from the mid 90’s kind of a riff on Lovecraft it looks like. No surprise I missed it, at that point a I had a toddler and one additional child on the way so I lived far more in Teletubbies, Golden books, Sesame Street and Dr Seuss. Although one might argue the Teletubbies were a cross between Lovecraft and a bad stoners trip.

4. > “You should be able to make a living at whatever you want to, whether it’s something other people want or need or not.”

   Thus, any menial job is supposed to pay “a living wage.” So all the not-absolutely-necessary-but-nice-to-have types of service go away, because they can’t be provided at a renumeration that’s a fair *value*, because the minimum pay is now “living wage”, at least until inflation catches up.

   1. Biden let slip the truth again when he said minimum wage should be $15,000,000.
      See, if they have their way, everyplace will become like ZimBob’sway, and have massive amounts of hyperinflation, and $15mill and hour will be the going rate in no time. It will almost buy one a fake meat burger, no bun (yeast give out too much CO2, ya see), fries, and a soymilk shake at the local BK

   2. They do not understand that money is a SYMBOL of value, and believe that they can create value by printing more symbols. It’s like trying to increase the supply of bread by making more bread wrappers.

      And so they won’t get it when it takes more and more of their empty dollars to actually buy what they want, and their ‘living wage’ of $15.00 an hour has less purchasing power than $5.00 an hour used to. They will demand a ‘living wage’ of $40.00 an hour ‘to help the working poor’ even more.

      Eventually they will commit the ultimate stupidity — they will index the minimum wage to inflation, setting off a positive-feedback loop. Will somebody have the wits to stop it before the minimum wage hits a million dollars an hour?
      ———————————
      Governments can only print money; they can’t make it worth anything. They can make it worth nothing.

      1. They ALWAYS confuse the wrapper with the gift.

         1. See; cats and children understand that it is the box that is the fun part, not the wrapper.

      2. More bread wrappers hell — they’re adding sawdust to the bread, apparently ignorant of what happens when the product becomes more sawdust than bread.
         –

5. > copybook headings

   I like that poem, except for the mystery of “copybook headings”, which seems to have a meaning other than the bare words.

   When I was in elementary school my parents moved to another state, and I went from a 7th grade “accelerated learning” track back to the 3rd grade, “because we must keep the age groups together.” The “teaching” there consisted of the teacher filling the blackboard with writing, which we then copied into notebooks. Every nine weeks the notebooks were handed in. and we were graded on penmanship.

   “It’s education, Jim, but not as we know it…”

   But that doesn’t seem to fit either.

   1. They were an old from of teaching penmanship.

      As I understand they’d have a quote or proverb in the heading, written in the correct handwriting, and the student was to then copy it down and repeat until the page was full, and repeat until their hand writing was acceptable.

      1. They tended to the obvious, such as “Honesty os the best policy”

         1. “A penny saved is a penny earned.”
            “A bird in the hand is worth two in the bush.”
            And so on. My early educators ruled with iron hands, and the headings were as often Christian as they were common sense wisdom. I used to have decent handwriting. Still can manage it somewhat. But my handwriting these days is more often checks and suchlike, not letters to be placed in the mail or missives to hither and yon.

            1. my handwriting these days is more often checks and suchlike, not letters to be placed in the mail or missives to hither and yon.

               –
               My handwriting mimics mom’s. Between me, hubby, & son’s, mine is the most legible. Not saying a whole lot, FYI; to quote Dan – “not letters to be placed in the mail or missives to hither & yon.” *** What is really interesting with my cursive is when writing longhand long enough, it looks like multiple people swap off producing the pages of writing.

               When our son was in elementary school they still required cursive learning, got an “official certificate & card” when their cursive writing “passed”. Part of was the engineering portion when he went to college. Requirement to print. But not most of it. His cursive writing is horrible, worse than his father’s, and hubby’s is illegible at best.

               Our son didn’t write up his Eagle Application for Eagle Court of Honor. He typed it up. Printed it. Then cut the paragraphs to put into the appropriate areas. No way could he “write” anything. This was 2005. Fifteen years later the application book may now be 100% on line in different saveable formats that it can be done on a computer & printed out. There is way more to the Eagle Court of Honor notebook that is is turned in before the scout goes before an Eagle Court. That may or may not be 100% computerized now too. Kind of a shame if it is. The Eagle Notebook is a keepsake in of itself.

               1. To be fair, typing is much faster and more efficient than writing. I work in a very small business, and when the office manager is not there to print out the shipping labels and forms I have to write them up by hand. It takes a lot longer.

                  Longer still if I want it to be readable… 😛
                  ———————————
                  “Kid, your eyes are red.”
                  “You should see ‘em from the inside.”

                  1. To be fair, typing is much faster and more efficient than writing.

                     –
                     Well. Yes. Even if you don’t touch type, it is more efficient & faster. (Hubby doesn’t.)

                     1. I never dreamed that typing class I took in high school would pay off so much, or for so long. I have been typing pretty much every day for the last 40 years.

                        My dad was in the Navy. He said when they found out he could type, they made him a yeoman on the spot.

                        1. This. (First paragraph)

                           “Personal Typing” was a class I picked as an elective way back in 10th grade and never resented. But I still underestimated just how useful it would be.

                           On the other hand, I have read lots of praise for penmanship and lots of depreciation of typing. There does seem to be a divide between those who are stylus-users at heart and those who are keyboard-users.

                           1. Mom had us touch typing drills on an very old typewriter well before high school or middle school. Didn’t use it for school work. Gave a little bit of lead for typing class HS sophomore year, which would have been 10th grade. Did type papers in college with actual typewriter (before personal computers, I’m that old, at least first time around); I used a lot of whiteout. Actual typing speed didn’t occur until well into my programming years.

                              True story. Back when typing tests were still a thing. My typing speed was 45 (s/h/b then well above 100). My accuracy was high (kept correcting on the spot). I told them I was a programmer, not a typist. But hoops to jump through. This was ’85. Also last time I tried to find work through a Job Recruiter.

                           2. Oddly, while I can type as fast as I think, and vice versa, on marketing copy (I was gonna say “nonfiction”, but THEN AGAIN…) and conversations, I canNOT write fiction any other way than longhand. I’ve tried it multiple times, and it cuts my writing speed to about 10 percent of what it is on paper.

                        2. Very weirdly, I never took a typing class. If I had it to do again, I would, but I never did.
                           So when I came to the states and realized the only jobs I COULD get involved typing, I spent a summer with Dan’s typing manual from high school, just going through the exercises.
                           At the beginning I typed 20 words at a minute. At the end 160. And yes, it’s seen me through with credit.

   2. We did copy books in school and I still keep a common place book. It was part of the formal training in rhetoric that all educated people used to get. I got a very attenuated version in school and was in the last generation to get it at all. Homeschoolers seem to be returning to it and one of the homeschool curriculum advisors has a multi year curriculum passed on the progymnasmata. No secret why they don’t teach it anymore since education has been just propaganda for a long time.

   3. You can buy copybooks, which is basically words of wisdom type writing practice.

      1. The ultimate copybook heading is “this too shall pass.” Alas, the good and the bad.

      2. So now I know what a copybook is, but Kipling’s use of the term makes even less sense.

         1. All of the lines that he quotes are things you would write in the copybooks– the “headings.”

            Ie, The Wages of Sin is Death.

            FWIW, my kids did the Pledge and the Our Father for practice, until they advanced to The Chaos. (“Dearest Creature in Creation….”)

            1. That makes a bit more sense.

               Reminds me of an old British book I read. The characters spent most of the book looking for “a canon with a crown.” I actually looked that up in the dictionary; it wasn’t there. It wasn’t until the very end of the book that I picked up from context that a “canon” was some kind of cleric.

               For a Briton in the 1960s “canon” would have been obvious; for an American in the 1980s it was a mystery even the dictionary didn’t help with.

               1. Canon refers to a church law, decree or regulation. Colloquially, it is also used to refer to the established order in a fictional world or universe, as in “Fanfiction that ships Luke Skywalker and Lando Calrissian is not canon.” Neither was Tim Zahn’s pairing of Luke with Mara Jade — that was merely awesome.
                  ———————————
                  “I warn you, Mariel, do not be overconfident. If I were married to Londo Mollari, I’d be concerned.”

                  “G’Kar. If you were married to Londo Mollari, we’d all be concerned.”

                  1. Neither was Tim Zahn’s pairing of Luke with Mara Jade — that was merely awesome.

                     Well, it was, until Disney decided it wasn’t.

                     “Canon” also has a broader meaning. When I took the course “Intro to the Ancient Near East” back in college they talked about “canonical literature”, basically sets of stories that set out the core beliefs and, well, “operating assumptions” of a civilization, it’s “canon”. The Epic of Gilgamesh would have been part of the canonical literature of the Sumerian city-states, for instance. Church laws, decrees, etc. would then be a specific instance of that.

                     1. That got scraped way before the Mouse was involved– half the Wars fans on my ship refused to watch the prequels because Lucas dumped one of the biggest bragging points for an awesome universe into the trash, and wouldn’t even bring in aspects of it in.

                        All Lucas had to do was be consistent with the hoops he told the writers to jump through, but no, when folks complained about him totally ignoring the expanded universe he got all nasty about how he hadn’t ever read a bit of it and it was all someone else’s fault that anyone thought they were canon at all.

                        All Disney did was give up on the no longer working patches of “they changed the calendars” and “the historians got confused” for all the stuff that calendar claims couldn’t cover, and made it a different cannon so they could start bringing in characters to the video universe.
                        Given how freak terrifying Grand Admiral Thrawn is in the animated form (two of my kids are dressing up as characters from Rebels) it sounds like as much of a win as we can hope for. (The Clone Wars Anakin is also far superior to the mess Lucas directed.)

               2. I take it you’ve never been nor hung out with, a Holmes fan. If you had, that usage of canon would have been instantly understood.
                  –

               3. Reminded me that I’d seen it in I think an Agatha Christie novel, may have been Chesterton– thank you for making me look it up. 😀

                  Now I have a word for “chief priest” that isn’t a bishop, is just in charge of a building or cluster of buildings.

   4. The bit of a Kipling poem that baffles ME is from THE BETROTHED, “I will scent them with best vanilla, with tea will I temper their hides”

      What on EARTH is he doing to his cigars, and why?!?

6. *musing*
   The ‘science of semantics’ sure sounds like handwavium on stupid rhetorical tricks– it’s hard to learn to look at what things mean, and what is going to happen, ignoring who is telling you a thing. Especially if you want what they’re telling you.

   1. There definitely was something in the SF writer water cooler about Semantics in that era; look at Vance’s Languages of Pao, for example. But we’re talking about a half-century during which Science had taken human society great leaps forward, largely by plucking low-hanging fruit (and people had yet to discover the worms in those fruit.) Much knowledge had been compiled by scientific (that is to say, systematic) investigation and humanity, as is its wont, had declared the technique a magic wand.

      As we have learned since, there are limits to what Science can analyse, there are blind spots, and there are categorical errors.

      Most importantly, we’ve learned the validity of what Orwell observed, “There are some ideas so absurd that only an intellectual could believe them.”

      Sadly, we seem to have turned administration of our government over to intellectuals — after all, what means “Listen to the Science” if not “Listen to the scientists.”

      As if anybody who knows more than three scientists doesn’t know they cannot even agree on which Star Trek film is best.
      –

      1. One of the ideas I learned from my late Father – really a core concept of his scholarship – is that the styles that permeate societies are not by any means limited to the Arts. When you have Baroque painting and Baroque drama and Baroque architecture, you are highly likely to have Baroque politics and Baroque science. Corollary to this is that the catchy New Science of the times is likely to affect all other areas of the culture, through the popular understanding (often misunderstanding) of that Science.

         Hence; Evolution is broadly misunderstood as being a directional movement from the flawed toward the perfect, and the term is often applied to other fields than biology to imply a scientific basis for utter drivel.

         See: Marxism.

         1. This one always befuddles me (the error in thinking, not your statement of the error)

            1. What confuses you?

               1. I would guess along the lines of “how the heck do they come to that conclusion?”

         2. I put that in a story I’m writing:

            “Evolution is a blind, random, chaotic process with no purpose and no goal.”

            1. Some might say, “Of course evolution has a purpose. Sort of. It’s survival. Just not *yours.* A species that procreates sticks around. Don’t survive to procreate and extinction is a consolation prize.”

      2. Olaf Stapledon had not a shred of a sense of humor, but he did manage a fine bit of wry irony when he set up a future America (which was in bed with a non-communist China) ruled by the Sacred Order of Scientists (SOS). It did not end well.

         1. Most “scientists” are academics, and they seldom question what they were taught. even after the wheels start falling off.

            They take way too much on faith, and faith is the difference between science and religion.

   2. It’s hard enough when your source text is trying to be clear. But sometimes it is deliberately obscure.

      I once read a scholarly article analyzing some very old Chinese erotica. Though the Chinese source text was readable, in that most of the words were recognizeable and the meanings were known, writing was “artful” and almost entirely euphemisms, or possibly slang, and even the Chinese analyst was unable to figure out who was doing what to whom. It might have been hot stuff back then, but back then the readers presumably knew what the author was talking about…

      “Context is everything…”

      1. I have been reliably informed that Arabic is a particularly difficult language for Westerners to learn because much of its content consists of metaphor, allusion, allegory and similarly indirect linguistic structures.

         There are, I am sure, other languages which operate similarly; even in English there are certain topics which are rarely described directly, thus our multitude of euphemisms for male and female genitalia and the interlocking of same.
         –

7. I’m trying to decide what particular bit of semantic crazy inspired the reposting. Was it the lady who recently discovered that she was “demi-sexual” i.e. only wanted to have sex with someone where there was an emotional connection, and was so relieved that there was a term for people like her? Or was it Amy Coney Barrett using the phrase “sexual preference” and over the course of 24 hours everyone including the people at Webster’s Dictionary deciding that was an offensive slur?

   Whatever it is, 2020 seems determined to give RAH a run for his money. I can only hope that 2021 doesn’t say, “Oh, my sweet summer child. You have no idea what crazy is!”

   1. *space ripping noises*

      I can only hope that 2021 doesn’t say, “Oh, my sweet summer child. You have no idea what crazy is!”

      Just got back from 2121, and this is adorable!

   2. only wanted to have sex with someone where there was an emotional connection, and was so relieved that there was a term for people like her?

      –
      Ummm…normal?

      1. Snort and guffaw

      2. RIGHT?

      3. Some months ago I was in a private chat where someone was trying to understand one of the menagerie of wokeisms. Eventually the understanding came…

         “Oh! They’re PRUDES!” (paraphrased)

         1. YES!

         2. LOL

         3. Even worse. They are useful idiots who aspire to being useful idiots, thinking that achieving useful idiot status will prove that they are superior to everyone else while they live in comfort provided by the state.

   3. If we must have Newspeak, could they at least provide an revised-every-hour dictionary to at least appear to be giving people a chance?

      1. Webster’s did that for “sexual preference” with online changes. IMHO, what would be nice would be ChangeLog.txt, but the Official Goalpost Mover and Gaslighting Society would fight tooth and nail against such. Having the non-woke ignorant of the Newspeak-of-the-moment is a feature, not a bug. To them.

         1. That could make a fun story. An online dictionary of “acceptable” words gets hacked.

            “Incoming wordcrime: use of “and”, “the” forbidden on pain of public flogging. To be applied retroactively.”

      2. Ah, but that would defeat on of the primary reasons for their ever-changing jargon; their desperate need to be In The Know. They NEED it to exclude ordinary people…because they are desperately afraid that THEY are ordinary.

      3. No. Then you could learn it and be immune to their attacks.

      4. Clearly the onus lies upon Notre Dame, which has failed to perform the modern university’s most significant task of keeping all students, alum, administrators, and professors (even adjuncts) up to date on what terms are offensive. Why didn’t they make sure ACB got the memo????
         –

   4. A demi-sexual is not just someone who only wants to have sexual intercourse with someone where there was an emotional connection. It is someone who simply can’t feel any sexual desire unless there is an emotional connection with the person.

      Mind you, there are a lot of people who claim the orientation when they are looking for an excuse. Which just shows how crazy life is.

8. Request for Information: some time recently* there was an audio analysis of Kent State that showed there was a shot before the Guard opened fire. I don’t have a link to this.

   Does anyone here have it?

   [*] “recently” may be affected by the 2020 time warping

   1. https://www.cleveland.com/science/2010/10/analysis_of_kent_state_audio_t.html

      1. Thanks! Relayed to original asker.

   2. Relative to “an entire generation and change grew up being told those nasty Guardsmen opened fire on poor widdle innocent, peaceful students”?

      Ten years ain’t very long.

      1. I lived in Cleveland suburbs at the time so we heard a bit more about what happened at Kent State than the rest of the country.
         Even at 12 years old, with Kennedy Dem parents, I knew that narrative wasn’t true. The National Guardsmen were put in a difficult position and reacted understandably under the circumstances. Yes, they could have handled it better, but they didn’t have perfect knowledge or much experience.

         1. Also, which seldom gets mentioned, the ‘protesters’ had set fire to the ROTC building the night before, and then interfered with firefighters on the scene. Rather run of the mill, NOW, but shocking then.

            Frankly, all arsonists in ‘protests’ (past and present) are putting lives at risk, and should be shut down, HARD.

            I live in daily expectation of reading that Antifa/BLM arsonists have managed to kill a large number of people at one go with their irresponsible idiocy.

            1. The same here – some kind of ghastly mass-cas … and they will be whining and moaning afterwards how all those peoples didn’t have to die … because … reasons.

            2. I recall Richard J. Daley catching flack over one of his orders for a riot in the ’60s. (Can’t remember which one, maybe after MLK was killed.)

               (Paraphrased, not going to try to look it up)

               “Looters: Shoot to maim.
               Arsonists: Shoot to kill.”

               Ah the good old days, when Chicago was merely incredibly corrupt instead of also being under control of terrorists and communists.

            3. Meh. Stupid protestors hadn’t read their Mao and had to be reminded about the source of political power.
               –

         2. It was a set-up. The college, the city, and the Governor were all working together to support the rioters and maxmize the chances of violence.

            Of course, that could *never* happen in 2020…

   3. …. I don’t have it. I think it was 2007?
      My husband grew up near Kent and finished his degree there (after getting clinically depressed and dropping out of a much better college.) He has…. opinions about it. (His brother was there at the time of the shootings. So, he really HAS opinions. From what he heard from his brother who was his polar opposite.)

9. Asimov, in his Foundation series, had the mayor of Terminus perform an analysis of the speeches of two visitors using symbolic logic, and reported summaries of what they had said. Nice try, but to date, symbolic logic is largely still limited to statements that are true or false, and has not progressed to properly handle ambiguity. Heinlein’s ideas of semantics and ethics being exact sciences also appeals to me, but who is the hardworking genius that is going to make the necessary breakthroughs? From today’s academic establishment? I like my jokes to be funny.

10. And there is still three months to go … time enough for the murder hornets, the SMOD, herds of feral man-eating hogs running rampant, even more mass hysteria, and G*d only knows what else.

    1. Don’t give HIM ideas.

       1. Hey, with any luck Grandpa Gropes will get stung by murder hornets and Kamala Blowswell will get eaten by feral hogs.

    2. Well, it looks like Facebook and Twitter just went all in on censorship today. Both are now blocking sharing of the New York Post’s story on Hunter Biden’s laptop and have officially started that they are and will continue to do so, and now Twitter just locked the New York Post’s Twitter account.

       1. Also deleted a bunch of accounts of conservatives who are black for obviously being fake. Because duuuuh, right?

          Well except for the radio show host that they banned in the process. At least until his lawyers had a talk with the Twatter’s lawyers.

          1. Well, Biden did say “if you’re not voting for me you ain’t black.”…. 😉

             1. Q.E.D.

             2. I saw a hilarious and also creepy cartoon about that.

                1. I think I saw it too.

                2. Found it! The artist has other cartoons on a similar funny yet horrifying vein.

                   The Party giveth… and the Party taketh away. pic.twitter.com/Oq04AWTIWv

                   — George Alexopoulos (@GPrime85) August 7, 2020

11. But the thing about semantic insanity is that words aren’t the truth. Words are just words.

    One of the best pieces of advice in Sowell’s writings (which contain a lot of good advice) is the quote from the late Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr. that he likes to use: “Think things not words.”

12. When did 2020 demand that 2013 “Hold my beer”?

    I’d think I’d recall that happening but I don’t.
    –

    1. Way earlier than that; 2013 is still stuck holding 2014’s beer.

13. Free Lunch!!! Just leave your liberty at the door!

    A Free Lesson on TANSTAAFL to the Candidates Running on a Platform of ‘I’ll Give You Free Stuff’
    By Sarah Hoyt
    I was fourteen years old and a European when I first read Robert A. Heinlein’s The Moon Is A Harsh Mistress and came across the concept of There Ain’t No Such Thing As A Free Lunch.

    It will amaze you – or maybe not – how much of an alien and strange concept this was to me. Why? Well, because it is in many ways an alien concept to Europe. It, and various other ideas—like the idea that people might object to paying taxes or that they might have rights that their governments couldn’t violate—were concepts as alien to the mindset I lived submerged in as the other side of the moon.

    As was, by the way, the concept of a “free lunch.” Since Portugal didn’t have laws limiting the sale of alcohol—no, really. At the time I think it was “if he can toddle to the counter and slap money on it, sell the kid a pint.” It’s different now—and even the rolls they brought to the table before a restaurant meal showed up on your bill (to the horror of tourists) the concept of “free lunch” was completely alien.

    However, knowing people who ran restaurants, I could see how it would work. I knew the margin was very tight (apparently our governors who limit restaurant capacity at random don’t) and if they were ordered to provide, say, free rolls by legal fiat, they’d need to find the money somewhere. Now, at the time, bread in Portugal was dirt-cheap, so adding rolls for free might only translate into a few cents extra per meal. Then again, because it was “hidden” it might amount to a full “escudo”—the national currency at the time—per meal. (At the time, if I remember correctly, it was 200 of those to the dollar per meal.) But the restaurant would have to find that money somewhere or go under. There was no escape. …
    –

    1. And, as the USSR, North Korea, Cambodia, Cuba, Ethiopia, and various other places have been demonstrating for three quarters of a century, even if you do leave your liberty at the door, you *still* don’t get a free lunch.

       1. Get a free lunch? Get a free lunch?

          I din’t never say no such thing.

          You are the free lunch.
          –

          1. The “free lunch” at the end of the Marxist tunnel is soylant green.

    2. apparently our governors who limit restaurant capacity at random don’t

       On that note, my family and I went for a drive into the mountains, then stopped for lunch on the way home. The restaurant was quiet, but I figured, hey, it’s a Tuesday, it’s slightly past the usual lunch hour, it probably doesn’t mean they’re having difficulties. And then I looked around and realized that the place was at full capacity–every single table that didn’t have people sitting at it instead had a giant potted plant indicating that no one was allowed to sit there.

       It’s going to take miracle of Biblical proportions to keep even the best of these places afloat.

       1. Had a FB friend post a picture of restaurants in Redmond. The unusable tables all had reservation signs on them. “Reserved for Party – Brown, Kate — By Governor Edict”

14. “… women are driven by different hormones which shape thought, which shape – oh, never mind.”

    Anyone spewing such nonsense as men and women being the same should be given a choice: either go on testosterone (or estrogen/testosterone blockers) for a month and see if they still feel the same way OR they should be prosecuted for Hate Crimes against Transgendered persons.

    Or we could simply lock them up as mentally incoherent — but when mental incoherence is criminalized where will we get people to run for Congress?
    –

    1. I have not said it yet, but I want to tell someone with pronoun issues that they can’t be “a man trapped in a woman’s body,” (or vice versa) because they have no idea what a man’s body feels like from the inside. Until they can get that “Y” chromosome or second “X” inserted into every bodily cell, they’re just dissing their own nature.

       1. Please report back. Also keep a coach gun nearby when you pull that one out …

          1. A coach gun?

             What, are they harder to kill than the trainers?
             –

             1. two cut down barrels of double ought is a very pacifying action.

                And I’m re-reading that, and “pacifying” looks wrong. It’s right, but it doesn’t look right. Argh. Brain.

       2. Perhaps not even then. The hormones you get *before birth* and grow up with, go through puberty with, and finally emerge in your mid 20s being done with… those change you. And even if you get new ones later on, that doesn’t undo the changes to your brain chemistry that have been layered on and built up over your entire formative period.

          Put it another way. Individualism reigns supreme again. I don’t know you from the inside. You don’t know me the same way. We can’t. Each individual’s lived experience is uniquely their own. One cannot live another’s life for them.

          But.

          We aren’t allowed our own *facts.* Those things are outside lived experience. Thusly does dihydrogen monoxide wet us, and commonly sourced plasmas burn. And the terrible spirits of horror and mass death return.

          1. The closest you can get to that is fiction….

          2. Hence the It’s Ma’am episode:

       3. It is possible to be “a man trapped in a woman’s body” — but only if she’s really been doing her Kegels.
          –

    2. I am going to be unpleasant to the next person who seriously uses the term “testosterone poisoning” in conversation.

    3. A while back I read a piece by a woman who had to start taking testosterone boosts. She wrote about it, and noted that the stuff was basically causing her to want to jump the bones of pretty much *every* male she saw. All in all, some pretty obvious ‘men aren’t women and vice versa’ stuff. Except that she then transitioned (no pun intended) her article into a pro-trans puff piece. So I didn’t bother to save the link.

       It’s a shame, though, because that first part made it pretty clear that men had to operate by a different set of hormonal rules than she usually did.

15. “The normal result of the crash is a strong man regime, and maybe that’s where we’ll end up.”

    Sometimes – more now than previously – the result is a strong woman regime (aka, Nurse Ratchedism or QBS – Queen Bee Syndrome) but that is hardly preferable.
    –

    1. Briefly, RES. It is pitiable and sad what happens to women, when men have sunk so low.

       That said, no one gets a free pass. It is the samadh and the corpse pile, what’s left of government having to tell its citizens not to eat their children, the return of the lash and shackle, privation and desperate want. Because the rule of the strong must ever defend its own with might and sword that very little is left over for the trappings of things today we’d call civilization.

16. Democrats have published their radical agenda; sadly even the open plans to impose identity group based communism (think Venezuela with a healthy dash of Mugabe) won’t persuade the never-Trumpers from their insane campaign to help Democrats murder the republic.

    https://www.breitbart.com/politics/2020/10/14/progressive-dems-reveal-radical-platform-biden-doorway-not-destination/

17. Uh Uh. Well. You know, reading this, I thought, “oh, honey child. You didn’t know what a crazy year even WAS. – SAH*

    Well, he did say “years,” and at no point did he indicate the first would also be the peak.

    At this point, I’m more worried it’s the “Year of the Jackpot.”

    1. #metoo.
       Speaking of send me a link to your post on dressing up to work at home. I keep meaning to link it at insty (it helped me) and forgetting because my head is not functioning as well as it could

       1. Link sent.

          1. Thanks.

    2. “At this point, I’m more worried it’s the ‘Year of the Jackpot.’”

       Nyaw – that 2020. First we get the Year of the Jackboot.
       –

    3. Really people two mentions of the nightmare Heinlein story? Just stop, right now. We’re going to attract something/someones attention and then we’ll be hip deep in murder hornets and puke caterpillars. And that will be the good outcome…

       1. It’s been much on my mind. Could be worse. Could be The Strange Profession.

          1. Do you refer to ‘The Unpleasant Profession Of Jonathan Hoag’? Come on, he was just an art critic.

             Hmmm, maybe we should get Quintus Teal to build a really special venue for the Biden campaign’s election night shindig.
             ———————————
             “I have never known the truth or Delenn to speak only when it is appropriate.”

          2. Another story I read. The Unpleasant Profession of Jonathan Hoag is just creepy and weird. If this is an art project we’re in at present its either a Salvador Dali or a Hieronymus Bosch, or maybe Edvard Munch. In any case I’m not blindingly fond of it :-), and No I’m Not a Critic like Mr Hoag.

18. How in the hell did “liberating women” turn into “make them available for men’s fun with no pressures and no commitments?”

    When the men who were most attractive and most immoral realized promoting the idea would allow them to have de facto harems, they could pawn off on the thirsty guys who were getting no female attention when the women were used up sexually.

    Then, after one generation of men like me existing, our younger brothers/sons are starting to realize they were getting women no longer able to pair bond after too many partners or have children as they aged out of fertility and are less and less willing to catch those women who squandered their youth on the fun.

    As in getting women who say things like, “oh, they had fun me. But you get serious me” without realizing that’s like saying you get to pay the car loan but only get the car after it is out of warranty.

    1. My husband has been known to quote, “Why buy the cow when the milk is free?” Mind you, we were in the Society and he had a baroness, so the joke was I was his mistress and the two of us double teamed him.

       But that quote fits way too much of the current situation.

       1. See; some of us have an alternative view: why hunt down milk all the time when you could just get the cow?

          But that is decidedly unhip.

          1. Right lads, it’s time to go reavin’ again, so! Time to steal those filthy Ulstermen’s cattle!

             1. “The hammer / of the gods / will drive our ships / to new lands.
                To fight the horde / singing and crying / Valhalla, I am coming!
                On we sweep / with threshing oar.
                Our only goal will be / the western shore.”

                1. And here we go…the Immigrant Song by the mighty Led Zeppelin:

          2. Problem is that the laws and the courts have arranged it that you cannot keep the cow, but you still have to pay for it to be housed, fed and doctored.

             1. The results of the milk need to be cared for, rather. Not the cow.

                Now, for those who really, really, really just want the milk, there is a relatively inexpensive, extremely low failure, reversible and one-time solution for…which there have been many attempts to give away where the programs were shut down for lack of takers, because those interested in milk without the cow would rather complain about having to pay for the kids they make than get a vasectomy.

                Far better to trust that someone you don’t care about beyond personal physical satisfaction is using various methods with much higher failure rates, and then complain because the procreative act didn’t fail and you’re not allowed to execute the human created by the act, or complain about how expensive it is to kill your offspring.

                1. The cow has no duty at law to spend the cash on the calf.

                   1. Other than being the one that is legally obligated to prevent neglect of the child, even if the other participant in the act of procreation ends his involvement at that point.

                      1. Then you get to be the social worker’s cash cow as they send you to classes and don’t take the kid away.

                         1. So delightful to see you suggesting the proper response to a child that is suffering neglect because of being abandoned by a parent is to take them from the parent that stuck around.
                            You’re in a special mood again, aren’t you?

                            1. You’re getting tiresome. Stop trying to gaslight me.

                            2. You should try it from the receiving side, some time, it doesn’t improve the experience.

                               Your “I am temporarily possessed by someone’s snippy ex-wife” shtick isn’t improved by obviously false accusations when someone points out what your statements say, any more than when it’s the mask twits trying to stick ‘karen’ on folks who take their business elsewhere.

                            3. What I posted, and your lie about what I posted, are visible to everyone. Stop trying to gaslight me.

                            4. What I posted, and your lie about what I posted, are visible to everyone.

                               Which is why I feel no compunction against saying:
                               you are falsely accusing me.

                               The entire appeal of public, text-based conversation is that attempts at gaslighting are right there, claims that one said a thing can be quickly checked, accusations that someone’s memory was wrong or they “obviously” did a thing is objectively verifiable, and attachments of rockets to goalposts can be quickly seen.

                               It’s the anti-DARVO.

                            5. The false accusation was made when we were talking of neglect by the custodial parent, and you lied and claimed I was talking of neglect by the non-custodial parent. And everyone can see that’s true.

                               Or, rather, the first one.

                            6. Following the chain of conversation that’s on the page is not lying, Mary.

                               No matter how mad you feel, no matter what you meant or what you were focusing on– you disagreed with the idea that child support (in the specific case of a guy getting the milk without buying the cow but ending up having to support the results of that milk) is used to support the child because there is no legal force attached to the money.
                               When it was pointed out that legal force was already leveled on caring for the child, if the other parent offered support or not, you jumped straight into taking the kid away as a valid solution to neglect via non-custodial parental abandonment.
                               In direct response to a case of abject abandonment after conception, just to make it even clearer.

                               At this point, I don’t even care if you are assuming that completely abandoning a child isn’t a form of neglect, or if you just got so fixated on what you meant and what you’d assumed that you didn’t bother to go back over and look at what was actually written.

                            7. ” you jumped straight into taking the kid away as a valid solution to neglect via non-custodial parental abandonment.”

                               You asserted that the custodial parent was required to spend enough on the child to avoid child neglect. I pointed that this is not so. You then lied and jumped straight to falsely claiming that I had into taking the kid away as a valid solution to neglect via non-custodial parental abandonment.

                               This assertion you just made here is simply gas-lighting.

                            8. You know, if it were gaslighting, you could point to something I had said that was false.

                               Instead you keep picking out a portion, ignoring the context that doesn’t match what you want to talk about, and then scream about me trying to “gaslight” you.

                               For pointing out the context you want to pass over in the comment you responded directly to.

                            9. I just did, so you are gaslighting again.

                            10. She says, right below where she had to chop half the claim out and ignore it to make the response….

                                Pretty much wraps that up beyond a reasonable doubt.

                            11. And again.

                2. Foxifier,
                   Children being ripped away from their fathers is not a topic that I can politely discuss. I will say that your post that I am replying to is incredibly offensive. I will also accept that you did not mean it that way. No apology needed.

                   1. Scott-
                      In return, I will not demand an apology for you reading “those who want free milk, but not the cow, could take steps to avoid the biological results of their acts” as some sort of a discussion of children being ripped from their fathers and choosing to take offense.

                      1. Guys, just take this as the fact that “sexual anarchy” unleashed on society, the idea that sex is a plus good, and promiscuity ALWAYS desirable, and that no consequences should accrue as TRULY horrible. Horrible for men and women, but mostly for children.
                         I know examples of horrible heartache on both sides, and scoundrels on both sides. Though the state is biased “for women” in fact, decent women who try to keep the father in touch with the kids get penalized to a horrible extent. The law encourages them to be castrating bitches, and if they’re not something wrong is adduced to them.
                         As for men, poor bastards. I’m very glad #1 son married an honorable woman, but can do nothing except pray #2 finds one also. And they’re very very rare.
                         This needs to be fixed and Chesterton’s fence restored.
                         It won’t be in my life time, but men and women ripping at each other is NOT what will fix it. It’s what breaks it.

                         1. It’s horrible for anybody that isn’t horrible– and it’s horrible for them, too, but they don’t realize it.

                            It involves a degree of “only I, and my desires are real” in order to hack the basic human desires to the point where folks aren’t fulfilled, and the very thing that could fulfil them is denied– the bonding between a couple in their co-creation of another human person, transmuted into anything but mutual masturbation* being “unsafe” and shameful, and the child being at best an unwanted side-effect and more often a punishment that was inflicted by the other member of the sex act, a life unworthy of life because they are a possible inconvenience.
                            The other member of the sex act is, of course, a horrible creature for not sufficiently maiming their reproductive system so that reproduction would not occur, or for failure to destroy the result.

                            Somebody seriously needs to mine this stuff for story fodder, because someone who is able to deal with the standard issue former space Nazis because they grew up dealing in a friendly manner with people who have a go-to complaint of how expensive it was to kill their first born, and how horrible it was that the mother expected them to contribute to the expense rather than just handling it herself, is both anvilicious and something that can be written from lived experience.

                            * I can only think of one scene where this was mined at all, and it was comedy– the full body condoms in, I think, one of the Naked Gun movies.

                            1. Saw the reverse of that recently, and it was a thing of beauty. Brought a tear to my eye. Seriously.

                               Was watching a romantic comedy TV series from mainland China. One of the supporting characters had repeatedly mentioned that she and her live-in boyfriend of several years didn’t want to have kids, and therefore didn’t see a need to get married. Late in the series, she finds out she’s pregnant (she says a condom failed), and realizes that she wants to keep the baby. So she immediately breaks up with her boyfriend. A few weeks later, she finally tells him why she broke up – that she’s pregnant and wants to keep the baby, and knows that he doesn’t want kids.

                               A few days later, he surprises her with his car, and gives her a lift. Then he produces her personal identity papers, which she’ll need if they’re going to use the marriage application that he also has, and he also tells her the requirements for the house that they’re going to go shopping for – requirements such as being close to both of their jobs, and having enough space for a nanny, since they both have well-paying jobs. And then, after making it clear that he’d already given the matter a lot of thought, he mildly reproves her for automatically assuming that he wouldn’t be interested in continuing the relationship if she had a baby.

                               It was a thing of beauty.

                               And you’d never see something like that on American TV.

                            2. If it was done correctly, that would be awesome!

                            3. In America we are constantly told that wanting kids is “A Bad Thing.” Men do not tell girlfriends of that desire, Women do not tell boyfriends of that desire. Both cruise along under the assumption that confessing such perverse desires is not just wrong, it is perverse, worse than swinging.

                               He doesn’t dare tell her of it because that would indicate a wish to “domesticate” her, to curtail her career ambitions and consign her to the nursery. She keeps silent because she is afraid of scaring him off over the threat of responsibility for a family. So both persist, miserably, in a pretense of not wanting to engage in the most basic and important of human urges: genetic replication.

                               If O. Henry were alive today what a tale he could make of such material!
                               –

    2. It is a sad thing, what’s been done to women and men these past many years. The scars are everywhere if you know where to look. And perfection is an evil lie. People are not perfect, nor perfectable, as the wicked ones have been trying to tell us nigh on all our lives.

       A proper woman fails every day. As does a good man. The difference between the proper woman, the good man, and the rest is that the former two strive for a higher goal. The former two need to realize that their opposite numbers exist. But there are a LOT of poison fish in the sea, as it were. Getting discouraged from time to time is inevitable. Getting bitter does not make one the kind of man the right woman needs.

       But we’re not perfect, so we fail daily in one form or other. So long as we keep trying we can become better men. And the flawed but striving women we are searching for deserve our best.

       Even if we end up dying alone at the end of a long life, having been a good man is something worthwhile to spend a life on, I believe. People will notice. And perhaps emulate. Even grumpy curmudgeons like me. There is something to be proud of in that, I think.

    3. I once saw online when a woman who was rebutted by another. So naturally she shrieked that the other woman was jealous of the way her husband preferred to sleep with the first woman and her ilk. That is, she tried to claim that a woman he stays married to is less to his taste than a one-night stand.

       (The irony is that the other woman was not married.)

       1. Based on the available evidence, she might well be right. At least with a one night stand there’s no reason to worry what kind of person your partner will turn into.

          Many a person on both ends of that celebrated first slice of wedding cake undergoes changes in character that have log been noted to wry effect.
          –

          1. Yes, but nowadays there’s no reason for him to stick around if he really preferred another woman. And a man who does one-night stands would

       2. *horrified laugher*

          And I thought the accusation that I was a bitter, dried-up lesbian virgin was bad! That may have been a lame attempt at a recovery from assuming I was female. (With a werefox cheerleader profile picture. /sigh)

          (I was in my third trimester with the Princess at the time, and while I find my dear half-elf quite attractive, Elf is not pretty nor female.)

19. About the Hunter Biden story, the speed and ferocity with which our tech giant overlords tried to throttle the news is truly breathtaking. Even if the story ultimately proves wrong, is it really their job to police what people say? They’re trying to control what is and isn’t news. And the real kicker is that the same media outlets that do this, the same people who approve of it, will turn around and wonder why there’s so many paranoid conspiracy theories these days.

    Gee I wonder why. It’s a mystery.

    1. I don’t think it’s wrong….

       1. Nice of them to confirm it for us.

          1. The extent of the coordinated effort to suppress the NY Post story and their willingness to openly ban people from even mentioning its existence should be taken as proof that the Post story is absolutely 100 percent accurate and that the Democrats and the tech oligarchs know that it is accurate.

       2. Well … the Biden campaign isn’t claiming it’s wrong. They’re saying it has been discredited.

          As Merriam Webster is apparently the go-to authority for Progressives this week:

          Discredit definition is –
          1: to refuse to accept as true or accurate : disbelieve.

          2: to cause disbelief in the accuracy or authority of

          Careful readers will note the word is not synonymous with disproven.
          –

          1. Yeah, that. Biden, or his supporters, have been throwing out the line that the Hunter corruption has been ‘debunked’. I do not think that word means what they think it means. They seem to believe that by merely denying a claim, it no longer warrants credibility. The Post revelation may put paid to that, but I’m not holding my breath.

             1. That’s the point: It always worked *before*. They’d state something was disproved or debunked and the MSM would faithfully report that, then drop the subject like a hot rock. Even though some of the newer pols have had computers and internet access for most of their adult lives, they’ve not managed to realize things are different now.

                1. THIS.

          2. Look at the timeline, and what the owner is and is not saying.

             April 2020. Suppose at that point, knowing that Biden is a fairly sure bet, a Republican operative dropped the laptop off with a known Republican sympathetic repairman. The hard drive could have been salted with a combination of real information illegally obtained somehow, and fake information.

             Hunter Biden is more than incompetent enough to have made these unforced errors.

             But, it may be an open secret that this is a GOP hit.

             The only way that this does not incriminate Biden is if it is a GOP hit; if Biden does not withdraw, they should open an investigation in the theory that it is a hit.

             1. Thing is, e-mails include their own little electronic fingerprints. You can’t just write a bunch of made-up e-mails, and try to pass them off. If the Post didn’t have at least one (and likely more) IT expert examine the headers on the e-mails before publishing, then they were incredibly foolish. So there’s a good chance that the e-mails are legit.

                Also, Fox apparently got the e-mails as well. That network hasn’t reported anything amiss about them.

                And finally, there’s all of the selfies of Hunter, including one with what appears to be a crack pipe.

                1. Even if one had obtained the emails/videos by hacking, a plausible looking mail client database on the hard drive could be hard to forge. Not an area I know much about.

                   And if it is a Russian operation, then Apple sales records might not indicate that it was sold to a Biden adjacent organization.

             2. I believe the Biden “defense” has claimed this is all Russian disinformation and we all know how isidiously clever those Russkies are.

                Geeze, I’m so old I can remember when the Eighties were calling demanding their foreign policy back.
                –

                1. The “Robots Read the News” strip that Scott Adams occassionally does has the robot newsreader announcing that you can tell Putin is behind the e-mails since he was clever enough not to leave any of his fingerprints on it.

                   ^^;;

                   1. Aha! Everybody denies it’s a conspiracy — that proves it IS one!

             3. Sorry, the GOP is not smart enough to organize this thing.

                1. Hmm…

                   Point.

                   I guess I’m boggled.

                   For all that I rave about junkies, I am slow to realize that Hunter’s alleged drug habit would result in many episodes of very poor decision making.

                   1. Is “alleged” still the right word when someone brags about their actions?

                      Hunter has been quite open about his drug use.

                      1. I think it is still the right word if a) I am trying to be fair, and even handed b) I haven’t seen the evidence personally to evaluate it.

                         So, I will still be using it in circumstances where everyone else has seen the evidence, weighed it carefully, and concluded that it is pretty definite. Because I choose not to look into some sorts of evidence, whether because it bores me, I think it is icky, or I think the stress and trauma of the experience is not worth the value to me of being more fully persuaded of what occurred.

                         Stories of Hunter Biden’s womanizing and drug use paint the picture of self-destruction, and is the sort of thing I do not like learning about and thinking about. I will do so for personal reasons, but Hunter Biden is my public business, not my personal business.

                         Anyway, I had overlooked that for some definitions, Hunter is mentally ill; with his cooperation another person can minimize the damage his choices make, but he will always make damaging choices, and the Biden campaign cannot simply assign people to keep him out of trouble, much less relay on Hunter’s good judgement.

                         If this costs Joe the election, and the Democrat voters are upset about it, they should reasonably have anticipated this during the primary and chosen otherwise.

                         1. I think it safe to go beyond “alleged” in Hunter’s case, with an arrest record going back as far as 1988 (expunged but that doesn’t mean it didn’t happen; searchengine “hunter biden drug arrests”).

                            Further, his father has publicly acknowledged Hunter’s struggles with drugs.

                            That does not mean, of course, that recent photos of him smoking a crack pipe constitute evidence of smoking crack, as there’s no way of ascertaining what flammable substance (if any) was in the pipe.
                            –

    2. They also locked the White House Press Secretary out of her twitter account for retweeting the NY Post story:

       https://pjmedia.com/news-and-politics/tyler-o-neil/2020/10/14/breaking-white-house-press-secretary-kayleigh-mcenany-locked-on-twitter-n1054773

       I am thinking RICO charges against Twitter and Facebook are appropriate, and give them the Backpage treatment. If the Obama administration could seize and shut down Backpage because it refused to act as an editor and remove posts by people who were soliciting prostitution, I see no reason why Facebook and Twitter can’t have the same done to them for promoting criminal violence, arson and looting by BLM and Antifa including allowing their platforms to be used to organize specific acts of violence against specific targets and people. This is in addition to the criminal racketeering their monopolistic conduct, not only in suppressing speech, but preventing competition, that they routinely engage in.

       Twitter delende est. Google delende est. Facebook delende est.

       1. There is a point where government intervention is warranted. I am deeply wary of granting people entrusted with such power something *more.*

          That said, there are levers in place that are going unused. Someone who picks and chooses which messages see the light of day and which they refuse to show… is acting as a publisher, not a service. And there are rules and regs in place for good reason to keep those in check.

          I am even more concerned about anti-trust… But I’d like to see the argument. Because it needs to be had out in the light, not hid under a bush.

          I still believe strongly that government should not involve itself in private business as much as possible. But businesses *will* push the envelope, and take *every* advantage they can get. There need to be clear, concise rules and they need to be enforced neutrally, without favoritism.

       2. What’s absolutely hilarious is that the exact same people who worry about corporations having too much power are usually the same people who are entirely okay with corporations censoring people they disapprove of.

    3. The Biden campaign said their might have been an informal meeting but not a formal one. So yeah, it happened.

       Evil will oft doth evil mar. Ole Hunter stiffed the repair guy and now Rudy has the whole hard drive. They got Biden with Burisma and Rudy is talking like he has the whole Biden family. Got to wonder who and what else is on that drive and who took the porn films.

       1. I suspect that the massive effort by the tech oligarchs to quash the story is going to convince a lot of people that the story is absolutely true and that the Biden campaign is actively conspiring with social media companies to suppress it because of Biden’s guilt.

          1. The masks are ALL coming off.

             1. Masks? What masks? They ‘wear no mask’. That is what the things have always looked like.

                1. “It’s lizards all the way down!”

          2. Nah, the Biden campaign is definitely not conspiring with the tech people. The tech people are doing it independently, because they are wholly owned subsidiaries of the Chinese state.

             It fell under their standard protocol of squashing stories about PRC paying off white dudes.

             (Yeah, I’m not entirely confident in these theories, but confrontational wording seemed more fun. 😛 )

             1. Bob, a) you’re sounding sane again, stop it.
                b) embrace the healing power of “both”

                1. There were very close ties, in some case immediate family ties, between Obama administration members and media organization members. That was MO for the Obama administration.

                   Biden’s media/information operation seems likely to be, or have been influenced by, the Obama media/information operation.

                   I don’t recall the Obama administration/media diagram, but if it lacked facebook/twitter, and if those omissions were correct, one might reasonably expect that perhaps Facebook and Twitter are not closely colluding with the Biden campaign.

                   Okay, Hillary’s failure in 2016 has probably caused some reflection by the left on methods and operations.

                   1. Kamala Harris’ years as San Francisco DA, California AG and then Senator have given her deep, deep ties to Silicon Valley. The Wall Street Journal reported in August that

                      Ms. Harris, … counts prominent figures such as Facebook Inc. operating chief Sheryl Sandberg and Salesforce.com Inc. co-founder Marc Benioff among her supporters. Boldfaced Silicon Valley names including LinkedIn co-founder Reid Hoffman and venture capitalist John Doerr raised money for her presidential bid that ended in December. And her brother-in-law is Tony West, general counsel of Uber Technologies Inc.

                      The New York Times reports

                      her family, friends and former staff members are part of the revolving door between government and the tech industry.

                      Lartease Tiffith left his position as a senior counsel in Ms. Harris’s Senate office in late 2018 and became an in-house lobbyist for Amazon, focusing on privacy and security issues. Rebecca Prozan, who ran Ms. Harris’s first campaign for district attorney in San Francisco, is a top government affairs official for Google in California.

                      and further tells us

                      Ms. Harris rarely challenged the major tech companies after she became California’s attorney general.

                      Jamie Court, president of the California-based Consumer Watchdog, said his group lobbied Ms. Harris in 2011 to support legislation that would force companies to stop monitoring the online activity of users if they clearly stated that they did not want to be tracked. She refused to sponsor the bill or support it, he said. … “She presided over this era of great consolidation and power in the hands of these tech giants and she didn’t do a thing,” Mr. Court said.

                      Further, although I cannot now locate the information, reports yesterday asserted that Kamala Harris’s campaign representative was also the vice-president of public affairs for Twitter, Google or one of the other dominant social media players.

                      Nothing to see here, move along now, move along.
                      –

                      1. Okay, that could explain why she was picked.

                         1. Although not quite the information I was seeking, …

                            Big Tech is in the tank for Biden, Democrats
                            In case there was any doubt that Facebook and Twitter are corruptly partisan, the social media giants censored The Post’s story Wednesday on Hunter Biden’s emails suggesting he took cash for access to his ­father, Joe Biden.

                            The bombshell exclusive was trending all Wednesday morning on social media platforms until Big Tech stepped in to run protection for the Democratic presidential candidate.

                            [SNIP]

                            But the only “potentially harmful” or “unsafe” impact of The Post story is on the Biden campaign — and, now, on the credibility of Face­book and Twitter.

                            Did Facebook and Twitter impose the same censorship on the New York Times story on President Trump’s leaked — or “hacked” — tax returns two weeks ago?

                            Did they ever fact-check the Times’ and the Washington Post’s debunked “Russia collusion” tall tales?

                            Did they interfere with BuzzFeed spreading the Steele Dossier tissue of lies?

                            Nope.

                            Big Tech only suppresses information that reflects badly on the Biden campaign.

                            The emails and photographs we have published speak for themselves. They come from the hard drive of Hunter’s laptop computer, legally obtained by The Post after he abandoned it at a Mac computer repair shop in Delaware.

                            [SNIP]

                            The campaign issued a statement claiming The Post’s story was “discredited.” And it would only say that the meeting didn’t show up on Joe’s “official schedules from the time.”

                            Even Joe is not silly enough to make such a meeting “official.”

                            There are clear implications for national security in the material we have published, which indicates the Biden family has leveraged Joe’s position for cash from shady clients overseas.

                            It is a legitimate news story that deserves answers.

                            Instead, Biden’s docile media ­allies swallowed his campaign’s obfuscations on Wednesday and tried to smother The Post’s story.

                            Democratic operative Andy Stone, Facebook’s communications manager, issued a statement via Twitter at 11:10 a.m.: “While I will intentionally not link to the New York Post, I want be [sic] clear that this story is eligible to be fact checked by Facebook’s third-party fact checking partners. In the meantime, we are reducing its distribution on our platform.”

                            Stone, who joined Facebook in 2014 from a Democratic super PAC, has worked for Democratic Sen. Barbara Boxer of California and the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee.

                            He also just happens to be tied to John Kerry, the former secretary of state who is tied to the Biden family scandal through his stepson Chris Heinz, a one-time business partner of Hunter Biden, as co-owner of private equity firm Rosemont Seneca Partners.

                            Stone worked for 16 months for the John Kerry for President campaign, as Manchester regional field and “assistant to national director of Veterans for Kerry.”

                            He is the last person Facebook should have deputized to announce the throttling of The Post’s story.

                            Make no mistake: This is election interference by unaccountable global tech oligarchs to restrict information that might damage the Democratic Party.

                            It is coordinated censorship by two of the largest multinational companies in the world. Their monopoly power should be broken up, once and for all.

                            [SNIP]

                            Throughout his vice presidency, Biden steered America into a position of sycophancy with China, missing the strategic threat it posed to our interests and those of our allies, like Australia, Japan and Taiwan.

                            As a presidential candidate, he has not changed his tune. Last May, Biden declared China was “not competition” for the US.

                            It is willful blindness, at best, for a senior politician not to perceive the threat from China.

                            The fact that Biden’s son is embroiled in multimillion-dollar financial deals with Chinese state-owned enterprises suggests something more sinister may be afoot.
                            –

                            1. Not just Biden. Who put up the money for those multimillion-dollar advances for 0bama and Shrillary’s books that nobody will ever read?

                               Biden is a problem for the Left. Whether it’s senility or outright dementia, he keeps forgetting what he’s supposed to say, and not supposed to say, and just throwing it all out there in jumbled pieces.

                               We need another debate. Trump has to push, and needle, and get Komrade Joe going, and then SHUT UP and let the old fart flounder.
                               ———————————
                               My grandpa voted Republican until the day he died — but he’s been voting Democrat ever since.

             2. As is Joe Biden.

          3. It doesn’t help that one of the Twitter guys responsible for “fact checks” just left to join the Biden transition team.

       2. There’s a text I saw in which Hunter basically tells his sister (paraphrasing) “Dad’s cut was half of your pay. But I’ll take a lot less now that I’m acting in his place.”

          So, yeah, it looks like thay’ve got goods on the whole family.

          1. Actually, I think that may have been Hunter’s daughter.

             1. Hunter’s sister, but yeah.

20. By the way. For those that missed it on AoSHQ and other places… Black Tide Rising is going to be a graphic novel. Comics nerds that are sick of Marvel’s BS, and like Ringo’s books…

    Here ya go:

    https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/black-tide-rising-volume-1-graphic-novel#/

    Ain’t bad looking. And for those that are interested, you can send a copy to the boots in the dust out there.

21. Thinking about this, I’ve been coming to a conclusion.

    About 2013, it wasn’t so much that this stuff was just showing up from some mysterious hole in space, unknown to anyone except the mad and the desperate. This was mostly stuff I was seeing when I was in college from the mid ’90s onward. Stuff that the people in Hollywood and Manhattan might think was a good idea, but the Money was making it very clear that they had to sell to the…normal people!…to get more funding in the future.

    But, as the years went on, I think the seduction of the tech industry and all the money they made-mostly by people that were various flavors of utopians in one form or another-started to hit. And, the people in the university departments that weren’t hard sciences, Hollywood, Manhattan, and quite a few other places pointed out that you could create these perfectly walled gardens where you could get people to pay for all of their ideas because they were the only real content creators in town. And, because the contents of each garden were “you have to take what you get,” the creators didn’t have any constraints on what they made. Avatar:The Last Airbender, to the Tumblr GAY/LESBIAN SHIP OR DIE!!! crowd, was proof that you could make a show based upon shipping and have it be successful. (Never mind that while shipping had been a time-honored tradition in fandom for decades and The Last Airbender was good for a whole lot of other reasons.)

    It didn’t help that in 2012, Obama won the election and everyone in the Progressive Left thought they had won the war against America and “traditional American values.” Now, all that was left was to keep the Republicans from a last minute rally, secure a final victory, and divide the spoils. They didn’t feel any need to hide what they truly believed or truly thought. They had won, and to the winners goes the spoils.

    It wasn’t so much things went crazy in 2013, as much as the Progressive Left truly stopped wearing their masks of reason and standards at that time.

    1. Wallaby’s Iron Law of Culture: a society so fabulously wealthy that being stupid is no longer a capital offense is a society that is peaking.
       –

       1. Stupid is always a capital offense, but the punishment can get delayed for a loooong time.
          ———————————
          Natural selection — making the world a better place, one idiot at a time.

22. Vote time:
    https://www.goodreads.com/poll/show/208428-what-theme-shall-we-read-in-november

23. 10 H held for the big guy. Who might the big guy be? All the world wonders.

    1. Arthur Carlson, of course…

24. Went to check Wretchard, (javascript off, mobile interface) and twitter says technical problems. Esotericcd, technical problems. I’ve just checked ogiel23 and moelane, accounts of a Never Trump guy who has basically quit talking about politics, technical problems.

    1. Baseballcrank, who is also a journalist/commentator with NRO, was not having technical problems. So there was a block list in force, that was fairly wide, but apparently had a carve out for people whose media organizations had enough clout to make complaints stick.

       Interesting question is whether Moe Lane was pissed off enough to comment, or if Twitter has a list floating around going back to 2016. Now that the ‘technical issues’ appear ‘resolved’, I can see some comments from him.

       1. Speculation is that Twitter quietly blocked accounts with low numbers of followers in order to stop retweeting. So the big accounts were still unmolested, and could post stuff. But the people who might retweet the big stories were blocked from accessing their accounts.

    2. From Mark Steyn tonight:

       The Last Copier in the Woods Arrives Sooner than Expected

       by Mark Steyn
       The War on Free Speech
       October 15, 2020

       UPDATE: If you’re wondering why we haven’t linked to the column below from our Twitter account, it’s because we’re unable to: every time we try to tweet it, we are informed that “Twitter is over capacity”. “Social” media are the new Stasi.

       UPPERDATE: The tweet is now there. But as media bigwig Yashar Ali notes:

       Why does it feel like there’s some DOS style attack on multiple platforms? Everything feels glitchy and slow everywhere.

       Indeed. It’s almost as if something is underway… Herewith the column:

       If anybody is around to write history in a generation or two, October 14th 2020 will go down as the first day of a new Year Zero. Yesterday, with less than three weeks to go in a national election in a settled democratic society with an ostensibly free press, the woke billionaires of the social media cartel decided to freeze and/or cancel the Twitter/Facebook accounts of the President’s press secretary, the Trump campaign, Republican Senate candidates and Republican House members.

       So America is now formally a one-party state, at least as far as fair access to media platforms is concerned. …
       –

       1. Jack, buddy, you are making me look sane and rational right now. That is very much not a good look for you.

          The whole point of a mass media disinformation scheme is that you can hold an audience with the appearance of being an information source, while in fact denying critical information to that audience. Above all else, you cannot tip off the marks when they have any alternative at all. You’ve got to keep the interventions below the the threshold of notice, or at least plausibly deniable, unless the detail is truly high value.

          Hunter Biden was always going to have oppo dropped, and would never be important enough for the level of obvious you have permitted. The information about Hunter’s drug use, adultery, and business dealing was already too widespread. It is too open a secret, the only way to manage it would be a combination of ‘old news’, denial that the new details are fully truthful, and smearing the opposition with enough random accusations to create doubt in neutral minds.

          You’ve messed up.

          You’ve got people who haven’t been reading the Post’s coverage to read the Post. You’ve given credibility to your wild eyed extremist critics.

          What’s more, by becoming the news, you’ve let Joe down. If Joe had a chance at all, he would have been prepared for talking around Hunter. You have been called to speak to Congress on 10/20. You’ve ensured that for the last two weeks before the election, he is going to have to talk around the issue of you censoring his opponents.

25. Well, I bet he didn’t predict this:

    Wow. China just threatened Canadians living in Hong Kong, in order to stop Canada from accepting Hong Kong refugees.

    That is seriously bad.https://t.co/HrNnhhNQ1f

    — Noah Smith 🐇 (@Noahpinion) October 15, 2020

    1. Just remember that the 2000 remake of On the Beach had the nuke war as being with China, rather than Russia.

       It was actually a very good version, and is grittier than the first movie version, but the last half hour or so is probably the most depressing piece of film I have ever watched.

       1. The book was depressing too. It was on all the recommended reading lists in high school.

          The schools *really* pushed the “give up, the world is ending soon” line. The ice was going to sweep down and freeze all thirty billion of us, oil and water would be gone, the seas were dying, nuclear war was coming any day now, and on and on.

          That’d an outright evil thing to do to children.

          1. Yes it is. And of course instead of demanding global communism to save the Earth from an impending ice age, nuclear war, etc., they now just demand global communism to save the Earth from global warming.

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