* * *
Hard leftist aims to replace moderate leftist Dick Durbin. She "plans to vote against...Mike Madigan" but that's probably because Madigan is slightly to the right of Leon Trotsky. This woman is going to find out what happens to you when you attempt to thwart the Premier of Illinoistan.
No, she is not going to be bastinadoed, wired to an old engine block, and thrown in a river. It's just that her political career won't go very much farther. And--win a primary challenge against Dick Durbin? I just don't see it; he's a Machine guy and has been his entire life, and if there's anything the Machine does, it's protect its faithful. Dickie is one of those.
The Machine always protects its members. If Joe Blow were arrested for beating his wife, his FOID card would be revoked in a matter of days. But when a Machine politician beats his wife? Nothing.
* * *
Even with Trump in office, I still don't believe the official numbers. I've stopped caring what the Federal Government says the economy is doing, as it's proven that it does not provide accurate numbers.
I believe that the economy is doing well, based on my own observations, but the actual numbers are too likely to be wrong. Trump replaced a few top-level people; the grunts in the trenches are the same ones.
* * *
This blew me away.
Our universe is infused with positive vacuum energy that causes it to expand without bound, while anti-de Sitter (AdS) space has negative vacuum energy, which gives it the hyperbolic geometry of one of M.C. Escher's Circle Limit designs. Escher's tessellated creatures become smaller and smaller moving outward from the circle's center, eventually vanishing at the perimeter; similarly, the spatial dimension radiating away from the center of AdS space gradually shrinks and eventually disappears, establishing the universe's outer boundary. AdS space gained popularity among quantum gravity theorists in 1997 after the renowned physicist Juan Maldacena discovered that the bendy space-time fabric in its interior is "holographically dual" to a quantum theory of particles living on the lower-dimensional, gravity-free boundary.We don't really know that "positive vacuum energy" drives the expansion of the universe, but the rest of it was what got me.
The idea being that if this is at all analogous to how the real universe works, suddenly the expansion of the universe does not need to be speeding up to explain everything. Light from the periphery of the observable universe is redshifted not because of expansion, but because it is moving into a "bigger" space-time. The farther out the light comes from, the greater the space-time "growth" becomes, and therefore the redshift is bigger as well.
...it's essentially another way of looking at an expanding universe. Space was smaller when that light was emitted than it is now.
I can't really explain it too well but it all fits together very nicely with what I already knew about this particular bit of astrophysics. It also neatly confirms my prejudices.
* * *
I have to agree, last night's ep of Orville was pretty damned good. I also agree that ST:TNG could not have done that episode.
Bonus points for introducing a new alien that was extremely well-executed.
* * *
Nancy Pelosi has a senior moment and the press obligingly ignores it. Ronald Reagan was a doddering old fool but Nancy Pelosi is sharp as a tack, right?
* * *
"We got congresspeople out here calling the president a mother fucker". Well, why not? "Have some respect for the office!" only applies when there's a Democrat occupying it.
* * *
There is a reason for this. Mrs. Fungus handles hiring etc at her job location. Every week there is another tale of a young person who didn't bother to show up for an interview, or who sent in a resume that might as well have been written in crayon on construction paper (one had emoji in it!), or who expect the job to cater to their whims. "That's not going to work for me," seems to be the most common reason applicants she wants to hire don't work out.
They don't like the shifts, they don't like having to take overnights once in a while, they don't like this, they don't like that; they demand total flexibility on the part of the employer and grant very little in return. And when they merely come to work on time and do their jobs, they expect accolades for it.
Contrast that, then, to my situation. I interviewed for the job predicated on working from home, two 12-hour shifts on weekends, then two days during the week, leaving me three days off. Instead, I'm working from home M-F, with two days off, and it'll be second shift starting next week, meaning I'll be working while my wife is in her post-work recreation time. Not what I signed up for--but instead of being a whiny bitch about it, I figure, "this is the job, so do it." You work, you get paid, you make money--and working from home means I'm not paying all kinds of money for gas and tolls to commute, so I'm actually making more money at this than I was at my last job. (Same wage. Less outlay. Profit.)
Some of these younger folks expect to get paid $20 an hour to heat a chair successfully; that's not what work is, though.
* * *
Greenpeace, another econazi group that says we should do as they say. They spent years decrying the places in the world where ships are run aground and scrapped by armies of people, because "muh environments!" only to do exactly that with the BSS Bullshit Warrior because it's an inexpensive and efficient way to be rid of obsolete ships, and it simply costs too much to decommission a ship any other way. But of course it's okay for them to do it, because they're Greenpeace and they fight for the environment.
* * *
$782,000 paid to former superintendant of school, for reasons. Must be nice to get three quarters of a million dollars given to you, no strings attached.
Well, perhaps not. The former administrator filed a "whistleblower" lawsuit against the school, and then presto! Money! Lots of it!
Why? Because shut up, that's why! You don't need to know that, prole!
* * *
That should read "leftist" rather than "liberal" but otherwise it's 100% correct.
There's not $5 billion for a border wall, but there's $10 billion to send to central America. Probably almost exactly like that, too. Palletized instead of in big green bags, though, I'd wager.
* * *
At least 25% of our government is 100% redundant and could safely be done away with. It will not be, of course, but it for damn sure ought to be.
* * *
The Chinese Social Capital system is already corrupt and all it really does is make the horror of socialism more horrible.
You already dare not complain about working conditions lest you find yourself "disappeared", but now before the government needs to do that they can simply lower your SCR score and get you barred from all kinds of things.
It's another tool for keeping the proles in line.
* * *
Autoplay warning: Victor Davis Hanson explains, among other things, why Democrats want to do away with the Electoral College:
In other words, about 7 million Californians do not possess a high-school diploma, about equal to the size of the nine counties of California's Bay Area, roughly from Napa to Silicon Valley. In some sense, inside California, there is a shadow state consisting of high-school dropouts that's larger than 38 other U.S. states.Uneducated people reliably vote Democrat. People who only have high school diplomas, too. For Democrats, this is a feature, and they will vehemently oppose anything that changes this condition.
Yes: wanting to make sure that everyone at least graduates high school is racist.
* * *
Is that a mouse or a chinchilla? Either way, cute.
* * *
It's Friday and I only have most of my day left. But Monday, at this time, I won't even have started work yet. Aiee!