atomic_fungus (atomic_fungus) wrote,
atomic_fungus
atomic_fungus

#6802: We know how to read them

When the New York Times warns us of something, it's a good bet that it's the least of our worries.
About one thing you can feel confident. If the New York Times identifies it as an enemy, and is ready to go to war against it, it is not the enemy. Perhaps the Times is agitated because certain conservative media outfits are eating its lunch, but when it comes to fighting Nazis, the Times' record is checkered, if not disgraceful.

Keep in mind, the paper of record did everything in its power to cover up the story of Nazi atrocities, of Nazi persecution of Jews and of Nazi extermination of Jews...during the Hitler years. Yes, indeed, the Times colluded with the Roosevelt administration to keep America ignorant of Nazi persecution. It, along with FDR, explained that it did not want to make things worse. Then again, how much worse could it have been.
This is the same paper that still has a Pulitzer Prize for Walter Duranty's hagiographic articles about the USSR under Stalin, you know--he was there at the same time the Holodomor was taking place, but man, communism sure was the future, wasn't it?

The problems occurring in countries which took in large numbers of islamic migrants are the result of islamic migrants, not some nebulous right-wing disinformation campaign. The crimes being committed by these third-world expatriates are not "misinformation" but are actual criminal acts. I wonder how the victims of those crimes would feel if the NYT told them, "Don't worry! This is all just right-wing misinformation!"

*rolleyes*

* * *

"Stay on the reservation", indeed. Six teenagers from Cook County tried to steal a car from a 75-year-old man in Lake County, which does not practice "catch and release" the way Cook County does. Said 75-year-old man had a gun, and used it, killing one of them. When the teenagers were caught by police, they were hit with a sackful of charges, including murder--because the one that got killed was killed during the commission of a felony they were perpetrating, and that's how the law works.

In Lake County, anyway.

If you want to steal cars and go joyriding in them, you'd best stay within Cook County, because that's where you'll get the slaps on the wrist that you're accustomed to. Outside that festering shithole, if you commit a serious crime, you're going to get charged with it, and your cries of "Raciss!" aren't going to help you one whit.

* * *

"Think twice", he said. So do you remember him saying it was just a "lament"?
The Texas lawmaker told MSNBC last week that his tweet was nothing more than a "lament"--not a call for harassment.

"It was a lament," Castro said. "It wasn’t meant as a boycott. It wasn't meant to target these people.

"It was meant to draw attention to the fact we've got a lot of people in our community who are respected by San Antonio, who are contributing to this guy that's using their money to fuel hate," he added.
The guy's a liar, all right. You don't "lament" by telling people, "Think twice!" It was meant to be intimidation.

* * *

WHAT IN THE EVERLASTING-- ...a picture of Bill Clinton in a blue dress.

Epstein had some weird taste in artwork.

* * *

Speaking of the late pedophile, the people who were supposed to be guarding him were literally sleeping on the job and then fudged the reports to indicate otherwise.



And speaking of gun control--

The true nature of the left on display.
Go ahead and give up your guns. Then donate to Trump or whatever Republican the Left brands as the "next Hitler" (keeping in mind that they called G.W. Bush and Romney "Hitler" as well). Then wait for your donation information to be made public and an angry mob to show up with torches on your lawn to protest and do whatever they have to do, to keep you from doing that again.
They don't want to debate or discuss. They just want to silence, permanently if need be.

Democrats want to pack the Supreme Court so they can legislate from the bench. Trump will probably get to appoint one more Supreme Court justice, and the Democrats will keep adding justices to the thing until they can drown out any dissent.
This is the most self-oblivious statement I have ever read. Senate Democrats say that the court is too political, so if the court refuses to bow to Democrat political pressure, the Democrats will punish the court.

To any reasonable person, that is twisting the court's arm to be more… what's the word...political.

This has always been a tactic for the Democrats. When the Left marches in lockstep, they are never accused of putting party over country. When the Right holds fast to principle instead of doing what the Left wants, they are told they are putting party over country. So it is with the Supreme Court. When SCOTUS legislates from the bench for the Left, that is good law. When SCOTUS affirms a right the Right likes (e.g. Heller and McDonald), that is the court engaging in bad partisan politics.
Even their name--Democrat Party--is hypocrisy, for they are anything but democratic.

They certainly can't win on their policies or brilliant strategies.
As Orange Man himself has shown us, you don’t have to be some kind of multidimensional chess master to defeat the Democrats. The Democrats are profoundly stupid. They score more own goals than policy victories, and have done so for years. Only profoundly stupid people would let Elizabeth Warren near a DNA lab, for instance, or Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez near a smartphone. And yet, here we are. All you need to do to beat the Democrats is:
* show up,
* throw a punch, and
* not be utterly, incandescently retarded.
McCain ignored all three of those rules and lost in 2008. Ditto for Romney in 2012. (And Hillary ignored the first and last ones, and aimed her punches in the wrong directions, in 2016.)

* * *

Zero surprise that the five proposed locations for a new casino in Chicago have been rejected.
Prospects for a Chicago casino took a hit Tuesday after a study found that the state-approved proposal would not be viable because of "very onerous" taxes and that five South and West side sites floated by the city would fail to draw enough tourists because they are seen as unsafe and inconvenient or lack nearby attractions.
"Unsafe" because the south and west sides are where all the gangs are, "inconvenient" because it takes over an hour to get there during peak entertainment hours, and "lack nearby attractions" because those neighborhoods have been unremediated shitholes for decades.

* * *

So high speed Internet is now a human right, at least according to Elizabeth Warren.
Almost everyone has internet access. Some older people are just choosing not to make use of it.

But Warren isn't offering internet access. Instead the goalposts have been moved to broadband. Or, as Warren demands, "minimum speed broadband", which she rates at 25 Mbps/ 3 Mbps.

Those are also Netflix's requirements for 4K streaming.
So below that "minimum speed" you effectively have no Internet, according to Fauxcahontas, and so the US government has to step in and fix that!

Just ignore the fact that she coincidentally happens to be championing something that would be extremely beneficial to NetFlix and concentrate on how much she cares.

The thing is, though, that nearly everyone uses the Internet. 100% of 18-29 year olds use it. Even in my age cohort, usage is 88%. The Baby Boomers built the damned thing, and 73% of them use it.

The issue here is not cost; it's inclination. If cost were the issue, that youngest cohort wouldn't be anywhere near 100%.
And how can we possibly deprive people of being able to watch uninterrupted HD videos?

To save the welfare class from being forced to endure such horrors, Warren is proposing to spend $85 billion to subsidize Netflix 4K streaming for the oppressed proletariat of Cleveland and Detroit.

"Nearly 27% of households in Detroit and Cleveland had no Internet access in 2017," Warren claims.

Except a Michigan State University survey found that 98% of Detroiters use the internet. 79% use handheld devices. And 48% access the internet through their cell phones.

But the no. 2 candidate in the 2020 Dem race has declared 4K streaming to be a human right.
But "free Internet" is something that resonates well with people, so she's harping on it.

It is true that Internet access in the US lags other countries, though. Thanks to FCC overregulation we're stuck with lower speeds and higher prices than elsewhere.

* * *

The problem with smart people is that they think everyone else is stupid. So, Googe CEO tells Congress that it's just not possible to skew the results produced by an AI algorithm, and then people are just shocked that he was lying.

AI is just a program. Programs are written by people, and AI must be trained. It's actually really easy to train AI to be biased; all you need to do is to pick your training inputs with care.

* * *

Who is racist against italians, anyway? This whole thing about Chris "Fredo" Cuomo claiming to be the victim of a racist attack is just stupid.

* * *

Anyone with any sense at all was saying, at the time this stupid shit was first proposed, that it was a dumb idea and wouldn't work. The world's first solar road is an abject failure.

OF COURSE!
On top of the damage and poor wear of the road, the Normandy solar track also failed to fulfill its energy production goals--the original aim was to produce 790 kW⋅h each day, a quantity that could illuminate a population of between 3,000 and 5,000 inhabitants--however, the rate actually produced stands at only around 50% of the original predicted estimates.
OF COURSE!

...in fact I'd bet even that 50% number is optimistic. Jeeze louise. Solar is a lousy way to make power if you're sitting at the bottom of an atmosphere.

* * *

Reportedly, Disney is trying to reboot the entire Star Wars franchise in order to avoid paying George Lucas licensing fees on the original characters. That's why they've killed off Han Solo and Luke Skywalker etc.

One reason, anyway.

The hopes that I had for a properly done third trilogy have been dashed. The original three movies are the best; the second trilogy was mind-numbingly boring and the latest efforts are pure crap.

Who can blame me, though? I thought for sure that Disney would have competent writers, people who would be better at telling stories than George Lucas. How could I have been wrong about that?

* * *

You see, this is what "worst case" looks like. This demonstrates handily that you cannot plan for every possible contingency. They had backup plans in place, but the situation was bad enough that their backup plans didn't work.

* * *

So, Hong Kong--

This could be staggeringly, incandescently bad if China cracks down on the protestors in Hong Kong the way they cracked down on Tianenmen Square in 1989.

China has other problems besides Hong Kong.

...which is why a crackdown there will be a major atrocity. Mainland China has little in common with Hong Kong, and because China is essentially a communist dictatorship with a thin veneer of capitalism, they expect instant and total obedience to the State. If they have to murder a few million people in Hong Kong in order to keep the entire rest of the country in line, they will do it.

A few viral videos of tanks rolling over protestors ought to keep the labor protestors in line. And if you think the Chinese government won't kill millions of people to keep the country under control, you're either a Democrat, or you didn't pay attention in history class. Or both.

* * *

Last night I finished the extant anime playlist. Seitokai Yakuindomo BLEEP finished last week. Last night saw the end of Seiren and Flying Witch, and We Never Learn--started at the same time as the other two--was a 13-ep series so I watched the last ep after FW was done.

Ep 11 of FW--seen Monday night--was outstanding. It is a crime there is not more of this. But, hey--it's a reasonably recent series; there might be more coming. That'd be fantastic.

We Never Learn ended with a promise to be continued, so I'll be looking for that one, too.

Up next, among other things, Hibike! Euphonium based mostly on Wonderduck's effusive posts on it. I'm going to need something nice to counterbalance Aku no Hana which promises to be a cringe-fest. Only seeing that one because the manga was fan-translated all the way up to the penultimate issue, so I never saw how it ended. It's one of those "psych-out" stories where the main character meets a girl who leads him onto a darker path, mostly because she's insane and no one ever told him that sticking it into crazy is a bad investment. (And they never actually get to have sex with them anyway.)

So, there's that.

* * *

What happened to Disney's Star Wars attraction?
Star Wars has always been (at least up until Disney bought it up) a boy friendly franchise. You wanted to be either the cool smuggler or the laser sword wielding space knight or the mysterious bounty hunter with no face or the super cool, all powerful bad guy with asthma. No little boy wants to be some loser that follows this girl around like a lost puppy or for that matter be a mopey, emo and always slightly moist, bad guy. They most especially don't want to be the girl unless they have the kind of parents that should be stoned.

The thing is, Rey is such a shitty character, little girls want nothing to do with her either. They might have been able to sell her to adolescent girls if they had done her right. Katniss Everdeen pulled down a total of three billion world wide and she was also a Mary Sue. But Katniss had the standard conflicting romantic interests, where as "Rey's sexuality is as desolate and unexplored as the deserts of Tatooine." There is nothing for anyone to latch on to with Rey except childless feminists and they don't go to Disneyland.
Disney made its success on movies about princesses. Star Wars was (formerly) not about princesses but Disney is working on changing that.

* * *

I have so many errands to run tomorrow. *sigh* No anime tonight!
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