Friday Links - 30 June

Ace at Ace of Spades HQ gets the first spot with Wall Street Analyst: Bud Light's Loss of 15-20% of Its Sales is Permanent

The forecasts call for the current losses to be permanent. And not only have they lost 15-20% of their sales volume permanently, but they'll go back to losing market share bit-by-bit before they came up with the brilliant idea of bringing in Dylan Mulvaney as a transfluencer.

The Other McCain - The Moose Is Loose

“There’s one!” Bob said, as we drove through the base on our way from the airport. I squinted, but didn’t see the moose until we were within about 30 yards. It was a young cow, not even full-grown yet, but certainly it stood more than six feet tall.

Pixy Misa at Ambient Irony - Daily News Stuff 27 June 2023: Daniel's Disappointing Donuts Edition

Google's Pixel Fold is a great $500 device with the slight drawback that it actually costs $1800
And the secondary drawback that if you get a tiny bit of grit on the screen and then fold it closed it could die after just four days. (Ars Technica)

Don Surber - Just end the war

And no one in Washington or Kyiv wants to end this war. They party all night while soldiers and civilians die far, far away. Forever wars are profitable for the generals and other politicians. It’s pretty bad when a song sung by Ozzy Osbourne 50 years ["War Pigs" by Black Sabbath] ago makes more sense than most of the commentary I read today.

Gun Free Zone - One punch kill that took two weeks to be fatal

There are few critical lessons here.

Just because someone is unarmed, doesn’t mean they are not dangerous or their attack isn’t potentially fatal.

Distance is your friend, especially with an unarmed aggressor. Keeping out of sucker punch reach during an argument is a good idea.

Power Line - “Everything about this case is wrong”

The story of the Biden family business continues to be the lead story in American politics. Let us strive to keep our eye on it one way or another.

EBL - Blade Runner 1929

Ok, was a fan of the original Blade Runner (a movie far better than its source material). Did not care for the sequel as much. This ginned up trailer is intriguing. A mash up of Blade Runner and Metropolis would be interesting.

Hot Air - More censorship of RFK Jr.

No matter when it started, the censorship regime is in full swing, justified by the reinvention of the term “misinformation” as “Any speech that is inconvenient to the Elite.”

The censorship regime is neither government nor private sector; it is rather driven by an unholy alliance of government, government- and privately-funded non-profits, government-funded universities, and government-aligned tech and media companies who conspire to shut down the speech of anyone they decide is saying inconvenient things.

Again from The Other McCain - Ironic Journalism

It is strangely amusing (but not really surprising) to learn that Barack Obama is descended from slave owners, as is Joe Biden, and while my own genealogical research has not revealed whether my distant ancestors owned slaves, it’s quite likely at least some of them did, and so what? I did not inherit a Greek revival mansion surrounded by live oaks draped in Spanish moss. My grandparents were born on small farms in the red clay hills of Randolph County, Alabama. When discussing what life was like growing up in rural Alabama in the 1930s, my aunt said, “We didn’t even know we were poor — everybody was poor.”

Another Failure of the Victim-selection Process

He apparently thought it was a good idea to break into an occupied home. Suspected home intruder shot by Colorado Springs resident, dies

Around 7:45 p.m. Tuesday, the Colorado Springs Police Department responded to a burglary on Nebula Court, in the Bear Creek neighborhood. The homeowner told police that an unknown man entered his home. Police say the homeowner then shot the person, who fled the home.

Cops found him, and took him to a local hospital, but he died from his injuries.

The investigation continues, but this appears to me to be self-defense. The DA will decide, and they typically hate self-defense.

1970s Nerd Programmers 1 - ChatGPT 0

This is for the geeks, nerds, and allies in the crowd. INTERCAL: Practically Impossible

A very good friend of mine has been experimenting with trying to coax Chat-GPT to successfully do basic coding tasks. So have a lot of people these days, of course. In an idle moment, though, my friend submitted the following query:

Please write a password generation program using the Intercal computer programming language.

ChatGPT responded with the long-winded paragraph that included the phrase, "Therefore, creating a password generator in INTERCAL is practically impossible."

WOOT! INTERCAL (it is correct to type it in all caps) is Turing Complete, which means you can do anything, even if it is difficult. For example, here is the standard "Hello World" program from the article.

DO :1 <- #13
PLEASE DO :1 SUB #1 <- #238
DO :1 SUB #2 <- #108
DO :1 SUB #3 <- #112
DO :1 SUB #4 <- #0
DO :1 SUB #5 <- #64
DO :1 SUB #6 <- #194
DO :1 SUB #7 <- #48
PLEASE READ OUT :1
PLEASE GIVE UP

INTERCAL does have a random number generator built into the language, so it would be easy to write a PW generator in INTERCAL. OK, not EASY, but easier than a lot of programs. (Did I mention the Devil's programming language? No. See below.)

But back to the "practically impossible" statement. If you get about 3/4 to the end of the article, you will find a PW generator written in INTERCAL. So there. (Well in the C-INTERCAL dialect, but one is available in the 1972 original version of INTERCAL.) "So there!"

INTERCAL is not the most user friendly programming language. Here is what I said in 2020. The Computer Language With No Readily Pronounceable Acronym

The full name of the programming language, as described in the programming reference manual, is a follows:

The full name of the compiler is "Compiler Language With No Pronounceable Acronym", which is, for obvious reasons, abbreviated "INTERCAL".

INTERCAL, to choose one example, not at random, will throw an error if you don't use the word "Please" enough. You are being rude, and the compiler will not accept that. If you use Please too much, you are being overly polite and your program will be rejected.

It doesn't produce error messages, it just ignores lines in the program that don't compile. That makes debugging "challenging." Which is why I said this:

I used to think that INTERCAL was the Devil’s programming language. Not that I ever actually programmed in it. But that title goes to a different language. (We may get there eventually.)

That other language, if anyone is interested, is MALBOLGE.

Back to ChatGPT and it's BS answer to the query in the first link above.

As for the rest, Chat-GPT remains true to form in that, like most bullshitters, it succeeds most when it confines itself to generalities. The moment it blunders into specificity, it gets itself in trouble.

Why Won't They Remove Him?

He clearly is not up to the task of being President. But I guess I know why they won't remove him. Biden Has Confused Iraq for Ukraine Twice in the Last 24 Hours

On two separate occasions in the last 24 hours, President Joe Biden has mistakenly referred to Ukraine as "Iraq."

On Tuesday night he talked about getting NATO to be unified on Iraq. On Wednesday morning he said that Putin is clearly losing the war in Iraq.

If any Republican said these things, they would be under attack from the Media and the Left, but I repeat myself. Biden gets a pass, like he does on so many issues.

The real question is, "Who is actually in charge of the country?"

Privacy is Possible, but You Need to Think About It

It isn't hard to maintain privacy, though it is getting harder. Turn off your phone once in a while. Leave it at home, or buy a Faraday cage for it. (Amazon will sell you one, though I truly HATE Amazon.) But the real issue is you need to THINK. Your ‘Private’ Messages Aren’t Private

This is about Pedro Gonzales and how his “private” messages turned out to be not-so-private.

First let me echo this thought:

This is not to defend Gonzales or anything he said in the messages; it’s just acknowledging the reality that politics explains why this leak happened.

Here is a #1 rule of privacy. It requires installing no software. It requires nothing except thinking, which is why no one will follow this rule.

As for Gonzales and his “private” messages, young people need to learn a lesson I’ve repeatedly taught my kids: Never say anything in a text message, email or a DM that you wouldn’t want to see screencapped and printed on the front page of the New York Times. There are few beliefs more dangerous in the modern world than thinking that your “private” messages will stay private, if anyone ever has a motive to leak them.

And it isn't just today. Will they be your friends in 15 years? 25? Because as a lot of people have discovered recently, the internet is forever.

The Legacy Media Is Finally Reporting on the Hunter Biden Story

From The Other McCain - CBS Evening News — !!! — Reports About Hunter Biden Influence Scandal Cover-Up

This fact has been blindingly obvious to anyone with two eyes and a brain for so long that it’s not exactly bombshell investigative journalism, but the media were so intent on getting rid of Trump — Orange Man Bad! — that they were willing to pretend they didn’t see the same facts the rest of us saw. So now, with the Republicans controlling the House Oversight Committee, and the documentation of this scandal steadily drip, drip, dripping into public view, the media have belatedly decided, “Hey, you know what? Maybe this is a real story after all.”

CBS covered it. The New York Times also did some ACTUAL reporting on it. Must be damn cold in Hell right about now.

Prediction: After Labor Day, House Republicans will vote to begin impeachment proceedings against Merrick Garland, and then . . . Well, we don’t know where it will end, but things are rolling along now.

And the Dems will cheat in the next election anyway.

What If You Called 911 and No One Came?

That is becoming more of a thing. HPD never showed up after bullet pierces into 6-year-old's bedroom, mom tells only ABC13

They said the next available officer would respond. No one ever responded.

I'm sure if your house was suddenly being riddled with bullets you would want someone to investigate.

"Five or six of (gunshots)," [Kayla] George said. "I ran into the living room and told him to get down and lay flat. He didn't understand what was going on. Then I heard the glass shatter, and that's typically not what I hear."

George checked the windows, but it wasn't until she discovered a bullet hole in her son's bedroom window the next day.

"You can't even be home safely anymore," George said.

I have bad news for Ms. George; she was never safe at home. She may have felt safe, or believed she was safe, but that didn't mean she was safe. Things may be worse today than in the past, in fact, they almost certainly are, but the risk was never zero.

Calling 911 is a fine thing to do, if you get the chance to do so in an emergency. Cops won't be there in an instant, and in some cases you may wait a very long time.

Lies, Damn Lies, and Academia

The irony is strong in academia.

Because you don't have to be honest to be a researcher in Behavioral Science studying Honesty. Harvard Scholar Who Studies Honesty Is Accused of Fabricating Findings

"Trust the Science." That is the mantra of the authoritarians, but "Science" isn't what people think it is. It is a human endeavor, subject to all of the problems of human endeavors.

Francesca Gino of Harvard Business School has been the author, or coauthor, of dozens of papers in various scholarly journals. Now a lot of people, including her partners on some of those papers, are reviewing everything for signs of fraud, because a fair amount of questionable methods have come to light.

But in recent days, the field may have sustained its most serious blow yet: accusations that a prominent behavioral scientist fabricated results in multiple studies, including at least one purporting to show how to elicit honest behavior.

The hat tip goes to Pixy Misa - Daily News Stuff 24-25 June 2023: Just People Doing People Things Edition.

Behavioural scientists behaving badly: The work of a top researcher at Harvard Business School has come into question after accusations that she is - and I quote* - just making shit up. (New York Times)

This is particularly striking because her area of expertise - such as it is - is honesty.

Only half of published [medical] research holds up when other researchers try to reproduce the results, and for psychology the number is closer to one third. (The Atlantic)

Another Sinking that Was Caused by Getting the Math Wrong

Well, by getting the math and the engineering wrong.

A ship built by a king - a wealthy guy - to basically show off how wealthy he was. Where have I heard that before? From MEEP we get the following cautionary tale. Sunday at Sea: the Vasa, the Far Side of the World, and Alexander in a Bathysphere

This sinking took place in 1628, about 20 minutes after the ship set sail.

“The warship survived the first blast of wind it encountered on its maiden voyage in Stockholm Harbor,” writes Lucas Laursen for Archaeology. “But the second gust did it in. The sinking of Vasa took place nowhere near an enemy. In fact, it sank in full view of a horrified public, assembled to see off their navy’s–and Europe’s–most ambitious warship to date.” Engineering problems sank the ship–but this PR disaster for the Swedish navy has become a boon for archaeologists. Here’s how it happened and how Vasa's influence is felt today.

It is worth noting that dozens of people were trapped below decks and drowned.

The management world has a name for human problems of communication and management that cause projects to founder and fail–Vasa syndrome. The events of August 10, 1628 had such a big impact that the sinking is a case study business experts still read about.

“An organization’s goals must be appropriately matched to its capabilities,” write Kessler, Bierly and Gopalakrishnan. In the case of the Vasa, “there was an overemphasis on the ship’s elegance and firepower and reduced importance on its seaworthiness and stability,” they write, “which are more critical issues.” Although it was originally designed to carry 36 guns, it was sent to sea with twice that number. At the same time, the beautiful ornamentation contributed to its heaviness and instability, they write. These and a host of other factors contributed to Vasa’s sinking and provide a cautionary tale for those designing and testing new technologies.

Proving that there is nothing new under the sun.

Mary Pat has a whole other part of her post, as you can tell by the title to her post, but this is the part I was interested in. And I suppose that it is worth nothing, how she came to write about this topic.

I was reminded about this particular disaster due to my recent visit to the Museum of Failure.

Wednesday Link Roundup - 28 June

Pirate's Cove starts things moving with Sorta Blogless Sunday Pinup

8. Don Surber covers the wages of BLM
9. Da Techguy’s Blog notes high crime at the Post Office

EBL - MAGA Double Standard Merrick Garland Covers For Hunter Biden 🤔😬☀️

Powerline: Garland Smoking Gun and Biden Bribes
Legal Insurrection: Victim? and WhatsApp
AoSHQ: Biden ChiCom Stooge

Wombat-socho - In The Mailbox: 06.26.23

Power Line: Impeach Merrick Garland, Hunter Biden’s “fair” tax share, and Disney’s Downhill Slide
Shark Tank: Gimenez Says Biden “Asleep At The Wheel” Against Red China

The DaleyGator - The Daily Top 5

Senate Democrats, the military industrial complex, and Washington Post columnist Max Boot are desperate to preserve the military’s unrestricted stranglehold on general and flag officer selection and promotion.

Political Hat - News of the Week (June 25th, 2023)

Race preferences in health care are here
A new report–essentially a whistleblower report–has revealed that racial “equity” determines who gets what surgery and when in New Zealand

Pixy Misa at Ambient Irony - Daily News Stuff 27 June 2023: Daniel's Disappointing Donuts Edition

Google's Pixel Fold is a great $500 device with the slight drawback that it actually costs $1800. (The Verge) And the secondary drawback that if you get a tiny bit of grit on the screen and then fold it closed it could die after just four days. (Ars Technica)

Don Surber - Highlights of the week

ITEM 4: Post Millennial reported, “On Thursday, NHL commissioner Gary Bettman said that teams would no longer be wearing themed jerseys for warm-ups during specialty nights like Pride Night.”

Again from Wombat-socho - In The Mailbox: 06.27.23

Adam Piggott: Let’s hear it for 50 year old White Guys
American Conservative: How Fake History Gets Made
American Greatness: Disney Suffers Box Office Losses Amid LGBTQ Promotion

Vlad Tepes - Walensky’s evasions to Hitler’s religion: Links 2 for June 26th, 2023

2. More footage of the Kafkaesque takedown of the FBI posing as a group friendly to classical American values. In other words, the values and laws the FBI are sworn to defend. It is very frustrating that the Proud boys didn’t manage to get all the masks off of what can only be the FBI

A View from the Beach - Flotsam and Jetsam - Is Garland Impeachment Coming?

Ace, Hunter Biden's Lawyer: Ignore The Fact that Hunter Invoked Joe Biden's Name as He Threatened a ChiCom Agent into Giving the Bidens Money. Hunter Was So High on Crack He Didn't Know What He Was Saying. "That's what the lawyer actually claims."

Gates of Vienna - News Feed 6/26/2023

How Crime Novel Became Reality for 8 Cities With Soros-Backed ‘Rogue Prosecutors’
Violent criminals are being given a “slap on the wrist” and released

Bacon Time!!!! - Sunday Linkage

Non-Original Rants: Saturday Meme Drop……
The Air Vent: Blind Justice

Small Dead Animals - Monday On Turtle Island

Woke Britain: Peter Hitchens has seen a Russian putsch before. The teachers focusing on woke issues. Apparently Winston Churchill was a white supremacist.
Biden’s America: The atmospheric change. DOJ finds no evidence of bribery.

Cafe Hayek - Some Links

Eric Boehm reports on yet another massive waste by government of taxpayers’ money.
Brendan O’Neill reports on “the classist lunacy of Net Zero.”

Maggie's Farm - Saturday morning links

Newly discovered ‘Stonehenge of the Netherlands’ is 4,000 years old
Macon Bacon Baseball Team Facing Calls to Change Name, Stop ‘Glorification of Bacon’

J.J. Sefton at Ace of Spades HQ - The Morning Report — 6/26/23

Robert Spencer: "The elites have been lying to us for decades."
Fifty-Five Years Ago, We Were Warned (actually it's 56 but Spencer gets a Mulligan - jjs)

Doug Ross - Larwyn’s Linx: Merrick Garland Poisoned the DOJ And Must Be Impeached

• Declare War on the Mexican Cartels Now - Stuart J. Cvrk
• Who Will We Really Be Voting For in 2024 if Biden Runs? - Lawrence Kadish

Anonymous Conservative - News Briefs – 06/26/2023

Rep. Comer to Newsmax: More Hunter wires to be released- Biden family “has received millions from our adversaries and they can’t explain what they did to produce that money.”

I leave you with Sunday Funnies from Flopping Aces, Sunday Funnies For 06-25-23 from Stately McDaniel Manor, and 'Hang in there, Monday's almost over' gifs from Wirecutter.

Mass Shooting Stopped Before It Got Started

When seconds count, police are only minutes away. Good Guy With a Gun Stops Man Shooting Up Las Vegas Building Lobby

A building employee of Las Vegas' Turnberry Towers is being hailed as a hero by residents for shooting a man who was firing upon the building's front desk on Friday.

KTNV reports a man wearing a helmet had an AR-15 and other weapons when he entered the towers Friday afternoon. The gunman then fired at the front desk, shattering glass but not hitting anyone.

That's when he was "stopped" by an armed employee of the condominium tower. (Hat tip to The Feral Irishman.)

Welcome to the Police State

Where government doesn't need a warrant to search your entire life. Most of it, anyway. LexisNexis Helps ICE Spy, Track Cars, and Try to Predict Crime

Federal law enforcement, taken as a whole, looks more and more like the Ministerium für Staatssicherheit, or the Ministry for State Security, or the Stasi every day. (That is the old East German secret police, for those of you who don't remember the Cold War.)

The legal research and public records data broker LexisNexis is providing U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement with tools to target people who may potentially commit a crime — before any actual crime takes place, according to a contract document obtained by The Intercept.

This is a long article, written by a Journalist/Leftist. But LexisNexis is being sued for collecting data illegally. And they seem to have a tremendous amount of license plate reader data.

LexisNexis’s LEIDS program is, crucially, not an outlier in the United States. For-profit data brokers are increasingly tapped by law enforcement and intelligence agencies for both the vastness of the personal information they collect and the fact that this data can be simply purchased rather than legally obtained with a judge’s approval.

“Today, in a way that far fewer Americans seem to understand, and even fewer of them can avoid, CAI includes information on nearly everyone,” warned a recently declassified report from the Office of the Director of National Intelligence on so-called commercially available information. Specifically citing LexisNexis, the report said the breadth of the information “could be used to cause harm to an individual’s reputation, emotional well-being, or physical safety.”

The Stasi would have been very happy to have this kind of reach. And just because they are cops, doesn't mean that they are above doing things like stalking their ex-girlfriends/ex-boyfriends or whatever.

Living in a democratic republic was nice while it lasted.

Ginnungagap

I really wanted to like Jethro Tull's new album, RökFlöte, but I don't think I can say that I do. YMMV, so I'll let you decide.

Ginnungagap is the void (or yawning chasm) between Mushpelheim (the world of the fire giants) and Niflheim (the world of Ice and mist). The fire melted the ice, and bridge/structure of ice and rime was formed. And the creation continues from there.

This song is "Ginnungagap" by Jethro Tull from the 2023 album RökFlöte.

Music News had some nice things to say about the album, which is why I even went looking for the songs, but I can't warm up to this effort from Ian Anderson. The album came out April 21st.

Tuesday Links - 27 June

Pirate's Cove is up first with Surprise: Eric Adams Shipped A Bunch Of “Asylum Seekers” Out Of NYC

He and the rest of the illegal alien supporting Democrats in NYC asked for this with their support of unfettered, mass illegal immigration. It’s all fun and games till you’re forced to play the game, right?

The Other McCain - North! To Alaska!

Our Army son is stationed there with the newly formed 11th Airborne Division, developing America’s arctic warfare capacity. More importantly — at least for me — is that his wife recently gave birth to our newest granddaughter, little Juniper.

And again from the The Othe McCain - Checked and Ready for Boarding

But now any airline trip requires you calculate not only the drive time to the airport (leaving a margin for possible traffic delays), but also leave yourself a little extra time in case there’s a backup at security. You don’t want to be sprinting to the gate at the last minute for fear of missing your flight.

Wombat-socho - Rule 5 Sunday: Tracy Cortez

UFC flyweight fighter Tracy Cortez is a tough gal (10-1).

American Greatness - What the Left Has Left for America

Democrats have transmogrified into a Soviet-style socialist binary of rich and poor, run by an elite nomenklatura that dictates its orders to its foot soldiers of the underclass. An entire new left-wing vocabulary—clingers, deplorables, irredeemables, dregs, chumps, ultra-MAGA, semi-fascists—has come to express their hatred of the middle class.

Again from Wombat-socho - Science Fiction, Gatekeeping, And Why Awards Are Useless

I saw on the Twitter last night that the execrable John Scalzi has won the LOCUS readers award*, apparently for his recent work of lameness Kaiju Preservation Society, which judging from his earlier work is probably a “transgressive” riff on Pacific Rim, and no, I’m not reading it to find out. Someone posted a couple of embarrassing extracts from the book, which inspired a lot of mockery at Scalzi’s expense.**

Ace at Ace of Spades HQ - Released "Intelligence:" The Wuhan Institute of Viriology "Collaborated" with the Chinese Military on Coronavirus Experiments

Oh look, another "conspiracy theory" was true all along, and the people calling it a "conspiracy theory" were the ones in conspiracy to deny the truth and manipulate the public.

Don't imagine that America's hostile expansionistic "intelligence" services are coming clean, though. They're still spinning about the three scientists who caught covid before the "wet market outbreak."

Self-defense Is Legal in Kentucky

And relatives of people who get shot don't like that. Grand jury not indicting Shively Animal Clinic shooter

Police arrested him on "second-degree manslaughter and reckless homicide charges," but the grand jury refused to indict. There is apparently video evidence showing he was the aggressor. Which is how it should be

[A press release from the Commonwealth's Attorney's Office] said evidence showed Taylor was shot and killed after "he was the initial aggressor" against the shooter and her spouse.

The father of the guy who died is not happy, and I understand that, but his son isn't dead "over a dog," his son is dead because he was a threat to a couple. There is a difference between those two things, and that difference is not subtle. (Hat tip to Keep and Bear Arms.)

Anyone Who Disagrees With Me is a Fascist - Australian Edition

Just because you call someone a fascist, that doesn't mean they are automatically fascist. Just because someone disagrees with you, that doesn't make them evil. And if you resort to fascist tactics in your "fight against fascism," well, you might need to look up the definition of what a fascist is, before you start calling people names.

UnHerd has this story to start us off. Three women in Australia cancelled for gender critical views. Actually it is five women, not three, but these are journalists, and math is hard. And they do focus on three.

All of these women — a journalist, a psychiatrist, an artist, a politician, and a philosophy professor — have expressed the once normal and now rapidly taboo view that a woman is an adult human female and that children’s psychological and bodily integrity (and future fertility) should be protected. That these views have become ‘incendiary’ speaks to the draconian absurdity of our present cultural moment.

This all started because of Rukshan Fernando. He published a video about the philosophy professor, Holly Lawford-Smith, which sent me looking for more info. Sadly, the one source I could find is behind a paywall, hence the link above.

Based on the video, I wanted to title this post, "What's the Opposite of Diversity? University!" How dare you have an opinion that I don't share!

This is Rukshan Fernando's video Security Guards to Protect Lecturer at Melbourne University from Trans Rights Activists

Sweden versus COVID

The country that had the most sane (i.e. no lockdowns, no masks, protect the vulnerable) response to COVID had the FEWEST deaths. Sweden Wins With Lowest Pandemic Mortality in Europe, BBC Analysis Shows

What a shock. Herd immunity, and no panic, solved the problem better than the other countries that freaked out.

Sweden, having famously refused to follow the world in imposing lockdowns and mask mandates in 2020, had the best Covid pandemic record in Europe, a new analysis by the BBC shows.

The medical establishment is still trying to explain away the numbers. Not very convincingly, but still trying.

Responding to Sweden’s success, Prof. Sridhar commented that it’s hard to read straight across from Scandinavian countries to the U.K., arguing “we’d never look like either Sweden or Norway”, and describing them as “healthier, wealthier and more equal” countries that are very different to the U.K. Right. So, the U.K. would have had a disaster of Fergusonian proportions had it failed to impose stay-at-home orders and mask coercion on the population. But Sweden is populated entirely by rich, athletic socialists so could get away with it. That’s anthropology, I guess

Click thru for the graphs or see the BBC article at this link. (Hat tip to The Geller Report.)

Tight Rope XX

Lacuna Coil is a bit unique, in that it is a European, Heavy Metal band that got noticed, and had a lot of success in America. Well, maybe "a lot" is a bit of an overstatement. That has a lot to do with the original version of the album that produced the original version of today's song. Two songs from their 2002 album, Comalies were included in the 2003 edition of MTV's Headbanger's Ball. And one song ("Swamped") was included in the soundtrack of the 2002 movie Resident Evil: Apocalypse.

This is "Tight Rope XX" by Lacuna Coil from the 2022 album Comalies XX. It was originally on their 2002 album Comalies, which was reissued in 2022. I believe the album was remixed, but I'm not 100 percent sure of that.

How Should a 77-yr-old Defend Himself from a 20-something-year-old?

Without a firearm, that is. 77-year-old spots home intruder in his kitchen, then gets his gun, Michigan cops say

The 77-year-old man heard someone trying to open a door of his home, police said, and then he saw a man believed to be in his late 20s in his kitchen.

That’s when the resident got a gun and fired one shot at the intruder, police said. The suspect was not struck.

The gun-hating Left, that wants everyone disarmed, wants this old man to be at the mercy of any young punk who breaks into his home. Without the means to equalize the strength imbalance, the old and the infirm would be at the mercy of the young and the violent. The strong could overpower the weak, and anyone could be buried by multiple assailants. I don't know about you, but my encounters with violent criminals doesn't make me feel great about being "at their mercy," since they have none.

Self-defense is a human-right, and it may even be your legal right in Michigan.

“Trust the Science” They Say

As if Scientists weren't people, with all of the many problems that people in any endeavor have. The Problem with Science.

Fraud. Bias. Rivalry. Politics. Pressure to publish. All of these things plague science in the 21st century.

In June, The Lancet retracted a major study based on a massive data set.

The study suggested that the drug hydroxychloroquine actively harms COVID-19 patients. But critics highlighted irregularities in the numbers, some of the study’s own authors were unable to audit the data to investigate the concerns, the company that claimed to have collected the information from thousands of hospitals did not appear to have the infrastructure and resources necessary to have done so, and several major hospitals in Australia whose participation would have been needed to make the numbers work told the Guardian they had not been involved. The New England Journal of Medicine had to pull a different study based on the same data.

That result is clearly politically driven. Trump, and others on the right, say something is good, therefore we have to do everything in our power to "prove" that they wrong, even if we have to lie to do it. You will not be allowed to resist the Science Dictates. (It's for your own good!) "We know better than you, and if we don't know, we will lie, and you will accept the lie as Truth!" Or something along those lines.

What is a primary reason to lie? If you don't publish, then you don't get funding.

And if you conduct a study and don't discover anything after months of effort, journals won't publish a null result either. If you want more funding, you lie, and publish the lie.

Other times, scientists are driven to make null results disappear, rather than just giving up and moving to the next project. There are plenty of techniques for doing so. They can separate the data into a bunch of subgroups and check each one separately. They can try different statistical methods. They can use the data to answer questions they didn’t plan on answering. If they run enough different analyses, they’ll find something that hits that magical threshold of statistical significance — even if just by luck.

Some scientists have even “hacked” their data this way without, apparently, realizing they’re doing anything wrong. In 2016, the prominent nutrition researcher Brian Wansink published a blog post in which he described a project that appeared to have “failed” until he told the graduate student analyzing the data to keep trying different approaches to find something to “salvage.” This set critics on Wansink’s trail, and it turned out to be part of a much broader pattern of sloppy work.

Then there are the people who want to be famous, even if that means killing patients.

The chapter on fraud is easily the most harrowing, because it involves scientists who deliberately mislead their peers and the public. Here we meet Paolo Macchiarini, who claimed to be able to transplant tracheas, including artificial tracheas, by “seeding” them with some of the recipient’s stem cells so the recipient’s body wouldn’t later reject them. Macchiarini published several papers touting his successes. It later turned out that his patients were dying, but it took years for the scandal to come to light and for the institutions involved to admit their mistakes.

All these doctors, and scientists, and more, were not blindly seeking truth. The were seeking money, more money, and fame. No matter the cost. As we see, some people would do anything to get that fame, even if it means stepping over dead bodies to achieve it.

Where is the "self-correcting" mechanism? Where are the people duplicating, or at least trying to duplicate, results? Where is the integrity? Where is a shred of humanity?

The Universe Doesn't Care How Much Money You Have

It also doesn't care about how many Social Justice points you've collected. You get the math, the physics, and the engineering right, or people die. Titan sub CEO dismissed safety warnings as 'baseless cries', emails show - BBC News

Warnings over the safety of OceanGate's Titan submersible were repeatedly dismissed by the CEO of the company, email exchanges with a leading deep sea exploration specialist show.

In messages seen by the BBC, Rob McCallum told OceanGate CEO Stockton Rush that he was potentially putting his clients at risk and urged him to stop using the sub until it had been certified by an independent agency.

OceanGate CEO Stockton Rush saw concerns about safety as a means for "the industry" to stop innovation. Just because you have a new idea, doesn't mean it will work. Not even if you are crazy rich. Or just crazy.

"We have heard the baseless cries of 'you are going to kill someone' way too often," [Stockton Rush] wrote. "I take this as a serious personal insult."

Safety warnings are a personal insult because in his mind he could simply NOT be wrong. He was STOCKTON RUSH! How dare you contradict him! [In your best Gretta T. voice] "How dare you!"

And I'll repeat myself...

As Pixy Misa (or Mixy Pisa) has noted, the universe doesn't care about how many diversity boxes you have checked.

When you build a bridge, it doesn't matter if you respect people's pronouns and their lived experience. It doesn't matter if you hate "fascists" and cheer "progress" and drink only sustainable organic fair-trade soy lattes.

You get the fucking math right or it falls down.

It also doesn't matter if you're rich, and convinced you are right. And it applies to more than just bridges.

Projection of the Left? They Are Sure You're the Bigot

The activist doth protest too much, methinks. Or something.

Again from The Other McCain - Who They Think We Are

The editor of Iowa’s Quad Cities Times has apologized for publishing the cartoon above, after being called out on Twitter by Republican presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy, who lamented the “shameful” cartoon and said: “It’s sad that this is how the MSM views Republicans. I’ve met with grassroots conservatives across America & never *once* experienced the kind of bigotry that I regularly see from the Left.”

The cartoon they published is racist, but they thought it was okay, because they are sure that YOU are the racist, not them. That means that they think it is OK to publish a racist cartoon. (Which you can see if you click thru.)

This is why it doesn't (usually) help to debate Leftists. The fact that you don't agree with them means you are a horrible or a stupid person. They will never listen to what you have to say.

In this way, the “anointed” liberals transform every policy question into a test of moral virtue, attributing malicious motives to anyone who fails to support the liberal agenda. They are intelligent and educated; you are stupid and ignorant. They are generous; you are greedy. And, as always, liberals conceive of themselves as the enlightened benefactors of oppressed racial minorities, while their opponents are hateful racists. In other words, the disagreement is not about the pros and cons of any particular policy, but rather about giving the anointed another opportunity to display their moral superiority, hence Sowell’s subtitle, “Self-Congratulation as a Basis for Social Policy.”

RTWT.

Democracy Dies When the Media Is in the Bag for One Party

No can deny that the Media is only the mouthpiece of the Democratic Party. Undertakers of Democracy: How the Washington Post Is Deliberately Burying the Hunter Biden Influence Scandal

After five years of federal investigation, the controversy over the “laptop from hell,” and everything else we’ve seen in this scandal, an IRS whistleblower delivers the smoking gun in testimony to the House Oversight Committee, and you’re going to BURY THE STORY ON PAGE A15? You deserve contempt.

Click thru for more, including an update on the Patriots football time.

Marvel and the No-accountability Superhero Movie

Once upon a time, superhero movies concentrated on the "hero" part of the equation. People may have had cool toys, or special powers, but in the end, they used those tools to protect people. Often at risk to themselves.

But that is a quaint view of the world that includes concepts such as Right and Wrong, and maybe even ideas like Good and Evil.

Now we are in the no-accountability era, where nothing matters. Superheroes no longer save people.

There were other ingredients in the mix back in those quaint old days of the early 2000's, like character arcs. People who were not awesome from day 1, but had to grow and change.

But all that has changed. I will let Jedi Brooks explain things. Using as a comparison of the introduction of Tony Stark from the original Iron Man (2008), together with some examples from earlier movies, with the introduction of Iron Heart, from the 2nd Black Panther movie, and how right and wrong don't seem to be an issue. Saving the innocent? Why would a super-powered woman do that? There are jokes to tell, and she has to prove what a girl-boss she is.

All the way to her complete lack of care for the safety of others, just for an action scene. [SNIP]

From her morality to her motivation, they've somehow managed to botch everything.

Politics is downstream of culture. Is it any wonder that the concepts of Right and Wrong, of Good versus Evil, have disappeared from public discourse? Right is whatever an individual wants, because there is no good or evil. Those concepts are being systematically erased from the culture.

This is Jedi Brooks' video Why Ironheart SUCKS - A Scene Comparison. That is a 15 minute video.

It is another cold reminder of why the MCU is dying a slow, embarrassing death.

I was introduced to Jedi Brooks by way of the most recent Open Bar podcast from The Critical Drinker. That is a 2 hour video, and I haven't seen all of it, but I usually see the entire thing over the course of the week.

Indiana Jones and The Box Office of Doom

Given everything that Disney has been doing to Lucasfilm (and other) bits of intellectual properties, I never had much desire to see this film.

Because Disney and Lucasfilm are tainted brands.

Then the reviews from the Cannes Film Festival came out, and my chances of actually seeing this movie went from slim to none.

This is the Nerdrotic's video Indiana Jones 5 is DOOMED | Another Disney FLOP?

The pre-release projections of box-office for this film are running in the $60 to $70 million dollars range in the US market. That may sound like a lot, but this is a movie that has an admitted budget of $295 million, though some people are saying that with all the reshoots, the budget - before marketting - is very much in excess of $300 million. Add in at LEAST $100 million in marketing - and maybe a lot more than that. Now consider that the movie theaters don't get 100% of the box office. Theaters in the US and Canada get about half. (Actually they get slightly less than half from Disney, because pre-2014, Disney movies were a sure thing.) And the studios get considerably less than half of the box office from overseas. All of that means that the film needs to bring in something like $800 million at the box office just to break even.

This is the Film Threat "Spoiler-free Review" of the movie, featuring Chris Gore, Alan Ng, with guest Dante James. There is also a review with spoilers from Film Threat, it is easy enough to find.

Oh, and the title to this post IS a quote from the Nerdrotic video.

Remember that Politics are downstream of Culture. We cannot afford to abandon the culture to the Radical Left.

Even More Self-defense in Texas

Or as I said yesterday, "Texans are still armed, and the bad guys haven't gotten that memo." 1 dead after breaking into north Amarillo home, shot by homeowner

Police said when officers arrived they were told a man, identified as Cedric Milligan, had allegedly broken into the home and the homeowner shot him.

You would think that the would-be bad guys would have gotten the message about the armed homeowners in Texas by now, and how home invaders seem to get shot with regularity. It seems that they have not gotten that message.

Even in Texas the investigation continues, and I believe that all homicides in Texas must be refered to a grand jury, but I'm not a lawyer.

Self-defense is a human-right.

Extended School Closures - The Gift That Keeps on Giving

And a video that is worth watching. At least some of it. Another NAEP Text Score Disappointment - WSJ

“National Assessment of Educational Progress scores decline” is a familiar story; the last installment was in May, with a report that 8th-grade U.S. history test scores hit an all-time low. The latest dispiriting data from the Nation’s Report Card is more evidence that learning loss from public-school closures won’t be easily recovered.

Math scores for 13-year-olds declined by 9 points. Reading declined by 4 points.

The math decline is the largest ever for this NAEP assessment. For the lowest-performing students, math scores were the worst since the 1970s, and reading scores were lower than the first data collection in 1971.

As for the video, I love this quote in the opening.

It remains clear that one of the long-term POLITICAL effects of the pandemic is memory loss.

That refers to the president of The American Federation of Teachers testifying about their stance on school closures.

This outcome was clear to anyone with 2 brain cells to rub together. High school students MIGHT be able to learn remotely if they are determined to do so. Elementary school students, not so much.

If I was a believer in conspiracy theories, I would say it was planned. The schools by me were opened fairly quickly. (I know because I would routinely get caught in traffic due to busses. The only traffic I ever see really.)

Army Brass Coming for your Mean Tweets

This has all the characteristics of a police state. "Don't criticize the Junta leadership!" Army Unit for Protecting Generals Spies on Social Media

The U.S. Army Protective Services Battalion, the Pentagon’s little-known Secret Service equivalent, is tasked with safeguarding top military brass. The unit protects current as well as former high-ranking military officers from “assassination, kidnapping, injury or embarrassment,” according to Army records.

If generals don't want to be embarrassed, they shouldn't say or do embarrassing things. But then they are bureaucrats at heart, and don't think they should play by the same rules as everyone else. "Oh no! Someone said something mean about me on the internet!" What a bunch of crybabies. It would be funny if they didn't have access to so much firepower.

Saturday Roundup of Link Roundups - 24 June

Wombat-socho is up first with - In The Mailbox: 06.21.23

American Conservative: The Art of the Deal
American Greatness: Arrests and Encounters of FBI Terror Watchlist Suspects at Southern Border Hits All-Time High

Animal Magnetism - Animal’s Hump Day News

On having cake and eating it, too.
And nothing will come of it.
DeSantis calls the dog out.

The Right Way - Top of the News

Keith Olbermann Continues Humiliating Himself - Bongino Report
Trial Date in Trump Classified Docs Case Set for August 14 - The Pirates Cove

The DaleyGator - Daily Top 5

World Doesn’t End – Greta Thunberg Deeply Disappointed
Eschatology is the end of the world component of religions. It has a really suspect history in the prediction racket.

EBL - U.S. House of Representatives Censures Rep. Adam Schiff 🤗

Twitchy: House Censures Rep. Schiff – Democrats Throw Tantrum
Instapundit: House Votes To Censure Adam Schiff

Pixy Misa at Ambient Irony - Daily News Stuff 22 June 2023: Usual Suspecting Edition

Journalists for Censorship is at it again: Spotify's podcast platform is going off the rails, except for Joe Rogan who is still drawing huge audiences and we can't stand it!!!!! (The Verge)

Wombat-socho again - In The Mailbox: 06.22.23

Vox Popoli: So Much for the Wunderwaffen, Those Pesky Mathematics, and Taking the N Out
Stoic Observations: Regression To The Digital Mean

A View from the Beach - Flotsam and Jetsam - Durham Testifies, Schiff Censured, Hunter Biden Still Guilty, Riley Gaines Rules

Ace, Durham: James Comey Hid the Fact That the RussiaGate Allegations Were a Political Op Concocted by Hillary Clinton From the Agents He Assigned to Investigate The Lies, "Via Hot Airs "Durham: You better believe Obama, Biden, and Comey knew that this was a Hillary dirty trick ."

Battleswarm Blog - LinkSwarm for June 23, 2023

Sex club founder kicked out of sex club after revealing that Hunter Biden was kicked out of said sex club for being too big a scumbag. In other news, Hunter Biden was too big a scumbag for an LA sex club.

Small Dead Animals - Thursday On Turtle Island

Fascist China News: As part of it’s effort to buy up South America, China is demanding that Britain gives up the Falklands.
Neil Oliver: Government Psyops and Covid.

Again from Wombat-socho - In The Mailbox: 06.23.23

Da Tech Guy: Five Fast Thoughts Under the Fedora
Dana Loesch: News You May Have Missed
Don Surber: The Wages Of BLM

Cafe Hayek - Some Links

Inspired by a blog post by my GMU Econ colleague Alex Tabarrok, GMU Econ alum Dominic Pino reports on some sour consequences of protectionism.

Maggie's Farm - Wednesday morning links

Florida Teacher Fired for Comparing Students' Skin to Coffee
The Ideological Subversion of Biology

J.J. Sefton at Ace of Spades HQ - The Morning Report — 6/22/23

"A direct assault on American ideals and values."
The Political Persecution of Trump

Doug Ross - Larwyn’s Linx: Biden is Controlled by China

• The Missing Sub: Death By DEI: CTH
• China Is A Dying Paper Dragon: Don’t rejoice – China’s death throes will be a danger to us all: And Magazine

Anonymous Conservative - News Briefs – 06/23/2023

The FBI “verified” the authenticity of Hunter Biden’s abandoned laptop in November 2019 and a federal computer expert assessed “it was not manipulated in any way,” IRS supervisory agent Gary Shapley told Congress in explosive testimony released Thursday.

I leave you with Wednesday gifdump from Wirecutter, Thursday Is Libturds ~ 1 from Woodsterman, Two Truck Loads Of Memes... Here's 1 from The Feral Irishman, and Friday Memes … from MaddMedic.

Another Example of "Crazy People Are Dangerous"

The Other McCain has another entry in the continuing saga, Crazy People Are Dangerous

The guy who got shot had a history of mental illness. There is bodycam video of when he was shot and killed.

The DA says self-defense. The family wants "answers." Their lawyer is (apparently) looking out for a payout, and a payday, from the city. The Police Chief, James Crayton, has not released the video, because the judge hasn't ordered it.

Does it strike you that Chief Crayton is demonstrating the serenity of a Christian holding four aces? He’s seen the video. He’s not afraid of anything. That speaks volumes about this case.

We shouldn't be reading these stories, but we decided in the 1970s that were not going to fund mental health, because of a movie, mostly.

As a treatment for acute psychiatric disorders, 124 grains of lead traveling at 1,000 feet per second is perhaps not the preferred medication.

How Many Times Has the End-of-the-World Been Predicted?

The latest entry was one popularized by Saint Gretta of the Swedish Outrage. Now That We’re All Dead …

In case you missed it, humanity was wiped out Tuesday, according to angry Swedish adolescent Greta Thunberg who, for some reason, decided it was prudent to delete that tweet. Her apocalyptic prediction is part of a long series of false prophecies by environmental doomsayers following in the failed footsteps of Population Bomb author Paul Ehrlich who, despite being completely debunked, is still sought out as an “expert” by the liberal media. One cannot help but notice that the same people who’ve been wrong about everything regarding climate change — exactly none of their dire predictions have come true — were also the people telling us that The Science™ required economically destructive lockdowns, compulsory masking and mandatory vaccines to deal with COVID-19

There are a couple of books listed at the link above, about detailing how these "Trust the Science™" folks use fear.

When people say, as they sometimes do, “you ought to write a book” about such a topic, I’m filled with a sense of futility. What’s the point of writing a book debunking “climate change” or some other false liberal belief, when there is already a vast library of books proving that liberals are always wrong about everything? Whatever the issue may be — economics, foreign affairs, education, race relations, you name it — if liberals have any clear set of consensus beliefs on a subject, their opinions and policy preferences are without exception demonstrably wrong.

RTWT

Texans Are Still Armed

Bad guys have yet to get that memo. Midland Police respond to gunshot victim

An initial investigation found Smith entered a home in the 900 block of North D Street and began fighting a man in the house. Police say in an act of apparent self-defense, the homeowner shot the suspect.

Self-defense is a human-right, and this took place in Texas, not New Jersey.

“A lie of omission is still a lie.”

From The Hill we get the following: Don’t hide the truth about who made violent threats against Target

You have probably heard that Target corporation has received threats of various kinds over its "Pride Collection." You definitely haven't heard who is making those threats.

And as far as lies of omission are concerned, certain newsrooms are guilty of it last week following a spate of bomb threats leveled against Target stores. The threats were made by individuals who claim they’re upset about the retailer’s decision to remove certain pride-month related merchandise, not its decision to sell that merchandise. But you’d hardly know this from a casual glance at the news.

“Target stores see more bomb threats over Pride merchandise,” the Washington Post reported this week. The subhead adds, “Locations in at least five states were evacuated this weekend, and no explosives were discovered.”

You have to dig fairly deep to discover that the people making the threats are not Donald Trump supporters, but "allies" of the LGBTQ-eieo-lmnop brigade.

Yes, the threats allegedly came from people claiming to be upset about the removal of pride-themed merchandise, not from belligerent conservatives upset about the merchandise itself.

WaPo is not the only one shading the truth. Click thru for more details. (Hat tip to YellowFlash)

Blood In The Water

There are few kinds of music I love more than top-rate guitar playing, and Ayron Jones is a first class guitarist. He is another artist I found by way of Spotify and one of their playlists. If you like Rock Guitar, I don't think you will be disappointed.

His playing style has been compared to everyone from Gary Clark Jr. to Stevie Ray Vaughn to Jimi Hendrix. In today's song, his playing reminds me more of someone else, though I can't think of who that would be as I type this. People also compare his singing to Michael Jackson, and while I can here that similarity, he has his own style.

Jones cites several people as influences including some of the usual suspects like B.B. King, as well as Mike McCready of Pearl jam and Kim Thayil of Soundgarden.

This is "Blood In The Water" by Ayron Jones from his June 2023 album Chronicles Of The Kid. It was a single released ahead of the album. (The lead single?) I like it. My only complaint is that it is not long enough. The guitar solo that starts at 2 minutes and 15 seconds in could have been two or three times as long.

The OceanGate Titan Sub and the Government/Media Not Telling Us They Knew

It was all about controlling the narrative. Well, that and extra eyeballs on their dying networks. 'Titanic' filmmaker James Cameron calls the search for Titan a 'nightmarish charade', says he knew on Monday the sub imploded

It was apparently a better story than the IRS whistleblower talking about the sabotage of the Hunter Biden investigation.

Cameron has much experience with traveling in a submersible. He has visited the remains of the Titanic 33 times, and he also holds the record for the deepest dive of 35,787 ft in the Mariana Trench. He referred to the search for the then-lost submersible as a "nightmarish charade."

The US military detected the acoustic evidence of the implosion at the time it happened. They notified the Coast Guard that day.

James Cameron, who isn't associated with either of those groups, but does know people in the commercial submarine community, knew on Monday.

"Monday morning, when I first found out about the incident, I got on a whole bunch of calls and emails. It's a small community. Within an hour and a half, I had the following information: They were on descent. They were at 3500 feet. They lost comms and tracking. The last one being the critical one, because the transponder that's used to track itself during descent on the bottom is a fully autonomous system."

"It's in its own pressure housing, and it has its own battery power. So for them [those within Titan] to lose comms and tracking at the same time, sub it was gone. There was no question in my mind. For days, I tried to run other scenarios that could account for it. I could come up with nothing."

Click thru for details on the problems of using carbon fiber for submarine construction as opposed to titanium or steel. Warning: engineering concepts are at that link.

This brought to mind the song "Vicarious"" from the 2006 album 10,000 Days by Tool.

Eye on the TV
'Cause tragedy thrills me.
Whatever flavour
It happens to be like:
"Killed by the husband",
"Drowned by the ocean",
"Shot by his own son",
"She used a poison in his tea"

That is the opening of the song. Here is a bit from farther in.

The universe is hostile, so impersonal
Devour to survive, so it is, so it's always been

Friday Links - 23 June

Pirate's Cove is up first with Surprise: Democrat Donor Arrested For Starting Fire Blamed On ‘Climate Change’

It’s not anthropogenic climate change when a Democrat sets it on fire.

Clayton Cramer - This is a Very Troubling Report

It is beginning to seem as though the criminal justice system is breaking down. In a place like Idaho, this is worrisome. In a big city, it will lead to widespread killing. Our society is dying?

Battleswarm Blog - The Mine-Laying Lawnmower of Death

I try to keep up with the latest drone developments out of the Russo-Ukrainian War, so this funky remote-control mine-laying device caught my eye:

Gates of Vienna - Defending European Women From Predatory Culture-Enrichers

Collectif Némésis is an identitarian feminist organization based in France and Switzerland. Its primary concern is the danger posed by third-world migrants to native white women. Because of this it has been condemned and shunned by mainstream feminist groups.

The Other McCain - Slap on the Wrist for Hunter Biden

Because it’s different when Democrats do it.

Pirate's Cove - Mayor Of Sanctuary City Chicago Realizes Illegal Aliens Are Expensive

Who would have thought that taking care of a bunch of illegals would be so costly? But, then, the Democratic Party run city is all in on illegals, so, they should welcome having to pay for their everything, including rent, out of their own money, right?

Professor David Yamane at Gun Curious - How to See Through the Fog of the Culture of Fear Over Bad Outcomes with Guns (Light Over Heat #55)

This week’s “Light Over Heat” video explains a little trick I use to see through the fog produced by the mass-mediated culture of fear.

Pixy Misa at Ambient Irony - Daily News Stuff 21 June 2023: Shark Day Edition

Meanwhile over 100,000 ChatGPT accounts have been leaked to the Dark Web. (Tom's Hardware)
Probably by ChatGPT.
Speaking of ChatGPT, it apparently knows 25 jokes.

The Crime Prevention Research Center - Federal Prosecutors: Black woman with no criminal history facing jail for using marijuana while possessing a handgun and making a false statement about her drug use in buying a gun. White male facing tax evasion for $1.5 million, using cocaine in possession of a handgun and false statement in buying a gun, not going to jail. (Headline says it all.)

The Federalist - Washington Post Exposes Ron DeSantis’ Nefarious Plot To Govern As A Conservative

The Florida governor threatens democracy by following the law.

The Other McCain again - White Privilege or … Biden Privilege?

Don’t do the crime, if you can’t do the time. Unless, of course, your name is Biden, in which case, the rules don’t apply to you.

Self-defense Seems To Be Legal in Indianapolis

I suspected that it was. IMPD investigates 2 self-defense shootings

INDIANAPOLIS — Among the several shootings that IMPD officers responded to over the weekend, in two cases the people who pulled the trigger stood by to talk to detectives and were not arrested and charged.

Those cases are under investigation as possible self-defense shootings.

Click thru for the details, and how the mayor of that city isn't happy with an armed citizenry.