This is "Square Hammer" by Ghost. It was originally included on the 2016 EP Popestar. It was included on the 2016 album Meliora (Deluxe Edition), which was a reissue/expansion of their 2015 album.
And since it is Halloween, let's have another song from Ghost, the original version of "Mary On A Cross" from Seven Inches of Satanic Panic. It is an EP if it only has 2 songs?
Mike Rowe starts us off with a story about the decency of some people. Tall Cowboy
There’s a place in Casper, WY called The Silver Fox, where they tie bacon into knots and put them in Bloody Mary’s. This is an excellent idea and should be replicated far and wide. I had dinner there last night, but didn’t pay for it because one of the diners picked up my tab.
Thanks to Space.com, I've come across a "next generation" flying drone, called Dragonfly, being worked on for a future mission to Saturn's moon Titan that might be flying in the not too distant future. It's very different from Ingenuity [the Mars helicopter].
It turns out that the Internet sleuths had it wrong — the divorced Maine sex offender is Robert W. Card, not Robert R. Card II, but that’s the kind of mistake that often happens in such situations. So my warning about the “fog of war” factor was vindicated.
This is a university grader and a teacher saying how they teach 2+2=5, and I’m mentally ill and defective because I refuse to accept their untruth as reality.
So, there I was with my lovely bride, the Evil Princess of Podcasts, Pixels and Polymer Pistols, at a hotel where I was teaching a MAG-40 class. The sciatica was really on me, and I was walking like ...
So I don’t want to steal their thunder, but there is a bit about Danny Thomas and his founding of the St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital: [SNIP]
As you may know, the primary focus of research of St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital is pediatric cancer. It was founded in 1962, and my data from CDC WONDER goes back only to 1968, but check this out
According to The Center Square, the board decided on October 25 to shell out $50,000 to Quetzal Education Consulting, which claims it readies teachers “to identify, disrupt, and replace white supremacy culture practices in math instruction with practices that center the wellness of students of color.”
Small Hadron Collider: Scientists have for the first time fired up the world's tiniest particle accelerator. (Space)
While early accelerators were much much smaller than today's giants like the Large Hadron Collider - which is an underground ring five miles across - this new device, called a nanophotonic electron accelerator, or NEA, reverses the trend entirely.
Investigators discovered that the shooting happened after a man was behaving in a threatening manner towards the resident of the home. The suspect, David Dale Arrington was allegedly threatening the resident with a weapon.
The incident took place on Monday, 16 October.
Gray Court, South Carolina is about 70 miles northeast of Columbia.
Police responded, and the guy who got shot was taken to a local hospital, but he did not survive his injuries.
Investigators say the resident feared for his life and fired in self-defense.
That is fairly fast for such a determination to be made. Some jurisdictions, ones that I believe hate self-defense, can take many months to make such a call.
Self-defense is a human-right, and it appears to be your legal right in South Carolina.
America's labor force is facing a crisis, and no one knows exactly why. According to data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the number of American adults considered unable to work grew by more than 3.5 million since January 2020, with 1.5 million added just in the first nine months of this year.
That's a concerning 12 percent hike. But among the labor force, in particular, the disability number grew an astonishing 33 percent since January 2020. Over the same time period, America has seen what one insurance insider calls an "open secret" of increased excess deaths—the number of people dying above what is expected. These shocking developments are surely contributing to ongoing labor shortages. People are leaving work at younger ages, in greater numbers, and from diseases seen mostly in later life.
So what happened in early 2020 that could account for increased deaths and disability? Anyone?
Consider that 25 percent more 15-to-19-year-olds than expected—about a thousand young people—died in the first five months of 2023, according to an analysis of federal data. They are among 87,000 additional people who died in those months. Compared to pre-pandemic numbers, those Americans should still be alive.
To be sure, some excess deaths are probably attributable to delays in medical attention, though I would expect excess cancer deaths to be concentrated in older populations. (I could be wrong; I'm not an actuary.) Drug overdoses have been growing in younger populations for at least a decade.
Some of the increase is attributable to liver disease, kidney disease, and stroke. It is almost as if the population has been poisoned, on encountered something that causes blood clots. Of course that can't be the case.
A rundown of some of the ways that wind and solar are failing, and the way some of the companies are losing money.
“Green” energy companies and electric vehicle manufacturers rely on governments to force consumers to buy their products, like it or not. But there is a limit to how much of a decline in their standard of living voters are willing to accept for the sake of “green” mythology.
But force is exactly the business that governments are in.
America must beware of “Christofascism,” Berlatsky practically screams. The “white evangelical Christian nationalist tradition” of new House Speaker Mike Johnson, Louisiana Republican, must be stopped. [SNIP]
Do you want to read the whole thing? Probably not, but I felt obligated to throw the link in there, just so you could see that I’m not making this up. Does anyone really believe that “Christofascist tyranny” and “authoritarian disenfranchisement” (whatever that means) are eminent dangers to our country, or that Mike Johnson aspires to achieve this?
I while back I featured a Goth song that I was reminded of by reading The Art of Darkness: The History of Goth by John Robb. That post got a comment from James, who recommended today's band.
Mono Inc. is a German Gothic Rock, or Gothic Metal, band out of Hamburg. Tilo Wolff is a German musician active in the Gothic, Darkwave and orchestral genres. Joachim Witt made a name for himself in the 1980s with Neue Deutsche Welle (German New Wave, or German Post Punk). Chris Harms is lead singer for the German Rock/Heavy Metal band Lord of the Lost.
We're nothing like you
A wall in black
We're nothing like you
And you don't get who we are
This is "Children Of The Dark" by Mono Inc. featuring contributions by Tilo Wolff, Joachim Witt, and Chris Harms. It is the title song to their 2021 album.
Rolling Stone Magazine put out a list of what they are calling the best 250 guitarists of ALL TIME. It is drawing some criticism from around the internet. And one of the people with a problem with the list is Rick Beato.
There are some notable folks who are not on that list. Like George Benson, Al Di Meola, Peter Frampton, Yngwie Malmsteen, etc. And then there are the people who are not close to the top of the list. And people who should not be on the list.
This wouldn't be bad if they didn't claim it was the best of ALL TIME.
This week, a pro-Palestinian protest at Cooper Union, a college in New York, made its way inside the school buildings.
Jewish students were barricaded in the library for their own protection and reportedly offered the opportunity to hide in an attic.
Apparently no one has to study the history of World War II anymore.
The symbolism was clearly lost on the CU administration, which sent out a milquetoast statement after, noting: “There is no place at Cooper for hateful and violent language or actions.”
But there is a place for it.
We watched it on video as the Jewish kids listened to the chants and the banging on the doors and windows and had to be evacuated.
Then there is this bit of truth:
You don’t have to be an antisemite to be complicit. You just have to be very quiet.
A group of furious Big Apple construction workers hopped out of their truck Friday to confront a stranger who was tearing down posters of Israeli hostages held captive by Hamas.
“This is f–king the US, this is New York City, You don’t have a right to touch that s–t,” one hardhat, identified only as “Paulie,” said to the man in a video that has since gone viral.
A pro-Palestinian group is set to stage a “louder’’-than-ever march in front of the Brooklyn Museum on Saturday — just down the road from the Jewish Hasidic Lubavitcher headquarters.
Jittery NYPD cops are increasing their presence in the area, while a furious Jewish leader raged, “We will not be intimidated.”
Linda Tigani, who raked in $143,938 in fiscal year 2022 as acting chief equity and strategy officer for the city Health Department, has repeatedly shared posts on X that include the phrase “from the river to the sea,” which is call by Hamas terrorists and their anti-Israel backers for the eradication of the Jewish state.
Embattled Gotham Tech HS math teacher Mohammad Jehad Ahmad continued to rant on Facebook and even argued with parents who called for his ouster at a PTA meeting because of his pro-Hamas, anti-Israel views.
Simon, who has also produced Broadway revivals of “Pippin” and “Bells Are Ringing,” told The Post he took down the fliers for the purpose of keeping the city’s streets clean, not for antisemitic reasons, and apologized for offending anyone.
Of course he was only doing it because of cleanliness. Sorry, but I don't believe you are sorry. For context see the first story linked above.
New York City, the home of the compassionate liberal. Or maybe not only compassionate liberals.
And since a part of this is being paid for by federal funds, it actually is a case of your tax dollars going to waste.
They bought high-tech subway cars that can't seem to manage the basic task of being a subway car.
The agency confirmed this week it was pulling six of the seven ballyhooed R211 rail cars out of service due to equipment problems — just months after the high-tech trains were unveiled.
The shiny new subway cars — which feature wider doors, security cameras and digital displays — had issues including leaky gearboxes that can cause a train’s wheels to lock up and drag along the rails.
I bet the digital displays were beautiful!
At the time of the R211’s unveiling, MTA Chair and CEO Janno Lieber said the new trains would provide straphangers with “a more modern passenger experience.”
If by that he means "more flash and less substance" he was correct.
The cost for more than 1100 cars was $3.2 billion.
Have you ever wondered why the Left hates LibsOfTikTok so much? Why did Taylor Lorenz think it was necessary to dox Chaya Raichik? All she does — the whole function of LibsOfTikTok — is reposting left-wing TikTok content to Twitter. How did that make Chaya Raichik a target of such vindictive wrath? Hold that thought for a minute, while I delve into something seemingly unrelated: Julia Steinberg’s recent column at Free Press, “Why My Generation Hates Jews.”
Click thru to have that statement explained by a Zoomer, and more.
As for the history of Israel, I watched the Yom Kippur War as it happened on TV news and read about it in the newspaper when I was 14. So anybody trying to sell me on the idea that the Palestinians (so-called) are victims of “oppression” by Israel is wasting their time — I know better. And, in general, my predisposition toward the written word (as opposed to video content) makes it more difficult for anyone to propagandize me. My body of knowledge is quite broad. I’ve read more Marx than most Marxists have.
As I said, read the whole thing. It is worth your time.
These were always amazing machines, and they still are. Today you can find them running z16, the operating system that follows a chain from OS/360 and LinuxONE 4, IBM's Unix/Linux variant.
These machines still reign in the financial arena. Credit card processing, air line ticket purchasing, etc. are still handled at the back end by mainframes.
Just one example: availability. In the video he says that they achieve 7-nines of availability, but in the description he corrects that to 8-nines. That is 99.999999% availability, or 315.58 milliseconds of downtime every year. If you are processing credit card transactions for Visa or MasterCard that is important.
This is an interesting video (if you're a technology nerd like I am) about the current state of the IBM Mainframe. It is about 23 minutes, so plan accordingly.
I don't think people recognize what an achievement OS/360 was. I still had a copy of Principles of Operation, which grew out of the original design documents for the IMB 360, on my desk well into the 1990s, even after I had moved out of a hands-on job.
South Park: Joining the Panderverse was released on the Paramount+ streaming service, making it difficult to see. But the clips at least let you know what everyone is talking about.
A few weeks back, we told you about South Park's newest episode (much to the chagrin of the Baptists) that was going to replace its main characters with women of color: [SNIP]
BOY OH BOY DID THE EPISODE DELIVER.
Several viral clips show how the episode took direct aim at Disney CEO Bob Iger and LucasFilm CEO Kathleen Kennedy, who seem to think good movies require replacing beloved franchises with intersectional reboots based in fourth-wave feminism and critical race theory.
There are three clips of the South Park special, and one shot at the Woke Snow White movie. Click thru.
They were installing a new hardwood floor inside a 2nd floor condo at 8 o'clock in the morning. She was upset and called the police. The police were not going to stop them from working.
“When the police got there they told the lady they were not going to stop them from working because ‘it’s not 6 a.m., it’s not 8 p.m. They’re here to make an honest living, we’re going to let them continue to work,'” said the man who oversees The Floor Doctor.
When the cops left she said she was going to "call someone else."
The owner tells us an hour later a man appeared and started beating up one of his guys.
“My guy went to put him in a headlock and the suspect pulled out a gun,” the man explained.
He told 10 On Your Side his team tried wrestling the gun out of the man’s hand with no luck. That’s when one contractor pulled his own gun in self-defense.
The guy who showed up to threaten the floor crew was shot. He remains in the hospital. Cops didn't arrest the flooring crew, because self-defense is not illegal in Virginia.
Some of the crew thinks that the woman should be arrested, but sadly felony stupidity is not something she can be charged with. I don't know if she can be charged with something else.
When did people become so self-centered that they object to people who work for a living?
Police said a man in his late 20s entered the store and pulled out a gun during an altercation with a 26-year-old employee that he knew. The employee pulled out a gun, too, and the men exchanged gunfire, leaving up to 20 shell casings on the floor in aisle 13.
Because nothing says, "We love all of our questionable gun-control laws" like shootouts in the local drug store.
He is an expert witness responding to claims by the state of Colorado that waiting periods and other restrictions on the second amendment are reasonable.
None of the laws [Prof. Spitzer] cited actually prohibited possession of a gun while drinking. One Rhode Island was quoted three words... three more words .. three more words.". So I looked up the law. It prohibited hunting, sports, shooting, or going to a bar on the Sabbath. His other laws were similar misrepresented. In at least one case, he copied the very carefully edited text and the citation from the Duke University Repository of Gun Laws and likely never read the actual statute.
This is the kind of work that should be supported.
Self Defense Principals from Andrew Branca
Slightly good news with the death and injury count going down a bit from last night. Still horrible. I hope the reason they have not found him yet is he went somewhere and killed himself.
Sundance at CTH, Remarkable Details – Matt Gaetz Gives Details of Backroom Machiavelli Tactics Triggered by Kevin McCarthy During House GOP Conference.
Dementia Joe’s America: U.S. deficit soars to 1.7 trillion dollars. How to destroy America. Covid compassion killed her father. The George Floyd story was a lie. Free sex changes. Threats to Zionist journalists. The Blafiwhimps.
1. World’s Oldest Central Bank Seeking $7 Billion Bailout After Massive Bond Losses
(Could just be me, but this seems important maybe? Do central banks declare bankruptcy often? Why does this happen? Isn’t central banks where governments get their money from?)
L.A.’s Soros-Backed DA Doubles Down on War on Police in Re-Election Bid
Los Angeles District Attorney George Gascon, who has been heavily funded by groups linked to liberal megadonor George Soros, announced last week that he is officially running for re-election
There’s evidently been limited Israeli ground force incursion into Gaza. Developing…
There was also a screening today for reporters of footage of the atrocities carried out by the organization so many college lefties are cheering for.
Donald Trump walked out of the courtroom Wednesday afternoon moments after one of his lawyers finished questioning fixer-turned-foe Michael Cohen, and after he was fined for a second time
Last weekend, we noticed that an attempt to download Google Chrome using Microsoft Edge results in the latter opening its sidebar with a poll, asking you to explain to Microsoft how you could dare try downloading Google Chrome. Of course, the exact wording is more tame, but you get the idea.
In response to the rest of the country taking issue with students at Harvard supporting Hamas, the students find themselves in a "backlash." The student paper is on the side of the students.
The language in the Harvard Crimson headline, of course, is a sort of journalistic DARVO (Deny, Attack, Reverse Victim and Offender) tactic, meant to convince the readership that what’s really wrong — the offense that should inspire outrage — is not that a coalition of student groups signed an open letter endorsing the slaughter of Israeli civilians by Hamas, but rather that these students have been “doxxed.”
There is a copy of the statement included - just so there is no confusion on what these students were (are?) supporting.
Got it, indeed. What is truly important here is the revelation (or perhaps better to say confirmation) that our “elite” universities are cocoons of extremist left-wing hivemind groupthink, where students are indoctrinated with radicalism so thorough, with so little pushback from any well-informed critic of this monolithic worldview, that they’ll sign onto literal terrorist propaganda and then be shocked to discover that not everyone agrees that Jews deserve to be murdered by Hamas.
I'm not an expert on how NY State organizes its judiciary, but this is "A" New York Supreme Court, not "The" NY Supreme Court. I believe that NYC will likely appeal to someone.
A New York state Supreme Court ordered all New York City employees who were fired for not being vaccinated to be reinstated with back pay.
Though I don't like the reasoning, it is better than nothing, and something positive for the people who were fired.
Apparently the US is carrying out air strikes in Syria.
Perhaps “nations which are in the four quarters of the earth, Gog and Magog,” shall soon be gathered for this battle.
I pegged the start of WWIII to Russia's invasion of the Crimean Peninsula when Obama was President. It has just been moving at a glacial pace since then. You could mark the date as when Russia invaded Georgia, but no one remembers that.
So we have a proxy war in Ukraine, a hot war (or one heating up) in the Middle East, and then there is China.
I thought it was supposed to be Trump who started WWII, and that Biden and the Democrats would keep everyone safe.
Some under-reported news from last week: Russia withdrew from the Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty (CTBT), and literally hours later the U.S. conducted a nuclear test.
Ending three weeks of leaderless chaos — Matt Gaetz owes the nation an apology — and repeated failure, the Republican caucus finally united behind a little-known member whose name wasn’t even mentioned previously.
In which academics reap what they have sown. (The Verge)
The story tries to pin the blame on conservatives, even though nobody in the story is to the right of Mao. A typical AWFL college student goes off the deep end and files Title IX complaints - and this is her mistake - against every lecturer she ever had contact with.
If you know anything at all about Capitol Hill, you know that Chuck Grassley’s staffer are the best investigators of governmental waste, fraud and abuse. Every year there are dozens of big stories that never would have come to light if not for the tireless work of Grassley’s staff. For many years, the ace in Grassley’s office was Jason Foster, who has recently left the Hill to launch his own non-profit organization, Empower Oversight, to continue that kind of investigation independently. The latest news should shock the conscience of the country
Libs of TikTok founder Chaya Raichik was invited to attend the Independent Women’s Forum (IWF) Awards Gala to be honored as the recipient of the distinguished Resilience Award.
Morgan Park is one of the 77 neighborhoods in Chicago; it is located on the far south side of the city.
The gun-hating part of the Left loves to go on about how if you own a gun, you are more likely to shoot someone you know than a perfect stranger. The implication is that you would never want to shoot someone you know, but the truth is a little different.
The shooting happened around 12:45 a.m. when a 41-year-old man who the woman knew approached her with a knife inside her home in the 11500 block of South Vincennes Avenue, Chicago police said. The woman then pulled out a gun and shot the man four times in his torso.
People you know include the creepy guy at your favorite coffee shop, the co-worker who is morphing into a stalker, ex-boyfriends, etc. They can all be a threat.
He was taken to Christ Medical Center in Oak Lawn, where he was pronounced dead, officials said.
The investigation continues, but this seems to be a clear-cut case of self-defense, which is a human right. There isn't enough info for me to call this a case of domestic violence, but it certainly could be. (Hat tip to Hoodline, and Keep and Bear Arms.)
The Big Apple has seen a spike in hate crimes since Hamas’ attack on Israel earlier this month — with nearly 60% of the heinous acts targeting the Jewish community, an NYPD official said Tuesday.
At least 51 hate crimes have been reported in the city since Oct. 9 — two days after the terrorist group’s unprecedented raid — and 30 of them were against Jewish victims, NYPD Chief of Detectives Joseph Kenny said at a press briefing.
“Muslims and those perceived to be Muslim have endured a disproportionate number of hate-fueled attacks.”
— WH Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre, when asked about antisemitism
We say: After taking heat (even from Democrats) for that tone-deaf answer, the White House claimed Jean-Pierre misheard the question.
Right.
The real question is, whether or not the Progressive Jewish population in the US will wake up to the fact that the Democrats are largely antisemitic. I don't believe that they will.
An ATF whistleblower informed Sen. Grassley's office that ATF knew that an employee was buying guns and gun parts in the U.S., smuggling then across the border in a car with diplomatic plates, then selling them.
The ATF knew. The ATF did nothing about it. Maybe the ATF hates Mexico, or maybe the ATF can't be bothered to enforce the law against a memeber of the ATF.
Also is it strange that an employee of the ATF is a citizen of Mexico?
ATF investigated, prepared a memo to the Mexican government because the ATF employee was a Mexican citizen and never sent it.
The Livermore Police Department said that before 2:30 p.m. Sunday, a man "wearing a mask, a hooded sweatshirt pulled over his head and gloves" who was "acting suspicious" entered East Bay Firearms.
The man, who has only been identified as a 28-year-old from Redwood, then attempted to rob the gun store owner by swiping a firearm while wielding a hammer, according to witness statements to police.
Livermore, California is about 35 miles northeast of San Jose, about 35 mile southeast of Oakland, and about 45 miles west of Modesto in the extreme easten part of the San Francisco Bay Area.
To no one's surprise, except briefly the guy who got shot, the gun store owner shot the would-be robber. He died at the scene.
"At this stage in the investigation, it appears that this was a case of self-defense," Livermore PD said in a press release.
Chicago Jews are scared for their own safety as pro-Hamas protestors roam Chicago’s streets (including the busing in of radical Muslims from outside the city, according to sources) and as anti-Semitic hate crime increases.
Like progressives everywhere, even when they are scared they will not take up arms for their own defense. That is the job of the .gov. Even when the government can't or won't protect you, you must rely on the government for protection. Self-defense? Personal responsibility? These are progressives of the highest order.
On Oct. 12, Jake Lang passed a milestone: 1,000 days in jail without a trial. To mark the anniversary, he wanted to share with the American people "the horrific conditions of confinement," which he says he and many of his fellow Jan. 6 prisoners have had to endure.
"During this time, I've done 20 months of solitary confinement," Mr. Lang told The Epoch Times. "For 15 months of that, I wasn't allowed to have a haircut or a shave."
This was intentional, he said, to make Jan. 6 prisoners look like "homeless vagrants" or "deranged terrorists" during video court appearances.
That is the date of The Battle of Agincourt and the defeat of the French by Henry V and his army of (mostly) English Yoemanry.
So it was that the English yeomanry earned their military fame in a battle where the number of French casualties was larger than Henry’s entire army. Indeed we shall remember “to the ending of the world.”
Transterrestrial Musings: Greta Thunberg
Victory Girls: Israeli Children Were Not Detained, They Were Kidnapped, The West Has Failed Its Moral Test Over Nazism, and Occasional Cortex – Israel Committed War Crimes, Not Hamas
Woke Britain: The Hamas tube driver. Something is killing Brits. Why are people tearing down posters in London?
Global Warming Scam News: Debunking climate hysteria.
Stacy McCain takes on The Biden Crime Family "For months now, Joe Biden’s defenders have claimed there is “no evidence” of his corruption. That can no longer be claimed . . ." Fox, Comer raises questions about $200k 'direct payment' from James Biden to Joe Biden in 2018.
Thanks to AI the future of programming may involve yelling in ALL CAPS. (Ars Tchnica)
Or more specifically, involve "AIs" (which aren't) yelling at each other in ALL CAPS.
ITEM 6: Hamas fired a rocket at a hospital in Gaza.
Congresswoman Rashida Tlaib, D-Hamas, blamed Israel and incited an actual insurrection on the Capitol steps.
A recent piece by David Leonhardt in the New York Times Magazine leaves John Cochrane mostly grumpy.
Candace Smith explains that etiquette enhances our individuality.
• Obama's Racist Chickens Have Come Home to Roost - PJ Media
• Rashida Tlaib Slammed for Response to Murder of Synagogue President in Detroit - Rebecca Downs
"While Democrats have historically demonstrated far more trust in the media than Republicans, even Democrats have begun to lose confidence."
Poll: More Americans Than Ever Have Zero Trust in Media
Israel promises ‘unrelenting attacks’ on Hamas; US, Obama urge caution. Cabal plan to get rid of Netanyahu? Start the war, then stifle Netanyahu to make him look ineffectual by having Iran poised to jump in
The Chicago suburb of Skokie is a historically Jewish neighborhood. After WWII, over half the population of the city was Jewish, including many survivors of the Holocaust. It also has a claim to fame in American legal history.
The city was targeted by neo-Nazis in the 1970s, who filed for a permit to have a white power march in Skokie. This resulted in a court battle that ended up at the Supreme Court.
As Not The Bee asks, what would happen if this was a mob of Trump supporters attacking anyone? It would be on the news 24 X 7 for months. But because it is a mob of "Palestinian Supporters" it isn't on the news at all.
They also attacked an elderly Christian man just because he was in Skokie as well. Or maybe just because he was Christian.
And that should probably be "replaced" not upgraded.
Billpayers will be forced to foot the cost of upgrading seven million smart meters which will become obsolete in less than 10 years, the spending watchdog has warned.
In a damning report highlighting a number of failures in the smart meter roll out, the The Public Accounts Committee said seven million smart meters would need to be replaced before the 2G and 3G networks they use are switched off in 2033.
99.9% of the London Telegraph disappeared behind a paywall a few years back, otherwise I would link to the main article.
Oh, and not only did they design in obsolescence, they don't seem to be providing all of the savings that they were supposed to provide.
Ministers are also facing growing questions about its purported money-saving benefits to households, with Dame Meg Hillier, chair of the committee, saying the evidence of whether smart meters in fact benefited consumers was “unclear”.
And this being 2023, they have to point out the racial disparities.
Smart meters were also said to be most likely to benefit rich, old men who own their own houses, the report said, while low-income renters are at risk of being “left behind” because blocks of flats pose a headache for installers to fit the devices.
When you add all of that together, the UK is far behind their official targets for getting everyone on smart meters.
I'm not sure exactly what smart meters in the UK do, so it is hard to judge how they could save money for people, except if they allow the powers-that-be to shut your power off at certain times of the day. The smart meter I have merely allows the Power Company to "read the meter" by only having the guy drive down the street.
Greta Van Fleet is the name of the band, not the name of a person in the band. (With apologies to Owen Wilson in his roll as Oscar from Armageddon.) The band Greta Van Fleet consists of twins Josh Kiszka (vocalist) and Jake Kiszka (guitarist) and their brother, Sam Kiszka, who plays bass guitar and keyboards, with Danny Wagner playing drums. They are from Frankenmuth, Michigan. (Home to the world's largest Christmas store.)
Those people will never stop voting for Democrats. And Democrats know it. So they have no incentive to dispense crumbs from their graft machine when there are new victimhood identity politics groups to pander to.
Instagram has apologised for accidentally labelling terrorists as terrorists. (Ars Technica)
Not everyone has accepted Meta's apology. Director of Amnesty Tech—a branch of Amnesty International that advocates for tech companies to put human terrorist rights first—Rasha Abdul-Rahim, said on X Twitter that Meta Instagram apologizing is "not good enough."
"You're not allowed to tell the truth", said Abdul-Rahim. "You have to lie, and you have to tell the lies we feed you."
This is timely. Just days after a UK report on how 95% of those who died from COVID had the COVID vaccines and boosters, CDC Director Mandy Cohen and Senator Chuck (It’s not a) Schumer are asking you to get updated flu and Covid “vaccination.”
The Other McCain - A Death in Detroit. On the stabbing death of a Detroit synagogue president:
We must not speculate or jump to conclusions. However, knowing what we know about Detroit, I’m willing to hazard a tentative guess that the killer was probably not a Trump supporter.
That’s right, among the polled who plan to vote for Biden in 2024, some 47% think “the government should regulate or restrict the expression of views considered discriminatory or offensive.”
Considered “discriminatory or offensive” by whom, exactly?
Sadly, the results weren’t a whole lot different for supporters of Donald Trump, 35% of whom purport to believe the government should exercise this control.
Meta (Facebook) has revealed the details of its internal serverless platform - similar to Amazon's Lambda - that "processes trillions of function calls per day on more than 100,000 servers spread across tens of datacenter regions." (Engineer Codex)
Does anyone see the problem with this? Anyone? Yes, the girl at the back?
The article is in Spanish. It was translated via the beta version of Firefox's translate facility. It doesn't do a bad job, though it isn't perfect either. You can also use Chrome, or Google Translate, or another service if you don't read Spanish.
The uniformed officer was in civilian clothes when six criminals cornered him to assault him. See how he ran to save his life and, for defending himself, shot a thief.
One of the key things pointed out by John Corriea at Active Self Protection, and something that I write about from time to time, is that your possessions are not worth your life. The off-duty cop, when he realized the situation he was in, dropped his bike and ran. He didn't try to keep hold of the bike, and he didn't try to put down a kickstand. His life was in danger. An insurance claim on the bike - or the complete loss of the bike - is NOT worth dying over.
Suddenly, four men on a motorcycle arrived at full speed behind him to corner him and assault him. In the midst of fear, the policeman jumped out of his vehicle, which fell to the asphalt, and ran out.
Two other hamburgers, who were also riding a bike, joined the band. Then, those who were following the uniformed man went after him. The victim sheltered behind a tree, pulled out his firearm and shot dead a thief.
As I said, the translation isn't great, but you can understand what is going on. (Chrome and Google Translate do a better job.)
After he was clear of the bike, and they were still coming after him, he defended himself. One of the bad guys died, and one was injured and took himself to the hospital. Cops did catch 2 of the other four by tracking known accomplices.
I'm not shocked. Pixy Misa at Ambient Irony describes another Large Language Model AI as a "pathological liar in a box."
I first asked, “What was the first mass shooting in American [sic.] in which the perpetrator used an AR-15 rifle.” Answer: The University of Texas tower shooter in 1966. Incorrect.
I tried to help Bard out by asking a more specific question about the Texas tower shooting, and Bard correctly answered that the shooter did not use an AR-15, but then suggested he could not have used an AR-15 because it wasn’t invented until 7 years after the shooting. Incorrect, obviously, but maybe also suggestive of where Bard’s “mind” is — he probably have used an AR-15 if it had been invented?
If you click the link you will find that humans are also fixated on the AR-15. Despite what the Wiki will tell you, AR-15 stands for Armalite Rifle 15. The AR-5 is a .22 Hornet bolt-action survival rifle developed for the US Air Force, and the AR-7 "Explorer" is .22 Long Rifle semiautomatic survival rifle. And finally, the AR-30 is a bolt-action rifle available in either .308 Winchester (also known as 7.62×51mm NATO), .300 Winchester Magnum, or .338 Lapua Magnum. Non of these are "assault rifles."
AI isn't the only place you will find lies.
Several authors will tell you that the Daingerfield church shooter was in possession of an AR-15. He killed 3 people with an M-1 carbine (designed in 1941), and two other people with a .38 revolver. Revolvers were in common use in the Civil War, and the "modern" variant dates to the late 1800s.
But he was carrying an AR-15.
Garbage in Garbage out. To err is human; to really screw things up requires a computer. The bias of humans also plays a roll.
For those who don't know a lot about firearms, here is a video about how an AR-15 works during firing. The video includes descriptions of military variants, specifically both full-auto, and burst mode that can be found in rifles such as the M16 or M4. There are similar videos on bolt-action rifles, if you're unclear on those.
Now cause and effect are hard to attribute in a statistical analysis, but when the trends are in one direction for years (13-17 year-old mortality rates), and then a reversal occurs as if overnight, I for one feel confident in assigning blame to the "do something!" reaction so many people had to COVID.
From 1999 to 2014, you can see mortality improvement.
Reduction in motor vehicle accident deaths was a huge part of that improvement. Motor vehicle accident deaths improved even more for teens than for the younger ages - over 60% decrease from 1999 to 2019.
Things begin to change in 2015, with an increase in suicides, homicide, and a reversal of the gains made in motor vehicle fatalities.
For the years 2020, 2021, and 2022 the story changes dramatically.
But we’ve seen huge increases in homicides, drug overdoses, and motor vehicle accident deaths. That’s pretty horrible.
The only bright spot in these numbers is that there has been no increase in suicide among teens. You have to look at older populations to find an increase in suicide during these years, and it is marked.
Oh, and the pandemic? You can barely see the COVID, but you can see the large jump up in motor vehicle accident deaths and drug overdoses. Also, homicides.
Click thru for the analysis, the graphs and the data, and links to Meep's other population studies.
So would all of those people who were shouting about the need to "Do something!" be shouting so loudly if they knew the impact on teen mortality? Teens were hardly impacted by the pandemic. Some were of course, but MANY more died of other causes, like homicide and traffic accidents.
Doro has been singing Heavy Metal since the 1980s when she was lead singer for Warlock. In some ways, the music she is producing today is better that what came before. The song writing is certainly top notch.
This song is "Children Of The Dawn" it was released on October 13th as a single from her upcoming album Conqueress: Forever Strong and Proud, which is scheduled to be released this Friday, October 27th.
Notebookcheck recently broke the story about the fact that Google appears to have blocked writers reviewing its new Pixel 8 and Pixel 8 Pro devices from being able to easily install popular benchmark apps like Geekbench 6 and 3D Mark.
Of course they couldn't stop the hackers from sideloading the apps, and so the benchmarks did get run.
There were reviewers with the requisite knowledge to by-pass Google’s Play Store block by simply downloading the app package for Geekbench 6 and installing it manually using a process known as side-loading.
The results Geekbench 6 produced by the Tensor G3 were unflattering.
The Tensor G3 is the chip in the Pixel 8 family.
Google has not responded to queries about why they blocked the benchmark, or the results of those benchmarks being published despite the block.
There is more if you click thru. Google's marketing the Pixel around AI, and the benchmarks for AI, and the apologists dreaming up reasons why the benchmark apps were kept off the phones, etc. (Hat tip to Pixy Misa).
