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).
