December 8, 2021

Sunrise — 7:13, 7:40.

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Talk about whatever you want... and please support this blog by doing your shopping through the Althouse portal to Amazon, which is always right there in the sidebar.

61 comments:

Lem the artificially intelligent said...

Google is doing evil.

Copy and paste Reddit link to your browser 👉🏽 https://www.reddit.com/r/videos/comments/rb6xro/over_150_videos_gone_my_response_to_toei/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=ios_app&utm_name=iossmf

(I’m on the road with my phone; I can’t do fancy html linkage)

farmgirl said...

That’s so creepy looking!!!
Miraculous Immaculate day

Dave Begley said...

I got a permanent suspension from Twitter. I’m sure my liberal enemies ratted me out.

Jack Posobiec had a picture caption contest. The picture showed Putin looking at a screen with Biden on it. My caption was, “We will bury you.”

You all certainly know that I was referencing what Nikita Khrushchev said about the West during the height of the Cold War.

I appealed, but I have little hope. It’s not like Twitter is fair or run by fair-minded humans.

I'm informed that the new CEO of Twitter is purging accounts. How Soviet of him.

Scott Patton said...

One of the funniest things on the internet.
Crazy goat annoying the dog

Big Mike said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Fernandinande said...

Re "Get Back", I'm waiting to see it for free since the previews for it show "the boys" hamming it up as if for a kindergarten kids' show. Quite unappealing. Although the song has a catchy tune, similar to "Meet the Flintstones", I've been prejudiced against it because of the dopey lyrics - Jo Jos in 1970 Tucson, such as myself, would be buying Mexican, not California, grass. Best Beatle songs are "Helter Skelter" (McCartney), "Paperback Writer" (McCartney?) and "Taxman" (Harrison/Lennon). Tons of others, too, but not "Get Back".

For those interested in real rockumentary, pieces of the "Sympathy for the Devil" doc are on youtube; Jagger starts it as a very different song, then Keef seems to create the final version. I like the organ version.

Wa St Blogger said...

For Tim in Vermont, responding to cafe 2 days ago.

I agree that Vaccinations are effective in limiting severity of Covid, my point was to say that since the vaccinated can also die, we cannot state, without more detailed analysis of the data that the lack of vaccination is the reason for the higher rates mortality in Trump counties. I would surmise it is a factor, but there are other possible factors that might have a greater impact.

Fernandinande said...

I got a permanent suspension from Twitter....My caption was, “We will bury you.”

Wow. Seriously. I guess they wanted "Can I be your friend?"

Big Mike said...

... and please support this blog by doing your shopping through The Althouse Amazon portal

After you just called me "irrational"?

mikee said...

A few months back, I was in a convenience store checkout line waiting for my turn to pay for my sodas when I looked out the front door of the store and saw my wife getting out of my pickup truck, parked right up front. She was cleaning something off the front window when, without really thinking about it, I clicked the keyfob in my hand for "UNLOCK" and made the headlights blink and the inerior lights all flash on for a second.

She looked a bit startled, and then reached gently down and put her hand on the truck hood. I clicked "UNLOCK" again on the fob, and the lights blinked, and she was again startled. So now she gets really scientific and starts walking around the truck, reaching out to very gently touch the truck, and each time I actuate the keyfob and the lights blink. She's at the front of the truck and I do this to her half a dozen times as she tries various ways and places to touch the truck. Every time she gets this unexpected response.

I finally paid for my drinks, and walked out to the truck, and gave her one last click for the lights as I handed her a cold Diet Coke. Well, she's concerned now, so shows me how if she touches the truck, the lights blink. Which I am still causing by clicking the fob in my hand, right in front of her.

I acted all unknowing, and said it must be something the mechanics set up in the truck software at my last oil change. And I've been waiting months now, trying to figure out a way to tell her it was me, without getting killed. Suggestions solicited.

Jersey Fled said...

Biden wants Americans to pay their fair share for gas?

https://youtu.be/PfxCDBHQWcs

Mike of Snoqualmie said...

I got a permanent suspension from Twitter.

I was permanently banned for calling a football player/coach (can't remember who) a "pansie" for not standing up to the mob. Twitter thinks that's homophobic. It means someone of weak will.

All my attempts to close the account have failed. I don't miss it.

Lem the artificially intelligent said...

"Twitter suspends account providing Ghislaine Maxwell trial updates"

link to fox news story

wildswan said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Mike of Snoqualmie said...

New home construction news:

GOOD NEWS

The King County inspector, Eric Hooper, came out and approved the foundation forms. We're good to pour the concrete!

BAD NEWS

Teamsters Local 174 is on a Unfair Labor Practice strike against the all the King County concrete companies. No end date is known.

We're already a month behind were I'd like us to be.

Dave Begley said...

Biden signed an EO making the federal government go to net carbon zero by 2050.

A McKinsey report estimated that it would cost Germany 6 trillion euros to go to net carbon zero.

I know that it will cost the Omaha Public Power District $50b to go to net carbon zero. Right now only $1b in revenue.

Net carbon zero will drive America into deep poverty.

wildswan said...

AP has a story about 12 cities which have surpassed their all-time record number of Homicides. Milwaukee isn't on their list but will be in a few days. Last year we had 190 murders for the year and that passed the former record 155 set in 1991. This year we are at 189 as of today, December 8 so I think we'll make the AP deadly dozen in a few days.

https://abcnews.go.com/US/12-major-us-cities-top-annual-homicide-records/story?id=81466453
https://www.tmj4.com/news/local-news/city-of-milwaukee-records-2nd-highest-number-of-homicides-ever-so-far-in-2020
https://projects.jsonline.com/apps/Milwaukee-Homicide-Database/ 2021

gilbar said...

mikee asked...
And I've been waiting months now, trying to figure out a way to tell her it was me, without getting killed. Suggestions solicited.


not necessarily saying You Should;
but if you told her in you suicide note, she wouldn't kill you. Might Even miss you!
but you'd still be dead

maybe still in a note; that you leave on the kitchen table, before you move to Bolivia ?

Narr said...

mikee, tell her you found the fix on youtube.

Richard Dolan said...

The Solicitor General filed a brief today in Students for Fair Admissions v. Harvard (available on the Supreme Court website, under docket no. 20-1199), recommending that the Court deny cert. This is the case alleging anti-Asian discrimination in the Harvard admissions program, and asking the Court to overrule Grutter on the grounds (inter alia) that it (and Powell's controlling opinion in Bakke, which gave rise to to these cases) was premised on a lie. There are dozens of briefs in the case, among the best (other than petitioner's briefs, which are terrific) are the ones for Richard Sander (a law prof at UCLA) and Economists in support of petitioners.

The case is now ready for the Court to rule on whether to grant the petition for cert -- the Court had asked for the Solicitor General's views late in June, and it's been held up waiting for today's filing. In the lower courts, during Trump-time, DOJ had filed briefs in support of Plaintiffs. No surprise that during Biden-time DOJ comes out in favor of the other side.

My guess is that the Court grants cert in January, with argument to follow in Fall 2022 and decision overruling Grutter in June 2023. I think the decision will be written by CJ Roberts ("the way to stop discriminating on the basis of race is to stop discriminating on the basis of race"). There was much speculation that the Court asked for the views of the Solicitor General last June just because they wanted to kick this case into 2023 -- no surprise that with the change of administrations, DOJ came out the other way than its briefs in the lower courts, but with abortion and a couple of other headliners this term, they didn't want to add another major issue (affirmative action/race) to this term.

This is one to watch.

Mr. Forward said...

mikee 3:13 pm. I explained your dilemma to Mrs. Forward. She says the death penalty is warranted. Good to know.

tim in vermont said...

" I would surmise it is a factor, but there are other possible factors that might have a greater impact."

I would never trust an analysis by NPR, but just in my own life, my Trumper friends are anti COVID vaccine to a man, and my liberal friends are all for the Trump shot. I am guessing that this plays out nationally, I could be wrong, but if it's true, then the odds that Trumpers are going to die from COVID is higher. I find the result unsurprising, but I couldn't swear to it that I had examined it carefully and found their analysis sound.

BTW, COVID is even more divisive than Trump, and while I was able to negotiate the Trump years and keep my friends, I am not sure that this is going to last through COVID, mostly because my liberal friends don't want me to "take the chance" of hanging out with people who refuse the vaccine, and so they are trying to force me to choose, and I don't think I am going to choose the control freaks.

Original Mike said...

@mikee - Has she tried to do it since then? Unless she has and is still trying to figure it out I would stay mum.

If she has, you're screwed.

Mike of Snoqualmie said...

Net carbon zero will drive America into deep poverty.

And the power won't be there when we'll need it most. In the middle of a snow storm with the solar panels covered in snow and the wind mills frozen over. No power. No alternates. The big freeze.

Hopes of global warming will be just a fever dream when a new Maunder minimum is in force and a new little ice age has started.

Original Mike said...

"mostly because my liberal friends don't want me to "take the chance" of hanging out with people who refuse the vaccine, and so they are trying to force me to choose, and I don't think I am going to choose the control freaks."

What does this say about your liberal friends faith in the vaccine? (no need to answer)

rehajm said...

Who are these women you guys are marrying? Yikes…

Here’s how you fix it: Queue up the Darth Vader kid Volkswagen commercial on her phone, leave a note something endearing something something, then flee the country…

madAsHell said...

I acted all unknowing, and said it must be something the mechanics set up in the truck software at my last oil change. And I've been waiting months now, trying to figure out a way to tell her it was me, without getting killed. Suggestions solicited.

Don't do that!!

madAsHell said...

For those interested in real rockumentary, pieces of the "Sympathy for the Devil" doc are on youtube; Jagger starts it as a very different song, then Keef seems to create the final version. I like the organ version.

I'm kinda a Stones fan. Listening to this evolution is absolutely fascinating.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a4wEQO090D0

P.S. Youtube did have a cut from the Jean Luc Godard video, but it seems to be gone now.

ALP said...

I am re-watching Star Trek's Deep Space Nine. Last night's episode, filmed in 1995, had a line that was so prescient, I nearly fell off my chair and nearly pissed myself to boot.

Sisko, Jadzia and Dr. Bashir are travelling to Earth for a big Starfleet to-do. Due to a cosmic screw up, the transporter lands them on earth - but in the past, in 2024. They encounter a San Franciso so riven by class division, there are "sanctuaries", with walls, where all manner of jobless/homeless people live in squalor. Sisko is the better student of Earth's history than Dr. Bashir - who is aghast that the Earth's cities were ever like this. Sisko says (paraphrase due to crap memory): "By the early 2000's every American city had areas like this."

I know I know there have always been homeless, but the scope of the problem has grown to the point that it is more visible than ever before. In the world of Star Trek, earth manages to somehow solve all of our social problems - too bad an episode telling us how to DO that was never made.

Maynard said...

my liberal friends don't want me to "take the chance" of hanging out with people who refuse the vaccine

Seriously? This is sick.

First, it is not a vaccine. It is an immunity booster. I had the Pfizer version, but I also do a ton of other things to boost my immunity.

Second, it is not the Black Plague. It is a man made flu variant. I strongly suspect that both my wife and I had it early on in 2020. She had some scary breathing issues and I felt like shit for a week, but we survived.

Third, the mRNA shot helps most people, but it has not and will not end the WuFlu hysteria.

Fourth, you probably need to find new friends. Neurotic liberalism is almost as bad as woks.

BG said...

So mikee...

I'm trying to think what would pacify me. Ha...you're screwed, and I don't mean literally.

Hope you have a nice couch. ;-)

Mike of Snoqualmie said...

AP has a story about 12 cities which have surpassed their all-time record number of Homicides. Milwaukee isn't on their list but will be in a few days. Last year we had 190 murders for the year and that passed the former record 155 set in 1991. This year we are at 189 as of today, December 8 so I think we'll make the AP deadly dozen in a few days.

The Lie-stream media will blame it on the legally-owned guns. I overheard a Lie-stream num-nutz going on about how all the 400M guns are just murdering people left and right without any human intervention. No mention of the D.A.s and City Attorneys who won't prosecute, nor the left-wing activists who want to protect the poor, misunderstand criminals. Nor any mention about vagrants who shoot up and rob people and stores to buy their drugs. No mention about the organized shoplifting gangs nor the carjackers.

It's all the guns fault. Just ask Adam Baldwin, he'll tell you the truth about the rogue guns firing themselves so that the beautiful people end up in prison for years and years. C'est tragique!

ngtrains said...

to Dave,

I logged onto twitter today to see your comments - but not there.
I thought it might be something like this. I'll 'follow' you through Ann.

thanks for your posts - but I'll never hear about Creighton again, i guess

ted

madAsHell said...

Wow!! Revisionist history is just a mouse click away.

This won't end well.

Lem the artificially intelligent said...

Remember when conservative writer/commentator Michelle Malkin tried to make the case for post-9/11 Muslims interment camps? She was near darned unanimously rejected. It’s a rare thing to achieve, that kind of unanimous consensus.
Now I hear that Australia, not China, not Russia, Australia has covid interment camps. Not that they are thinking about doing it. Australia has them. And there doesn’t seem to be any problem. God help us all.

Big Mike said...

@Mike of Snoqualmie, point of information. I believe you mean Alec Baldwin. Adam Baldwin (no relation to Alec) is a different actor who is familiar with guns in his roles as an actor, and respects them. His take on Alec’s interview with George Stephanopoulos? “He confessed.”

StephenFearby said...

Your Tax Dollars at Work...

FDA Says It Now Needs 75 Years to Fully Release Pfizer COVID-19 Vaccine Data

Zachary Stieber, Epoch Times, DECEMBER 08, 2021

"The Food and Drug Administration is asking a judge to give it 75 years to produce data concerning the Pfizer and BioNTech vaccine, up 20 years from a previous request.

The agency, known as the FDA, told the court it can work faster than its previously proposed 500-pages-per-month-rate. But it also said there are over 59,000 more pages than mentioned in an earlier filing.

That discovery and a desire to make sure it can work on other Freedom of Information Act requests at the same time, prompted the fresh request to the judge to allow the production of roughly 12,000 pages by Jan. 31, 2022, and 500 pages per month thereafter.

That timeline would take it until at least 2096, Aaron Siri, a lawyer working on the case, said in a blog post."

"...The case was brought on behalf of the Public Health and Medical Professionals for Transparency, which said the FDA was not complying with its request for data in a timely manner.

https://outline.com/rj49eP

Narayanan said...

!@mikee - put on garland of LED bulbs for christmas ; [get in bed - optional] and everytime wifey touches make light flash

tim in vermont said...

Twitter is banning conservative voices for being conservative voices one after the other now that the new boss has taken over.

What did "Nancy Pelosi's Portfolio Tracker" do to get banned? Embarrassed Nancy Pelosi, who the account rightly pointed out was one of the most amazing stock pickers of all time, or she was using her access to inside information... Naah!

Lewis said...

Some creepy, East European beautiful, ghostly music:


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zr-XUEieU-s&list=RDMM&index=7

Lewis said...

'Ghostly' - because it haunts me.

Lewis said...

Like this:


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YfPlKNNS_p0

tim in vermont said...

"Fourth, you probably need to find new friends. Neurotic liberalism is almost as bad as woks."

I try to see them for what they are, propaganda victims, but a man can only do so much.

I don't really care if the "vaccine" is only a "therapeutic," that doesn't really carry any meat world weight with me. Right now in South Africa, the people who are actually on respirators from Omicron are unvaxxed in the vast majority. There is a possibility that Omicron seems mild because vaccination and natural immunity are far more widespread in this wave, and that it is not going to be mild among those unvaxxed, and who may falsely believe that they already had Covid. I hope that's not true, but it's far from certain, right now. Since many of the cases are breakthrough, of both the vax and natural immunity, and that it seems to infect younger people symptomatically, it may be that that seems to be skewing the cases mild.

Everybody in the world who has any contact with the outside word at all is going to get this virus, and after that happens, every wave after will be mild, but even a 'mild' case of COVID may be a nasty cold/fiu combination.

Scott Adams had a puzzler tweet yesterday, "If you believed that the vaccine would save millions, but kill tens of thousands would you recommend people take it anyway?"

I don't believe that the vaccine will kill tens of thousands, although it probably will kill people in smaller numbers, but I also would recommend the vaccine, even if it did, because we are "thrown," like out a window, which means that whatever we do, even nothing, will have consequences and modify our chances, at some point we are all going to "hit the ground" by getting infected with the virus. We can't live on a planet where this ChiCom virus isn't loose anymore than we could go back to not being thrown out of the window in our hypothetical. Maybe we will tuck and roll and not get hurt, maybe we will break our neck. Our choices will determine the probabilities of our fate, including choosing to do nothing. Therefore, even a vax that will kill some people is the right choice. Don't let fear porn about the vaccine make you choose poorly.

tim in vermont said...

"It's a therapeutic, not a vaccine"

"The perfect is the enemy of the good."

Lewis said...

So, I hear, again, about a brother running away from his responsibilities. What the f? Here am I bleeding because of one woman, smelling like the chimnies, all the chimnies, for 20 years! Why? Because I believe in something - how to be good. How not to be bad. Protect others from my violence. Be good. Be good. Grind your teeth at night. Stupid.

Lewis said...

She.


                   .I.

It is not for this that I waited alone,
Listless afore a feeble fire,
The sun impatient to have done.
All the lighting bad no matter its source,
The coarse street shoppers shouting excitement
In fears oblivion: I was patient,
Reading horrid Milton, sipping cheap tea,
Smoking a haze of desire in troubled Pandamonia.
And those ‘after thoughts’ circling a vortex
In the blackened hole of incurable want.


                         .II.

To long and a chair to comfortable
Excusing the silence of passive desistance:
I claimed ignorance, then corruption,
Then the impossible greatness of the task
And so destiny: fated thus
To the eternal Ovidian whine,
Claiming sanctuary in exile.
The dark obliged, the nocturnal vigil,
The lack of vitamin D:
Cold, an empty gullet, the night.



                         .III.

One Sunday I ventured out:
The street was the same shabby bin
Of flowering tin and copulent flies.
I discovered the polluted sea
As I had discovered her before:
From the strand and at a distance,
Reflecting a sapien backside,
Resigned, as passive as a slave,
To complexions blare. And so,
Seeing the mutual indifference
Of man and water, I did not protest,
I certainly was not shocked,
I retreated back to my door:
Another forty days vigil
In the barrel of my bed,
Expecting Alexander
With a preprepared, laconic tongue
So to list instructions
Confused but tolerable.


                   .IV.

Next the eye saw around
The hostility of the times,
The self sacrifice requisite to repair
Deep holes in the fabric
Torn in an uncaring glance.
This was She who held the power to maim,
Taking what accident had gathered
In a forceful hands fine brutality.
Pain of a posterior enervation
Left the relics of charred anatomy
Scattered as an after burn
Whether the death, the caput mortuum
Of an alchemical change
Or the autograph of a miracle –
Who knows?

                       .v.

Who dances in the Elysian fields
Or laughs in the alley of posterity?
No songs past memories rest: all, all a ball
Of billowing winds wrapping chaos
In the cries of vulgar sentience;
Or the mechanics of bombardment
And the assorted atom contending
For upper air in feverish necessities,
Scratched epitaphs of void.
Death is a place past illusion
Where permanents and eternity
Are finally confounded
As dust across a plain
When a plain has gone.

gilbar said...

ALP said...
In the world of Star Trek, earth manages to somehow solve all of our social problems - too bad an episode telling us how to DO that was never made.


i suspect, that The Eugenics Wars and WORLD WAR III had a Lot to do with it
( World War III ended, after a nuclear exchange, in 2053, but with a body count of 600 million.)

Mostly, the Eugenics though

wendybar said...

NYC let the Christmas Tree arsonist go to terrorize and vandalize more of NYC before the Holidays. I used to go there often as it is a quick train ride, but never again. Not as long as Progressives are ruining what was once a great city. It is a toilet again. A Progressive Utopia.

Lewis said...

Absence.


                   .I.

Caught in a translunar spot
A dying butterfly in a pool,
A thousand old visions lost
Mortal in it’s metal lids:

A note pinned upon a door
Through which a friend had made
Her exit: it was nearly missed,
A faltering rope, suspended, clue giving.


                    .II.

Breaking the fingers
Faulty in ice
Thoughts push along the floor,
Screech up a wet tank.

“I’ll rise next morning,
I’ll set the day.”

Lewis said...

Absence.


                   .I.

Caught in a translunar spot
A dying butterfly in a pool,
A thousand old visions lost
Mortal in it’s metal lids:

A note pinned upon a door
Through which a friend had made
Her exit: it was nearly missed,
A faltering rope, suspended, clue giving.


                    .II.

Breaking the fingers
Faulty in ice
Thoughts push along the floor,
Screech up a wet tank.

“I’ll rise next morning,
I’ll set the day.”

Narr said...

In the Star Trek universe, social problems didn't exist in the Federation because scarcity didn't exist. One can argue whether that makes sense, but it was the premise of the show.

It's not called science FICTION for nothing.

Lewis said...

                   .III.

Arm on the butter stain
That’s now between the cornflakes:
“She should have been here to enjoy.”

Lewis said...

TV - 'Giant Lobster Hunters', 'My incredible skin', 'My big fat life' isn't tv land fun? Other than that Star Trek, endless effing Star Trek.

Lewis said...

test

Lewis said...

Everybody knows, everybody knows this song:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lin-a2lTelg

Lewis said...

                   .III.

Arm on the butter stain
That’s now between the cornflakes:
“She should have been here to enjoy.”

TheOne Who Is Not Obeyed said...

"Everybody in the world who has any contact with the outside word at all is going to get this virus"

Assumed by you. There is no evidence that all people are susceptible. Indeed, there is a growing interest in the cases where people living in a household in close, continuous contact with COVID infected individuals did not contract the disease. Not as in being asymptomatic, but as in seemingly having no response to it at all. In some cases, households of 5 reported two infected and 3 unimpacted. Not even antibodies.

This common behavior of other corona viruses seems to be surprising to our scientific priests. It also helps explain why only about 10% of the US population has been infected. Wu Flu is deadlier than other coronas, Omicron is more contagious than other Wu Flu strains, but since it is still a corona virus it is likely that not everyone will ever be infected by it.

Lewis said...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O0HVeG-JpLc

Lewis said...

To Hannah Arrant

O, Hannah, there is always this:
Between the past and the future
There is this: dead? No, but
Wanting this ‘past’, always hoping
(‘Killed by hope’) for merely a summer:
A field, a forest, the wilder, wilder flowers.

Lewis said...

Strange Meeting.

Not many years after that we realigned,
Catching eye to eye a second sight:
With age had come the clearer thought that sees
And does not like, the in become the out.
Lining the brow with an ignorant script
Intervening chance and all those things not done
As two. And this chance that’s worst of all.

She seemed to say through move of eye and mouth
(Though she asked the usual things one asks)
That, where ever once we’d met, those people
Then had ceased to plague a time unfortunate
And dead: who were these gathered on a chance
It did not matter, an inconsequence
Set up to sting a faded photograph.

Faded, yes, but not gone: we both had kept
The odds and ends of our separate lives
And, this one conjunction amongst them all
Illusion, like the rest: one recovered,
The other not: “The lies that we call soul
I see and yet I cannot dispense with soul
But have kept that wound festeringly bad.”

And so her to I had not forgot. But,
As usual, I blindly circumscribed
My image there on cast. And though her face
Discouraged all it had not changed for me
But grew inside till it at last cracked out.
Shocked and battered and in retreat she said:
“Well, must be off. Another day, perhaps?”

Lewis said...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YfPlKNNS_p0&list=RDMM&index=2