Flotsam and/or Jetsam

CBD snake oil?

Posted on April 1, 2024April 1, 2024 by Mike

Can’t say myself, having neither expertise nor experience with it, and so won’t presume to offer an opinion. But I know several people who would argue strenuously with this one, including a couple of CF Lifers, none of whom are by any stretch what used to be called “heads.”

Large Review Finds CBD Products Don’t Relieve Chronic Pain After All
Evidence does not support the use of cannabidiol (CBD) products as a treatment for chronic pain, a new review found.

A meta-analysis of relevant studies published in scientific journals found a lack of convincing evidence that CBD – packaged as oils, vapes, creams, gummies, drinks, and more – reduces pain, prompting the team of UK and Canadian researchers to advise caution when comparing the marketing claims of CBD products.

Scientists were still learning about the potential benefits and risks of CBD when its promotion as a pain reliever took off with a substantial head start.

The authors hope more balanced, evidence-based advice can now be given to patients and their care providers, while research focuses on effective pain treatments.

“Untreated chronic pain is known to seriously damage quality of life, and many people live with pain every day,” says senior author Chris Eccleston, a pain scientist at the University of Bath.

“Pain deserves investment in serious science to find serious solutions.”

It does at that, certainly. Nevertheless, this meta-analysis serves as a reminder that, just as correlation is not causation, it’s usually a mistake to construe absence of evidence as evidence of absence, either.

(Via Insty)

Remembering the greatest American president of them all

Posted on March 31, 2024March 31, 2024 by Mike

Mister we could use a man like Calvin Coolidge again, as I’ve insisted here again and again over lo, these many years.

When Ronald Reagan put Calvin Coolidge’s portrait up in the White House Cabinet Room, taking down a painting of Thomas Jefferson, the outrage in the media was deafening.

Historians typically treated Coolidge with disdain as well. When I was in college, as my contemporary history professor went through the run-up to the Great Depression, the only thing he said of Coolidge was, “If you took the Washington Monument and dug a commensurate hole in the ground, that would be a fitting monument for Calvin Coolidge’s contributions to America.” That was it. No argument, no specifics, nothing to substantiate this view.

In the years since, historians have revisited Coolidge. Thomas B. Silver made an important contribution in the early 1980s with his book Coolidge and the Historians. Paul Johnson got a lot of the story right in Modern Times and A History of the American People. The restoration culminated in Amity Shlaes’s spectacular biography, Coolidge.

Of course, Coolidge still achieves middling marks in most presidential rankings. He has that reputation as Silent Cal. This is a superficial take. Coolidge was not silent at all. He gave more press conferences than any other president and used the radio well. But his taciturn nature remains legendary. It makes for fun reading.

Still, I have always thought historians who disliked Coolidge had a secondary purpose to attaching the Silent Cal label to him: they hoped you would ignore what he said—because if you read it, you might be persuaded by it.

No Real American could fail to be, far as I’m concerned. Taciturn Coolidge may (or may not) have been, but when he did utter, it was always to say something truly worth listening to. In fact, I’d go so far as to say that the current sad, sorry state of affairs can in part be blamed on our having failed to properly remember Silent Cal, along with his crucial words and thoughts on the essentials required to keep a nation free, strong, and thriving.

A few notable quotes illustrating the man’s philosophy of government, his sagacity and wit, his seemingly instinctual facility for stripping away the dross, fripperies, and distractions and cutting arrow-straight to the heart of any given issue.

“I want the people of America to be able to work less for the government and more for themselves. I want them to have the rewards of their own industry. This is the chief meaning of freedom.

Until we can reestablish a condition under which the earnings of the people can be kept by the people, we are bound to suffer a very severe and distinct curtailment of our liberty.”

“Our government rests upon religion. It is from that source that we derive our reverence for truth and justice, for equality and liberality, and for the rights of mankind. Unless the people believe in these principles they cannot believe in our government. There are only two main theories of government in our world. One rests on righteousness and the other on force. One appeals to reason, and the other appeals to the sword. One is exemplified in the republic, the other is represented by despotism.

The government of a country never gets ahead of the religion of a country. There is no way by which we can substitute the authority of law for the virtue of man. Of course we endeavor to restrain the vicious, and furnish a fair degree of security and protection by legislation and police control, but the real reform which society in these days is seeking will come as a result of our religious convictions, or they will not come at all. Peace, justice, humanity, charity—these cannot be legislated into being. They are the result of divine grace.”

“It is much more important to kill bad bills than to pass good ones.”

“Don’t you know that four fifths of all our troubles in this life would disappear if we would just sit down and keep still?”

“They criticize me for harping on the obvious; if all the folks in the United States would do the few simple things they know they ought to do, most of our big problems would take care of themselves.”

“The only way I know to drive out evil from the country is by the constructive method of filling it with good.”

“This country would not be a land of opportunity, America could not be America, if the people were shackled with government monopolies.”

“When a man begins to feel that he is the only one who can lead in this republic, he is guilty of treason to the spirit of our institutions.”

“It is difficult for men in high office to avoid the malady of self-delusion. They are always surrounded by worshipers. They are constantly, and for the most part sincerely, assured of their greatness. They live in an artificial atmosphere of adulation and exaltation which sooner or later impairs their judgment. They are in grave danger of becoming careless and arrogant.”

“The people cannot look to legislation generally for success. Industry, thrift, character, are not conferred by act or resolve. Government cannot relieve from toil. It can provide no substitute for the rewards of service. It can, of course, care for the defective and recognize distinguished merit. The normal must care for themselves. Self-government means self-support.”

Good stuff, no? My God, in light of current harsh reality the man wasn’t merely a president, he was a prophet. The total dearth of anything remotely resembling such high-minded yet eminently practical rhetoric delineating bedrock American ideals amongst contemporary ProPols has left the nation’s political discourse stunted and hopelessly diminished. Back to the first article for our denouement.

Coolidge was the last of our presidents in the model of the Founders. Every other president since him, in both parties, has been in the activist mold of Teddy Roosevelt or Woodrow Wilson to one degree or another.

And so Coolidge was the last of the statesmen who would have fit comfortably alongside Jefferson and Madison. We could use more presidents with that disposition.

If we think about what we want in our statesmen, what qualities of character, what depth of insight about our Constitution and how our society works, we would say we want more leaders like Coolidge.

A-friggin’ men to that, with big ol’ bells on. If we had any damned sense, at any rate.

America needs a miracle

Posted on March 31, 2024March 31, 2024 by Mike

By no means just one of ‘em, either.

Easter Reflections: George Washington’s Farewell Address in Today’s America
George Washington’s exhortations and admonitions are residues of a lost and probably unrecoverable past. What that means for us now and in the future is sobering to contemplate.

Sitting down the day before Easter, I thought I might say something about this most awful (in the old sense) holiday in the Christian calendar. But then Joseph R. Biden, the President of the United States, issued an official proclamation denominating March 31 as Transgender Day of Visibility. Farewell Easter! You just got superseded by the latest freak show in the great Democratic carnival of perversity.

I can’t compete with Transgender Day of Visibility. Nor can I compete with “Lizzo,” the kinky, obese black singer who performed for Joe Biden’s “grassroots” fundraiser at Radio City Music Hall last week. That event, which featured three presidents—Barack Obama, Bill Clinton, and Joe Biden—pulled in some $26 million for Biden’s 2024 presidential coffers. Tickets to the event topped out at $500,000 a pop. How’s that for a “grassroots” extravaganza? That same day, Donald Trump went to the wake for Jonathan Diller, the New York City cop who was gunned down in cold blood by Guy Rivera, a black ex-con who had 21 prior arrests. He also made a donation to a charitable organization to pay off the house mortgage for Diller’s widow.

I feel stymied by these contrasts, so I thought I would reprise, with some updates, a column featuring George Washington that I wrote for a prior Easter.

I recently chanced across a photograph of the lower Manhattan skyline at night from Good Friday in April 1956. Three skyscrapers dominating the space feature certain windows illuminated to form gigantic crosses to commemorate that most solemn of Christian holidays. The year 1956 was not that long ago. But how much has changed in those 60-odd years! Can you imagine such a public display of Christian affirmation in New York today? Nor can I.

That was then. Now things are different. As I write, New York Governor Kathy Hochul, following Joe Biden, has herself delivered a proclamation announcing that March 31, Easter Sunday, will be celebrated as Transgender Day of Visibility throughout the state. In order to observe this new holiday, various landmarks, including One World Trade Center, the Kosciuszko Bridge, and Niagara Falls, will be lit with the colors of the transgender flag.

I thought about such disjunctions between then and now when reading through Washington’s Farewell Address recently. Washington had intended to withdraw from politics when his first term ended in 1792. He asked James Madison to draft a valedictory statement but, when the time came, bickering among some of his Cabinet, especially between Thomas Jefferson and Alexander Hamilton, convinced him to run again. He set the original document aside.

But when 1796 rolled around, he was weary and determined to leave politics. He enlisted Hamilton to revise the statement, to which he added his own observations. The document is known as Washington’s “Farewell Address,” though Washington did not deliver it orally. Instead, he had it published in Claypoole’s American Daily Advertiser in September 1796, about 10 weeks before the election to choose his successor.

It was widely reprinted and became, in the words of the historian John Avlon, a sort of “civic scripture,” more widely reprinted even than the Declaration of Independence in the early years of the Republic. During the Civil War, both Houses of Congress began to hold annual readings of the document. The House abandoned the practice in 1984. The Senate continues the tradition to this day, selecting a senator (and alternating between parties) to read the document aloud on the Senate floor to commemorate Washington’s birthday.

Several passages from the Farewell Address have become inscribed on the collective memory of the nation. But what struck me rereading the 6,200-word statement is how much it appears as a period piece, a blast from an apparently unrecoverable past. Anyone who has read the Farewell Address will recall Washington’s stirring warnings against “the fury of party spirit,” foreign entanglements, his cautions against excessive debt, and his insistence on the place of religion as the foundation for civic order. The question is: what relevance do such injunctions have in present-day America?

…Finally, there is the matter of morality and its basis, religion. We modern sophisticates tend to blush when the subject of religion is broached. We mewl about “the separation of church and state” and wait for the moment we can utter the word “fundamentalist” to dismiss our opponents.

George Washington, however, was not a member of that anti-Christian church. Indeed, in one of the most famous passages of the Farewell Address, he stipulates that “Of all the dispositions and habits which lead to political prosperity, religion and morality are indispensable supports.” In case we didn’t get it the first time, he proceeds to drive the point home. “In vain would that man claim the tribute of patriotism who should labor to subvert these great pillars of human happiness, these firmest props of the duties of men and citizens. The mere politician, equally with the pious man, ought to respect and to cherish them.”

Okay, he says we ought to have regard for morality. For such an Enlightenment figure as George Washington, morality surely does not encompass or stand upon religion.

But it does. “Let us with caution,” he writes, “indulge the supposition that morality can be maintained without religion. Whatever may be conceded to the influence of refined education on minds of peculiar structure, reason and experience both forbid us to expect that national morality can prevail in exclusion of religious principle.”

Well, that was then. We’ve made such progress since 1796. We have embraced our hatred and antipathies with uncommon zeal, to the point where the words “secession” and “national divorce” are once again circulating in earnest. A snarling partisan spirit is alive and rancorous. We have in all essentials transformed ourselves from a republic into an oligarchy, trampling on such quaint guardrails as the separation and disbursement of powers. We have loaded ourselves—or, rather, we have been loaded—with eye-watering, incomprehensible mountains of debt. And we have loudly rejected the claims of traditional morality and religion as so many otiose and unprogressive holdovers from a discredited past.

Like those crosses outlined in light on the Manhattan skyline at night, George Washington’s exhortations and admonitions are residues of a lost and probably unrecoverable past. What that means for us now and in the future is sobering to contemplate. But this is Easter, a holiday commemorating a miracle. That is good, because we are going to need one.

We do at that, all the moreso with the bloated central government firmly in the talons of soulless demon-spawned fiends who would dare to piss all over Easter Sunday by replacing it with a “Transgender Day Of Visibility”—as if so-called “transgenders” weren’t the most visible, in-your-face minority in Amerika v2.0 already.

As I stated earlier, I’ll have more on that rancid obscenity tomorrow, as well as this accompanying profanation.

Joe Biden is fond of talking about being a Catholic, but he seems to have forgotten the meaning of the holy day of Easter.

Perhaps to him, it’s just that day when the Easter Bunny has to chase him around to prevent him from getting lost and saying something stupid.

This year, they’re holding an Easter egg design contest for the children of National Guard members. The theme is supposed to be celebrating National Guard families. But, guess what is forbidden in the designs? Any religious mention of Easter on the egg.

The rules for the contest state that an Easter egg design submission “must not include any questionable content, religious symbols, overtly religious themes, or partisan political statements.”

Now they may not want to display anything that appears to be endorsing a religion.

Oh, absolutely. We must all be mindful of the tender sensibilities of all those Moslems, Buddhists, Hindus, Taoists, Zoroastrians, &c who wish to celebrate Easter at the White House, right? I mean, there’s gotta be many, many thousands of ’em, if not millions, right? Only a H8RR Christianist ogre would ever dream of leaving them out.

Even then, they should have constructed this as something that doesn’t come across as forbidding religious expression.

But that’s the Biden team, just a complete mess when it comes to doing the simplest of things, including just recognizing the Easter holiday.

This is the same White House that managed to have a topless transgender activist at the White House during a pride event, but you won’t let kids reference religion during an Easter celebration?

Well, naturally. I mean, the horned, cloven-hoofed devils are for the former, and ag’in the latter. If you haven’t figured that out by now, you really need to start paying closer attention. Biden’s putative “Catholicism” remains exactly what it has been all along: a pose, a political prop to help him swindle his way into office, nothing more. Y’know, like the dog, the Corvette, the sunglasses, the “wife,” all the other affectations.

Easter blessings

Posted on March 31, 2024March 31, 2024 by Mike

A perfect Easter Sunday essay from Mark Tapscott, thankfully not paywalled.

Why Easter Is About the Single Most Important Fact in All History

How would you respond were you asked: what is the single most important fact in all of human history?

Rome fell? Roland died so Charlemagne could defeat the Saracens? The printing press? The U.S. Constitution? America beat the Nazis to the atomic bomb?

Those and many more facts have each arguably changed the course of history and could thus be cited with equal assurance of their relevance. However, there is one fact that not only fundamentally altered human history but defined reality for every person who ever has or ever will live.

That fact is the empty tomb of Jesus Christ.

Why the empty tomb? Because on Easter morning and for 40 days thereafter, Jesus was seen, touched, heard, and spoke to His disciples, then to other individuals in and around Jerusalem, and ultimately to more than 500 individuals.

The tomb was empty because Jesus was literally resurrected from the dead, thus validating everything He claimed about Himself, including “I am the Way, the Truth and the Life. No man comes to the Father but through Me.” (John 14:6).

But wait a minute, you may be thinking: what if somebody stole the dead body of Jesus and then falsely claimed that He had been resurrected? Well, let’s examine that possibility.

There are only three candidate groups who logically might have had a motive for stealing the body of Jesus. First, there are the disciples themselves. Critics have long claimed the disciples stole the body and then invented the Resurrection myth.

Here’s why that claim is preposterous: the disciples scattered when Jesus was arrested. They were terrified that they would be next. Peter’s thrice denial of even knowing Jesus is indicative of the group’s cowardice.

Why is that significant? None of the disciples is known to have had any military training, yet we are to believe that this scattered crew of cowards somehow found the courage to overcome a crack unit of the Roman Legion that was guarding the tomb, or buy them off, then hide Jesus’ body where it would never be found, and afterwards go out and tell everybody that Jesus was God?

The second candidate group would be Jesus’ enemies, chiefly, the Pharisees and Sadducees who were the religious leaders of Israel. Throughout His three-year ministry, Jesus had tangled with these religious leaders who accused Him of blasphemy for claiming to be God-become-man. That’s why they demanded that Pilate order Jesus crucified.

But let’s say they did steal Jesus’ dead body because they were quite aware that He had said He would “rise again.” (Mark 9:31). Weeks after Jesus’ crucifixion and burial Peter spoke to thousands of people on the Day of Pentecost, explicitly claiming Jesus was alive. Three thousand people became Jesus’s followers that day and the Christian church was born.

But if they had stolen His body from the tomb, as soon as Peter began claiming the Resurrection, Jesus’s enemies would have rolled his stinking, rotting corpse down Jerusalem’s Main Street to prove He was dead, not alive.

Then they would likely have arrested Peter and any of the rest of the disciples they could lay their hands on and crucified them. Instead of the day it was born, Pentecost would have been the day the Christian church died.

More follows, all of it well worth a read. Got a few more Easter browser tabs open, which I’m thinking I’ll just append to this post as updates, maybe.

Update! This one seems to be making the rounds all over the place today, as well it should be.

How they lit NYC for Easter in 1956. Crosses along Lower Manhattan Skyline, New York. The Three Crosses of Calvary… pic.twitter.com/lxpCA4fNHa

— Sachin Jose (@Sachinettiyil)

March 29, 2024

How very far we’ve come since then, every step in precisely the wrong direction.

Updated update! The Crucifixion, the Resurrection, and the Ascension were to the incalculable benefit of all mankind, to be sure. But some may have benefited more directly, more immediately, than others.

Pontius Pilate Sure Glad That Whole ‘Jesus’ Ordeal Is Done With
JERUSALEM — After a difficult week subduing mobs and navigating political landmines, Governor Pontius Pilate was relieved on Saturday to finally have the whole “Jesus of Nazareth” ordeal over and done with for good.

“Whew, glad that’s behind me,” said Pilate as he washed his hands once more. “I’m sure this will all blow over in a week or so. I was starting to worry this ‘Jesus’ episode might end up really coming back to haunt me.”

Though Pilate disagreed with the decision to crucify Jesus, he readily admitted that Jesus’ death helped avoid a stain on his governorship that could make its way into the history books. “I really dodged a stone there,” said Pilate. “A lesser governor could have ended up with a riot on his hands, or even lost control of the populace. I could have become a cautionary tale, like a part of some creed that people repeat. Not Pontius Pilate! Totally crushed it.”

Heh. I’ll give you exactly zero (0) guesses as to where I found this one, folks.

He is risen

Posted on March 31, 2024March 31, 2024 by Mike

Matthew 28:1-10 King James Version

28 In the end of the sabbath, as it began to dawn toward the first day of the week, came Mary Magdalene and the other Mary to see the sepulchre.

² And, behold, there was a great earthquake: for the angel of the Lord descended from heaven, and came and rolled back the stone from the door, and sat upon it.

³ His countenance was like lightning, and his raiment white as snow:

⁴ And for fear of him the keepers did shake, and became as dead men.

⁵ And the angel answered and said unto the women, Fear not ye: for I know that ye seek Jesus, which was crucified.

⁶ He is not here: for he is risen, as he said. Come, see the place where the Lord lay.

⁷And go quickly, and tell his disciples that he is risen from the dead; and, behold, he goeth before you into Galilee; there shall ye see him: lo, I have told you.

⁸ And they departed quickly from the sepulchre with fear and great joy; and did run to bring his disciples word.

⁹ And as they went to tell his disciples, behold, Jesus met them, saying, All hail. And they came and held him by the feet, and worshipped him.

¹⁰ Then said Jesus unto them, Be not afraid: go tell my brethren that they go into Galilee, and there shall they see me.

There, that will do for Easter Sunday morn. Plenty of time to deal with the criminal pedophile scum Joe Biden’s Satanic pronouncements tomorrow.

Powerful moment, powerful story

Posted on March 27, 2024March 27, 2024 by Mike

One to make even the coldest, most unempathetic heart go pit-a-pat.

WWII RAF veteran reunited with Battle of Britain aircraft
A WWII RAF veteran had the chance to fly alongside the aircraft he helped maintain during the heroic Battle of Britain in 1940.

Jeff Brereton, who celebrated this 102nd birthday earlier this year, took to the air in BE505, the world’s only two seat Hurricane, with R4118, the only remaining airworthy Mk 1 Hurricane to have taken part in the Battle of Britain, and the aircraft Jeff worked on, flying alongside.

Jeff, who lives in Evesham, Worcestershire, said: “I have great memories of the plane. Of all the aircraft I dealt with, that was the one that stuck in my mind. It was unbelievable to be able to see that aircraft again, that it had survived.”

Jeff’s amazing story first come to light when he gave an interview with Air Mail, the RAF Association’s member magazine. The team realised that the Hurricane Jeff worked on had not only been restored but was still flying.

The Association immediately got in touch with James Brown, the current owner of the R4118 Hurricane. James runs Hurricane Heritage, an organisation based at the historic White Waltham Airfield where visitors can experience flying in and alongside these iconic aircraft.

James arranged for Jeff to come to the airfield with his family and jump in the cockpit and take to the skies.

James said: “The story is just an unbelievable coincidence and it’s so incredibly lucky to have found Jeff. I just couldn’t believe that there was this amazing guy who was still around and actually remembers working on our Hurricane.”

Is there video, you ask? Why yes, there is, and it’s three and a half minutes of good, good stuff. The last minute or so especially, when the in-flight footage of those two beautiful old Hurries tooling along in close right echelon kicks in.

During the in-flight sequence of the vid, after his unique check-ride, Brereton says:

The main signal he gave me…he said if you’ve had enough put your thumbs down, and I’ll get you down to the ground as quickly and safely as we can. But I didn’t want to, I was putting them up, I want to go up. And it was that feeling, that sort of feeling that…you can’t have that feeling on earth. You see the same clouds and things, but they don’t look the same, they’re not the same, they don’t feel the same. Just wonderful, I can’t wait to go again. I can’t.

Well said, sir. You just put into words the sensation that makes the miracle of powered flight in a piston-engine aircraft so incredibly addictive. I can’t imagine there’s an aviator alive who didn’t smile and nod his head knowingly in complete agreement with everything you just said. God bless you, Jeff.

Further details of Jeff Brereton’s RAF days perusable here.

(Via Bayou Peter)

Is Hillary Clinton now running Boeing or something?

Posted on March 25, 2024March 25, 2024 by Mike

Well. Well, well, well, well, well, well, well, well, WELL.

Another day, another suspicious ‘suicide’
With each high-profile “suicide” that looks like anything but, I get these suspicions (apologies to Eddie Rabbit). It’s always the same basic story: obvious murder motive; hard-to-believe coincidences; a revisionist coroner who says it was suicide despite evidence to the contrary; the police who say they will leave no stone unturned but after the attention dies down say it was indeed a suicide; relatives and friends say the deceased had a zest for life and told them shortly before his untimely demise that if anything happens to him, it was not suicide.

The latest is Boeing whistleblower John Barnett, who, seven years after retiring from Boeing, where he had worked for 32 years as a quality control manager, was in the middle of giving a deposition in a retaliation lawsuit exposing serious safety problems with the 787 Dreamliner. From Newsmax:

“We understand the global attention this case has garnered, and it is our priority to ensure that the investigation is not influenced by speculation but is led by facts and evidence,” police said in a statement.

A coroner’s report said Barnett, 62, died from a “self-inflicted” wound, though a close family friend of Barnett’s told WCIV-TV, “I know he did not commit suicide.”

“He wasn’t concerned about safety because I asked him,” the friend said. “I said, ‘Aren’t you scared?’ And he said, ‘No, I ain’t scared, but if anything happens to me, it’s not suicide.’”

The person added: “I know that he did not commit suicide. There’s no way. He loved life too much. He loved his family too much. He loved his brothers too much to put them through what they’re going through right now.”

Follows, a non-comprehensive list of super-hinky supposed self-offings.

Does any sentient human being really believe that Jeffrey Epstein, who could have brought down not only many rich and famous people, but also many important politicians, committed suicide shortly after saying he wouldn’t; when the night he died, the prison guards were AWOL and the cameras aimed at his cell door just happened not to work; the damage to his neck was not compatible with self-hanging, etc.? What about Seth Rich, the one who likely released the DNC emails, who had a wallet full of cash on him despite his death allegedly being a robbery (later called “botched”); the two mysterious figures caught on video who killed him being given about as much attention by the authorities as the one who planted the fake pipe bombs around the Capitol; the FBI denied having files on him but then later had to admit it did even at the time it said it didn’t (i.e., lied); etc.? What about Mark Middleton, affiliated with both the Clintons and Epstein, who committed double-suicide: a gun blast through his chest while hanging from a tree by his neck with an electric cord around it, with no gun found in proximity to the body? In the above link you can read the deputy sheriff’s report, which doesn’t address the obvious problems. If you question even this suicide, you’re a conspiracy theorist.

There are many more “suicides” where these came from.

Because of COURSE there are.

Squatters rights

Posted on March 21, 2024March 21, 2024 by Mike

“Vigilantes”? Hardly, seems to me.

‘Vigilantes’ try to evict squatters at $1M Queens house after homeowner who confronted them is arrested in tense standoff
A pair of vigilantes allegedly tried to forcefully evict three alleged squatters from a million-dollar Queens home after the homeowner was arrested when she changed the locks and tried to remove them.

Two unidentified men driving a black pickup truck pulled into the driveway of the Flushing home searching for the tenants Tuesday afternoon, according to the Daily Mail.

“We are looking to get this guy out,” one of the men allegedly said, a neighbor told the outlet. “I am here to talk to him. I want to see why he is here.”

Adele Andaloro, 47, was in the process of selling the property when the group shadily took refuge in the home last month.

Andaloro inherited the $1 million property from her parents after they died.

She confronted the trio and changed the locks in hopes they would not be able to re-enter if they left.

However, a male inside the home called the police on Andaloro, who was later arrested.

Neighbors have noticed some concerning activity from the house since the alleged squatters snaked their way into the home.

Residents of tight-knit Queens Street, which many have called home for over 30 years, expressed that they’re ready to do as much as possible to get the alleged intruders out. Some have even floated the idea of starting a petition in hopes that it will help, according to the Daily Mail.

A beloved community member, Andaloro put the two-story home on the market, but that’s when the tenants got in and brazenly replaced the entire front door and locks.

Before her arrest on Feb. 29 — which was captured by ABC’s “Eyewitness News” — Andaloro faced off with the group in a tense standoff.

The police were eventually called and escorted two people off the property.

With at least three apparent residents still inside, cops told Andaloro she had to sort the saga out in housing court because it was considered a “landlord-tenant issue” before she was arrested.

Utterly, utterly pathetic. Unless and until the nabe gets itself some serious vigilantes willing to adopt measures a bit more forceful than “talking” and petitions, Queens Street will just have to live with their new “neighbors” whether they like it or not.

I lived on the top floor of a five-floor walkup on 13th between 1st and 2nd in Manhattan for a year (ask me how much I love stairs!). In one of the two ground-floor-front apartments was a woman who’d lived there rent-free for over ten years; she had sued the landlord over some piffling dispute or other, and they’d been tangled up in court ever since, resulting in her refusal to pay another dime of rent. She fully expected to continue living there without paying rent indefinitely, and is probably there still.

Artist Joe Coleman lived in the apartment directly under mine; I used to run into him all the time in the stairwells or just sitting out on the front stoop, one of my favorite things to do on my days off work, weather permitting. Old Joe was what used to be politely referred to as “a real character,” had lived in the building for years himself. And Lord, the horror stories he used to tell me about that old building!

I’d never thought much about it until Joe commended it to my attention, but in the quieter watches of the night you’d hear this strange sound as of sand sifting down between and behind the walls—which, according to Joe, is exactly what it was. The plaster was crumbling, the joists and interior timbers eroding, the whole mess slooooowly slip-sliding away into the basement all night and day. There were only three months left on our lease when Joe related this to me; me and the gf decided we would NOT be re-upping.

One night, our power went out during a bad thunderstorm. I grabbed my trusty Maglite and hurried downstairs to see if I could find a breaker to reset or a fuse in need of replacing, wherever the damned box turned out to be; I had no idea about that, all I knew for sure was that there wasn’t one in our apartment. On the ground floor I ran into the building super on his way to the basement, a friendly, avuncular sort who I’d come to know a little, and who seemed quite glad to see me…or my flashlight, more like.

He led me through the basement to the main fuse box, where I replaced three blown fuses with new ones he handed me from his pocket. On our way back out, he pointed out two rows, stacked three high, of plywood cubicles along either side of our path: cramped, stuffy holes containing bedding, items of clothing, miscellaneous unidentifiable bric-a-brac. These cubicles were almost hilariously poorly-built and flimsy-looking, as if they’d been designed and constructed by a little kid using the Fisher-Price Jr Carpentry Set Santy Claus had left under the tree last Christmas.

The odor wafting from this subterranean jungle—stale sweat, dirty linens and/or clothes, unwashed bodies, rotting fruit, human piss—was literally eye-watering.

The super explained to me with a conspiratorial grin what I was looking at: here in this dark, dank 13th St basement were the living quarters for about thirty or forty Chinese illegals, who exchanged a measly rent every Monday for the right to coop a few hours a day in these squalid, nightmarish little rats’ nests, spending the other 18 to 20 hours working in garment-district sweatshops; shared-storage waterfront warehouses or outer-borough factories; Chinatown restaurants, or whatever other sketchy employment an illegal alien could scrounge to bring in coolie wages he could kite to his Honorable Family back home.

I had heard of such arrangements before, of course—what New Yorker hasn’t? Same-same could be found under any number of non-luxury buildings all over the Lower East Side, I knew. Trust me, though, it’s one thing to know intellectually that these things, these people, exist; it’s quite another to see it in front of your very eyes, under your very nose. I was neither naif enough to be shocked, nor jaded enough to just shrug it off and forget about it. In fact, I never have.

Rent control, squatters rights, property owners who are paid more by the city to keep their residential buildings vacant than they could hope to make renting them—NYC’s real estate regulations are a jumbled, incomprehensible maze of payola, corruption, and backscratching that neither tenants, property managers, or owners are at all happy with; that artificially keep rents at insanely-inflated levels; that keep dangerously decrepit buildings in desperate need of repair neglected; and that leave entire city neighborhoods unstable, unprofitable, unaffordable, and unsafe.

The losing tradition

Posted on March 21, 2024March 21, 2024 by Mike

David Solway examines some evidence that Real Americans are mired up to the axles in one.

Why Do We Almost Always Lose?
One of the besetting vices of the conservative disposition is the tendency to regard potential or likely victories in contested situations as inevitable. The conservative mind is not happy with the reality principle. It prefers not to see that menacing and intractable elements often lie beneath the cover of apparent failure. Such tranced insensibility is always quick to snatch fantasy from reality, proof that conservative analysis is often unreliable and prone to underestimating the cleverness and determination of the Left. This seems to be one reason (there are others) that conservatives have trouble winning.

Let’s consider three current examples of this unfortunate tropism.

1) Arizona candidate for governor Kari Lake’s case against Katie Hobbs on grounds of electoral impropriety and mismanagement, citing compelling evidence that had many commentators confident of courtroom success, was predictably tossed by the presiding judge, Peter A. Thompson. I say “predictably” by which I mean “utterly obvious to anyone with eyes to see.” As I wrote in a earlier article for PJM, the belief that Kari Lake’s evidence-based lawsuit against electoral fraud would bear fruit — “Kari Lake Just Ended Katie Hobbs” is the title of one conservative video — is another indication of wishful thinking rather than sober insight. The evidence of electoral malfeasance was dispositive but, given the state of the judiciary in a heavily left-oriented county, there was never any possibility of a fair judgment. Kari Lake had truth and justice on her side, which, in the ideological universe of the Left, meant she didn’t have a chance. Any astute observer would have seen that.

2) Among conservative sites like Turley Talks, The Five, and others, the general jubilating consensus in the Fani Willis travesty was that Willis would surely be cited for various forms of obvious misconduct, possibly disbarred, and certainly would not be permitted to proceed with her election interference prosecution of Donald Trump. The list of misdemeanors was so absurdly extensive as to read like a plot by the ancient Greek playwright Aristophanes, that is, like a comedy trying hard not to be a tragedy. Watching these programs and interviews, my wife and I were struck by the debilitating naivety of the various commentators. We knew well before the fact, and for a fact, that the presiding Fulton County Superior Court Judge Scott McAfee would effectively punt the case, despite the overwhelming evidence that there was an actual conflict of interest, violation of ethical rules, perjury, and unprofessional conduct on the part of Willis. Alan Dershowitz and Victoria Taft have eviscerated the judge’s ruling, but it should have been plain from the get-go that the verdict was pre-ordained. We note also that McAfee will be facing a black primary challenger in in a Democrat-run, largely black county. Just saying.

3) Most significantly, many commentators have wondered why the Democrat Party would run an obviously senile, incompetent, corrupt, and half-demented failed president as a candidate for re-election against a hale and vigorous challenger. Following his clearly medically amped-up State of the Union Address, writes Matt Margolis, “we’ve seen Biden return to his usual low-energy, gaffe-prone self,” which does not augur well for his electoral prospects. Indeed, many of the pundits and talking heads representing the Republican side of the political divide are exulting in a sure victory, a decisive sweep of the electoral college, a favorable march of battleground states, and are perhaps even more exuberant than they were in 2020 and 2022 when victory was also presumably assured. They did not allow for a massive game of three-card monte then and, while acknowledging that the Democrats are up to their old tricks now, believe that Trump is sufficiently popular to effortlessly clear the margin of fraud.

Wrong again. The Democrats can run a doddering and decrepit excuse for a functioning politician and a demonstrably nasty human being because they are convinced that they will win again. We recall that Katie Hobbs did not bother to debate her immensely popular gubernatorial opponent Kari Lake, no doubt because she knew beforehand that, as Secretary of State presiding over the official certification, and with a compliant judiciary, friendly media sumpters, and biddable tabulators, she had the election won. Similarly, the federal Democrats are supremely confident that they have the election already in their pocket via a strategy of relentless lawfare and financial extortion against Trump, weaponized justice and policing agencies, a suborned media apparatus, digital collaborators, a degenerate university system, ballot harvesting tactics, a crew of vote counters, an army of mules to carry out their instructions, and, as Ben Bartee at PJM points out, the very real possibility of unleashing a COVID 2.0 pandemic “if and when they believe it will be politically expedient, potentially even existential, for them.” The Democrats are not to be underestimated. They could run a mummified cadaver and still win handily.

As Jeffrey Tucker points out, “this president is plunging us straight into lawlessness and dictatorship,” his dimwitted and narcoleptic condition notwithstanding. But enough of the dictatorial machine is already in place to plausibly guarantee a resounding triumph, since most of the votes will be Monopoly votes, no doubt deposited under cover of darkness as in 2020.

A-yup—as we shall soon see yet again, then refuse to learn from…yet again. One of my biggest gripes about Rush Limbaugh over the years was his mulish insistence that the FUSA was “a conservative-majority nation,” when that manifestly was, and is, NOT the case.

It’s doubtful in the extreme that seriously liberty-minded individuals have ever constituted more than a tiny minority in ANY nation, throughout human history. In this one, where even among self-proclaimed “staunch conservatives” the instantaneous reaction to any problem, conundrum, or conflict is always to tub-thump for more government involvement as the “solution”? Gedouddaheah, ya makin’ me laugh wid dat shit /end Brooklyn accent.

Blarney

Posted on March 17, 2024 by Mike

Aesop says, “And speaking of thieving, only an Irishman could steal every scene he was in, in a movie about a famous Scot.” He ain’t wrong about that, in my half-Scots/Irish estimation.

In your FACE, Normie!

Posted on March 14, 2024March 15, 2024 by Mike

Stridently, obnoxiously “queer” online newsragazine Them whines like a little bitch.

Lady Gaga Stands Up for Dylan Mulvaney: “Hatred Is Violence”

And so, right out of the gate we know how utterly full of horseshit of the purest ray serene they are. Wanna learn how stark the difference is between “hatred” and violence is, fucktards? Go on Fucking Around as you are and you’ll surely Find Out sooner or later. Get the hell out of our faces, on the other hand, and we’ll be perfectly happy to stay out of yours.

On Monday, March 11, Gaga shared a post of her own featuring a photo of herself and Mulvaney, writing, “It’s appalling to me that a post about National Women’s Day by Dylan Mulvaney and me would be met with such vitriol and hatred.”

“When I see a newspaper reporting on hatred but calling it ‘backlash’ I feel it is important to clarify that hatred is hatred, and this kind of hatred is violence,” the singer-songwriter continued. “‘Backlash’ would imply that people who love or respect Dylan and me didn’t like something we did. This is not backlash. This is hatred.”

Gaga noted that while this response is unfortunately “not surprising,” she feels protective of Mulvaney and the larger trans community “who continues to lead the way with their endless grace and inspiration in the face of constant degradation, intolerance, and physical, verbal, and mental violence.”

“May we all come together and be loving, accepting, warm, welcoming,” she added. “May we all stand together and honor the complexity and challenge of trans life — that we do not know, but can seek to understand and have compassion for. I love people too much to allow hatred to be referred to as ‘backlash.’ People deserve better.”

Anybody else besides me good and goddamned sick of being endlessly lectured about what hard-core Leftists think they “deserve”? Of their intentional, casual distortion of the sun-bright distinctions between “hatred,” “violence,” and “genocide”? Divemedic spells it out clearly and concisely, in such a fashion as permits no misunderstanding whatever.

So if a man says he is a woman, and you use objective reality to disagree with him, you have just committed violence against him. Why are they saying this?

So they can justify the actual violence that they are about to use in eliminating you. Make no mistake, this is the attitude that they will use to come after you, to unperson you, deny you services, and place you into reeducation camps. You will deserve it in their minds, because you called Dylan Mulvaney a ‘he’ instead of a ‘she’ while not allowing him to celebrate being a woman.

Annnnnd bingo, there you have it. Jump back and get over yourselves, you stupid, lying sissymarys. Scree scree scree as you will about what you do and do not “deserve”; we see through your silly game, and aren’t gonna dance to your shrill, rancid tune anymore. Period, full stop, end of fucking story. You, along with every other hoomon on Earth, “deserve” exactly, precisely nothing whatsoever you haven’t worked hard to earn, and that’s flat.

If you don’t believe it, try this little experiment: shag your sorry ass on out to the middle of the Gobi desert, sit down on a dune, and wait for a benevolent, caring universe to present you with all those wonderful things you insist you “deserve” thanks purely to being another useless eater and little or nothing else besides. Assuming you survive—PRO TIP: you won’t—you’ll emerge from the experience knowing at long last all about what you “deserve”—a real FAFO lesson you won’t soon forget.

Update! In his magisterial Starship Troopers, the peerless Robert Anson Heinlein explicates the basic principle at issue here far above my poor power to add or detract. From Chapter Eight’s recounting of the course of classroom instruction under the redoubtable, unforgettable COL DuBois:

“The basis of all morality is duty, a concept with the same relation to group that self-interest has to individual. Nobody preached duty to these kids in a way they could understand — that is, with a spanking. But the society they were in told them endlessly about their ‘rights.’

“The results should have been predictable, since a human being has no natural rights of any nature.”

Mr. Dubois had paused. Somebody took the bait. “Sir? How about ‘life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness’?”

“Ah, yes, the ‘unalienable rights.’ Each year someone quotes that magnificent poetry. Life? What ‘right’ to life has a man who is drowning in the Pacific? The ocean will not hearken to his cries. What ‘right’ to life has a man who must die if he is to save his children? If he chooses to save his own life, does he do so as a matter of ‘right’? If two men are starving and cannibalism is the only alternative to death, which man’s right is ‘unalienable’? And is it ‘right’? As to liberty, the heroes who signed that great document pledged themselves to buy liberty with their lives. Liberty is never unalienable; it must be redeemed regularly with the blood of patriots or it always vanishes. Of all the so-called ‘natural human rights’ that have ever been invented, liberty is least likely to be cheap and is never free of cost.

“The third ‘right’? — the ‘pursuit of happiness’? It is indeed unalienable but it is not a right; it is simply a universal condition which tyrants cannot take away nor patriots restore. Cast me into a dungeon, burn me at the stake, crown me king of kings, I can ‘pursue happiness’ as long as my brain lives — but neither gods nor saints, wise men nor subtle drugs, can insure that I will catch it.”

Far as I’m concerned, nobody’s ever said it better, either before or since. Yet another reason I’ve always maintained that anybody who hasn’t read and closely considered Heinlein’s stuff really, really needs to.

Updated update! Since they bear such uncanny relevance to our situation today, it would be grossly remiss of me not to include Chapter Eight’s penultimate ‘graphs.

“Mr. Dubois then turned to me. “I told you that ‘juvenile delinquent’ is a contradiction in terms.

“‘Delinquent’ means ‘failing in duty.’ But duty is an adult virtue — indeed a juvenile becomes an adult when, and only when, he acquires a knowledge of duty and embraces it as dearer than the self-love he was born with. There never was, there cannot be a ‘juvenile delinquent.’ But for every juvenile criminal there are always one or more adult delinquents — people of mature years who either do not know their duty, or who, knowing it, fail.

“And that was the soft spot which destroyed what was in many ways an admirable culture. The junior hoodlums who roamed their streets were symptoms of a greater sickness; their citizens (all of them counted as such) glorified their mythology of ‘rights’…and lost track of their duties. No nation, so constituted, can endure.”

And so, unsurprisingly to Heinlein devotees, it hasn’t.

Big Boeing trouble

Posted on March 13, 2024March 13, 2024 by Mike

Well, THIS certainly doesn’t stink to high Heaven or anything, now does it?

Boeing Whistleblower Found Dead of ‘Self-Inflicted’ Gunshot, 787 Suffers Another Mishap
Former Boeing Quality Manager John Barnett was found dead in a Charleston, S.C., parking lot on Saturday from a “self-inflicted gunshot wound,” according to local police — opening up yet another bizarre chapter in the troubled aircraft maker’s recent history.

Barnett had given “stark warnings” about quality control issues on two models of Boeing passenger jets, including substandard parts and using Dawn dishwashing soap as a lubricant. The 62-year-old had also claimed that Boeing executives were hiding the company’s safety issues rather than addressing them.

“My concerns are with the 737 and 787 because those programs have really embraced the theory that quality is overhead and non-value-added,” Barnett told TMZ after the infamous Jan. 5 incident when a door plug blew off an Alaska Air 737 MAX 9 that depressured the cabin and exposed passengers to open air shortly after takeoff.

Brian Knowles was Barnett’s attorney and described in an email to Corporate Crime Reporter what happened in the days leading up to Barnett’s death:

John had been back and forth for quite some time getting prepared. The defense examined him for their allowed seven hours under the rules on Thursday. I cross-examined him all day yesterday (Friday) and did not finish. We agreed to continue this morning at 10 a.m. (co-counsel) Rob (Turkewitz) kept calling this morning and his (Barnett’s) phone would go to voicemail. We then asked the hotel to check on him. They found him in his truck dead from an ‘alleged’ self-inflicted gunshot. We drove to the hotel and spoke with the police and the coroner.

If you’re thinking the whole thing stinks, we’re in agreement.

Oh, pish-tosh; don’t be ridiculous, you paranoid, cynical old grumpy Gus. I mean, just ’cause the poor guy shot himself six times in the back of the head with a bolt-action rifle, then hung himself, then ran himself over with his own car, then set himself on fire and swallowed a gallon of Drano, there you go getting all suspicious and untrusting-like.

Why, I have it on very good authority that Hillary Clinton was nowhere NEAR Charleston that night, for starters.

Update! Problem: SOLVED.

Boeing Proudly Announces It Has Fixed Malfunctioning Whistleblower
ARLINGTON, VA — In response to mounting public criticism of its quality standards, aerospace corporation Boeing proudly announced it has fixed its malfunctioning whistleblower.

The longtime industry leader in commercial aircraft manufacturing had been in hot water following a string of highly publicized malfunctions and accidents involving its planes, leaving the company desperate to find a solution to its problems.

“That should take care of everything,” a Boeing spokesman said. “After extensive investigation into the recent engineering and design quality issues, we determined that many of these problems could be traced back to this whistleblower. We are proud to announce that we have, in fact, fixed the whistleblower. Permanently.”

Following the decisive action taken to resolve its whistleblower issue, Boeing expressed confidence that it will be smooth sailing moving forward. “We don’t foresee any more problems,” the spokesman said. “Everyone here at Boeing feels much safer now.”

When asked how fixing the whistleblower would solve ongoing issues with the design and assembly of the aircraft, the spokesman offered the following response: “There aren’t any more problems. Got it? If you disagree, you can take it up with our newest board member, Hillary Clinton.”

Heh. Her Herness© DOES seem to keep popping up whenever one of these “fixes” is needed, doesn’t she? I mean, this makes twice just in this post alone. HMMMMM…

The incomparable Grace Kelly

Posted on March 11, 2024March 11, 2024 by Mike

A few little-known facts about one of the hottest babes EVAR.

3 of 7 A Failed Screen Test Fueled Her Later Success
Sometime between 1950 and 1952 (sources differ on the year), Kelly auditioned for the part of a desperate Irish woman in a New York City-based drama called Taxi (1953). She was passed over for the role, but her screen test eventually found its way to celebrated director John Ford, who lobbied for the little-known actress to be included in his high-profile adventure film Mogambo (1953). Separately, Alfred Hitchcock also saw something intriguing in the same Taxi screen test, leading to Kelly’s first true starring role, in Dial M for Murder (1954).

4 of 7 She Enjoyed a Running Gag With Alec Guinness
As told in Spoto’s High Society, Kelly and Alec Guinness engaged in a running gag that lasted more than two decades after their time together on the prank-filled set of The Swan (1956). After Kelly relentlessly teased her co-star about an overzealous fan, Guinness retaliated by having a concierge slip a tomahawk into her hotel bed. A few years later, Guinness was surprised to return to his London home and discover the same tomahawk nestled between his bedsheets. He later enlisted English actor John Westbrook to redeliver the item while Kelly and Westbrook toured the U.S. for a poetry reading during the 1970s, but her highness got the last laugh when Guinness again found the tomahawk in his Beverly Hills hotel bed in 1979.

5 of 7 Her Romance With Prince Rainier Got Off to a Rocky Start
Per High Society, Kelly was in France to attend the 1955 Cannes Film Festival when she agreed to travel to Monaco to meet Prince Rainier III (part of a scheme put together by the magazine Paris-Match for a photo story). However, the prince was delayed by a commitment elsewhere, and by the time he rushed back to his palace an hour late, his fed-up guest was ready to leave. When Rainier asked if she wanted to tour the palace, Kelly coolly replied that she’d already done so while waiting. They subsequently relaxed while walking through the palace garden, their brief meeting giving rise to an epistolary friendship that turned romantic, and eventually led to their “wedding of the century” in April 1956.

I like Kelly enough to have cobbled myself together a custom desktop pic of her juxtaposed against the NYC skyline many years ago, complete with P-shopped-in lightning bolt, which is still proudly in use to this very day. To wit:

Lasses just don’t come much lovelier and more winsome than Grace Kelly, the likes of which they just aren’t making nowadays, more’s the pity.

Update! Might’s well throw in the two other GK desktops I made at the same time as the above one, these two complete with pithy, apt quotes.

My God, as can be seen in Numero the Second, even Grace’s feet were flawlessly beautiful. And just like that, it occurs to me that I really need to set up the iMac’s desktop-pic-switching automagickal function to alternate randomly between these three. If you can’t squint hard enough to read the two quotes, the first is from Mark Twain: ”What would men be without women? Scarce, sir, mighty scarce.”

The bottom words of eternal wisdom come from Farrah Fawcett (!!): “God gave women intuition and femininity. Used properly, the combination easily jumbles the brain of any man I’ve ever met.” True brilliance and insight from what many would consider a most unlikely source, eh?

No, I am NOT a robot

Posted on March 11, 2024 by Mike

Not that those CAPTCHA tests they force you to click on really care. That, after all, isn’t what they’re really all about. Of course, and as usual.

This is what clicking that ‘I’m Not A Robot’ button REALLY does — and it’s probably not what you’re thinking
This security method is known as a CAPTCHA, which stands for Completely Automated Public Turing test to tell Computers and Humans Apart. The Turing Test, originally named the Imitation Game, was created by British computer scientist Alan Turing in the 1950s and is designed to put Artificial Intelligence to the test and determine whether it’s indistinguishable from a human mind.

So, is Google simply checking whether AI is smart enough to know to click on the “I’m Not A Robot” button? Not quite.

As revealed by the researchers from BBC’s QI in an episode that first aired in 2020, ticking the box allows Google to trawl your internet browsing history to determine whether you’re a real user or a bot trying to force entry.

QI host and comedian Sandi Toksvig explained: “Ticking the box is not the point. It’s how you behaved before you ticked the box that is analysed. To be honest, I can’t tell you all the details because they keep it secret because they don’t want people trying to cheat the test, but broadly speaking, you tick the box and it prompts the website to check your browsing history.

“For example, before you tick the box you watched a couple of cat videos and you liked a tweet about Greta Thunberg, you checked your Gmail account before you got down to work — all of that makes them think that you must be a human.”

Google, which is behind much of the CAPTCHA security tests you’ll come across online — usually under its reCAPTCHA brand name, can’t access your entire search history. Instead, it’s likely checking websites that it owns (Gmail, YouTube, searches on Google, Google Maps) or those where it has some visibility thanks to the “Sign-In With Google” buttons, analytics or advertising, or the CAPTCHA itself.

That’s a huge proportion of the internet.

So, there must be SOME way out of this—some way of safeguarding your personal privacy and security that doesn’t cost an arm, a leg, and a lot of hassle to protect yourself from yet another Goolag intrusion into what, in the end, is really none of their goddamned business, right? RIGHT?!?

No. No, there is not.

Unfortunately, if you think that using a private browsing mode in your web browser, like Incognito Mode in Google Chrome, keeps your data out of reach ― that’s not the case. In fact, Google was recently forced to add a new warning to its Incognito Mode feature to keep users in the loop about the risks.

The only way to keep your browsing history completely out-of-reach is to encrypt everything with a Virtual Private Network. NordVPN is an example of a VPN that keeps everything you do online locked away— so that even Google or your broadband provider is unable to see what you’re doing. Prices start from £3.19.

As well as trawling a slither of your recent internet history to work out whether you’re behaving like a real human being, there is another use for the CAPTCHA quizzes that you complete. Picking the correct image of a fire hydrant, zebra crossing, or school bus is actually helping to train Artificial Intelligence behind-the-scenes.

Not a single bit of which most if not all of us are interested in helping them out with, or so I’d bet. Bastards.

I must say, Tor looks better and better all the time.

(Via Stephen and Ed)

Is Woke broke?

Posted on March 8, 2024March 8, 2024 by Mike

I don’t really give a tinker’s damn about the two main topics at hand here—the Wokester incursion into comic books, and Gamergate, whatever the hell that was and/or is—being neither a reader of comic books nor a video game person—but I love the “Cancel Pig” epithet so much I’m running with it anyhoo.

The story: A Boston comic retailer complained that he could not sell a lot of the crap comics the industry was spamming out. (Obviously he is very sensitive to bad, unsaleable comics — they murder the retailers who are tricked into buying them, but then cannot sell them for full price, or even for half price. Comic books are not returnable.)

One major complaint he had was that the nitwit writers were not writing classic, very manly characters like Tony Stark or Steve Rogers in-character. Rather, they substitute their own femmy, Current Year concerns, phobias, and anxieties make man’s men parrot their own Twitter freak-outs.

The typical Cancel Police immediately attempted to cancel this man. They made fun of him for being, well, a comic book fan — he was overweight, older, not-too-stylish, and a bit awkward. One obese comic book writer attacked him for being fat.

A woke black comic book artist — well, a low-level artist — named Jerome Igle decided to brand him a racist, not based on anything he said (he did not mention race at all, nor did he allude to it), but based on the fact that he said this guy reminded him of a disgusting, dirty comic book shop owner he had known who was racist.

See, this guy reminded him of someone else, and that guy (he claims) was racist, so: Q.E.D.

Wow, Jerome — good to see your many, many accusations of racism are built upon a firm foundation.

The cancellation train was beginning to chug along and approaching top speed, when suddenly it ran into a problem: star comic book writer Mark Millar, writer of Kick-Ass, the Kingsmen, and a bunch of bestselling comics turned into movies and TV shows, stepped up and defended the comic shop owner, echoed his complaints about storied characters being written as if they were 25-year-old Twitter Addicts, and castigated people for attempting to cancel a man for merely offering his (unobjectionable) opinion.

Suddenly the comic book “pros” who were attempting to cancel him fell into retreat. The obese comic book writer who’d made fun of the comic shop owner for being overweight now clarified he didn’t mean to call him “fat” as an insult, no, not at all! He had merely called him fat to show that fat comic book nerds should stand in solidarity.

One by one, the would-be cancellers made excuses and softened their objections.

Then Millar coined a new term for then — he called them “Cancel Pigs,” which a pungent, memorable, and highly accurate term for these scumbags. That term, “Cancel Pigs,” has now exploded in popularity and is the most popular way to refer to these miserable fascists.

And rightly so, too. Well, except for the gratuitous insult to actual, y’know, pigs, of the four-legged, oink oink oink, rooting and wallowing in slop persuasion. They’ll just have to bear up under the strain somehow, poor dears. As to whether Woke is finally on the run or not, all I have to say about that is it’s about fucking time.

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