BACK TO NAVAL FICTION, I’m currently reading the Bliven Putnam series by James Haley and quite enjoying it. Early US Navy instead of Royal Navy, opening with the campaign against the Barbary Pirates. Well written and entertaining, highly recommended.
April 15, 2023
OPEN THREAD: Party like it’s Saturday night.
THE LONELY LIVES OF SCIENTISTS: Scientist Captures Rare Footage of a 30-Minute-Long Tardigrade Threesome.
TRADITIONALLY, MOST DEEP THINKERS ON THE HUMAN CONDITION WERE NOT OBSESSED WITH SELF-LOVE: “At this point, it doesn’t feel like much of a stretch to say that the self-love phenomenon is bordering on a societal obsession. The question is: why?”
I’m gonna go with marketing.
AMERICA’S NEWSPAPER OF RECORD: ‘Why Don’t More People Use Public Transit?’ Asks Naked Hobo On Subway.
WELL, THAT’S A RELIEF: James Pethokoukis says things are better than we think.
HMM: Why The Accused Document Leaker Had A High Level Security Clearance.
The criminal complaint against Jack Teixeira released Friday disclosed that he possessed a high-level top secret clearance known as TS-SCI, Top Secret – Sensitive Compartmented Information, since 2021.
Teixeira worked as a full time active-duty Air National Guardsman at Otis Air National Guard Base, near Cape Cod, Massachusetts, as a “Cyber Transport Systems Journeyman” — essentially providing IT support for the 102nd Intelligence Wing.
Defense officials told ABC News that having a TS-SCI clearance is typical for Air Force personnel who in order to provide IT support might need access to classified spaces, computers and networks so they could do their jobs.
But the fact that you have a clearance does not mean you have access to everything at that level. That access is based on your “need to know” the information for your job.
I don’t think he needed to know this.
AMERICA’S NEWSPAPER OF RECORD: Budweiser Replaces Clydesdales With Cows Dressed As Horses.
IF YOU CAN OPEN CARRY, SHOULD YOU?
The left has been successful in moving the Overton Window. This might do the same by normalizing firearms. But some people are, uh, . . . triggered.
BETTER LATE THEN NEVER: TurboTax Deluxe 2022 Tax Software. #CommissionEarned
DECLINE IS A CHOICE: Just Perfect: For 2024, Dems Pick a Dying Chicago to Showcase a Lost Joe Biden.
JULIE BURCHILL: The privileged ignorance of Daniel Radcliffe.
It was King Lear who said, �How sharper than a serpent’s tooth it is to have a thankless child’. I always think of it whenever I see the latest nasty little jibe at JK Rowling from one of the mediocre actors whom her novels shot to stardom. Now Harry Potter actor Daniel Radcliffe has opined – more in sorrow than in anger, no doubt, with a caring, sharing smile on those sensitive lips – that adults concerned about children changing gender are �condescending’. More specifically, he �affirmed’ the beliefs of six trans and nonbinary children at a discussion organised by LGBTQ charity The Trevor Project this week, saying: �There are people who also have a slightly condescending, but well-meaning attitude of “People are young… and it is a huge decision”.’ According to Radcliffe, �We can trust kids to tell us who they are’.
Commenting on the difference between his childhood and the childhoods of da kidz he was gettin’ down wiv, Radcliffe said: �I always knew I was a boy because that was a thing I grew up knowing.’ Or perhaps this was because you were part of the last generation to grow up in an age when girly boys and boyish girls weren’t carted off to have any potential gayness transed away? What a loss to The Brains Trust this man is.
It sounds lovely to say �listen to kids’. And no one wants to say that �children should be seen and not heard’. (Of course not – it’s gender-critical women, the people who want single-sex spaces and single-sex sports, who should be seen and not heard, silly!) But there’s a reason that children don’t have the same rights as adults – why they can’t get a tattoo, have sex, get married, buy alcohol, fight / die for their country or drive a car. It’s because they don’t know who they are or what they’re doing yet.
Read the whole thing.
ADAPTIVE SYSTEMS: Business Avoided and Fixed Neon Shortage From Russia-Ukraine War.
WEIGHT LOSS IN OLD AGE IS NOT GOOD: Significant association found between all-cause mortality and weight loss in the elderly. “Using men with stable weight as a control, men with a 5% to 10% weight loss had a 33% higher risk of all-cause mortality, and those with more than a 10% decrease in body weight had a 289% higher risk. Compared to women with stable weight, women with a 5% to 10% weight loss had a 26% higher risk of all-cause mortality, and those with more than a 10% decrease in body weight had a 114% higher risk. . . . There was no significant association between weight gain and increases in waist circumference and all-cause mortality. The researchers state it is likely that weight loss is an early indicator of the presence of various life-shortening diseases.”
THE NFL JUST CAN’T ESCAPE WOKENESS: Shocker: NFL Draft Will Be Sponsored By Bud Light.
I DON’T WANT WETTER THAN USUAL CONDITIONS IN THE SOUTHERN UNITED STATES: Weather scientists say conditions ‘favorable’ for return of El Niño. Honestly, we’ve already had that and I’m tired of it.
BE PREPARED: PeakPlus LED Tactical Flashlights High Lumens. #CommissionEarned
ANSWERING THE IMPORTANT QUESTIONS: Why the US Kept Trying to Land Oversized Cargo Planes on Aircraft Carriers at Sea (Video).
INCONVENIENT TRUTHS: Ten Years After the Boston Marathon Bombing, No One Dares Discuss Why It Happened.
Various media retrospectives don’t even attempt to discuss the bombers’ motive. The Washington Post came closest on Thursday when it did the common perpetrator-to-victim shift, claiming that bomber Tamerlan Tsarnaev “may have felt victimized because he was Muslim.” Also on Thursday, NBC Boston told a heartwarming love story of a firefighter and a woman he aided that day, but remained mum about why the bombing happened. On Friday, MassLive published a lengthy piece about the lessons that have been learned from the bombing, but apparently, none of those lessons have anything to do with why the bombing happened in the first place. ABC News focused on the psychological scars of some of the survivors but said nary a word about what might have led anyone to want to inflict such scars.
This willful ignorance began on the very day of the bombings.
Narrative uber alles.
