It's been above freezing since about noon,

which makes a world of difference, and it's supposed to stay above through tomorrow, so lots of melting.  While that's happening, some other heat to observe

‘Never before’ has the leader of the free world been ‘so cognitively compromised’

From Sky News in Australia.  No, we're not the only ones who've noticed.

When try to post this on Fecesbook you get
"In response to Australian government legislation, Facebook restricts the posting of news links and all posts from news Pages in Australia. Globally, the posting and sharing of news links from Australian publications is restricted. "

So, how much is Zuckerbitch being mad about those proposed Aussie laws, and how much "We don't want them putting out stuff like this!" ?

Yea, though I walk through the valley

of no water, I've still got power and heat.*  Therefore, there is data to analyze

A bunch of the media weenies are crying because "People aren't listening to us

and letting us control what they hear!"  Damn right.  Because you can't be trusted, you've proven it.
Nolan knows how, and that’s what bothers him: Tesla scrapped its media-relations department because the media don’t much matter to it. Tesla has plenty of ways to get its story out without relying on the media, and that makes the media much less important — and much less powerful. And it’s the power part that hurts the most.

Writes Nolan: “We are living through a historic, technology-fueled shift in the balance of power between the media and its subjects. The subjects are winning. . . . As journalists, we all view this as a horrifying assault on the public’s right to know, and on our own status as brave defenders of the public good. And that is all true, for what it’s worth. But this is about power.”

It sure is. And the media have less. Some of that is because of technology, but more of it is because reporters and editors have lost their standing with the people whose “right to know” they allegedly uphold.

The “right to know” claim rings hollow when The Washington Post, along with virtually every other mainstream outlet, did its best to kill the still-undisputed Hunter Biden stories published in these pages ahead of the election. Do the people have a “right to know” things in general? Or just the things Nolan would want them to know? Seems more like the latter, and people have noticed.
And they don't like it.  And they're doing something about it.  So a bunch of people who depend on the 1st Amendment want to limit it to keep themselves in control.

Well, he couldn't find .50-70 in stock anywhere, but he did find some .50-90.  Which can be cut down to the right length(Which was done well before this super-cold/snow crap)

Cutting quite a bit: on the left is .50-70, on the right .50-90

So a lot shorter.  Happily, easy to cut with the little chop saw, and with the right pilot the old Lyman case trimmer works.

More on this project as it goes.

I need one of these

Badly.

Because it's about 5 outside,

and trying to do the plumbing fix is not something I'd try, especially under current conditions, I found news:
Zuckerbitch really is a piece of crap, isn't he?


For people who claim to be all about justice, they really hate Jews.


These people are insane.  And they're running schools.


The PRC is really getting its money's worth out of the Bidens

Rush Limbaugh died

Which has led to the Usual Suspects displaying their compassion and caring in their usual way.  

All the people who hated him I never understood, with two exceptions:
The media.  A bunch of them hated him because he showed them for what they were(and most still are): bigoted clowns who prefer to give what they want you to hear, not the actual facts available.  Way I put it to someone was "If people believed they could trust the major media, that they were getting facts and accurate information and not just a preferred version, Rush would probably be happily sportscasting somewhere.  A lot of the people who hate him are the reason he's so big."

Leftists.  Both because he was putting out information they didn't want people to hear, and because- the really big one- he was effective.

See "if people believed" above; a lot of people who'd known the media was full of crap on many things found out, in large part because of him and what he started, that they weren't alone, and that- combined with the spread of this here internets- really got things going in ways the media and leftists really didn't like.

Didn't always agree with him, but he really pissed off all the right people.

We have windmills frozen, we have others producing nothing because the wind is too low,

but that won't stop the fanatics from wanting to make us more dependent on the damn things.
Ice storms knocked out nearly half the wind-power generating capacity of Texas on Sunday as a massive deep freeze across the state locked up wind turbine generators, creating an electricity generation crisis.
Problems in OK for the same reason: the damn things aren't reliable, especially under these conditions.

“We are experiencing record-breaking electric demand due to the extreme cold temperatures that have gripped Texas,” said ERCOT President and CEO Bill Magness. “At the same time, we are dealing with higher-than-normal generation outages due to frozen wind turbines and limited natural gas supplies available to generating units. We are asking Texans to take some simple, safe steps to lower their energy use during this time.”
And Biden & Co. want to make the gas situation worse.  Yeah, that'll work.

They do crap like this, and then wonder why people don't trust them

On Saturday, the Times finally published Metz's profile of Slate Star Codex. It's a lazy hit piece that actively misleads readers, giving them the false impression that Siskind is at the center of a stealth plot to infiltrate Silicon Valley and pollute it with noxious far-right ideas. Unfortunately, this theme—that new tech ventures are sources of right-wing disinformation—is becoming endemic to the paper's increasingly panicky tech coverage, which cynically treats all new electronic conversation spaces as potential disinformation incubators.

According to Metz, Slate Star Codex was first and foremost "Silicon Valley's Safe Space," which is the absurd title of the piece. This gives the impression that Siskind primarily spends his time flattering venture capitalists, tech startups, and coders, which could not possibly be further from the truth.
Maybe if they stopped acting as political hacks with bylines and started acting like actual reporters, people would start to regain some trust in them. 

Chances of that happening: way too damn low.

What? the PRC is hiding stuff?

This is my shocked face.
Just a few days ago, we reported that the World Health Organization (WHO) dropped its investigation into the origin of the coronavirus pandemic, declaring it did not originate in a Chinese laboratory.

WHO is now backtracking on this dismissal.

The investigation to Wuhan, where the first cases were detected, failed to identify the source of the virus but appeared to disregard the theory that it leaked from a virology laboratory in the city.

However, WHO director-general Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus today said that following the ‘very important scientific exercise … all hypotheses remain open and require further analysis and studies.’

It comes after Peter Embarek, the leader of the WHO team, this week concluded it was ‘extremely unlikely’ that the virus emerged from the Wuhan Institute of Virology.

This snow is so dry

I just cleared half the driveway with the leafblower.

The other half can wait, it's damn cold out there.

I am going to write about someone I really wish had listened to a piece of advice

My mind was kicked into this memory by glancing over a post Lawdog had about staying away from DC during the inauguration: 
Respected firearms instructor John Farnam has a couple of quotes that I would like folks to meditate upon.
"Don't go stupid places. Don't hang out with stupid people. Don't do stupid things."
And:
"Asking for trouble is a pretty good way to get it."
The first time I heard of this it was referred to as the Four Stupids: 
Don't do stupid things
In stupid places
With stupid people 
At stupid times, and your chances of getting into real trouble, including having to fight for your life, are very greatly reduced.  The more Stupids you violate, the greater your chances of big trouble.

The story goes, years back a lady I knew got into the habit of having a beer(she at least only had one; she was petite and had no alcohol tolerance), talking a while, and then going driving through areas of town she had no business being in at night.  Did point out to her, more than once, that that was not a wise thing to do.  "I can drive wherever I want, whatever time I want, and nobody can tell me I can't!" was always the response it came down to.

Noting that yes, she could, but it wasn't real smart to do that was ignored.

Add in one more complication: she was one of those who always insisted she needed to lose 'that last five pounds(she didn't)', but wouldn't actually exercise, so when she stopped losing weight she started using diet pills.  I did tell her that using those was dumb, and especially when she had a drink, but...

As you might expect, the cops who patrolled those areas became quite familiar with her, and she wound up being stopped more than once(a simple fact cops deal with is that when someone who has no business being in a certain place at certain times is randomly driving around, and/or keeps showing up, it needs to be looked at).  No arrests, but more than one warning: "You really shouldn't be here at night."  Which always led to "I'm not doing anything wrong, I can drive where I want", etc.  On one occasion she told me about she asked a cop why he kept stopping her and he flatly told her "Because I don't want to have to investigate your rape or murder."  No impression was made.  She was never drunk, but the beer was a factor in doing this.

Over time it got worse.  She really needed a good psychologist; some things hadn't gone well in her life, and they were all someone else's fault.  Maybe so, but even if correct she wasn't dealing with things well.  This finally led to a bad accident, which led to being in a psychiatric facility for a couple of days because something said when the cops arrived made them think she was suicidal.  Convinced them otherwise, healed up and got out.  And after a while was doing it again.

Finally, one night, she did get arrested, and only having the story she told me later I have no real idea what happened.  She did wind up with a neck injury which she insisted was because the cop was a bastard who wanted to beat someone up.  Possible, but it's also possible that she nutted out and he had to use some force to get the cuffs on and get her in the unit.  I have no idea, but that really put things on a downward slope that had some grease on it.

From that time on she had trouble working because of the injury, which made her more bitter, and it reached the point that any time she called to talk it shortly wound up with her bitching the same gripes about the cop and him ruining her life, and she wanted him dead, etc.  One night when it started I told her "If you're going to do nothing but gripe about the cop again, I don't want to hear it."

"Well, I'm going to talk about him!  He messed me up!", and on, and I said "I'll talk to you later" and hung up.

We spoke less and less, last time was about two years ago.  Downhill she'd gone, and I didn't want to witness any more of it.

Had the cop used excessive force?  No idea.  She was small, but I've known/known of a couple of people who were seriously injured when a small woman went over the fence, whatever force used may have been called for.  For all I know he tried to cuff her and she jerked back and fell.

The one thing that she would never deal with was the simple fact that if she hadn't been in those stupid places at those stupid times, this wouldn't have happened.


Yes, I had some times of thinking "Was there anything else I could've said or done that would've made a difference?"  I don't think so.  I really wish I'd had some magic words, but I didn't.

Let us speak of stupidity,

which is available in large quantities.  Starting with
Professor Huang Heqing of Zhejiang University, one of the most eminent schools in China, is teaching his students that all of Western history is a hoax and that everything, from the pyramids to Shakespeare to the Mona Lisa, are modern fakes meant to belittle China.


How dumb are journalists?  A lot of them, very.


Throw in that a lot of Professional Educators and university bigshots... jeez, racism and stupidity, and it's getting people sued, as it should.


I suggest a law: you turn a foreign species loose, you will be fed to it.  In pieces, if necessary.


Asshats who insist terrorists must have understanding and the best legal representation available are pissed that Trump had a good lawyer.


More idiot and racist academics.

This is magnificent

Media weenie gets her Preferred Narrative™ burned to the ground.

This is how clowns like her should be faced: call them on their crap and don't back down.