Big Brother lives in China.

Why are we still doing business with these assholes?

According to this story at Slashdot, the Chicoms are rolling out facial recognition scanning and iris scans all over the country, all at once.

Their goal: to influence behavior and identify lawbreakers.

Lawbreakers. Yeah. Meaning everybody.

By 2020, the government hopes to implement a national "social credit" system that would assign every citizen a rating based on how they behave at work, in public venues and in their financial dealings.

See if you can guess what happens to the people with lower "social credit" scores.

See if you can imagine Communist Party members being bothered with their bad social credit scores.

The Phantom

The Intelligentsia: Trust us! We're experts!

Here's a beautiful article that explains exactly why your money is worth nothing and you can't get a job, my friends.

For years, economists, mayors, and urbanists believed that high-tech development was an unalloyed good thing, and that more high-tech startups and more venture capital investment would "lift all boats." But the reality is that high-tech development has ushered in a new phase of what I call winner-take-all urbanism, where a relatively small number of metro areas, and a small number of neighborhoods within them, capture most of the benefits.

Middle-class neighborhoods have been hollowed out in the process. In 1970, roughly two-thirds of Americans lived in middle-class neighborhoods; today less than 40 percent of us do. The middle-­class share of the population shrank in a whopping 203 out of 229 U.S. metro areas between 2000 and 2014. And places where the middle class is smallest include such superstar cities and tech hubs as New York, San Francisco, Boston, Los Angeles, Houston, and Washington, D.C.

Yes, the problem in places like Toronto and San Francisco is that all the houses cost over $800,000 and the taxes are astronomical. That has been the situation in New Your City for a very long time, New York City policemen and firemen haven't lived in NYC proper for 30 years. They commute. Some of them come more than 60 miles, usually by train.

Now, there is a reason for that, and the reason is that the -only- place an individual has left to shelter his money is in his house. The more money people have that they must shelter, the bigger the house. There are some big goddamn houses in Toronto these days.

So, this author is a biiiig expert! He knows what has to be done. Here's his list:

1) More housing must be built. In a city, that means apartment buildings. Big, tall, apartment buildings.

2) Public transit. That means trains, so that the serfs can commute the long distances from their shitty apartments to  the place where their job is.

Third, they can engage the wider business community and government to upgrade the jobs of low-wage service workers—who now make up more than 45 percent of the national workforce—into higher-paying, family-supporting work.

Translation: $15/hr minimum wage for everybody.

Yep, that's the big plan. Shitty apartments, subways, and a massive minimum wage hike.

(Want to know what McDonald's is doing about the new, too-high minimum wage laws being introduced all over North America? They are replacing workers with ROBOTS. Obviously.)

Who is this scholar, you ask?

Richard Florida is a professor at the University of Toronto's Rotman School of Management, and the cofounder and editor-at-large of the Atlantic's CityLab. His books include The Rise of the Creative Class and the just-released The New Urban Crisis.

And that is why your money is worth nothing, and you can't get a job. Because geniuses like this Richard Florida guy teach Management.

The Phantom

Doc-in-a-box, next level.

Popping up all over the place are mini-clinics, where people with minor ailments go to see a doctor. In the industry they are referred to as doc-in-a-box clinics. The operational notion is that -any- doc is as good as any other doc for a first visit. Industrial medical model in all its glory.

Next step, put the patient in a box and take the doc out.

But the most radical bit of the concept is the self-driving car. What may appear to be a gimmick is actually a carefully designed space. "The vehicle provides an in-between space," says Jordan. It's like a CVS Minute Clinic on wheels, with a patient self-directed as to what to do next via software–cutting down on the staffing costs behind routine measurements often gathered by nurses. "You can take the model of a patient going to Walgreens and doing the automated pressure cuff," says Jordan.The floor automatically weighs you when you walk in. Its pressure sensitivity can measure BMI, and posture, too. The chair has built-in acoustic sensors, which hear your respiration like a stethoscope. And a wraparound screen provides augmented reality interactions, to guide the patient through the experience. They may even be asked to literally point to where it hurts.

No doctor. Not even a nurse. Just a fully automated diagnostic suite that will (presumably) be able to tell if you are actually sick, and put a band-aid on your booboo.

You are not a human being, you are a billable unit. Shut up and get in the box.

They are going to build this. You can tell, there's such excitement over the notion of a hands-free diagnostic service where they can bill you and they don't have to talk to you. Most important, they don't have to pay a doctor.

I suggest you all resist. Hard.

The Phantom

Dems still stunned when they lose.

This piece in the Daily Beast is like a cry to the Gods: where did we go wrong?!!!

On the Democratic side, the combined efforts of the Ossoff campaign, the Democratic National Committee, and the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee help build a monster operation unprecedented in Georgia Democratic politics. By the end of the race, they had knocked on more than 500,000 doors, hired 100 staffers, recruited 12,000 active volunteers and spent more than $11 million on ads on everything from the Today show to Korean newspapers and gospel stations.But, and this is the part that will sting Democrats for a long time: It still wasn't enough.

But gee, they still lost. How can this be?!!!

But after $23 million, a candidate who genuinely ignited the grassroots, and a Republican president who may or may not be (but probably is) under FBI investigation and can't stop talking about it, the real question Democrats need to answer is: What's it going to take to win an election in the era of Trump?As of Tuesday night, they still have no idea.

Well, it might just be that people are tired of tax-and-spend Liberalism, where a new regulation or a new policy that comes along to scrape away a little more of your money, time and freedom every goddamn week.

It might be that Trump is not the fool the Dems think he is, and that putting Americans first in their own country is what they really want.

It might be that world-wide Apology Tours and their president BOWING to the execrable king of a shit-hole desert nation (that still has slavery!) pissed them off.

I'm just saying, that might be a thing. Y'know?

The Phantom

Ben and Jerry's gets picketed by the Left.

Ben and Jerry's ice cream in Vermont is one of the most devotedly Lefty companies out there. They are SUPER SJW, all the time. Have been since the thing was two hippies in a shack making artisanal ice cream.

I don't buy their stuff because of that. They're dicks.

So, this piece of news is so sweet, I had to share.

Scores of dairy farm workers and activists marched Saturday on a Ben & Jerry's factory to push for better pay and living conditions on farms that provide milk for the ice cream maker that takes pride in its social activism.

Protesters said Ben & Jerry's agreed two years ago to participate in the so-called Milk with Dignity program, but the company and worker representatives have yet to reach an agreement.

"We can't wait any more. We are going to pressure them and see what happens," said Victor Diaz, a Mexican immigrant now working on a farm in Vergennes.

Ben and Jerry's is getting rolled by the Entitlement Industry just the same as if they were General Motors or Colgate.

Awesome.

The Phantom

Corbyn: "Eat the rich and take their stuff."

The headline of this post is a translation of what he actually said, which in some ways was worse:

"The ward where this fire took place is, I think, the poorest ward in the whole country and properties must be found - requisitioned if necessary - to make sure those residents do get re-housed locally.

"It can't be acceptable that in London we have luxury buildings and luxury flats left empty as land banking for the future while the homeless and the poor look for somewhere to live. We have to address these issues."

This is the true face of the Left. If you are wealthy enough to afford a town house in London, as it seems many are, your property may be "requisitioned" at the whim of some bureaucrat and pressed into service as a flop for displaced poor people. (Well, unless you're a big donor and friend to the Labor party anyway. They could probably work something out for you in that case.)

Displaced by a government who put POLYSTYRENE on the outside of an apartment building to increase insulation. I'm sure an engineer somewhere left memo after memo that this was a Bad Idea, but the government machinery made the call. Because it is a Green Initiative, you see.

There is also some talk that the refrigerators in Europe use a "new" refrigerant. Replacing freon is propane. Yes, the stuff you burn in your barbecue, because it is a fuel, is being used as a refrigerant. It works great, as long as there isn't a leak. But sadly there are always leaks somewhere, and so there have been -many- refrigerators exploding in Europe lately. And by explode I mean fuel-air incendiary bomb, not firecracker.

Just thought you ought to know.

NYT: blames Sarah Palin. Again.

Just in case you were wondering if the media does this Republican hating thing on purpose.

The New York Times used the attempted assassination of dozens of Republican congressmen by a left-wing Bernie Sanders supporter to attack former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin with a baseless conspiracy theory blaming Palin for inciting mentally ill Jared Loughner to shoot Democratic Rep. Gabby Giffords in 2011.
"In 2011, when Jared Lee Loughner opened fire in a supermarket parking lot, grievously wounding Representative Gabby Giffords and killing six people, including a 9-year-old girl, the link to political incitement was clear. Before the shooting, Sarah Palin's political action committee circulated a map of targeted electoral districts that put Ms. Giffords and 19 other Democrats under stylized cross hairs," the editors wrote.
They added later: "Though there's no sign of incitement as direct as in the Giffords attack, liberals should of course hold themselves to the same standard of decency that they ask of the right."

Yes, they really do want more nutjobs to run out and shoot up more Republican baseball games. They are BEGGING the nutjobs.

More proof needed?

and let's not forget

You will be smarter and better informed about everything if you stop looking at the mainstream media.

The Phantom

First round of US civil war?

The cops have released the name of the guy who shot up the Republican baseball practice this morning. James T. Hodgkinson, appears to be a full-on Bernie-bot and all 'round SJW thug.

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/jthodgkinson

Social media of course is blowing up with all kinds of people praising this guy for bravely shooting a bunch of unarmed fat politicians trying to play baseball.

As of right now, I'd say you've got a problem, America. There's a tone of assholes like this guy out there.

On the bright side, it isn't that big a problem. This moron fired multiple mags out of a rifle on a baseball field and only hit five people. No gun control there.

The Unimpressed Phantom

Wonder Woman vs. the SJWs!

Sadly, only the movie vs. the whinging of the SJWs. Diana curling her lip at them would be a scene for the ages, but I digress.

Complaints about the movie have been many. I covered it here, I had only a couple about Hollyweird boilerplate. But I found something truly hillarious.

I didn't expect to have anything more to say about Wonder Woman after publishing my short review of it.  But in the week that followed, the film has stayed with me, particularly the ways in which it complicates (and fails to complicate) the conventions of the superhero narrative.

There's a world of comedy right there. "complicates the conventions of the superhero narrative", forsooth. Or doesn't, as the case may be. The pretentious gas-bagery right there simply screams Wasted Ivy League Education.

But, against all odds, it gets funnier. These are a few of my favorite things:

"In particular, I've been struck by discussions of the film's visual language, and of its avoidance of typically male-gaze-ish approaches to depicting powerful women.  And, in the other direction, there have been some trenchant critiques of the whiteness of the film's feminism..."

"How does Diana's bemusement at the concept of marriage face up to the discovery that almost all of the people she meets in 1918 would consider it acceptable for a man to beat his wife?"

"How does her decision to engage in heterosexual intercourse change in light of the fact that she is moving through a rape culture?"

"How does her joy at seeing a baby withstand the knowledge that most women in that period have no choice in when or whether to have children, and that many of them die in childbirth?"

"...women of color are mostly relegated to the background, and in the WWI segments, they are almost entirely absent..."

"... how does Diana know what a slave is?"

"...when what she should be decrying as slavery is the very notion that one should have to work to earn the means of survival."

"The more I think about it, the more it feels like the biggest flaw in Wonder Woman, not just as a feminist work but as a film trying to establish Diana as her own unique kind of hero, is the near-total absence of women after Diana leaves Themyscira."

I remind one and all that this is not a historical film, or a documentary, or a biography. This is a movie made from a COMIC BOOK.

This is what is meant when a Leftist says "everything is political". They're going to stick their claws into anything within reach and suck all the fun out of it, then wear its empty shriveled skin as a costume while they sell socialism.

Sense8: no wonder it got cancelled!

I'm binge-watching Sense8 the TV show on Snotflix this week. All the SJWs were crying that it had been cancelled, so I decided to see what all the crying was about.

The first thing I'll say is, its pretty. They had good people running the cameras and picking the locations. Visually it looks like a big budget movie. The actors are pretty. OMG, they are pretty. The music is beautiful. Tons of effort on the music.

The plot? There isn't one, not really. More of a framework for the pretty scenes and pretty music. Eight people spend the whole first season bumping into each other in psychic encounters, then a bad guy comes to capture them all. He works for an eeeevile corporation. That's it. Sorry if the eeeevile corporation thing is a spoiler.

The characters? Mostly they're sort of annoying cardboard cut-outs. The Korean tough chick is fun, for all that she's cardboard. I actually like the trans character, that one they spent some time and energy on. The characters all read "White Liberal", even the black guy, even the Korean woman. The relationships all read "WASP Normal". Particularly the gay relationships, they are 100% colossally loyal, committed and monogamous. Except for the sex scenes, of course. Then its an orgy. A loyal, committed, monogamous, orgy. They practically hit you upside the head with a bat, the relationship thing is that unsubtle.

The story goes along pretty slowly, with all kinds of scenes that don't forward the action at all. They preach. So much preaching. Any "good cause" you an imagine some Hollywood dickweed getting all spun-up about, its in there with the kitchen sink. I'm fast-forwarding past a lot of ten-minute stretches of the show, where nothing happens but many speeches and lots of gay porn. There's M/M, F/F, TF/F, M/M/F, M/M/TF/M/M, F/M/F/M/M/M, and so forth. There's also a bit of M/F normal, but one barely notices after all the other stuff.

I understand from the entertainment news that this series cost $100 million dollars per season. That's two hundred million bucks for a gay love letter to Hollywood from Hollywood. As anyone with a brain could have predicted, there is not an audience out there big enough to pay off a show with this subject matter.

Bottom line, this is soft-core gay porn loosely hung on a kinda/sorta SF action framework, designed with the purpose of showing gay and trans people in the most positive possible light. There are some good parts, but you have to swoop past an awful lot of Liberal Gay Mafia propaganda to find them.

I have only one question: who the hell thought it would be a good idea to spend that much money on something like this? I want to find that guy and talk him into spending $200,000,000 on my pet project.

The Phantom

This is why I don't TV anymore: CNN caught creating fake protest in London.

CNN caught stone cold creating a propaganda "protest".

A video released a day after the Islamic terror attacks in London show a CNN crew staging a scene with Muslims holding signs saying "ISIS Will Lose".

According to the article, BBC and AP also used footage and pictures from the staged event.

This is following young girls being killed in Manchester and yesterday's knife attack in London, where the brave jihadinis again targeted women. Because they're smaller and easier to kill.

There is no Mooselimb protest against ISIS in London. If there had been , CNN et al would have been all over it. They had to literally stage one.

Just so you know who is who and what is what.

The Phantom

Wonder Woman movie: Phantom thumbs up!

Saw Wonder Woman last night, and I must say they avoided all the things I complained might potentially ruin the performance.

Contrary to my previous fears, they managed to make Gal Gadot look big and powerful physically.

Contrary to every other DC movie since forever, the producers and the director etc. had some respect for the source material. They looked at Wonder Woman in the comics, and they gave us a real, no kidding Amazon warrior fighting for peace, justice and humanity. Just like Wonder Woman does in the comics.

Contrary to expectations, they did not pursue the usual SJW BS that the Twitterati were loudly demanding all this time. Wonder Woman is not gay, or bi, or trans, or any other such nonsense in this movie. She's an Amazon. Just like she ought to be.

Lots of -excellent- fight scenes, a couple of the usual political correctness moments and weak writing problems that seen inevitable in Hollywood productions (why does there need to be an American-Indian character going on about the eeeevile white man? Why do they need to spend time on making a fool of Victorian values again? Why is the writing always full of plot holes? Why are the Germans always the bad guys?) On the whole, I enjoyed it.

Well worth the ticket, particularly compared to what else is on offer.

The Phantom

Government: how much is too much?

When your government cuts off the entire internet for two weeks, and the reason they give is that a high school exam has been stolen and they don't want any cheating, you know you have too much government.

ADDIS ABABA (Reuters) - Ethiopia has cut off internet access nationwide until at least June 8 to try to stop cheats from posting high school exam papers on social media, a government official said on Thursday.

...

"The shutdown is aimed at preventing a repeat of leaks that occurred last year," Mohammed Seid, public relations director of Ethiopia's Office for Government Communications Affairs, told Reuters.

"We are being proactive. We want our students to concentrate and be free of the psychological pressure and distractions that this brings."

Mohammed did not give a precise date regarding when the shutdown would be lifted, but added it would last throughout the exam period.

Note to all you puppy kicking, Republican-hating Obama voters out there. Thanks your hero Barry, the President of the United Stated has what Barry called an "Internet Kill Switch."

Meaning, you idiots, that Donald Trump has his finger on a button that can shut off the whole fricking Internet. Whenever he wants. Legally.

Yeah, the rodeo clown. The one with a bird on his head. The one that you're all cheering Kathy Griffin over. The one who's Worse Than Hitler!!! The one you were "literally shaking" over when he got elected. Putin's c**k holster. That guy.

One of you tools please call me a racist for objecting to Barrack Obama's eight year reign of stupid. Come on, you know you want to.

The Phantom