Correlation causes cancer! YES IT DOES! YOU HAVE TO TRUST MEEEEEE!!!!!!

And now, from the wonderful world of medicine, the stupidest thing I've seen since Hillary's last speech. There is no safe dosage of alcohol.

Alcohol use is a leading risk factor for global disease burden and causes substantial health loss. We found that the risk of all-cause mortality, and of cancers specifically, rises with increasing levels of consumption, and the level of consumption that minimises health loss is zero. These results suggest that alcohol control policies might need to be revised worldwide, refocusing on efforts to lower overall population-level consumption.

From Slashdot, where somebody read the bloody thing, we hear:

According to the report, "27.1% of cancer deaths in women and 18.9% in men over 50 were linked to their drinking habits." The biggest causes of death linked to alcohol in younger people were tuberculosis (1.4% of deaths), road injuries (1.2%), and self-harm (1.1%).

"Worldwide we need to revisit alcohol control policies and health programs, and to consider recommendations for abstaining from alcohol," said the report's senior author, Professor Emmanuela Gakidou. "These include excise taxes on alcohol, controlling the physical availability of alcohol and the hours of sale, and controlling alcohol advertising. Any of these policy actions would contribute to reductions in population-level consumption, a vital step toward decreasing the health loss associated with alcohol use."

Prohibition, essentially. Because that went so well for the Americans when they tried it. "But if we do it WORLDWIDE and really, really try, it'll totally work!"

This piece of "research", and I use the term very, very loosely, is the type of thing we have come to expect from the gun control crowd. Take a population, count up the mortality factors, count up how much people drink, and SHAZAM!, beer causes cancer and tuberculosis.

In other news, appendix surgery causes 1,000 deaths worldwide every year!!!! Right? Because those 1,000 people who died after surgery would have totally been fine otherwise. Uh huh.

So, at the same time they are losing the War on Weed, the NinnyNannies want to start up a new, bigger War on Booze.

One might almost suspect there was money to be made in this space.

And speaking of money, guess who paid for this travesty:

Funding: Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.

The Phantom

Update: Saray Hoyt's Instapundit flying monkeys is da HOOOOOOOUSE! 

"Rationing" is the word you're looking for.

62 hour wait for an ambulance in Wales.

The longest delays in the UK were recorded by Welsh Ambulance Service, which kept four patients waiting for more than 50 hours.

A spokesman said the figures were "not typical" and "represent the extreme end of the waiting time spectrum".

The Patients Association said they were "extremely concerning".

Between June 2017 and June 2018, ambulances from four services took 24 hours to reach patients, including some with breathing and mental health problems.

The trusts said the longest waits were for "less serious calls", and they had to prioritise responding to people in life-threatening or urgent conditions.

This is what is 100% guaranteed to happen in any socialized medicine system. In 62 hours, nearly three days, they could have had an ambulance drive over from France and do that call. But they would never do that, because -rationing- a resource is more important than providing the service.

Its not a tiny home. It's a shack. You're not brave innovators. You're assholes.

In a development that surprises no one, tiny home aka shack builders are threatening people using sock-puppet email accounts.

Wichita, Kansas

The emailed threat read like dialogue from 1930s pulp fiction.

"We're going to tell you this once," the message began that told Jonathan Endicott to give up his fight against the MicroMansions tiny homes development planned near his Cambria neighborhood, just south of Harry and 143rd East.

"If not we will use all of our resources, money and means to stop you. You're dealing with powerful people that have no problems attacking your business, life and family if you choose not to stop."

Endicott reported the note to police, though he says an officer told him since there weren't specific threats of bodily harm he couldn't file a report.

End result, another home-owner discovers that when you need the police to do something useful, there are always a million reasons why they won't. The police are not there to protect you, they are there to keep you in line. Are you beginning to understand, all you middle aged normal people?

The Phantom

Read more here: https://www.kansas.com/news/nation-world/national/article216981455.html#storylink=cpy

China: Why are we doing business with Communists?

Chicoms always lie, Chicoms always double down, Chicoms always project. They killed 100 million Chinese people in the 20th Century, and they have not changed at all.

Empty hotel rooms, idle tour boats and shuttered travel agencies reveal widening fissures in the tiny Pacific nation of Palau, which is caught in an escalating diplomatic tug-of-war between China and Taiwan.

Late last year, China effectively banned tour groups to the idyllic tropical archipelago, branding it an illegal destination due to its lack of diplomatic status.

As China extends its influence across the Pacific, Palau is one of Taipei's 18 remaining allies worldwide and is under pressure to switch allegiances, officials and business people there say.

"There is an ongoing discussion about China weaponizing tourism," said Jeffrey Barabe, owner of Palau Central Hotel and Palau Carolines Resort in Koror. "Some believe that the dollars were allowed to flow in and now they are pulling it back to try and get Palau to establish ties diplomatically."

In the commercial center of Koror, the Chinese pullback is obvious. Hotel blocks and restaurants stand empty, travel agencies are boarded and boats which take tourists to Palau's green, mushroom shaped Rock Islands are docked at the piers.

Prior to the ban, Chinese tourists accounted for about half the visitors to Palau. Of the 122,000 visitors in 2017, 55,000 were from China and 9,000 from Taiwan, official data showed.

Ruining the livelihoods of a whole island full of people for diplomatic political points. This is how they roll.

Why are we still doing business with these assholes? They're not good people.

The Phantom

Frosty Brazillian welcome for Venezuelan immigrants.

Yes, there are worse, less welcoming places than the USA.

Angry residents of the Brazilian border town of Pacaraima ran riot and drove out Venezuelan immigrants on Saturday after a local restaurant owner was stabbed and beaten, residents and government officials said.

The demonstrations forced hundreds of Venezuelans to flee back across the frontier on foot and residents set fire to the belongings they left behind and to tires to block the only road crossing between the two countries, video images released by the state of Roraima government showed.

The outburst of anger was sparked by the robbery and severe beating of a resident in his home on Friday night by four Venezuelans, Roraima state security secretary Giuliana Castro said by telephone.

The four Venezuelan suspects stole 23,000 reais ($5,800) from the restaurant owner, identified only as Raimundo. He suffered head injuries and was taken to hospital unconscious but was reported to be out of danger, said Castro, who is also head of the state's police force.

After crossing back into their country, Venezuelans migrants attacked a group of 30 Brazilians who were shopping across the border and who had to be taken to a shelter, Castro said.

Venezuela's government expressed concern about reports of attacks on its citizens and a "massive eviction" of Venezuelans, and asked Brazil to guarantee their safety. A foreign ministry statement said the violence was fueled by xenophobia.

Its funny, Mexicans do this kind of shit in America literally all the time and nobody rises up against them.

The Phantom

Update: Welcome Instapundit!

Your gayness will not save you.

Oh look, another Hollywood Lefty is getting thrown under the bus because he didn't hate Trump supporters enough.

A star of the Netflix show "Queer Eye," Jonathan Van Ness, is getting heat from the left after he sent out a tweet calling for Democrats to stop demonizing Trump supporters.

Yep, a member of a sacred protected group, gay men, is being ShirtStormed for daring to suggest that not all Republicans are Eeeeevile incarnate. Really, that's all he said, and they're hating on him like a house on fire.

I'm all for it, myself. Rage on, dipsticks. Next thing you're going to hear is that this Van Ness dude has deleted his Twitter, Facebook and Instagram accounts, and he's added his name to the #WalkAway list.

I've been saying this for a long time now, white gays and lesbians are going to be the first under the Lefty bus, then all East Asians, closely followed by straight black men and all Hispanics. After that, things will start to get interesting.

The Phantom

The Left is not happy with weed!

They wanted legal weed, they got legal weed. And now, a few months later, they are complaining about legal weed. I kid you not.

SEATTLE - Washington state's penchant for getting high is trashing the place.
Plastic "doob tubes" and small Mylar bags used to package pot are moldering in gutters, bleaching out in landfills and bobbing in waterways.
Concentrated nutrients and fertilizers left over from cannabis growing operations are being dumped in public sewers and making their way past wastewater treatment plants into Puget Sound. And millions of pounds of weed harvest waste that could be composted are instead getting trucked to landfills.
This, in a part of the country that prides itself on being environmentally friendly.
"We're seeing a lot of marijuana packaging in our public spaces," said Heather Trim, executive director of Zero Waste Washington, which organizes litter cleanups. "Cannabis packaging is adding to our load, which then gets washed into our lakes and Puget Sound."

Oh, the humanity! Plastic packaging! Oh noes, plant waste! Quell horreur, FERTILIZERS!!!!! [boo, hissss!] Make it stop!

Really, these people are absolutely shameless. Is there anything more objectionable than a Lefty enviroNazi?

The Phantom

Update: Welcome Instapunditeers!
Upperdate: Welcome Kate McMillan's monkeys! Small dead animals!

Those Peaceful Europeans!

Here's some news you won't find on the CBC, The German Federal Police are shopping for 7.62x51mm machine guns and remote vehicle turrets to put them in. That's .308 fer y'all Americans. ~:D

If you ever wondered what the World is coming to, the German Federal Police has some clues for you.

As a part of modernizing and expanding their fleet of armored vehicles they have ordered 42 pcs. of the Krauss-Maffei Wegmann FLW100 remote-controlled weapon stations.

The turrets will include the Heckler & Koch MG5 A1 machine gun, and will be mounted on their MOWAG Eagle IV and LAPV Enok 6.1 protected vehicles.

The MOWAG Eagle IV is a wheeled armored vehicle, designed by the Swiss MOWAG corporation.

The LAPV Enok 6.1 is a Light Armoured Patrol Vehicle, which is also used by the Bundeswehr.

The project is planned to happen around mid-2019, which also includes an additional amount of ENOK 6.1 protected vehicles.

To my knowledge this is the first time a German Police force, in modern time perhaps I should add, have commissioned a Machine Gun. The use is said to be mainly for Airport Security, but the ENOK 6.1 is also to be used in serious situations like terrorist attacks.

You can find more information about the FLW turret here. The FLW 100 can take 5.56 mm and 7.62 mm NATO MGs, like the Heckler & Koch MG4 and MG5 A1.

The FLW 200 can also take 12.7 mm Heavy Machine Guns and 40 mm Grenade Launchers, but this is not the case for now. Not yet anyway, perhaps I should add.

I will add again, for emphasis purposes because some people are living in denial, that this is the Federal German Police we're talking about here, not the Army. They've decided that spending a LOT of money on what is basically an armored Mercedes G-Wagen with a machine gun turret is something they want to do. The MOWAG Eagle is similar to an American MRAP armored truck.

These are the kind of things you use in open warfare against large numbers of enemies armed with rifles. No use if there are RPGs or mines, but just the thing for mowing down tightly packed rioters in the middle of a German city.

That's what they're buying in Angela Merkel's Germany. Forty two (42) of them. M'kay?

The Phantom

Liberalism is a crippling mental disease.

"Evil is a make-believe concept we've invented to deal with the complexities of fellow humans holding values and beliefs and perspectives different than our own." Jay Austin

Jay Austin and Lauren Geoghegan were run over by a car in Tajikistan, deliberately.

A grainy cellphone clip recorded by a driver shows what happened next: The men's Daewoo sedan passes the cyclists and then makes a sharp U-turn. It doubles back, and aims directly for the bikers, ramming into them and lurching over their fallen forms. In all, four people were killed: Mr. Austin, Ms. Geoghegan and cyclists from Switzerland and the Netherlands.

Two days later, the Islamic State released a video showing five men it identified as the attackers, sitting before the ISIS flag. They face the camera and make a vow: to kill "disbelievers."

This Austin guy was a type I've met before. Very committed to "loving the world," very devoted to all kinds of trendy notions like the Tiny House Movement, very eager to abandon any kind of common sense behavior, like locking his bicycle. If (when) it got stolen he'd probably say something like "they needed it more than I did" and shrug off the loss as "karma." I never met the man, but I've met plenty like him. They're doves, energy thieves. Fake Buddhists, I like to call them.

Its a pattern with Liberals. This is a telling quote, from the PJ Media story:

"With...vulnerability," he wrote, "comes immense generosity: good folks who will recognize your helplessness and recognize that you need assistance in one form or another and offer it in spades."

Jay Austin, from this story, appears to be one of those people who moved through the world employing an aggressive, even ostentatious vulnerability to blackmail those around him into behaving generously. Moral judo of the most questionable sort. Like a beggar making himself as pitiful as he can, to get more sympathy.

But then he met up with ISIS, and they killed him and his girlfriend for being White. I bet his last thought was "Are you kidding me? Can't you see what a good person I am?!"

Fake Buddhists will deny the existence of Evil, capital E, literally to their dying breaths. Which leaves them easy meat for evil men. Like the guy who ran over four people for being White, and then made a video bragging about it.

That wouldn't be so bad, but part of their belief system is that it isn't enough for -them- to be vulnerable. Everybody else has to be vulnerable too. Then the violent people will have no reason to attack, and we'll all live together in Love and Peace in our Tiny Houses.

The problem is that Evil is fairly rare. Most people, 95% of them, really will behave themselves and be extremely generous. You can see it happening every time there's a hurricane in the USA. People step up and fix everything without even being asked. So Fake Buddhists can breeze through life like everywhere in the world is Sunny Southern California, every night's a Friday Night and every day is Saturday.

But sometimes the Fake Buddhist finds the one evil man in the remote mountain town, and dies from it.

Because Evil, capital E, really does exist. So if we take nothing more from Jay Austin's stupid story, we at least should be assured of that.

First seen at Small Dead Animals.

The Phantom

Fireside is at it again. #BlackSpecFic 2017

Yes friends, it is that time of year again when SJWs once again demonstrate that they don't understand how statistics works.

Summary & Conclusions

Key facts:

• 2017 saw a Black-authored publication rate of about 4.5%, which is essentially double what it was two years before

• Half of 2017's authors are new to this set of magazines

• More debut stories by Black writers were published in this set of magazines than in 2015 and 2016 combined

• Fiyah Magazine published close to the same number of debuts (10) as the pro magazines in this dataset (12) in 2017, despite being significantly smaller in number of stories published (22 versus 1,112; about 2%)

• 5 of the 23 pro-rate magazines in this dataset are publishing Black writers at rates approximating U.S. population levels or greater

• 9 of these 23 magazines published over 80% of the field's stories by Black authors (when adding Fiyah Magazine, it's over 90%)

• These same 9 magazines collectively published Black authors at rates approximating U.S. population levels

• These 9 magazines constitute 26% of the field by number of stories published

The fact that the top quartile of pro-rate magazines is currently publishing Black writers at levels approximating U.S. population figures strongly suggests that it is perfectly possible for the field as a whole to do so.

The field is segregated¹⁶, and whether that's due to variable submission rates, variable acceptance rates, and/or other factors, the data expose a clear instance of structural racism.

In order to assist Black writers navigating¹⁷ the submissions process and to measure magazines' progress according to parameters that aren't available in this report, Fiyah Magazine has created the Presence of Blackness score; see L.D. Lewis' upcoming "POB Score: Growth and Accountability" for a retrospective on creating this metric.

Once again this year, I'm left asking these same questions:

• How is it not the most purulent racism to tally up science fiction authors by skin colour?
• Once again, there's no baseline, no real information here. Its all self-report. How do you get meaningful information out of that?
• How many of these authors self-identify as conservative, or had conservative themes in their work?
  

But now there's something new, as mentioned in the report there are a few magazines actively seeking new black authors, and those magazines were responsible for most of the increase in black authors getting published this year. My new question is:

• Is it selling? Did those magazines do well with their new push?

Because the authors of the study made this conclusion: "The fact that the top quartile of pro-rate magazines is currently publishing Black writers at levels approximating U.S. population figures strongly suggests that it is perfectly possible for the field as a whole to do so."

To which I must add, yes it is perfectly possible for the field as a whole to do so, but only if it sells. Fiction magazines are not charities, you know. So if those magazines with lots of new Black authors did well, awesome. Go you guys. But if they didn't, then they won't be around long. Too bad so sad, but that's how Capitalism works, kids.

The Phantom

The Real Left: scooter vandals.

You know how the SJW/EcoFreak/Femminazi Left is always demanding "community based solutions" and "think global act local" and "reduce/reuse/recycle" and all that happy horseshit? And every time some new initiative comes, we all roll our eyes because we really don't believe anything they say?

Well, all that eye-rolling was justified my friends. They do not mean a single goddamn word of it.

They've been crammed into toilets, tossed off balconies and set on fire. They've even been adorned with dangling bags of dog droppings.

As cities from Santa Monica to Beverly Hills struggle to control a rapid proliferation of electric pay-per-mile scooters, some residents are taking matters into their own hands and waging a guerrilla war against the devices. These vandals are destroying or desecrating the vehicles in disturbingly imaginative ways, and celebrating their illegal deeds on social media — in full view of authorities and the public.

"They throw them everywhere: in the ocean, in the sand, in the trash can," said Robert Johnson Bey, a Venice Beach maintenance worker who regularly comes across scooter parts on the Venice Beach boardwalk, Speedway and adjoining alleys.

"Sunday I was finding kickstands everywhere," Bey said. "Looked like they were snapped off."

A pay-per-mile electric scooter you can take from the side of the road where its lying, slide your credit card, and ride for as far as you want, then leave it at your destination. That is a hell of a fine service. I have a bad knee, getting around in a city is hell for me. One of those scooters would be amazing.

But people are smashing them, setting them on fire, driving their cars over them. Hundreds of them. Seems unreasonable, doesn't it?

When Hassan Galedary of Culver City sees a Bird scooter, a knot in his stomach begins to twist and his teeth clench, he said. The 32-year-old film producer describes the sensation as one of "violent bitterness."

"I hate Birds more than anyone," Galedary said. "They suck. People who ride them suck."

He loathes the scooters so much that he waged what he calls an "insurgency" against them, tossing the contraptions into trash cans on Abbott Kinney Boulevard and down the Culver City Stairs. He even designed a T-shirt of a chick perched on a scooter being shot in the head. Many of his anti-scooter antics have been featured on the Bird Graveyard account.

So where does all this scooter scorn come from?

Galedary grew up on the Westside and said he hates how kids there are paying to ride scooters instead of honoring the local traditions of surfing and skateboarding. He hates the traffic accidents they cause — "Bird on Bird," "Bird on person" and "Bird on car"— and he hates how they can be left anywhere for pedestrians to trip over.

"The city is already losing so much culture due to gentrification," Galedary said.

Yes, those goddamn rich people with their goddamn money, GENTRIFYING everything, and those goddamn kids having fun the wrong way. There oughta be a law!

Clean, cheap transportation, available to all, getting people out of their cars and back into Nature, all that exercise and fresh air for the poor and needy who can't buy their own scooters? Yeah, screw that! Because GENTRIFYING and SURFING!!!

They're insane. They're fucking well insane. You give them -exactly- what they want, I mean perfectly what they said they wanted, every single parameter met, and they freak out and burn it down like a bunch of rabid chimpanzees.

So let this be a warning to any of y'all Moderates who are doing the "feed the crocodile so he eats you last" plan. They'll lose their shit and eat you first. That's who they are. Mentally ill destroyers of life.

The Phantom

Update! Already an update from Kathy Shaidle of Five Feet of Fury, this is too perfect. In Toronto's formerly crappy but now trendy area of Parkdale, its Lefties protesting against... wait for it... Vegans!

Parkdale, a rapidly gentrifying Toronto neighbourhood, was the scene of a protest Saturday against its latest interlopers—vegans.
Around 250 people turned out to the meeting, called Parkdale Isn’t Vegandale, to express their concerns over the branding of a cluster of vegan shops and restaurants that have dubbed themselves Vegandale around Queen and Brock streets. Their issues centred on capitalism, gentrification, and a perceived moral self-righteousness on the part of the vegan businesses.

Yep. They're all crazy. Every single one.

One guy got Alex Jones kicked off the internet? Maybe so.

That's what this news story wants us to believe.

The timing isn't random. In recent weeks, a group of progressive activists has dialed up efforts to pressure these distribution platforms to drop Infowars. That pressure, which comes at a time when court proceedings against Jones have finally begun in earnest, created the momentum that led to this decision. This has been mentioned in passing in much of the coverage, but these folks deserve much more credit and recognition for the work they've been doing in trying to fight right-wing disinformation campaigns.

Salon spoke recently with Jared Holt, a researcher from Right Wing Watch, a project of People for the American Way. Holt's work has been instrumental in getting social media and other internet platforms to give Infowars the boot. This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity.

This is my favorite part right here:

You work at Right Wing Watch and People for the American Way by tracking right-wing misinformation sites. Why is it so important to go after these guys? What danger do they present to the public?

It's in the name of Infowars. It's not an attempt at legitimate reporting. It's a, quote, "war" for your mind.

Unfortunately, their war for the American mind is to stuff it full of conspiracy theories. That ultimately debases people from reality and polarizes them to the extremes of right-wing politics. Historically, we've seen that can be very harmful for the vision of America as a free and open democracy.

I think it's important to realize that people like Alex Jones are using these platforms in bad faith.

Yes, that's right. Alex Jones has an opinion, and him expressing his opinion is using the internet in bad faith. Because Jared Holt doesn't agree with Alex Jones, and that's what makes it bad faith. If Jared Holt agreed, then it would all be totally kewl, bro.

 I'm going to laugh my ass off if it turns out Jones is right about Sandy Hook. I don't think he is, but watching little bitchez like Jared Holt twist in the wind would be -awesome-.

But here's a question: who funds People For The American Way? From Wikipedia:

Major donors to PFAW include George Soros' Open Society Institute, the Miriam G. and Ira D. Wallach Foundation, the Bauman Foundation, and the Evelyn and Walter Haas Jr. Fund.

So, I'm now speculating that George Soros made a phone call. That's maybe what happened.

The Phantom

How to not get a date.

First seen at Small Dead Animals (as usual because I'm lazy and Kate has all the thingz first anyway) an amazing scientific discovery.

New Research Shows a Vast Majority of Cis People Won't Date Trans People: A recent study attempts to quantify the extent of trans discrimination when it comes to romantic and sexual relationships.

Wow. What a discovery.

To be clear, for the army of outrage seeking dickheads out there, this is not posted for the purpose of mocking Trans people. Those people have enough trouble in their lives without me making fun of them. Leave the Trans people alone, ladies and gentlemen, it is the proper Christian thing to do. Being merciful is never wasted, as somebody besides me should have said a long time ago.

But I am most certainly mocking someone:

 Dr. Zhana Vrangalova is an NYC-based sex researcher, writer, and educator. She received her PhD in Developmental Psychology from Cornell University.

Yes, I am mocking Dr. Zhana Vrangalova for being a fraud, and I am mocking Cornell University for giving this moron a PhD. Why? Behold:

Two Canadian researchers recently asked almost 1000 cisgender folks if they would date a trans person in a new study published in the Journal of Social and Personal Relationships. This is the first study to ever attempt to quantify the extent of trans discrimination when it comes to romantic and sexual relationships.
958 participants (all but seven cisgender, ranging in age from 18 to 81, with an average age of 26) were asked to indicate which genders they would consider dating. The options included cisgender man, cisgender woman, trans man, trans woman, or genderqueer, and participants could select as many genders as they wanted.

Only 12% of all participants selected "trans woman" and/or "trans man."

Shock and surprise, most people be they gay or straight won't date the Trans person. Here's what Dr. Zhana Vrangalova makes of that:

The high rates of trans exclusion from potential dating pools are undoubtedly due in part to cisnormativity, cissexism, and transphobia — all of which lead to lack of knowledge about transgender people and their bodies, discomfort with these unknowns, and fear of being discriminated against by proxy of one's romantic partner. It is also possible that at least some of the trans exclusion is due to the fact that for some people, sexual orientation might be not (just) about a partner's gender identity, but attraction to specific body types and/or judgment of reproductive capabilities.

Now, I've not bothered to look up the research. But, sight unseen, I would wager that the majority of people if given the choice of dating a person with one leg or two will pick the person with two legs. I do have some prior experience here, -very- attractive young women in wheelchairs have less luck with getting dates than they do without the wheelchair. Same girl, two different responses. That state of affairs remains constant across race, religion, ideology and gender. Nobody picks the wheelchair.

People like what they like. Generally they like whole, healthy, attractive members of the opposite sex. If you ask them what they want, most will choose that. Some will lie about their choice of course, and claim the virtue signal of Openness, which is probably why they got 12% open to dating a trans. The actual number is probably a lot less. A double-blind test would sort that out.

Why? Because that's how Humans are, not because of "lack of knowledge about transgender people." Knowledge of gay people hasn't changed the percentage of gays in the population in the last 30 years, and it hasn't made straights any more likely to date them. More "education", by which I actually mean browbeating and propaganda, will do nothing positive and will probably make things worse.

People like what they like. Fashions change, but the ground state of dating choices does not. Anybody tells you different, put a hand on your wallet and #walkaway.

The Phantom

Update: Welcome, tsunami of Instapundit readers! Sarah Hoyt linked me again! Woo hoo!

An Academic Woman-splains Free Speech.

I saw this at Small Dead Animals, and it is a beauty. "Do you remember Deborah MacLatchy? Wilfrid Laurier's President and Vice-Chancellor has penned a special message for all Canadians..."

Not merely free speech, but better speech needs to be protected on campus

Better than what, you ask? Good question, as it turns out. Rex Murphy asks that question.

Amid the vast waste of anodynes, platitudes and non-sequiturs, it was difficult to pick out a winner — the most tired, numb and vacant verbalism. But I struggled and chose, from her opening sentence, her claim that Laurier "has been at the centre of the campus free-speech conversation during the past year."

Just like there are two genders plus academic bullshit, there are two kinds of speech. There is free speech, and there is coerced speech. Otherwise known as shutting up if you know what's good for you.

The Phantom

Infowars ban not going well for the banners.

How does that old Star Wars line go? "If you strike me down, I shall become more powerful than you can possibly imagine."

The Infowars app is rising in the Apple store's rankings after a number of other major digital platforms cracked down on its content.

The app has surged in popularity in recent days from the 47th to the 4th most popular Apple store news app in the United States. That position places Inforwars over CNN, Fox News and The New York Times's apps, according to app analytics site, App Annie.

In Google Play's app store for Android, the Infowars app currently sits at the 11th spot for the most popular U.S. news app, up from its previous spot at 31st.

Everybody is getting on this bandwagon.  Spotify, Apple, Pinterest, MailChimp, are kicking Jones and Infowars off their platforms.

There's really only one thing to say to this: You want more Trump? Because this is how you get more Trump.

Exhibit A on getting more Trump, closely contested Ohio congressional seat went to the Repooplicans last night, even though they probably didn't deserve to win. The Republicans as a party SUCK these days. Its just that the DemocRats have gone far beyond sucking and passed into the "active enemy of the Republic" zone.

Seen first at Small Dead Animals.

The Phantom

Bringing a knife to a gunfight... in Nebraska.

Another nutcase ignores the age-old advice.

Lincoln police are looking for a man who exposed himself to another man while wielding a sword early Saturday morning.

The other man, 26, told police he was sitting in his car at West South and Southwest Ninth streets around 4:30 a.m., after walking his dog, when a naked man approached him with a sword.

The naked man tapped the driver's side window with the sword, and the 26-year-old grabbed his rifle from the vehicle, chasing the man into a wooded area nearby, Lincoln Police Officer Angela Sands said.

Here we have the typical thing that happens these days, a man who is clearly crazy and/or wasted on some sort of drug has a sword, and he's menacing people with it. A quick Google Maps reveals that the address is a suburban neighborhood next to a controlled-access highway.

Because I know that lots of anti-gun people read this type of thing, I'm going to point out a few items they'll miss.

First, some random 26 year old redneck scrub in Flyover Country, fricking Lincoln Nebraska, has a rifle in his car at 4:30 AM, and NOBODY DIED. Okay? What was the best possible outcome here? Armed crazy person, attempting assault with deadly weapon (and close in there is no weapon deadlier than a sword, my gentle flower children) and nobody died. It doesn't get better than that. A -cop- would have most definitely shot that guy. No question.

Second, despite everything the government does at all levels from top to bottom in the name of public safety, there's an insane person with a sword. Was the random 26 year old hopelessly paranoid to keep a gun in the car? No, apparently not. Because insane naked man with sword, tapping on his window. The chances of winning the lottery are very small, but somebody always wins it.

Third, how does this turn out if 26 year old doesn't have a gun? Hmm? Maybe he gets away clean in the car, or maybe he has to use the car on this guy. Chances of casualty are much higher. So he gets away, crazy guy still has his sword, now he's on the hunt for a new victim. Again, chances of injury or death are higher.

Fourth, how does this all turn out if the victim is less robust and less aggressive that a 26 year old male? Badly, right? Very, very badly. Even if nobody dies, lifetime PTSD for the victim.

And that, dear socialists, is why we mock you.

The Phantom

Update: Sarah Hoyt Instalanche!!!

Apple, Farcebook, Pootube ban Alex Jones.

This is California culture asserting itself. Restrain, regulate, ban.

Apple, Facebook and YouTube clamped down on content by Alex Jones Monday.
Apple confirmed on Monday that it had removed five out of six podcasts, which includes Jones' infamous "The Alex Jones Show" as well as a number of other InfoWars audio streams. The news was originally reported by BuzzFeed News.
Facebook and Google made similar decisions later on Monday. Facebook removed four pages controlled by him, while Google removed the official "Alex Jones Channel" on its platform. The YouTube channel for InfoWars, the media company owned by Alex Jones, still remains live.

I'm not going to defend Alex Jones here, because that's not the point. He has an opinion that differs from the management of three big California tech companies, and they are using the power of their platforms to shut him down.

Lots of people have opinions that Big Silicon Valley technocrats don't like. For instance, every single American who voted for Donald Trump.

That they would even consider taking this sort of step now, against a small fry like Alex Jones, speaks volumes about their arrogance and their mindset.

Imagine what they're going to do in October, when the election determines whether Trump will be impeached or not. Imagine 2020.

Possibilities: How about every iPhone and Android device suddenly won't play Republican election ads? How about if all the data that Facebook has been scraping from the web for years suddenly becomes available to Antifa? Names, addresses, phone numbers, relatives, workplace, etc. They could actually do that. Its physically possible. Probably pretty easy. Couple of hours work, I would think.

And the political will is clearly there, they -want- to do it. Strike down the Nazi-voting Trumpers in one blow, a high-tech Kristalnacht.

I strongly think we are nowhere near paranoid enough, my friends.

The Phantom

Update:  https://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2018/08/are-tech-giants-working-together-to-ban-conservatives-apple-and-facebook-ban-infowars-on-same-day/

The answer is quite obviously yes, they are working together. Possibly without even formally doing so. Same culture, same goals, they're all going to be on the same page pretty much.

Excessive tattoos and mental health: Zombie Boy dies.

We have sad news today, which I am now going to exploit to make a point. The artist and model known as Zombie Boy died yesterday of an apparent suicide. RIP Rick Genest.

Montreal model and artist Rick Genest, also known as Zombie Boy, has died, police sources have told Radio-Canada. Genest was 32.
Genest came to the public's attention after tattooing his body from head to toe, including images of a skull and brain on his head. He holds a Guinness World Record for most insect tattoos (176) and another for most human bone tattoos (139).
His body-art attracted fashion designers and he modelled at high-end shows in Paris and Berlin. In 2011, he appeared in Lady Gaga's music video for the song Born This Way.
Police sources told Radio-Canada that Genest died in Montreal's Plateau–Mont Royal borough around 5 p.m. ET on Wednesday. They are classifying his death as a suicide.

When an otherwise healthy man commits suicide at age 32, that is a very sad thing. It is, apart from being a tragedy, a failure of the mental health establishment as well, to help this man find his way through his illness. That's their job, and they didn't get it done. This is not to sit in harsh judgement of the individuals involved in this man's care, if he was even getting any care. It is merely a statement of fact. Whatever measures were taken, it didn't work.

But for the greater community, it is also a failure. When a handsome man has every inch of his body covered in -painful- tattooing, furthermore depicting images of rot and death, it is a sign that he's having a problem. This man had a biohazard emblem a foot tall on his chest and a skull tattooed on his face, that's not something a healthy, well-adjusted person does. They get "Mom" on a shoulder, or a tribal arm band. Maybe a heart on their butt or something.

Yes, I'm actually saying that his body art was a manifestation of a dangerous illness. Which killed him by the way, making it a -fatal- illness.
Again, I'm not sitting in harsh judgement on the individuals involved in that art. They didn't make him that way, it isn't their fault. But, the bald facts are: fatal mental illness.

My harsh judgement is reserved for the people screaming at their computers right now because I dared mention excessive tattoos and mental illness in the same sentence. Radical body modification is strongly correlated with suicide, and y'all need to pull your heads out of your asses. There's some guy out there getting surgical modifications to make him look like a Ken doll. He's got a problem, which might very well kill him.

It isn't cosplay, people.

The Phantom

Update: Welcome Instapundid, and thanks for the comments!

Woman crashes into man's car because TRUMP!!!

Today in our "random acts of kindness and senseless beauty" file, some liberal woman road-raged a complete stranger over a Trump bumper sticker on his car. Drove into his car stopped at a stoplight, with his girlfriend inside at the time, and took off.

Chloe Wright is charged with driving offenses, vandalism and assault with a dangerous weapon. No word if hate crime charges are pending. If not, they should be.

And here we thought it was going to be Republicans shipping black people off in cattle cars, right?

The Ironic Phantom

Britain blinks: Tommy Robinson freed on bail.

Her Majesty's government has blinked. It appears that between the hordes of protesters in the streets and the upcoming Brexit debacle, somebody decided it would be smart to let Tommy Robinson out.

This is probably a good decision. Jailing a guy for literally standing on the corner minding his own business with a phone in his hand was not a good look for Britain.

Because you know what? If the government is doing something in public that they can't afford to have live-streamed, they shouldn't be doing it. Taking a video of public employees doing something is a public service to the nation, not a crime.

As well, it is not a good sign for British democracy that they have vast mobs of 25,000+ taking to the streets over political issues. Rule by mob is not what you want to see in a democracy. Its more what you expect in a South American banana republic, where forming a mob is the only power common people have over government.

The Phantom