Windows even less secure than we thought.

This is getting nauseating.

"In my testing, population of WaitList.dat commences after you begin using handwriting gestures," [Digital Forensics and Incident Response expert Barnaby Skeggs] told ZDNet in an interview. "This 'flicks the switch' (registry key) to turn the text harvester functionality (which generates WaitList.dat) on." "Once it is on, text from every document and email which is indexed by the Windows Search Indexer service is stored in WaitList.dat. Not just the files interacted via the touchscreen writing feature," Skeggs says.

 Meaning, every text file on your PC, AND passwords etc. If you wrote it into a text file, its there in WaitList.dat.

From the linked article,

According to Skeggs, the default location of this file is at:
C:\Users\%User%\AppData\Local\Microsoft\InputPersonalization\TextHarvester\WaitList.dat
Not all users may be storing passwords in emails or text-based files on their PCs, but those who do are advised to delete the file or disable "Personalised Handwriting Recognition" feature in their operating system's settings panel.

Be it noted, according to the researchers, this is a FEATURE of Windows. Not a bug. It is supposed to work like that.

$1 processor that runs Linux.

Spotted this today at HackADay blog, its is a $1 processor that is capable of running Linux with a few support chips.

Over on the EEVblog, someone noticed an interesting chip that's been apparently flying under our radar for a while. This is an ARM processor capable of running Linux. It's hand-solderable in a TQFP package, has a built-in Mali GPU, support for a touch panel, and has support for 512MB of DDR3. If you do it right, this will get you into the territory of a BeagleBone or a Raspberry Pi Zero, on a board that's whatever form factor you can imagine. Here's the best part: you can get this part for $1 USD in large-ish quantities. A cursory glance at the usual online retailers tells me you can get this part in quantity one for under $3. This is interesting, to say the least.

The chip in question, the Allwinner A13, is a 1GHz ARM Cortex-A8 processor. While it's not much, it is a chip that can run Linux in a hand-solderable package. There is no HDMI support, you'll need to add some more chips (that are probably in a BGA package), but, hey, it's only a dollar.

If you'd like to prototype with this chip, the best options right now are a few boards from Olimex, and a System on Module from the same company. That SoM is an interesting bit of kit, allowing anyone to connect a power supply, load an SD card, and get this chip doing something.

 

The author goes on to point out that the support software and documentation for this thing is a mess, BUT it only costs a dollar. This is cheap enough to justify using to run Christmas lights. Cheap enough to build lots of little boxes to do all kinds of things, run them on batteries and just leave them lying around.

The thing here isn't the capability or amazingness of the chip, because its a piece of crap compared to what's out there right now. The thing that is powerful is the price. Once the price of a thing comes down past a certain break-point, it makes possible all kinds of applications that are not feasible at a higher cost.

'Twitter is run by SJWs!' said Jack Dorsey.

In a rare moment of candor, Jack Dorsey, CEO of Twitter, admits that the place is run by SJWs and his Conservative employees don't feel safe.

Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey — like his counterparts at Facebook and YouTube — has consistently said that his service isn't biased.

But the people who build Twitter are biased, Dorsey admitted in an interview last month, saying out loud what everyone already knew: Twitter, like most tech companies in Silicon Valley, has a lot more left-leaning employees than right-leaners.

Twitter is so liberal, in fact, that conservative employees "don't feel safe to express their opinions" within the company, Dorsey told NYU journalism professor Jay Rosen in a new interview published today on Recode Media.

"We have a lot of conservative-leaning folks in the company as well, and to be honest, they don't feel safe to express their opinions at the company," Dorsey said. "They do feel silenced by just the general swirl of what they perceive to be the broader percentage of leanings within the company, and I don't think that's fair or right."

Now, I'm going to have to translate one euphemism here. When he says Conservatives "don't feel safe to express their opinions," he's not talking about a Safe Space where people go to rage on about Trump. He's talking about an environment where people are terrified somebody will discover they voted for Trump. They are watching other people be drummed out for the sin of "not a team player" because their hobby is shooting, or hunting, or even fishing. (Fish have feelings too, you murderer!!!) Or somebody found a pic on-line of them at a Pro-Life rally, or somebody saw them walking into a church on Sunday morning. Or that they secretly listen to Rush Limbaugh on their phone.

"Do you believe in the Virgin Mary, Private Joker?" is a Silicon Valley interview question these days. You are supposed to jump up and say SIR! NO SIR!!! while standing at attention.

What would posses Jack Dorsey to say such a thing?

Dorsey also explained why he brought up Twitter's left-leaning employee bias to begin with.

"I think it's more and more important to at least clarify what our own bias leans towards, and just express it," he added. "I'd rather know what someone biases to rather than try to interpret through their actions."

I'm going to translate that one too. It means there's a ton of SJWs at all levels of the company, steadily working to purge all traces of Conservatism from the organization, and he can't do anything about it. Otherwise he'd keep pretending everything is super hunky-dory peace love and smoking weed, man.

Now, avid readers may recall this post about Bonnie McDaniel, wherein we learned that The Phantom, by virtue of being willing to let people talk, was in fact stifling free speech. (I know, right?) She said something interesting:

"As the saying goes, "The standard you walk past is the standard you accept.""

Meaning that if somebody says something Wrongspeak, such as "We're going fishing this weekend," it is not enough to walk past muttering "what an asshole!" to yourself and then stab them in the back later. No, the standard is that you must confront them and tell them off right then. You must scream "Fish have feelings too, you murderer!" at them, right there in the hallway, and hit them with a pamphlet from PETA. Otherwise, everyone else will know that you are a fish murdering Fascist too.

So really, Dorsey isn't saying that he's resolute about stamping out political bias at Twitter Inc. He's not declaring support for free speech, and telling all the Conservatives its safe to come out now. He's admitting there's a Reign of Terror and saying the guillotine is open for business.

Intelligent individuals will begin polishing their resumes now. Good idea to have a parachute ready for when the company rolls hard left and dives for the ground in flames.

The Phantom

Update: Google founders on video calling Trump voters "fascists."

Upperdate: Welcome Instapundit flying monkeys!Thanks for the linkage Sarah!

Women in the infantry? Genius!

This is actually a sad story. One of those spectacular clusterfucks we've come to expect from the military.

Remedios Cruz joined the Marine Corps in 2013 as a supply clerk. One year later, she completed infantry training, and in 2017, made history when she became one of three females to join 1st Battalion, 8th Marines at Camp Lejeune, North Carolina. Now, Cruz is awaiting separation from the Marine Corps after pleading guilty to maintaining a romantic relationship with a subordinate. Cruz, 26, eventually married the person, who was a lower-ranking Marine in her unit, according The New York Times.

When you take 19 year olds and put them through the wringer, like they do in the Marines, the normal ones form bonds. That's how its supposed to be. These are not warrior monks, sworn to celibacy and poverty for life, for the the greater glory of the Almighty. These are soldiers. They become brothers. Sometimes more strongly than with their own family. (Mileage varies on this of course, but that's the idea they're trying to get to.)

When you put women in there, they still form bonds. But these are boy/girl bonds, and that means family. Despite any order or policy, despite surveillance and even jail, they are going to pair up. Because that is what healthy, normal males and females do under pressure. You don't have to look far to see them doing it, the local high school is an object lesson.

Ms. Cruz was set up to fail by an insane ideology that ignores history, tradition and science to pretend men and women are the same. To pretend you can treat them like identical cogs in a big military machine, and it will all roll along the same as an all-male force.

But they're not, and you can't.

I feel I should add that the Marine Corps has probably lost a fine soldier here, and that legally pursuing her for getting married is as much bullshit as sticking her in the infantry in the first place. Absolutely typical of the peace-time military, and the reason I'm not in it. Capricious application of odious regulations, for the furtherance of some incompetent officer's career. REMF Politics. [spit]

The Phantom

Why SJWs fail at brain.

Well, the sorry, soggy saga of the flopping camel turd blog continues. [Still not linking, y'all can look it up.]

Today's special contestant is Bonnie McDaniel. She's got lots of posts at the camel flop blog, she's got her Special SJW Official Faerie Wings and everything. She's been calling me everything but the kitchen sink for a while now.

But this was Tewww Good! to pass over. The complete comment was...

I see Bonnie is melting down and accusing me of an attempt to stifle free speech now, as well as saying I’m advocating genocide. Classy, Bonnie.

Well, you know, Phantom, I visited Hoyt’s place and saw that thread, in which you were participating, where BobtheRegisteredFool (and someone else, can’t remember the name now) were bleating about it being A-Okay to wipe out the Japanese and Indigenous people.

Did you step up and say, “Hey dude, that’s not cool?”

Did Sarah Hoyt step up and say, “Hey dude, I’m not hosting that shit on my blog. If you want to say that, take it elsewhere?”

The answer to both questions is no. In fact, Hoyt said she found FoolBob…”still interesting.”

As the saying goes, “The standard you walk past is the standard you accept.” So if you don’t object when somebody says terrible things like this…well, that means you’re consenting to it, now doesn’t it?

And if you think it’s “classy” to call you out each time you pull this crap…well, hey, yeah!! I’m class all the way.

In Bonnie's universe, we are all Nazis because we did not instantly gang up on BobtheRegisteredFool (henceforth BtRF) and eject him from our midst, lit on fire.

Also there's some alternate universe reality bending going on here. Bonnie says "Did you step up and say, “Hey dude, that’s not cool?” and helpfully answers "no" for me. As if I was totally down with the Nuke Japan Moar plan.

Which is not true. Rather than scream-and-leap like some demented ratcat, I explained my thoughts on why "Kill them all, let God sort them out" is a bad idea. Historically it never ends well. Not once. BtRF was unmoved, oh well, I'll try again another day.

But, according to Bonnie, I have sinned mightily! Quoth she: "So if you don’t object when somebody says terrible things like this…well, that means you’re consenting to it, now doesn’t it?" Yes, by engaging BtRF in a civil discussion where I strongly disagree with him, including historical references etc, I am consenting to his belief/argument/statement.

So basically, I'm the hate-filled hater of free speech because I didn't DEMAND that BtRF be de-platformed. On somebody else's blog. Because brain.

Shown actual size.

Because I engaged in a discussion, with some guy who has views I disagree with, I am both advocating genocide and also stifling free speech.

That's where we are with the SJWs now, my friends. The One True Way is de-platforming followed by punching punching the Nazi. Anything less and you are a Nazi too.

So much for collegiality and civil discourse, eh?

Currently in the Province of Ontario where I live, the provincial government is threatening to de-fund public universities if they don't knock this shit off. There's Real Life consequences to booing a guy off a stage and then beating his ass, which are you go to jail and live there for quite some time.

But, given Bonnie and taking her to the logical conclusion of her views, what can we expect? Un-civil discourse, obviously. Lots of punching people in the face, lots of doing unto others before they do unto you. Whoever has the most thugs wins.

What does that look like historically? Well, we've seen that shit before in the 20th Century. Civil war, followed by warlordism, followed by foreign invasion, famine, pestilence, and death. Otherwise known as China from about 1900 to 1950. Over a hundred million dead of one thing or another, mostly famine, ALL of it 100% avoidable. In fact they're doing it right now in Syria and Venezuela, with Mexico not far behind. Seems fun, right?

But wait, there's more! Two of the Four Horsemen got upgrades! With modern weapons like plagues, nukes and nerve gas, they can probably beat the Chinese record. Predict 200+ million dead in North America. Two of three. More in the cities, they starve faster and diseases spread in hours.

Doesn't that sound like a party? Two out of three dead right across Western civilization, sign me the hell up for that, Bonnie baby!

Oh noes, Global Warmening!!!

South Africa, as the sun blazes down on the savanna...

September 11th.

A reply to cacophonous fornication.

It seems that the floppy camel turd blog has decided it is not enough to slander Dave Freer and Sarah Hoyt, he's inviting comment on said slander.

I will not be linking to the floppy camel turd, because I might get some on me. But, for the record, this is my comment, which he has no-doubt blocked.

Since you asked so nicely:

"On that, don’t you think there’s something a bit weird about that defence given that it is literally an admission?"

An admission of what?

That the Europeans have a long, long history of pointless wars and random genocides? They do.

That the Romani (and the Travelers, and lots of other wankers) commonly abuse and steal from welfare systems across Europe? They do! (Go on, tell me they don't floppy. I've got a whole bag of popcorn here for that show.)

That the European welfare states will be looking for scapegoats as soon as the checks bounce?

Dear floppy, Greece is already doing that. Everybody is to blame but them. A whole war was fought the last time Germany did it, you might recall the Great Unpleasantness of 1939. Migrants are already being force-marched through Hungary, there's pics of it on my blog. Sweden just took a hard Right turn at the voting booth on Sunday. Britain voted itself out of Europe.

Who are the very first people that are going to be targeted by frantic bureaucrats when everything goes wrong? People who everybody knows are crooked and steal from Welfare, followed shortly by those of mere bad reputation, and proceeding to people who wear funny clothes in public and/or are the wrong colour. Oh, and the Jews. Can't forget them. Nothing is going to save those guys except Israel, poor bastards.

Because when you've decided that it is morally acceptable to purge undesirables, (as WorldCon did, I remind y'all Puppy kickers, love rubbing that in!) forced deportation vs. just killing them all is the next discussion. And it will be the Left which makes that decision, the same as they always, always do, when they inevitably run out of money. The difference between a National Socialist and a Communist is the uniform.

All of the above is why I like personal freedom, smaller governments and tax cuts. Because bureaucrats are cowardly murdering assholes waiting for their chance to shine. Don't matter what flag they do their murdering under, even lily white Canada has done its share. We are better off with fewer of them.

So, floppy, now I want you to show me where Sarah Hoyt said deporting/murdering all the Romani was a great idea, and Europe should get on with doing that. Popcorn's ready, take your best shot.

The Phantom

Update!

In the comments, floppy has of course been playing fuckaround with my remarks. That's why I post things here, for the record. Fuckers want to slander me, its nice to have what was said someplace public for all to see.

The only published comment of mine was: "Hope you feel proud, taunting a woman like that when she’s ill. You’ve really surpassed yourself this time. Try taunting -me-, floppy. See how somebody healthy deals with your shite."

This response is classic SJW Puppy-Kicker. Perfection.

JJ

9 hours

thephantom182: Hope you feel proud, taunting a woman like that when she’s ill.

If Hoyt is genuinely ill, then she should be taking care of herself instead of posting wildly irrational, unhinged rants on the internet.

If she is ill, where are the people who care about her? Why aren’t they looking after her and helping her to take care of herself, instead of letting her engage in deeply emotionally-unhealthy activities? Does she actually have any friends, or just hangers-on who sadistically enjoy goading her on and watching her implode on the internet?

With “friends” like that, she doesn’t need enemies. 🙄

In Bizzaro Universe, its perfectly acceptable to slander a woman online. Its perfectly acceptable to slander the woman every couple of weeks for four or five years. When she's already announced that she's sick and under medication, she's still fair game.

The bad guy is the one who mentions to her that she's being slandered. Got that? That's SJW logic.

Hey JJ. Never change, dewd. We LOVE you, man!

Upperdate: the flopper responds. My comment:

"Your upset about me disagreeing with people and things you like. Now think about that for a moment. Do you actually value my opinion that much?"

One does not "value" slander. And you are not denying you've slandered me, Sarah, Dave and Chris Chupik with untruths. Which is actually a step up for you, floppy. Normally you'd have some legalistic walk-back, where you'd claim you didn't say what you said.

So why bother? Because the internet is increasingly being used for marking targets, floppy, and that's what you're doing here. So and so author is a racist, or a Nazi, or a creeper, or Pro-Life, so and so commenter has a "deep searing hatred of free speech," and currently this carries with it Real World consequences. Which are getting worse. As you well know.

This week, people are getting security details assigned to them by their local PD over tweets. That is thanks to target-marking by little slandering shits on the interwebz, Twitter shirt-storms, and etc. Imagine what's waiting for next week.

That's why.

You got anything? Put it up. Call me out, big boy. You got nothing? Well, now everybody knows you've got nothing, and you're just trying to gin up another witch burning.

I'll add that it is very tedious cutting and pasting things for the record. I think I'm done here unless the camel flop has something truly noteworthy. Which does seem unlikely, I must say.

Media turns on Amazon!

I suppose it was only a matter of time. The US media is the mouthpiece of the DemocRat Party, and the Party has moved on from Hillary. She's yesterday's bagel, baby.

The new sweetness? Bernie! Who's Bernie targeting lately? Amazon!

A patent Amazon has received would pair humans and machines. In this case, the humans would be in a cage.
Illustrations that accompany the patent, which was granted by the U.S. Patent and Trademark office in 2016, show a cage-like enclosure around a small work space sitting atop the kind of robotic trolleys that now drive racks of shelves around Amazon warehouses.
The patent was called "an extraordinary illustration of worker alienation, a stark moment in the relationship between humans and machines" by researchers who highlighted it in a study published Friday.

The caged human forced to live in an environment ruled by soulless robots! METROPOLIS!!! FRANKENSTEIN!!! TERMINATOR!!!!

Or, we could use our tiny little brains, and wonder how do you keep a maintenance guy from being killed by the robots in the warehouse without shutting them all off? Because he has to go in there and pick up a box that fell off a moving robot, and it would be nice if he didn't DIE in there. And shutting them all off will cost $300,000 dollars every time you do it.

You put the guy in a safety cage mounted on a robot platform, give him a robot arm to pick up the box, and carry on.

F- you, US media. We can see you hiding behind that curtain.

The Phantom

Everything wrong with SF/F in one post.

Saw this gem today. "Everything wrong with science fiction is John W. Campbell's fault."

Campbell was basically a racist garbage-person.

Campbell supported slavery. And segregation. And believed black people were inherently intellectually and culturally inferior to whites. You know that whole, "But how could you possibly expect readers to empathize with a black protagonist?" thing? Something Campbell quite famously told Samuel R. Delany, in quite possibly its first documented incarnation. That whole "I don't care if they're white, black, or polka-dotted" thing white people say when they're trying to pretend they're not being racist? Campbell, while making apologetics for slavery no less, which was something he got up to a lot.

It goes on and on like that. Campbell was a RAAAACIST!!! Heinlein was a RAAAACIST!!! Asimov, Hubbard, Clarke, all RAAAACISTS!!! Sure, baby. Sure they were.

Why write this? What's the point? Well, about that:

Which is why I can't help be reminded of the whole World Fantasy Award H.P. Lovecraft bust… thing that went on a few years ago. And, well… I'm not saying that maybe it's time for a similar conversation about the Campbell, but…
Maybe it's time for a conversation, y'know?

Yeah, because HP Lovecraft was a RAAAACIST!!! So there was a rush by SJWs to get his face taken off the World Fantasy Award statue.

Having got that done, this bitch now wants the John W. Campbell Award re-named.

I guarantee you some other bitch has his/her/its sights set on Hugo Gernsback, who committed the twin unforgivable sins of being Jewish and a Capitalist.

What's revealing here is the -speed- with which these denouncements are coming. One after the other, the men and women who built the Science Fiction I grew up with from the 1960s onward are being declared heretics and their names stricken from polite society. The pace is frantic. They've only just finished burning Robert Silverberg at the stake, now John W. Campbell is getting tied on there.

It isn't sufficient that a commentator like Alis Franklin doesn't like JWC, or she doesn't like his work, and she therefore talks about the man or the work and points out the flaws. That's not enough. No, she demands the very memory of the man must be erased, chiseled off of monuments and even removed from an award given for science fiction books.

Everything wrong with Science Fiction as we know it today is personified by Mrs. Alis Franklin. Oh yeah, the edgy purple-haired SJW is actually a cis/het/white/married Normie. With fat arms. Shock, surprise.

At this rate of acceleration, in three more years there won't be a WorldCon and there won't be a Hugo award. They'll have burned it all down to the ground themselves.

The Phantom

Connect the Mexican dots.

Dear DemocRats, Liberals and NeverTrumpers. Here are two news stories for y'all to consider.

Mexican cops discover mass graves with 166 bodies.

Then this one:

Arizona rancher documents armed men in camouflage crossing the border onto his land in huge numbers.

I want you to consider those two stories for a moment, and then tell me again how Trump is a Nazi and he's insane, and building a wall along the US border is the same as the Holocaust.

Go ahead. I'll wait for y'all to sound out the big words.

Because I'll tell you this: If that was the Canadian border, and drug cartel assholes were coming into Canada like that, there would be a wall across the border you could see from space.

The Phantom

Respekt teh Whamyns!

New law in California is heading to the governor's desk for signature. Its a Beauty!

On Aug. 30, California lawmakers voted to force publicly traded companies based in California to have at least one woman on their boards by 2019 and depending on the size of the company, one to three women by 2021.California Senate Bill 826, sponsored by California State Senator Hannah-Beth Jackson (D), now heads to the desk of Gov. Jerry Brown. If it becomes law, this will be the first example of a state-mandated gender quota of its kind in the U.S.

Leaving aside the issue that this is certainly unconstitutional in both California and the USA federally, I found this bit here from the author to be noteworthy:

But forcing companies to accept a token woman could have unintended consequences. For one thing, women who are newly added to all-male boards may wonder if they are being asked to join because the state forced the company to do so. The larger policy problem, however, is that government overreach like this tends to have no limiting principle. Once the government decides it has the right to intercede in this arena, it is difficult to know where and when the government interference will end. What, for instance, is to prevent the government from requiring that each year, private employers hire employees from any number of classifications based on age, race, sexual orientation, or gender identity? Diversity is a vitally important goal, but one that the government should not mandate.

The author is clearly a liberal, self-identifies as a feminist, the article is hosted on an NBC affiliated page... and she's still sitting there saying "holy fuck!" to herself. Because holy fuck, this is a bad idea.

Hate to break it to ya girlie, that decision got made a loooooong time ago. Spoiler, we lost. Big Government means that the government "intercedes" (by which I mean meddles) in things that are not only none of its business, but in things which damage private enterprise. Because they are programmed to always "progress" and never stand still, they always take a little bit more. Another spoonful. Every day.

That's how you eat an elephant. One spoonful at a time. Pretty soon the elephant is gone, and they're looking around for another one to eat. The government raises taxes just a little, they regulate just one more thing, pretty soon you have no money and no freedom.

Now, this wouldn't be so bad, if they could deliver on their promises. In this case, if their new law actually delivered female equality in business, where the ladies get an even break with the men. But as even this airheaded Liberal journalist can see, it doesn't do that. All it really does is allow a government department to dictate the makeup of corporate boards. That's a bad idea for a lot of reasons, all by itself.

But it gets worse, because government progresses. They can dictate how many women are on the board of directors at Apple, pretty soon they will be dictating who those women are. And who the men are. And what Apple will be doing with its money, what little is left after the corporate taxes are paid.

The problem with Big Government is that if its big enough to give you everything you want, its big enough to take everything you've got. And it will.

The Phantom

Belgium bans the Bible. Or wants to, anyway.

Not content to let Saudi Arabia win the title of Most Oppressive Assholes, Belgium steps up to the plate!

An onscreen Bible reading which demanded women be submissive to their husbands has sparked calls to end religious broadcasting on public television in Belgium.

The New Testament reading, from Ephesians 5.22 - 33,  was broadcast on radio and Flemish TV station VRT from a Catholic mass in the town of Grimbergen.

A lay reader said, "Women, be submissive to your husband as the husband to the Lord. For the man is the head of the woman as Christ is the head of the church."

Sven Gatz, the media minister for the Dutch-speaking Belgian region of Flanders who represents the Flemish liberal party, tweeted: "No outdated, woman-unfriendly statements … please. What if, for example, an imam would have said this?"

He told newspaper Het Nieuwsblad: "The fact that they come from an old book is not an argument for letting them go to our people. This is not of this time, and that it is broadcast on the VRT for the whole of Flanders is already completely crazy."

Mr Gatz has been unsuccessfully calling for the end of Songs of Praise-style programmes at the taxpayer's expense since last year, but he now hopes the controversy will reignite the debate and insists different solutions could be found for religious people who are unable to attend mass.

"I want to examine all the technical possibilities to give these people their weekly celebration. But this cannot be an argument to keep these broadcasts, at the expense of the taxpayer," he said.

Well, if an imam would have said that, Mr. Sven Gatz, the media minister for Flanders, would not be talking shit about the Koran on Twitter and threatening to pull funding from the TV show. That type of thing is reserved for Christians, who to date have not habitually shown up to riot over slights like this.

Christians will no-doubt revisit that strategy fairly soon, if the likes of Mr. Gatz keep pushing the way they have been.

The Phantom

Saudi Arabia bans satire.

Well, looks like the Liberals came up smelling like a rose on this one.  Accidentally getting cut off by the Saudis was the best thing they could have done.

Saudi Arabia will punish online satire that "disrupts public order" with up to five years in prison, the public prosecutor said Tuesday, as the kingdom cracks down on dissent.

"Producing and distributing content that ridicules, mocks, provokes and disrupts public order, religious values and public morals through social media ... will be considered a cybercrime punishable by a maximum of five years in prison and a fine of three million riyals ($800,000)," the public prosecution tweeted late Monday.

So really, the Saudis are not the guys we Canadians should be selling guns and armored cars to. They're assholes.

But lest we be too harsh on the Arab Kingdom, consider that a ban on "public satire" is exactly what's being pursued here in Canada by the Liberal Party. If they get what they want, it will be -illegal- to publicly espouse Conservative views regarding taxation, religion, reproduction generally, and a lot of other things.

If Liberals are willing to make it a federal offense to miss-gender someone cosplaying as a tulip by refusing to use their requested pronoun, they will be happy to make it illegal to have a lawn sign that says "Windmills Kill Birds!" The truth, as they say, will be no defense.

The Phantom

Sarah Hoyt and Kevin J. Anderson win the Dragon Award!

https://www.amazon.com/Uncharted-Arcane-America-Book-1-ebook/dp/B07CG7LZJT/ref=sr_1_1?accordingtohoyt-20

This year's Dragon Award winners, Sarah Hoyt and Kevin J. Anderson for "Uncharted, Lewis and Clark in Arcane America."

Congratulations to Sarah and Kevin! Woo hoo!

The Phantom

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.