Google: The end is nigh.

He's coming.

Here's a classic scenario from a toxic work environment. A snowflake triggered by the use of an every-day normal word in a work meeting.

A Google executive sparked a fierce backlash from employees by using the word "family" in a weekly, company-wide presentation, according to internal documents obtained by The Daily Caller News Foundation.
Many Google employees became angry that the term was used while discussing a product aimed at children, because it implied that families have children, the documents show. The backlash grew large enough that a Google vice president addressed the controversy and solicited feedback on how the company could become more inclusive.

What does that look like in real life?

One employee stormed out of the March 2017 presentation after a presenter "continued to show (awesome) Unicorn product features which continually use the word 'family' as a synonym for 'household with children,'" he explained in an internal thread. That employee posted an extended rant, which was well-received by his colleagues, on why linking families to children is "offensive, inappropriate, homophobic, and wrong."

One guy posts a snowflake rage-fit on the internal communication network, a bunch of other people have themselves a little ShirtStorm agreeing with him, to the point where upper management has to do a groveling ritual to calm the storm.

At work? Are you kidding me?

Don't we recall the last guy who embarrassed Google with a controversial internal memo was publicly shamed and fired? James Damore, name ring a bell?

I'd go into the details of the snowflake memo, but they don't really matter. Here's the bottom line of it:

Use the word "family" to mean a loving assemblage of people who may or may not live together and may or may not include people of any particular age. STOP using it to mean "children". It's offensive, inappropriate, homophobic, and wrong.

So why is the end nigh for Google? Because they are encouraging and rewarding mobbing behavior among their employees. Using a word in the culturally normal way in a technical presentation generated a couple of days worth of uproar on the company network.

All that activity occurred during work hours. Those people were not doing any revenue generating work while they were raging on about pronouns. But worse, now every guy who has a presentation to make is worried about what harmless word is going to be the next one to cause a mob. Will it be "team?" How about "shoe" or "badminton?"

Net result, the smart people who get all the work done are going to see that and leave the company. You can't work in an environment where snowflakery is more important than a major product presentation. The ones who are left behind, such as the idiot who objected to using the word "family" in a sentence, are the ones who DON'T ACCOMPLISH ANYTHING. They are a cost, not an asset.

Dead company walking.

Update: Welcome Instapundit readers!!! Woohoo!

127 bodies in the desert, Dems yawn.

REEEEEEEE!!!!!

The way the border to Mexico is portrayed in the media, you'd think crossing it was a leisurely stroll on a Sunday afternoon. Chad and Muffy take the two kids across at Nogales AZ at 10AM, then enjoy a refreshing iced tea on the back patio at 1PM. The reality?

Yes, the sun will kill you.

On the weekend before Christmas, a group of volunteers set out to search for the remains of dead migrants on the Barry Goldwater Air Force Range, a remote desert area in southwestern Arizona where military jets from bases in Arizona conduct live bombing exercises.

The volunteers from the non-profit group Aguilas del Desierto recovered the skeletal remains of eight migrants in two days.

30 volunteers search the bombing range over a weekend and come up with eight bodies. That's a lot of bodies.

In 2018, the remains of 127 dead migrants were recovered in southern Arizona, the Pima County Medical Examiner's Office said.

The office conducts autopsies on the remains of migrants found in Pima, Cochise and Santa Cruz counties, where the majority of migrants die.

The 127 remains recovered in 2018 were slightly below the 128 remains recovered the previous year, Medical Examiner's Office data show.

Over the past two years, the number of migrants recovered in southern Arizona has dipped to some of the lowest levels in recent years. In 2010, the number of migrant deaths recorded by the Pima County Medical Examiner's Office peaked at 222.

Although the number of remains recovered dipped in 2018, "we are not down to where we were," said Gregory Hess, Pima County's chief medical examiner.

They're trying hard to word this as if the difference between 127 and 128 is a "dip." Hilarious in itself, and even funnier when you read on.

Before 2000, the remains of fewer than five migrants were found each year, the Arizona OpenGIS Initiative for Deceased Migrants shows.

In 2000, just one was found. In 2001, the number soared to 79 and then to 151 the year after that. The number of annual migrant deaths since then has remained well above 100, according to Humane Borders, a Tucson-based group that compiles data and logs it on the OpenGIS website.

Coincidentally, what changed in 2000?

Migrant deaths have remained high despite a sharp decrease in the overall number of migrants apprehended by the Border Patrol, which in fiscal year 2018 totaled just less than 400,000, down from 1.6 million in 2000, when Border Patrol apprehensions peaked.

Yeah, that. Before, they'd get arrested. Now, the government just lets them die in the desert. Because arresting them is RAAAAACIST!!!! Reeeee!

Somebody remind me why Trump and his wall are so eeeevile again. I forget, because I'm thinking about women, kids and old people dropping dead from heat stroke, and then being eaten by the coyotes and javelina pigs. Tell you something else, if Canadians started waking up to find dead migrants frozen in their backyards, there'd be a big honkin' wall from sea to shining sea soon afterward.

The Phantom

SJWs: Women's self defense is problematic!

Yes friends, it is true. SJWs have decided being a strong, independent whamyn of colour is problematic. See, SJW Zack Ford thinks you ladies should just let yourself get robbed.

No, not kidding. Boi really went there. Then deleted the tweet, because telling the truth like that is very embarrassing to an SJW.

The original tweet, transcribed:

"The punishment for armed robbery is not death, though. Of course I don't think he should have had a gun either, but if she had let him rob her, even at gunpoint, both likely would have survived. It's the praise for her gun ownership that bothers me."

There was also this piece of genius here:

"Conservatives a thrilled a woman with a concealed-carry permit shot and killed a 19 year-old would-be mugger. That's not how justice works. The penalty for theft is not death, nor do we want it to be."

Both these tweets plus some more are deleted, of course. Now there's a much longer non-apology up. Zacky was not prepared for the number of people telling him to shove it up his ass.

The problem he's having is that he already said what he actually thinks. Which is that women (and everybody, really) should let themselves be robbed, raped, what have you, because those crimes don't rate the death penalty.

I watched the video of this attack at the first link. The attacker put her on the ground. She fired at him after he drew his weapon and after he physically shoved her down on the ground. She apparently didn't have much of a gun on her, because the attacker ran away after being shot, was arrested later blocks away, and survived all the way to the hospital. Died on the table during the very expensive taxpayer funded surgical effort to save his life. So probably a .22. If he'd decided to fight, that gun wouldn't have been enough unless she put a couple or three right into his brain.

My take, carry a bigger gun, ladies. You shoot have to somebody, it should HURT him.

Here's what Zacky Ford's newer, "more nuanced" take is:

My ideal is for a world in which guns do not have to be a part of anyone's daily life and in which gun deaths are not a part of our daily news. I stand by this ideal and disagree with the proposition that more guns will make people safer.

This in the face of video showing a woman saving her own life with a gun.

So just take that little datum right there, that the plain and obvious truth on a video tape won't move this asshole, and apply it to every other fucking thing on his Twitter feed. The man is perfect SJW.

I'm reminded of previous posts where SJWs say retarded things about self defense. Plus Aaron. Can't forget Aaron, he's a special kinda special.

The Phantom

But muh government!!!! Shutdown threatens "hellscape".

NBC has gone full retard today:

The country would face an economic hellscape if the government shutdown lasts "months or even years," as the president has suggested it might, experts tell NBC News.

 Yes friends, if the DemocRats don't make that bad orange man re-start the Great Mill of Government, we're all gonna die in Hell. No food, no water, no roof over your head.

What they're actually terrified of: the US government is shut down for 6 months, and no one notices or cares. That's got them sweating blood.

The Phantom

Gun use surges in Europe. Unexpectedly!

This article really is an example of how bad its gotten in Europe. Check this out:

Europe is still far from facing the gun prevalence and violence in Latin America or the U.S., which lead the world. World-wide civilian ownership of firearms rose 32% in the decade through 2017, to 857.3 million guns, according to the Small Arms Survey, a research project in Geneva. Europe accounts for less than 10% of the total.

The first thing to know is that the Small Arms Survey is a Leftist peacenik appendage of the UN, and pretty much everything they say is suspect. The USA did NOT lead the world in "gun violence", whatever that means.

But even using their own bent statistics, they're flipping out.

But Europe's shift has been rapid, and notable in part because of strict national restrictions. In most European countries, gun permits require thorough background checks, monitored shooting practice and tests on regulations. In Belgium, France and Germany, most registered guns may only be used at shooting ranges. Permits to bear arms outside of shooting ranges are extremely difficult to obtain.

Strict registration requirements don't account for—and may exacerbate—a surge in illegal weapons across the continent, experts say.

Europe's unregistered weapons outnumbered legal ones in 2017, 44.5 million to 34.2 million, according to the Small Arms Survey. Many illegal weapons come from one-time war zones, such as countries of the former Yugoslavia, and others are purchased online, including from vendors in the U.S.

When the Lord Mayor of Cologne told women to stop dressing slutty so the Mooselimbs would stop raping them back in 2016, a lot of people were listening. The communication was pretty clear. "Ain't nobody gonna help y'all bitches! Get off my lawn!" According to the article, both gun crime and legal gun ownership are up ~10% since then.

If the Small Arms Study says gun ownership increased 10%, you can bet it went up a lot more than that. And if they say there's 44.5 million illegal guns in Europe, you can probably add a decimal point. This despite them all having gun control since the Nazis. (Yes that's right, you NPC snowflakes, Hitler invented gun control. Easier to shove a Jew in a cattle car if he doesn't have a gun.)

Gun ownership is both expensive and tedious in Europe. The governments have done everything they could to take all the fun out of it. But despite that social and legal oppression, people are still buying them. Legally, or illegally. Gun control doesn't work,, not even in Holy Europe the land of Big Brother.

What's Trudeau want way more of? Gun control. Inevitably.

The Phantom

 

Oh Noes! Supreme court, Aieeeee!

There is no joy in Mudville, Mighty Ginsberg has stepped out.

The Supreme Court says Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg is missing arguments for the first time in more than 25 years as she recuperates from cancer surgery last month.

Court spokeswoman Kathy Arberg said Monday the 85-year-old Ginsburg is continuing to recuperate and work from home after doctors removed two cancerous growths from her left lung on Dec. 21.

I can tell you how much "work from home" an 85 year old lady is getting done during her recovery from lung surgery. Not a lot. The description "painful" doesn't cover it. "Agonizing" is closer, but still falls short. She'll be lucky to be able to watch TV unassisted right now, between recovering from the anesthetic and the pain killers. Expecting her to read and understand legal arguments while wasted on Oxycontin, you'd have to be a Liberal to expect that.

That means SC spokesbabe Kathy Arberg's word on the issue is... I'm going with "optimistic."

Clearly the End Times have arrived, if you're a Liberal. For Conservatives, we feel kinda bad that ol' Ruthy is having a hard time, but slightly relieved that the Law of Gravity won't be getting repealed this session. Alexandria Occasional-Cortex has been heard saying gravity is racist, we were a bit concerned.

The Phantom

Apple: don't fix your phone, peasant!

Seen at Slashdot and at Instapundit, this datum should inform your choice for your next phone. You'll have to decide if you want to pay a thousand bucks for a phone that can't be repaired.

The lengthy [Apple shareholder] letter cites, specifically, that people are buying fewer iPhones because they are repairing their old ones. Apple has long fought efforts that would make iPhones easier to repair: It has lobbied against right to repair efforts in several states, doesn't sell iPhone replacement parts, sued an independent repair professional in Norway, worked with Amazon to get iPhone and MacBook refurbishers kicked off Amazon Marketplace, and has deals with electronics recyclers that require them to shred iPhones and MacBooks (as opposed to allowing them to be refurbished.) The Department of Homeland Security, meanwhile, has seized iPhone replacement parts from prominent right to repair activists in the United States.

[...] Apple has never clearly articulated why it doesn't want people to fix their own iPhones or to have independent experts repair them. It has previously said that iPhones are "too complex" for users to repair them, even though replacing a battery is pretty easy and is done by average users all the time. But the fact that repair hurts Apple's bottom line came out in Cook's official communication with shareholders, who he is legally obligated to tell the truth to.

Now, we all knew this at some visceral sort of level. Down deep in your heart, you could feel that Apple did not want you to fix that iPhone. They don't sell repair parts, right? I can get repair parts for almost anything from a shovel to a big-screen TV. I can certainly get parts for my Samsung phone. But not an iPhone. And why couldn't you even open an iPhone without all kinds of specialized knowledge and tools? Because they wanted you to give up and buy a new one.

We have also seen that Apple really and truly was slowing down older phones and iPads. You didn't imagine it, it was slower. Which would have been okay-ish, I suppose, if they hadn't done it in secret. Which they certainly did.

I've seen a few generations of these phones taken apart. They are -shoddy- inside. Things like wifi antennas break because they are made of super thin plastic and stuck on with hot-melt glue like a kid's craft project. The phone gets hot, the glue softens, and the antenna wanders out of its socket. Or the plastic perishes and the teensy-tiny little ribbon wires break. Engineers don't do things like that by accident. They know it will break. But more than that, they know -when- it will break.

Back in the 1970s with the Ford Pinto we all learned a new term: planned obsolescence. This is a business maneuver where a company designs a traditionally durable-good product, like a car, dishwasher, phone, electric motor or what have you, with a deliberately limited lifespan. The Ford Pinto was famous because it rusted out in four-to-five years, and would go on fire in low-speed collisions.  Ford made it that way to maximize profit by minimizing production and material costs. They calculated that it would be cheaper to pay off potential lawsuits than build the car properly. And, they knew it would be easier to buy a new car than fix the rusty one.

Tim Cook and company in the Apple leadership seem to have remembered the planned obsolescence part, but they forgot the part where Ford nearly went bankrupt from the class-action lawsuits over corrosion and exploding cars killing people. The company was served with murder charges, which nearly sent the Ford corner-office guys to jail in 1980.

Lately we've seen a big advertising push from Apple that their next-gen 10-s phones will last longer, to be more environmentally friendly.

Sure. I believe those boys care about the environment. Because their failed attempt to make the phones legally unrepairable would have nothing to do with that, right?

Note to read-until-offended Lefties: When I say that Silicon Valley Liberals are a bunch of lying assholes who do not mean a single word they say, this type of thing above is why. Tim Cook, for sure, does not care a single damn about the environment, or Diversity!!!, or anything other than the almighty dollar. Just turn the sound off and watch what he does.

UPDATE: It seems Apple has finally discovered that humans don't like being spied on.

My thoughts on this parallel my thoughts on Tim Cook's ecology crusade. Their whole business model is built on iPhones tracking their owner's movements and interests. They make more out of selling that data to advertisers than they make out of selling the phones.

Seeing that sign makes me giggle. What happens on your iPhone gets transmitted to Cupertino every ten seconds.

To be fair, Android is no better. The only difference between them is the location of the server farms. But please, lets not pretend Apple gives a good Goddamn about your privacy. They're the reason you don't have any.

#Don'tBelieveTehWamyn!

Well well, looks like Bernie Sanders is about to get a taste of the #MeToo lash.

Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders and his chief lieutenants are offering contrition as some of his 2016 campaign staffers face allegations of sexual harassment that threaten to derail a second White House bid before it begins.
Hours after a New York Times report detailed allegations of unwanted sexual advances and pay inequity on his first campaign, Sanders apologized late Wednesday "to any woman who felt that she was not treated appropriately."
"Of course, if I run again, we will do better next time," Sanders told CNN.
Yet there were immediate signs that the allegations, which did not directly involve Sanders, could hurt the self-described democratic socialist's 2020 ambitions in the midst of the #MeToo era. In the wake of the report, some Democratic activists and operatives complained about the aggressive culture during the first campaign when male staffers and supporters were sometimes labeled "Bernie bros."

Scratch a Commie, find a pervert. They're like hogs and mud.

While it would be -hilarious- to see BernBern dragged through the same knot hole as Kavanaugh and Roy Moore, we all know how this works. We only #BelieveTheWoman when the accused is Republican/Conservative. When the accused is a DemocRat/Liberal, the woman is a lying bitch even if she has a blue dress with a sperm sample on it. Bernie could be a Furry in his off time and we will never, ever, hear a word about it.

Which, frankly, is why I do not read newspapers or watch television. The only time "news" impinges on my sphere of attention is when I need to fact-check some atrocious lie or disinformation campaign. Like this one.

The Phantom

Update: Welcome Instapunditeers, and thank you Sarah Hoyt for the linkosity! Flying monkey airforce, ATTTAAAAAAACK!!!

Southern Poverty Law Center getting sued for a change.

I'm familiar with this SPLC group because of their activity in liberal gun control policy and propaganda. I'm used to seeing them being not even wrong on a wide variety of issues. Generally I expect to see 2+2=Aardvark from them.

But lately, since the Fall of Hillary (aka the election), they've been getting excitable. Net result, they're getting sued.

In December 2018, a Baltimore lawyer filed a devastating lawsuit against the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) and two of its employees. The SPLC targeted Glen Keith Allen over his former ties to the National Alliance (NA), a white nationalist group. In doing so, the liberal group allegedly violated laws and legal codes of conduct by receiving and then paying for stolen documents in violation of confidentiality agreements. The group went after Allen with the intent of getting him fired by the city of Baltimore and permanently destroying his future prospects.

 

In August 2016, the SPLC published an article branding Allen a "neo-Nazi lawyer" and insinuating that this lawyer's work for the city of Baltimore was racist. Beirich, the article's author, smeared a small political party as racist and then published allegedly stolen documents protected by confidentiality agreements connecting Allen to the National Alliance.

The lawsuit is not only about defamation, it also includes documents stolen by paid SPLC informants.

Why care about some neo-Nazi lawyer? Where's the beef?

Well, SPLC works with Twitter, Google and Facebook to decide what you get to see on the internet, and what you get to say on your own social media pages.

Its Soviet censorship, being done by private companies and an NGO supported by private money.

Its funny to see the same Lefties who never stop moaning about McCarthyism doing stuff that would have made McCarthy blush. Stolen documents, paid informants, the lawsuit allegations read like a Cold War spy novel.

The Phantom

Happy New Year!

2019, Woohoo!

IRS is very well armed.

Mid-Christmas week news, the IRS has a -lot- of guns and a -lot- of ammunition.

The Internal Revenue Service had in its weapons inventory 4,487 guns and 5,062,006 rounds of ammunition as of late 2017, according to a report published this month by the Government Accountability Office.
Included in this arsenal, according to the GAO, were 15 "fully automatic firearms" and 56,000 rounds of ammunition for those fully automatic firearms.
The same report--"Federal Law Enforcement: Purchases and Inventory Controls of Firearms, Ammuntion, and Tactical Equipment"--says that the Office of the Inspector General of the Department of Health and Human Services had 194 fully automatic firearms and 386,952 rounds of ammunition for those fully automatic firearms.

That's because they have armed officers, and many of these departments have a SWAT team. Full time SWAT teams exist in the Dept. of Education, HHS, HUD, all kinds of alphabet soup departments have them. Not absolutely certain that IRS has a SWAT team, but it would not surprise me to hear that they did. They certainly have M-16 rifles and shotguns, so that's a SWAT setup right there.

Also, remember this?

And this?

And this?

Just thought y'all ought to know. ~:D

The Phantom

Update: Welcome Small Dead Animals! 

Merry Christmas!

Merry Christmas to all, and to all a good night!

The Phantom

As the camel-turd whirls.

Picture first, obviously!

Flopping camel flop is at it again, making up blog posts out of blocked comments and invoking my name to get rage-clicks from his flying monkey troupe.

My reply to his click-bait posted here, because I know he's not going to.

Gee floppy, that's a lot of work you did. However I am strangely unmoved by your Wikipedia research.

The core of your discontent appears to be that you assume all these data are honest. You seem outraged that I do not accept them too. Interesting thing to be upset about, floppy. Sacred cow being gored? Structural pillar of your worldview being undermined?

I merely observe that corrupt governments are disgustingly common these days, and their minions lie with every breath. I mean, do you believe any official number coming out of Venezuela right now? The people who live there don't, that's for sure.

Or the Canadian government. Guns, for example. They lie about that an awful lot, and really shoddy lies too. Easily exposed, you know. Pipelines? Windmills? The lies are numerous and flagrant.
Are they lying about population, immigration, things like that? I'd like to think they're not, but I'm not going to bet money on their veracity, lets just say.

Also, you have some interesting people commenting here. JohnQPuzzle for example: "So I am not swallowing Hoyt/Phantom’s crap until they give more than vague claims of non-white people being liars."

Curious how "non-white" got in there, I don't recall either Sarah Hoyt or myself mentioning race or colour. The boy must have just made it up out of whole cloth, eh floppy? There's a lot of that going around...

Well, there you have it. I'm not insisting the global population is hugely different than the official UN number of 7 billion, I'm just saying I don't take it as holy writ anymore. They may have lied about that in pursuit of an agenda. Wouldn't be the first time.

It is interesting how fast Lefties will begin howling when you question something like that though, isn't it? Almost as if there was money involved.

The Flop-Dodging Phantom

Playboy at the Vatican again...zzzzzz

Hey, edgy New York pricks, try this shit in Mecca if you want me to buy your washed up, worn out, boring-ass magazine.

A Playboy model who has posed naked at the Vatican while holding a large wooden crucifix in the latest of a series of controversial photoshoots has been arrested.

Belgian model Marisa Papens is seen dragging the cross across a street with St Peter's Basilica visible in the background - while nude.

Another of the pictures shows Papen sitting naked on some bibles on the wet cobblestones of St Peter's Square while other snaps show her tied to the cross.

Papens made global headlines when she was imprisoned after posing naked at the Karnak Temple Complex near Luxor, Egypt.

Wow. Super transgressive. Say what you want about Hugh Hefner, that guy knew how to sell a magazine.

NYT: would extinction be a bad thing?

The New York Times pops the question that's clearly on a lot of SJW minds.

There are stirrings of discussion these days in philosophical circles about the prospect of human extinction. This should not be surprising, given the increasingly threatening predations of climate change. In reflecting on this question, I want to suggest an answer to a single question, one that hardly covers the whole philosophical territory but is an important aspect of it. Would human extinction be a tragedy?

To get a bead on this question, let me distinguish it from a couple of other related questions. I'm not asking whether the experience of humans coming to an end would be a bad thing. (In these pages, Samuel Scheffler has given us an important reason to think that it would be.) I am also not asking whether human beings as a species deserve to die out. That is an important question, but would involve different considerations. Those questions, and others like them, need to be addressed if we are to come to a full moral assessment of the prospect of our demise. Yet what I am asking here is simply whether it would be a tragedy if the planet no longer contained human beings. And the answer I am going to give might seem puzzling at first. I want to suggest, at least tentatively, both that it would be a tragedy and that it might just be a good thing.

The author, one Mr. Todd May who the NYT assures us  is a professor of philosophy at Clemson University, is going to suggest human extinction is a Good Thing. Oh, and that global warming is the thing that's going to kill us all.

Of course he is.

Mr. May is an American academic in 2018. If he didn't hold this view he wouldn't have a job. And what is the core of this view, anyway? What notion could view the extinction of Humanity to be a good thing?

One could press the objection here by saying that it would only be a loss from a human viewpoint, and that that viewpoint would no longer exist if we went extinct. This is true. But this entire set of reflections is taking place from a human viewpoint. We cannot ask the questions we are asking here without situating them within the human practice of philosophy. Even to ask the question of whether it would be a tragedy if humans were to disappear from the face of the planet requires a normative framework that is restricted to human beings.

 Emphasis mine. The issue is that Mr. May does not restrict his "normative framework" to humans. In other words, he's a bunny hugger.

So, then, how much suffering and death of nonhuman life would we be willing to countenance to save Shakespeare, our sciences and so forth? Unless we believe there is such a profound moral gap between the status of human and nonhuman animals, whatever reasonable answer we come up with will be well surpassed by the harm and suffering we inflict upon animals. There is just too much torment wreaked upon too many animals and too certain a prospect that this is going to continue and probably increase; it would overwhelm anything we might place on the other side of the ledger. Moreover, those among us who believe that there is such a gap should perhaps become more familiar with the richness of lives of many of our conscious fellow creatures. Our own science is revealing that richness to us, ironically giving us a reason to eliminate it along with our own continued existence.

Yes, we should all die so that nice cows and bunnies and timber wolves will be happy. I can see you doubting me out there. I can see your eyebrows going up with skepticism. Nobody could be such a dick to think Humanity should die because bunnies. Sadly, dear reader, yes they could:

One might ask here whether, given this view, it would also be a good thing for those of us who are currently here to end our lives in order to prevent further animal suffering. Although I do not have a final answer to this question, we should recognize that the case of future humans is very different from the case of currently existing humans. To demand of currently existing humans that they should end their lives would introduce significant suffering among those who have much to lose by dying. In contrast, preventing future humans from existing does not introduce such suffering, since those human beings will not exist and therefore not have lives to sacrifice. The two situations, then, are not analogous.

 So we don't have to kill ourselves, really. But we do have to stop breeding. But killing ourselves would probably be a plus, and we should strongly think about it.

That's what passes for Post Modern Philosophy at universities these days, ladies and gentlemen. These clever fools like Mr. May think themselves very erudite, very enlightened and Avant Garde for having these anti-Human views, but it has all been done before. If you look at the kind of vile writings current in the Germany of the 1920s, you'll see ideas very similar, differing in minor detail only.

How else does one justify mass murder?

The Phantom

Update: Welcome Instapunditeers!

What's your comfort number, Lefties?

It's a good question, don't you think?

My question for Congressjerk Eric Swalwell is pretty simple: "How many Americans would you murder to achieve your goal of disarming us?"
It's a fair question.
Swalwell is the MSNBC stalwart who recently wrote an op-ed advocating that the government confiscate the guns that make people like him wet themselves and imprison those of us who decline to surrender them.
...
Now, we know that some Americans would resist this kind of tyranny. People all over the world are resisting the elite's commands. The Brits Brexited. The French are rioting because they don't want to sacrifice their livelihoods on behalf of the global elites' weird weather religion. And a decree that the Second Amendment is not a thing anymore would certainly provoke some serious pushback here.
That's why it's fair to ask Rep. Bloodlust how much blood he's prepared to shed to achieve his goal of disarming Normal Americans.

I think its time this question started being asked of our glorious leaders. Larry Correia has a bruising takedown of the good Eric Swalwell, one which covers all the practical reasons why Swalwell is not even wrong about the issue. Swalwell is saying something like 2+2= aardvark.

But, as I mentioned yesterday and today, people like Swalwell and Occasionally-Cortex have no interest in facts and practicality. When faced with opposition, they will double down every time. Because they are playing to a crowd. And that crowd is angry, they want red meat and lots of it! They don't care what's real, or what's true. They just want a target.

So there's really only one question worth asking DemocRats in the USA and Liberals here: how many people are you willing to throw out of work to get your socialist plan enacted? How many will you imprison to enforce your regulation? How many senior citizens are you willing to freeze to death for your ecological fuel tax? How many resisters will you kill? Hmm?

One?

Ten?

Ten thousand?

The Communist's answer was 100 million in the 20th Century. The entire nation of Canada, four times over, died for the myth of the Worker's Paradise. The Chinese Communists are still at it.

How many injured and jailed this week in France, over a fuel tax? How many citizens will the French government be willing to sacrifice for their regulations? The number is already more than ten.

Next time you go to a town hall to hear a politician speak, you ask them that. How many resisters will you kill to get what you want? What's your casualty comfort number?

The Numerology Phantom

Update: Welcome Instapunditeers!

Muy caliente: Occasionally-Cortex goes full Stazi!

Not content with saying stupid shit about Glowball Warming and nationalizing private companies, Alexandria Occasionally-Cortex confirms all our worst fears about socialists. She threatened to subpoena Donald Trump Jr., a private citizen, because he posted a spicy meme about her.

Socialist Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez threatened to use the powers of her elected office to retaliate against Donald Trump Jr. on Friday after the president's son posted a meme trolling her on his personal Instagram account.
"I have noticed that Junior here has a habit of posting nonsense about me whenever the Mueller investigation heats up," Ocasio-Cortez tweeted. "Please, keep it coming Jr - it's definitely a "very, very large brain" idea to troll a member of a body that will have subpoena power in a month. Have fun!"

The meme is a great one, incidentally. Picture of Occasionally-Cortex with the question: "Why are you so afraid of a socialist economy?" Picture of Donald Trump Sr. with the answer: "Because Americans want to walk their dogs, not eat them."

Again, this is not because Occasionally-Cortex is an idiot. It is because that's what her idiot New York City followers want to see in her Twitter feed. I can see them sitting in bars downtown, showing this tweet to each other and yelling "You go, girl!"

They don't understand that a government official who can and will send cops to you house because you posted a meme is a bad thing. Occasionally-Cortex is like a zoo-keeper, feeding outrage pellets to the monkeys so they'll put on a good show for her.

The Phantom

Update: Welcome vast horde of Instapundit!

Occasionally-Cortex: watch her double down!

Newly elected Lefty Alexandria Occasionally-Cortex demonstrates the one trait that we have all come to associate with The Left: stupidity.

In a week that brought the unprecedented sight of the French Super Lefty government backing down off an Eco-friendly fuel tax because half the population of France were in the streets baying for their heads, Miss Occasionally-Cortex was all about the ecology and taxes:

"As a matter of fact, it's not just possible that we will create jobs and economic activity by transitioning to renewable energy, but it's inevitable that we are going to create jobs," Ocasio-Cortez said. "It's inevitable that we're going to create industry, and it's inevitable that we can use the transition to a hundred percent renewable energy as the vehicle to truly deliver and establish economic, social and racial justice in the United States of America."

 Ocasio-Cortez also suggested the federal government should nationalize Tesla's technology, following the company's receipt of tax subsidies.

This was a Bernie Saunders event by the way, just so you know what snake oil Bernie Bros are going to be peddling the next two years.

One would almost think she doesn't watch the news. A fully-fledged tax revolt in Europe, as the peons -finally- reach their limit for being pushed around, taxed and told-off by government assholes, and little Alexandria is proposing more of it.

But it is worse than that. She -does- watch the news. She knows there's widespread rioting in the intellectual birthplace of Marxism and Post Modernism, and she knows why. This is her response. She's doubling down. Same message, twice as hard.

Because why? Because that's what sells.

It isn't Alexandria Occasionally-Cortex who is stupid, my friends. She has identified a constituency, she has won them over, and she is throwing them red meat as fast as she can. She's probably above-average smart. She's certainly very high energy.

Its the people who voted for her, who want more and more and more taxes and regulations on every goddamn thing in the world. They see France going up in flames, and they say There Oughta Be A Law!!! They'll keep on saying the same fucking thing until there's literally bodies hanging from streetlamps in front of their house. There is no situation where they smarten up. They'll go to their graves like that.

You can seen the stupid fuckers doing it right now in Venezuela. There's no money, no food, no fuel and no cops, but they're out demonstrating for Maduro because he's promising More Free Stuff again.

Ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls: there is no free stuff. Never was, never will be. If somebody promises you free stuff in exchange for your vote, it is a -lie-. You have been warned.

The Warning Phantom

Update: Welcome Instapundit!

Lefty receives death threats, oh the humanity...

This is something kind of new. I don't recall seeing this type of thing played out in quite this way before.

The LGBT news website INTO has removed the byline for an opinion piece accusing Ariana Grande's new music video "thank u, next" of being "anti-queer" after the writer of the story received death threats.
"We have decided to remove the author's name from this piece after the editorial team was alerted that a high number of death threats were being made against the writer as a result of the opinions presented in this piece," read an editor's note affixed to the top of the article.

Some Usual Suspect SJW writer delivers the expected "That's Anti-Gay!!!" tirade against a new and very popular music video by very popular singer, and the unexpected happens! People, instead of accepting that this sort of thing is the New Normal, are pissed off. They vent their rage on the web site in the New Normal fashion, with death threats. "Ah'mina killz ya!"

Web site management is super surprised by this, removes the author's name. I guess it never happens when they call Taylor Swift and Lady Gaga videos racist/bigoted/homophobic.

This is two brand new things happening in two weeks. The Middle Class rioting in France and forcing the government to back the hell down off their shiny new fuel tax, and now pop music fans telling Lefties to shut the fuck up about their diva.

The death threat thing, I'm unimpressed. I know people who get blood-curdling death/torture/rape rape threats every day. Conservative women receive that shit all the time, they still post their by-lines and tell the little Threat Fairies to come and get them. Milo Yiannopoulos had a mob try to burn down a building trying to get at him in Berkeley. Jordan Peterson gets internet death threats all the time, and has been mobbed and de-platformed at venues in boring-ass Canada.

Even I, your humble host, have things like this said about me out there in Internetz Land: "...the deep searing hatred of free speech, free association and freedom of ideas reveals itself every time." Way to go, floppy camel dork.

But for a gay mafia site to get mobbed, that's new. This is a sign that a segment of young people may have had enough of the gay mafia. Unlike Taylor Swift, Ariana Grande is popular with the Diverse kids, meaning those who tan. That particular group has never bought in to the LGBTQFBICIAKGB agenda. Previously they've settled for writing rude things in the bathrooms of the nation with magic markers, but now maybe they're tired of it.

This is how these popular movements go, you know. They slide along in the grass roots for a long time, kind of simmering away, nobody talks about it but everybody is thinking it. Then some little thing happens, and suddenly half the population of France is tearing down the Arc De Triumph. Or Donald Trump gets elected President of the USA.


Update: Welcome Instapundit horde!

And speaking of white privilege...

Is it still a privilege to be white when people try to kill you and make magic spells out of your innards?

The first Mr. and Miss Albinism East Africa pageant on Friday night in Kenya's capital saw participants from Tanzania and Uganda as well.
Elizabeth James of Tanzania said she was forced to change schools as a child when people, staring and pointing, started trailing her home.
She called for an end to the ignorance that drives some to kill people with albinism for their body parts or even dig up graves in the misguided belief that they will bring wealth and good fortune.

The above question is of course directed at all the SJWs and race-huckster scum who continually rage on about Whiteness.

Nothing but praise and respect for the people in the fashion show, particularly the women. They've got more guts than all the SJWs on Twitter combined.

The Phantom

Update: Welcome Instapundit!

A war on nerds? Could be.

Fixing your shit for you, because you Normies can't read the manual.

I've noticed, over the years, that everybody likes to push the nerds around. We're "weirdos." We act "funny."

Yeah, we do. Because our fucking brains work different than the Normie brain. Usually, better in most respects. We actually know how to program the VCR. That absent-minded dork you're making fun of? He's doing calculus in his head, trying to figure out how to make your friggin' iPhone work better.

But we can be annoyingly dense in social situations. Its true. We actually annoy each other.

Normies like to pretend that our failings are some kind of choice to misbehave, a moral failing, the result of Mommy Issues or some other need to be nonconformist square pegs in a world of round holes. But that is not the case, my friends. The difference is literally bone deep. We have different DNA than you Normies. We're built to be this way from the ground up.

What's that like? Its like being a Ferrari Dino, living in a world made for Volkswagen Beetles. Everything moves too slow, the speed limit is too low, all the other cars are sluggish and they get in the way. The best part of life is when you find a piece of open road. Then you can put your boot down and hear that engine roar like the raging beast that it is, eating up the miles and leaving the little piss-can Beetles in the dust.

Beetles don't like that. They gang up and trap you in traffic. That's what its like. Thanks, Normies. You pricks.

So how far would the Normies go to be rid of the annoying Nerds?

Two fairly scary news items tell the tale when you put them together.

First, a very large scale DNA survey study claims to have found genetic markers unique to ADHD.

Geneticist Ditte Demontis and her colleagues used data from more than 20,000 people with ADHD, comparing them to a control group of 35,000 people without an ADHD diagnosis. They found 304 points where tiny differences in DNA—like single letter swaps—were distributed across their two groups in a statistically telling way. If any of those variants were very close together, the researchers counted them as representing the same stretch of DNA, grouping them together into 12 important regions.

The authors of the study emphasize that there is no "gene for ADHD," but they have found that in their study population genes common in ADHD were also common in other disorders, like Autism and Schizophrenia.

Which sounds about right. People with Aspergers or more pronounced Autism often are also diagnosed with ADHD. Twenty or thirty more years of research in that direction, they may be able to isolate all or most of the markers for a wide range of behavioral neurology.

Nerds will be instantly identifiable with a cheek swab. How do you like that?

Second, the Chinese have been gene-editing humans. Link to Nature article here.

They finally hatched two that lived.

A Chinese researcher claims that he helped make the world's first genetically edited babies — twin girls born this month whose DNA he said he altered with a powerful new tool capable of rewriting the very blueprint of life.
If true, it would be a profound leap of science and ethics.
A U.S. scientist said he took part in the work in China, but this kind of gene editing is banned in the United States because the DNA changes can pass to future generations and it risks harming other genes.

Taken with a grain of salt, this claim is a bit questionable. Nobody really knows if they actually managed it. But the thing is, they clearly want to, and eventually they will manage to gene-edit human beings and bring them to term.

Therefore China will be the first country to discover just how bad an idea it is to meddle with the Human genome. If they really did bring two baby girls to term, my prayers go out to those two babies. I really hope that the eggheads didn't frig something up. But they probably did, and nobody will ever know exactly what.

Well, so what, Phantom? What's that got to do with nerds?

If you can identify nerds with a simple test, and you can modify DNA at will, how long before nations (or companies!) start demanding citizens weed undesirable nerd traits out of their offspring? 

Particularly tech companies. They've shown a fine disregard for privacy and basic human rights, and they really don't like depending on guys like James Damore to create their products.

Damore is a great example. He's a huge Nerd. He's famous for being the guy who put his foot wrong in a typically Nerd way, by pointing out the elephant in the room at Google. They need his Ferrari 500hp brain to solve their problems, but they can't stand the way he doesn't know to shut up like any Normie would. He uses his brain to discover Truth in places where they don't want him to. But they NEED him, because they are all just fucking Volkswagens where it counts.

(And you better believe that every Nerd in Silicon Valley was watching that whole thing. If there's one thing nerds all know, its bullies. Like nerds everywhere they made plans to deal with it. Are you watching Google and Facebook stock prices tank? That's what happens when you piss off the Nerds. They are subtle and quick to anger.)

Wouldn't it be nice if the authorities could chop and channel that nerd-brain into something a little more Normie and a little less annoying and loose-cannon? Wouldn't China, and probably Google, love the chance to -make- people get their children edited?

After the uprising of the 17th of June
The Secretary of the Writers' Union
Had leaflets distributed in the Stalinallee
Stating that the people
Had forfeited the confidence of the government
And could win it back only
By redoubled efforts. Would it not be easier
In that case for the government
To dissolve the people
And elect another?

We could actually live to see that. And the terrifying Revenge of the Nerds that inevitably followed. It would be legendary.

Dear Normal People: please realize that the last guy on Earth you want to toy with is the guy that designed everything that keeps you alive. There's no more dangerous creature than an engineer with a grudge. So cut us weirdos some social slack and get the fuck out of the way. We've got stuff to do.

The Phantom

Update! In case some of you think I was a little harsh lumping Google in with the Chicom government as a force of diabolical oppression in the world, guess what? You're wrong. I was not harsh enough:

https://dailycaller.com/2018/11/28/google-employees-chinese-surveillance-tech/

Google employees unhappy with the project, which would extend China’s surveillance state by creating an application that would further censor Chinese search engines, renewed their protest in a new letter published Tuesday by Medium, which has about 435 signatures.
 “Dragonfly would also enable censorship and government-directed disinformation, and destabilize the ground truth on which popular deliberation and dissent rely,” the open letter reads.
The signatures on both letters objecting to Project Dragonfly reveal a growing internal concern among employees who do not wish to be part of a company that allows governments to censor its citizens and enable a surveillance state.

However, around twice as many employees signed a letter in April opposing Google’s involvement in a Pentagon program, Project Maven, that aimed to improve drone analysis to better identify civilians, thus reducing the amount of accidental civilian casualties.
This opposition letter was signed by between 3,100 and 4,000 employees between April and June and included dozens of senior engineers, according to another Times report.
Thousands of Google employees addressed their letter to Sundar Pichai, the company’s chief executive officer, asking that Project Maven be canceled.

 Now, I don't know about y'all, but in my school days 4,000 is more than twice as many signatures than 435. 4,000 is an order of magnitude larger than 435.

An order of magnitude more Google employees object to working for the United States government than object to working for the Communist Chinese government.

Upperdate! The Chicom government blinks!

China’s government ordered a halt Thursday to work by a medical team that claimed to have helped make the world’s first gene-edited babies, as a group of leading scientists declared that it’s still too soon to try to make permanent changes to DNA that can be inherited by future generations.
Chinese Vice Minister of Science and Technology Xu Nanping told state broadcaster CCTV that his ministry is strongly opposed to the efforts that reportedly produced twin girls born earlier this month. Xu called the team’s actions illegal and unacceptable and said an investigation had been ordered, but made no mention of specific actions taken.

 I would like to think that this move was brought on by a sudden attack of conscience on the part of the Minister of Science and Technology. I would like that a lot. But the cynic in me suspects it may have more to do with the Party being made to look bad in front of the international community.

The cynic also suspects that Dr. Evile was spirited off by the Chinese Secret Squirrel Squad to a secret lab on a mountain peak somewhere, and set to work making more CRISPR tots.

Self-driving hotel room?

Some things simply demand to be mocked.

Robotic self-driving hotel room, dream version.

The robotic hotel room on wheels - is this the future of travel? Self-driving suite can ferry guests from place to place - and drones deliver room service through the sunroof

• Toronto-based Aprilli Design Studio has designed a hotel suite housed within a self-driving vehicle 
• Renderings reveal how the battery-powered hotel-room-on-wheels includes a double bed and shower room
• The vehicle's designers note that travellers would simply specify the route they wanted to take via an app

Yes friends, the "future of travel" is a camper van.

Actual robot hotel room after 15 years of service.

Also, these geniuses think that "room service" can be delivered by a quadcopter to a moving vehicle that is driving down the highway. Because that will totally work, right?

But best of all:

So that travellers wouldn't miss out on the usual perks of staying in a hotel, Aprilli says it plans to install dozens of hotel facilities across road networks.These stop-off points would house 'public amenities such as food and beverage, meeting room, spa, pool, and gym along with housekeeping, maintenance, and charging services for the travel suites'.

Hotel faclilty with public amenities, dream version.

Trailer parks.

Actual version. Good luck getting room service, bro.

Enchanted Forest Robot Hotel, 2045. Clem cooks meth in the red one.

You know what kills me? Artists and designers got paid good money to come up with this bullshit.

The Phantom

Goalposts have moved again.

It is no longer enough to remain silent on the subject of gay marriage. If you do that, they'll come for you.

A leading Australian bridal magazine has shut after being ditched by advertisers for refusing to feature same-sex couples, one year after the country changed its marriage laws.

The Christian founders of "White", Luke and Carla Burrell, said they did not feature gay weddings in their magazine as they had "no desire to create a social, political or legal war".

In a farewell blog on Saturday, the couple said they were targeted by activists because of their stance and forced to "pick a side".

As a result, several advertisers withdrew their sponsorship making their publication "no longer economically viable", the pair added.

In another fit of "if you're not with us you're against us!!!" the gay mafia managed to get the magazine closed down. Not because the publication or the owners were anti-gay, but because they refused to bow to the Don and kiss the ring. It is no longer sufficient to just be quiet, now you have to actively go along and promote the cause.

I predict this will not end well for anyone.

The Phantom

Orangutan extinction: blame Kellogg's!!!

Are there any greater liars than Greenies? I have my doubts.

Cadbury bars and Oreos are among products from TWELVE companies driving orangutans to the 'brink of extinction' with the use of palm oil.

Long story short, the Daily Mail has a story that the poor Orangutans of Indonesia are having all their forests chopped down to grow palm oil plants.

Which is true. Palm oil plantations are growing at a huge rate in the tropics. It's a very big deal.

The lie is blaming American and European food companies for this growth. Edible oil is available from a large number of sources. Corn, flax, sunflowers, those are all grown industrially right here in Ontario. World-wide there's plenty of vegetable oil to eat. Big food companies use palm oil because it is the cheapest, not the best. Food consumption of palm oil is a tiny fraction of the overall production.

Why is palm oil so cheap, and why is so much of it produced?

Bio diesel.

Who caused that to happen?

Greenpeace.

Will they come clean and admit that burning food oils in our cars is fucking insanity?

No.

They will blame Big Business for something Big Business has resisted for 40 years, since it was first proposed. They will do this because they are pusillanimous liars.

May their trousers burst into flame. At the gas station.

The Phantom

Update: Welcome Instapundit!

Stan Lee passed away. Yancy Street mourns.

What a revoltin' development.

Stan Lee, the man who co-created Marvel Comics, has died ... Stan's daughter tells TMZ.

We're told an ambulance rushed to Lee's Hollywood Hills home early Monday morning and he was rushed to Cedars-Sinai Medical Center. We're told that's where he died.

Lee had suffered several illnesses over the last year or so -- he had a bout of pneumonia and vision issues.

Stan started Marvel with Jack Kirby in 1961 with The Fantastic Four. He went on to create Spider-Man, Black Panther, The Incredible Hulk, X-Men, Iron Man and The Avengers.

Farewell Stan. Yancy Street and every superhero in the cosmos salute you.

The Phantom

The failure of imposed morality.

Here's something interesting I stumbled upon on Drudge today: "How the GOP gave up on pr0nz"

From the 1960s through the turn of the century, pornography played a dominant role in the American political argument—its morality and legality, its restrictions and regulations, its implications and unintended consequences. It was treated as a matter of urgency not just by the religious right, which decried the hypersexualizing of society, but by the radical left, which denounced the objectifying of women. Liberal feminists and conservative evangelicals found themselves unexpectedly allied in vilifying the adult entertainment industry. After decades of intensifying conflict, Ronald Reagan convened a Presidential Commission on Pornography in 1985; two years later, Reagan held a press conference to announce his administration's plan to combat illegal obscenity—and issue a warning to the porn professionals: "Your industry's days are numbered."

And now of course the pr0nz sites have the most traffic of anything in the internet. Top Five traffic sites are all filthy pictures and filthy movies. Kids, adults, everybody looks. Now we joke about Rule 34: if there's a character or an idea, then there's porn of it. But Rule 34 has gone from being a joke to being an actual rule. If you can think of it, there really is pr0nz of it. (I'm not going to give examples, sorry.)

Something else has become apparent, porn is bad. It is bad for the people who view it, and extremely bad for the people who make it. Plenty of high-profile suicides and mental disintegrations in the pr0nz "industry" make that painfully obvious.

The article makes it clear that the author thinks an opportunistic politician could find plenty of grist for their fame-mill in safety issues alone, and lots of "For The Chilllldren!!!" activity. But nobody does.
 

What happened? The pervasiveness of porn is a reminder that politics historically hasn't been much of a bulwark against the most primitive human desires—money, power, sex and, in this instance, a combination of the three. But it's also a window into the mentality on the right, which has surrendered the fight on many social issues as America has moved left. Even with Trump in the White House and five conservatives on the Supreme Court, there is no reversing the cultural tides that have swept away the Moral Majority's footprint on supporting traditional marriage and prayer in public schools. The difference is that some on the right still pay lip service to those lost causes. When it comes to porn—more accessible, more acceptable and less scrutinized than at any time during its history—they don't even bother anymore.

What happened, from my perspective, was would-be totalitarians realized they couldn't get any traction with the issue and gave up. The fact that porn may be harmful to everyone doesn't matter to them, what they want is a hot-button to push that will get them votes. But now, porn is ubiquitous. The most freaky hardcore imaginable is no farther away than your smartphone. Everybody has seen anything they want, and probably a bunch of stuff they didn't want. (Important safety tip kids, you can't un-see shit.) People are not shocked by it anymore. Nobody is screaming "there oughta be a law!!!".

So there are no votes there. No money. No leverage they can use to get power.

This leads to an interesting situation. There's nobody telling the populace not to watch the porn anymore. Churches have given up. Even the freaky Feminazis have given up, which is really saying something. If those nut-jobs give up on an issue, it is gone, baby. There is no more candy in that pinata.

From here on, until some new excuse is found, people will be free to view as much porn as they want. That it is harmful, if it is, will become apparent to everyone in due time. But it will still be there, waiting. So, it will be up to the -individual- to exercise restraint. Just like they have to exercise restraint with candy, booze and bacon.

Freedom, my friends. Sometimes it looks funny.

But the culture of self-restraint that grows from this freedom will be far more powerful and effective than the oppressive regulation imposed from above by our social betters.

The Phantom

Lest We Forget

100 years since 1918.

We still remember.

media behavior around mass shootings.

Another mass-shooting atrocity last night, this time in California. Condolences to the bereaved and the wounded.

Of note is the behavior of police and media today. This shooting occurred at roughly 11:20 last night. By 7:00AM this morning the police had released the shooter's identity.

White male, US Marine veteran.

That's pretty fast release of information on a guy that the news says didn't have any ID on him, and was too dead to have given police his name.

Ever notice how the cops seem to take a really looong time to release information on shooters, except when they're white, male and presumably Republican/Conservative Christian?

Maybe its my imagination, but there does seem to be quite a discrepancy in speed. Just sayin'.

The Phantom.

Robot grocery stores, get ready for it.

In my continuing series on job destruction and what inevitably happens when you raise minimum wage to idiotic heights, I give you the robot grocery store.

EINDHOVEN, Netherlands/NEW YORK, Nov 7 (Reuters) - Grocery group Ahold Delhaize will roll out small, automated warehouses to speed order picking and cut delivery times, Reuters has learned, as it revamps its ecommerce business in response to rising competition in a fast-growing sector.
At an investor event on Nov. 13, the world's eighth biggest food retailer is set to showcase a partnership that will allow it to automate order collection at mini "robot supermarkets" attached to the stores of its U.S. chains like Stop & Shop.
Now Netherlands-based Ahold Delhaize is teaming up with Takeoff, a start-up which builds small warehouses that stack groceries to the ceiling to save space and use robot arms to assemble shoppers' orders for items such as beer, milk, bread and fruit.
The warehouses serve as condensed supermarkets that can supply several stores with click-and-collect orders. They cost about $3 million to build, which Takeoff says is less than the cost of a typical store revamp.
"Ahold is preparing for a major push," Curt Avallone, Takeoff's chief development officer who led digital innovation at Stop & Shop until 2003, told Reuters.
"If it goes well, both from their side and our side, the hope is we would rapidly be able to build quite a few."

Lets list the advantages for the vendors here:

No shoplifting (Which is huge)

No employee stealing (Which is huge)

Much reduced breakage (robots don't drop stuff as much)

Much reduced spoilage (Just In Time delivery and stock rotation goes a lot faster.)

Tiny square footage compared to regular market

NO EMPLOYEES means the store can be open 24/7/365, including Sundays and holidays. It's a vending machine.

This is a perfect setup for big cities where supermarkets can't afford the real estate costs. Tiny space stacked two stories high with racking, no aisles, no lighting, no checkout, no cash registers, no samples, no nothing. Order on your smart-phone, all your crap gets spit out a chute into your car, you drive off.

One problem. All those people currently working at stores? They're on welfare now. They can't afford to buy the food at the robot store.

The Phantom

 Update: Welcome, Instapundit!

The American Election is over!

Yes, the American election is over. The world did not end, again.

Yay.

We now return you to the never-ending media meltdown.