Another day, another lesbian blocked on Farcebook.

Big Tranny is flexing it's muscles these days, beating up women and getting them kicked off social media.

On Sunday evening, Miriam Ben-Shalom, the first lesbian to be reinstated to the U.S. Army after being booted over her sexual orientation, told PJ Media she had been banned from Facebook for 30 days. Her crime? Saying that lesbians like her are not interested in intercourse with males who have male anatomy. She has been outspoken against transgender activists, who — among other things — insist that males who identify as women are really women, so lesbians must be romantically interested in them.

When PJ Media asked about the offending post, Ben-Shalom pointed to a photo with two t-shirts.

"It is a picture of 2 red t-shirts in 'Your photos,'" she wrote in an email. "One says 'D*kes Don't Want D**k Get Over It' and the other says, 'Women Have V*g*n*s Get Over It.'" The vulgar photo may be seen here.

So vulgar! I'm clutching my pearls!

My second most favorite part of this story is that the Farcebook page is private, for members only. The "offending" picture (of t-shirts with printing on them, for fuck sakes) is not public and no one can see it. So Farcebook management is looking pretty red-handed today, censoring an old lady over nothing.

Of course to the Woke(tm) activists, Ben-Shalom is literally worse than Hitler, for daring to suggest that men can't be lesbians. They called the cops on some radical TERFs the other day in England for the same thing, a banner that said "Lesbians do not have penises."

There's something about a bald statement of the obvious that sends these tranny-activists into a frenzy. Meanwhile, actual transgender people are starting to disavow all this stuff. Blair White, for example.

But then actual transgender people tend not to be pedophile perverts trying to rope town councils into paying for "topless pool parties for 12 year olds" and using the law to make unwilling immigrant women wax their balls. Which they still have, while declaring themselves a whamyn.

My most favorite part is that radical lesbian man-hating feminist Miriam Ben-Shalom is being defended, not by the Left, her comrades in arms, but by PJ Media. The Right. The horrid NeoCons, the Hitler Youth, the Nazis, the Fascist swine that Antifa exists to punch. Yeah.

Dear Lefties, we can see you for what you are.

A list of themes I've seen enough of.

From Sarah Hoyt's post yesterday, following the chain of links to the original, I came upon this list:

• There is no truth, only competing agendas.
• All Western (and especially American) claims to moral superiority over Communism/Fascism/Islam are vitiated by the West's history of racism and colonialism.
• There are no objective standards by which we may judge one culture to be better than another. Anyone who claims that there are such standards is an evil oppressor.
• The prosperity of the West is built on ruthless exploitation of the Third World; therefore Westerners actually deserve to be impoverished and miserable.
• Crime is the fault of society, not the individual criminal. Poor criminals are entitled to what they take. Submitting to criminal predation is more virtuous than resisting it.
• The poor are victims. Criminals are victims. And only victims are virtuous. Therefore only the poor and criminals are virtuous. (Rich people can borrow some virtue by identifying with poor people and criminals.)
• For a virtuous person, violence and war are never justified. It is always better to be a victim than to fight, or even to defend oneself. But 'oppressed' people are allowed to use violence anyway; they are merely reflecting the evil of their oppressors.
• When confronted with terror, the only moral course for a Westerner is to apologize for past sins, understand the terrorist's point of view, and make concessions.

 
The title of the original post was "Gramscian damage," which I have seen around but I never knew what "Gramscian" meant. So I looked it up. It is for Antonio Gramsci, a Marxist propagandist and general issue a-hole.

Reading the list, I'm struck by how often these themes are the entire basis of fiction and films. Not a complete list, but good for a start. These themes infest recent science fiction to the exclusion of all else. Anti-colonialism is particularly popular as a cause in itself.

For me, the presence of any of the above bullshit in a story is reason to put it down. As soon as I come to "the poor are victims" or "violence and war are never justified" I'm putting the thing back on the shelf and moving on.

So, all you authors out there, fair warning. Free country so you can write whatever you want, but if anything on that list forms the basis of your book, I will not be reading it. I'm done reading about that.

The Thematic Phantom

#MeToo is over because Dems need Al Franken's senate seat.

Sometimes it is truly amazing, watching these socialsts maneuver.

Democrats and liberals in the news media have found a sudden nuance when defining "sexual misconduct," though the concept was conveniently a lot more clear-cut when a Supreme Court seat was on the line just 10 months ago.

The New Yorker's Jane Mayer published a lengthy article Monday that all but clears disgraced former Sen. Al Franken, D-Minn., of the multiple accusations of sexual assault he faced in 2017, which ultimately led to his resignation from the Senate.

Mayer offers a sympathetic ear to Franken, who believes he was wrongly shafted. She gets testimonials from Senate Democrats who have since come to regret their initial demand that Franken resign. And she casts doubt on the allegation that started Franken's pursuit because the victim, Leeann Tweeden, may have misremembered insignificant details about the time Franken forcibly kissed her and touched her breasts while she was unconscious.

Yeah, so don't #BelieveTheWoman if there's a DemocRat senate seat involved.

Amazing that some random journalist bozo thinks she can stuff the #MeToo tsunami back in the bottle over a frigging senate seat.

The Phantom

"Shut up, bitch!!!" explained the Canadian Government.

Apropos of the men "competing" as women in boxing and wrestling, and essentially beating up girls, I present this fairy tale:

Once upon a time in the Frozen North, some guy decided he was a woman, put on a dress and went around demanding everybody treat him as a woman. Most people decided it wasn't worth dealing with the guy, and said "Fine, whatever." This made him very angry.

Where he finally got the push-back he wanted was by demanding "Brazilian Waxing" services from ethnic women who work out of their homes.

Naturally, young and physically small Indian and Philippine women were his targets. He did not attempt to get a Brazilian from Fraulein Greta the shot-put champion because she would have punched him out. He picked little 98lb brown women. They, obviously, told him: "No, I am not going to wax your balls in my home where my kids are, your weirdo."

Yes, there is a real-world case that resembles the above fairy tale:

This is the case of Jessica Yaniv, born Jonathan Yaniv, who has filed complaints against more than a dozen female waxers with the Human Rights Council (HRC) in British Columbia. Yaniv claims that the women's refusal to give him a Brazilian – that is, to handle his penis and testicles and to remove his pubic hair, activities these women did not want to carry out – is discrimination. Yaniv says that self-identifying as a woman is sufficient to be treated as a woman and to get access to services typically reserved for women.

It is not enough to force a Christian baker to make wedding cakes for gay weddings. That's so last year! Now you're going to wax that woman's balls! Because women have balls now! [wait, what?]

The author concludes:

The suggestion that these Canadian female waxers are 'transphobes' because they refused to wax a dick confirms the cynical, sinister nature of that term 'transphobic'. It really is just a way to demonise and punish anyone who refuses to bow down to the ideology of genderfluidity. It is stick used to beat those who refuse to buy into the Orwellian notion that war is peace, freedom is slavery, and a penis can be female. You can now be a bigot simply for believing in reality itself, in this case that people with penises are not women. Pressuring women to handle male genitalia against their will is dreadful and it suggests woke politics has now crossed the line from irritating to disgusting.

I would contend that "woke politics" crossed the Disgusting Line with the #BakeMyCake! thing, but that is a mere quibble.

Where we're really at today is White men oppressing women of colour and attempting to sexually abuse them, under force of law.

Like nobody saw this coming. And you Lefty fuckers wonder why we look at you sideways.

Update: Ms. Jessica Yaniv has a "history" as they say.

Upperdate: A clarification for the lawfare inclined: I have no problem with Ms. Yaniv being a woman, and I have no problem with Ms. Yaniv bringing a suit before the BC Human Rights Commission. My problem is that the BC HRC exists at all. It is an affront to freedom and human decency, and should be dismantled immediately.

UppityUpperdate: Ms. Yaniv is (possibly, maybe, we're not really sure because Twitter didn't say) the complainant who got Lindsay Sheppard kicked off Twitter. And previously Megan Murphy (maybe, because again, Twitter never said.)

New Upperdate: Ms. Yaniv wants to host a "topless pool party" for "LGBT" 12 year olds, at a public pool, with no parents allowed, and she wants the Township of Langley BC to pay for it. As one does, apparently.

You know, it is remarkable how wrong this stuff looks when all you do is report the bare facts. No bold accusatory rhetoric or embroidery required. You just repeat the request in plain language, and the fundamental wrongness fairly boils off it. Gives you an idea what kind of MUTANTS are working in the Canadian civil service, and what they are working toward.

UppityUpUpperdate: Conservative weighs in with a hearty "I Told You So, You Lefties!!!" Bro seems to be missing the point though:

I’m all for letting bygones be bygones. But can we now please finally all realize that there are real policy and personal implications to this rash decision to suddenly change the definition of men and women?

 No, dude. There will be no bygones, no gracious apology. There will be more, harder and faster as the Left frantically clings to this issue like a dog fucking a football. This isn't about "policy," as all you Conservative wonks persist in thinking. This is the Left moving to oppress and cow normal people into hiding. Yaniv is a temporarily useful tool, which will be used up and abandoned when it breaks. The Left hates Yaniv, they hate women, they hate brown people, and they hate you.

Once you understand that the Left is motivated by nothing but the urge to destroy, then you'll be dealing with Reality.

ItIsOnNowUpittydate: Looks like one of Ms. Jessica Yaniv's alleged 14 year old victims saw Yaniv's picture, and came out with guns blazing. Alegedly there's a whole swarm of them out there.
You know that thing they say, that there's no such thing as bad publicity?  They're wrong about that. 

Nobody wants Jane Bond.

The great uproar of the interwebz this week is the casting of a black lady as the new 007 in the next Bond movie. Nobody is down with it, everyone knows its going to be stupid.

Trina Parks says she is against the potential plot twist - insisting the Bond movies have already done huge amounts for Hollywood diversity, she said in an exclusive interview with DailyMailTV.

Parks famously made history as the first black Bond girl appearing in Diamonds Are Forever as assassin Thumper alongside Sean Connery in 1971.

Speaking from her New York home, the 72-year-old actress said: 'Lashana is a great actress, but I don't really agree with her becoming 007. It is not about her color, but just because Bond, the spy code-named 007, was written by Ian Fleming as a man.'

She continues,

'So a black James Bond sure, I don't see why that could not be a move, but as a man. Miss Bond doesn't have the same ring to it. 

'I think that there are lots of movies already where you have a woman taking center stage, defeating men - and I like that.

'But I don't feel that the James Bond franchise has to go there.'

Because a 110lb woman killing 220lb men in hand-to-hand combat doesn't look any less ridiculous when a black woman is doing it than when a white one does it. Its a stupid idea.

The other, glaring issue is that they're doing a James Bond movie that doesn't have James Bond in it.

I think what most people are concerned about is that the movie makers have succumbed to the illusion that progressive Leftist themes sell movie tickets. They still don't understand that the only BIG movies of the last ten years are the ones with the least amount of Leftism on screen.

Or worse, they do understand and they're destroying these franchises deliberately.

"Shut up, Canadian!!!" explained the Chinese sponsors.

I would say, offhand, that these boys are buying themselves an ass kicking. You do not come to Canada and tell the people who live here to shut up. It is really not a smart idea.

A Falun Gong practitioner (who is a Canadian and a white guy) says the CEO of Ottawa's dragon-boat festival ordered him to take off a T-shirt advertising the Chinese spiritual group, citing in part China's sponsorship of the popular event.

John Brooman also threatened to have other Falun Gong practitioners removed from the public park in which the festival took place last month if they didn't leave voluntarily, says Gerry Smith, a retired Nortel Networks employee.

Emphasis mine. Why would John Brooman, CEO of the Ottawa dragon boat race festival, another Canadian white guy, give two shits about Falun Gong as a group, or people doing the exercise in the park?

The Chinese embassy in Ottawa is listed as a "gold sponsor" of the Tim Hortons Ottawa Dragon Boat Festival, which also receives funding from companies and federal, provincial and city governments.

Because money. That's why.

Also Mr. Brooman appears to be some sort of Liberal Party of Canada apparatchik, factotum or other sort of minion, so he probably got orders to see those dangerous troublemakers off. This is the exact equivalent of chasing a bunch of old ladies out of a public park for doing Tai Chi. Or playing checkers, for that matter.

But you know, Canadians are funny. We put up with an awful lot of shit from our governments, but one thing we don't put up with is officials throwing their weight around and breaking the rules. You don't get to throw Canadians out of a public park because they are inconvenient to a foreign power. That's a Rule. Nobody will put up with that.

Therefore, this little issue is going to go exactly the opposite to the way the Chinese Embassy wants it to. This has the potential to become an issue in the national election.

More girls on the bench in New Zealand

The headline says it all:

Transgender weightlifter wins two gold medals in women's competition

Actual woman who competed gets silver, and told to shut up.

In second place was Samoa's 18-year-old weightlifter Feagaiga Stowers, who won her nation's second gold medal last year after Hubbard was forced to withdraw due to an elbow injury.

Humanity is a sexually dimorphic species. Males are bigger and stronger than females. That's how it is. Politics does not change that, any more than Canute could order back the tides.

As people who used to be men increasingly compete in these sporting events, women will increasingly remain in the also-ran category. For a while anyway, until they become angry.

The correct course of action would be to create a special category, and let trans compete against each other. But that is not what's being done, because politics.

The other course of action is rebellion. Women athletes refuse to compete with them, and let the chips fall where they may. I expect that's where we're going to end up, and probably soon.

Lindsay Sheppard kicked off Twitter

New development, Lindsay Sheppard kicked off Twitter for... well we're not sure really, they didn't actually say why. Apparently straight white women are not allowed to talk anymore.

Why is anyone still on Twitter? Seriously. Let them go bankrupt, ladies and gentlemen.

The Phantom

What white people -really- are.

I hear a lot of chatter on the Interwebz about Whiteness this and Whiteness that. 

Dear Ivory Tower Socialists and Feminist Theory weenies, you have no idea what the hell you're talking about. All those micro-agressions and colonialism this and every other thing you think white people are, we're not those things. 

Our culture, our nations, our Western civilization, this is us trying to be good. That's our nature harnessed and made to work. Unleashed, its so much worse than that.

This is Whiteness.

Do not pull on this thread. You will not like what is in there.

(And all you White people who watched the whole thing, go ahead and tell me you didn't feel the monster trying the bars of its cage.)

The Phantom

"Shut up, Jews!" they explained.

You don't see that one every day, do you? Jews have been holy to the Holier Than Thou intellectual community since 1945. But now they are under the bus, ladies and gentlemen.

The world of literature, where Jews have made so many invaluable and long-standing contributions, is succumbing quickly to the new anti-Semitism.

The most recent example comes from the United Kingdom. Two cultural organizations in England have just rejected hosting talks by novelist Richard Zimler—explicitly because he's Jewish. In the Guardian, Zimler writes of the conversation with a friend in which he learned of the trouble: "'They asked me if you were Jewish, and the moment I said you were, they lost all interest,' he said. "'They even stopped replying to my emails and returning my phone messages.'"

Zimler had been hoping to promote his new novel, The Gospel According to Lazarus, and up until his friend confirmed the author's Jewishness, these unnamed organizations had been interested. And then they weren't. "It made Britain seem like a place I didn't know and maybe never knew," Zimler writes. "Even just asking about my religious affiliation struck me as outrageous.

It gets a bit more outrageous when you consider what Zimler's publicist had to say to the Observer—while not revealing his own name: "I was very shocked and surprised. People in the literary world are not usually narrow-minded. Everyone who knows Richard knows he is his own person."

Zimler "is his own person"? That's a curious defense, isn't it? It's hard not to think that what he meant was that Zimler, while Jewish, isn't a Zionist puppet and can, therefore, be tolerated.

 Of course that's exactly what he meant, and its why he didn't reveal his name. Jews are "tolerated" based on the quality and amount of their virtue signaling. Unless you are a trans-ally, post-feminist, atheist and leader of the local chapter of Divest Israel, you are not to be tolerated. You're a Deplorable. Just like every other white man out there.

In Britain the purity spiral has accelerated to such a degree that Jews have become persona non grata right along with those odious Christians and [shudder] Americans. And TERFs. Oh, and gay men, they are also now officially uncool.

So, ladies and gentlemen of the Jewish persuasion, welcome to the under-the-bus experience. Feel free to relax with a cigar and some of this lovely port we White Men have over by the differential as the purity spiral accelerates.

The Deplorable Phantom

"Shut up, Christian!" they explained.

An uproar in Oz caught my attention, apparently some Aussie Rules football player lost his multi-million-dollar job because he dared to have an opinion.

The firing of one of Australia's best-known sports stars for saying gay people are headed for hell has exposed social fault lines and sparked debate about what constitutes religious expression.

Rugby Australia tore up Israel Folau's multimillion-dollar contract last month after he posted on Instagram in April that gay people, adulterers and atheists were living in sin and would go to hell unless they repented.

The sport's national governing body said Mr. Folau breached its code of conduct, which calls for the respectful use of social media, and was fairly dismissed. "This is an issue of an employee and his obligations to his employers within the contract that he signed," Rugby Australia said.

To be perfectly crystal clear, that view is not controversial in Christianity. According to the bible, Hell is where unrepentant sinners go. The whole purpose of having Christianity and churches, historically, was to keep people out of hell. Like it or hate it, that's what Christianity is about.

Where we are right now is that mentioning your Christian beliefs on Instagram can legally get you fired in Australia. Mr. Folau is about to test that legality in court, something that in a free country he wouldn't have to do.

Canada is in worse shape, someone already tested this in the Supreme Court of Canada and lost. His crime was leafleting cars in Calgary, if I recall correctly. You can't say that sinners go to hell in Canada. You'll go to jail. Probably not what the people who made those laws had in mind, but that's how it turned out.

However there are quite a few people quite openly preaching that Israel should be destroyed, and none of them have gone to jail for it. So the law does seem to be squarely aimed at traditional Christianity and its adherents, two of whom have gone to jail so far. The leaflet guy, and some old lady praying in front of an abortion clinic.

How long before the law gets used to suppress any speech not approved by the ruling party? Thus far the government of Canada (and Britain, Australia, America) has let the private sector do all the censoring of political speech, but it is only a matter of time before openly supporting the party not in power becomes a criminal offense.

Dear liberals and useful idiot SJWs, this is not going to turn out the way you think. Sooner or later, people will start going to jail for stuff they said. That's how this type of thing inevitably ends up. Just letting you know that history predicts it 100%.

Just keep voting Liberal and we'll all presently find out.

The Phantom

New property of light discovered.

https://science.slashdot.org/story/19/06/29/0039231/new-property-of-light-discovered

A team of researchers affiliated with several institutions in Spain and the U.S. has announced that they have discovered a new property of light -- self-torque. Their findings have been published in the journal Science.

So very cool.

"Shut up!" explained The Guardian.

No, you morons don't understand. In order to protect Free Speech we need you to shut up!

Free speech advocates also misunderstand the motivation of those who might want to shut down a debate: they see this as a surefire mark of intolerance. But some debates should be shut down. For public dialogue to make any progress, it is important to recognise when a particular debate has been won and leave it there.

Even the most passionate free speech advocate might not wish to reopen the debate into whether women should be tried for witchcraft, or whether ethnic minorities should be allowed to go to university, or whether the Earth is flat. No-platformers are not scared – they simply think certain debates are over. You may disagree, but it does not mean they are against free speech.

Oh, and if you disagree that some debates should be shut down, you are a bigot, a boor and probably very stupid as well.

 Martha Gill is a political journalist and former lobby correspondent. She has worked as a staffer at the Economist and the New Statesman.

Where she was probably manhandled by the perverts who run the place, but lacks the fortitude to come forward about it because the #MeToo debate is officially over.

In other news, it was discovered that Martha Gill's head is completely filled with wool. A co-worker noticed a bit of yarn protruding from one ear and pulled on it. Ms. Gill exhibits no ill effects from having 400 feet of red number 5  pulled from her now empty skull, but was heard to complain there was a bit of an echo when she speaks.

The Echoing Phantom

Most People Are Not Assholes.

If you look at TV or the movies, and increasingly fiction, the Human Race is mostly depicted as worthless assholes who don't deserve to live.

This turns out to be untrue.

If you find a wallet stuffed with bank notes, do you pocket the cash or track down the owner to return it? We can each speak for ourselves, but now a team of economists have put the unsuspecting public to the test in a mass social experiment involving 17,000 "lost" wallets in 40 countries.

Overall, 51% of those who were handed a wallet with the smaller amount of money reported it, compared with 40% of those handed an empty wallet. When the wallet contained a large sum of money, the rate of return was 72%.

72% of the people returned the -large- amount of money. This disproves the "Everybody Does It" excuse so beloved of scumbags and politicians everywhere. No, you assholes, everybody does NOT do it.

Authors and movie makers please wake the fuck up and smell the coffee.

The Phantom

Update: Welcome Instapundit! Thanks for the linkage, Sarah!

Hatred in the public sphere: why is it there?

We all know there's plenty-plenty hate out there pointed all over the place. I'm going to talk about a specific and extremely virulent hatred, that of liberals toward gun owners, because I found a great example of it: "How Guns Literally Go to Men's Heads" by Thom Hartmann, a "writing fellow" of the "Independent Media Institute." (I'd be fascinated to know where they get their money.)

Mr. Hartmann is also the author of "The Hidden History of Guns and the Second Amendment" which is one of the most breathtakingly false books about American history I've seen in a long time.

So let's see what Mr. Hartmann has to say about men, shall we?

People are asking why the shooter in Virginia Beach used a gun to settle his workplace score. The answer is probably pretty simple.

When a man has a gun, he literally holds the power of life and death in his hand. That kind of power is extraordinarily seductive.

The Virginia Beach shooter was seduced by the Power of the Gun. That's his whole take.

With a gun in his hand, a man can look around a room, a building, or a public area and specifically identify who will instantaneously die and whom he will allow to live. It's a power that traditionally has only been held by doctors, priests, police and soldiers.

I can tell you from personal experience of carrying a gun, that isn't what I was thinking when I got into a "situation" one time. I was thinking "If I have to shoot this prick, I'm going to lose my job and probably go to jail."

Also, that whole "doctors, priests, police and soldiers" list is bullshit. Every adult male in the world has the power of life and death in his own two hands from puberty onward, and he knows it. You don't need a gun to kill somebody. You can do it with your fingers. Or feet, elbows, a nice handy rock, whatever.

This is largely a male problem because men commit 85.3 percent of all homicides and 97 percent of all homicides where the shooter and victim don't know each other. In the case of school and workplace shootings, the shooters are also more than 97 percent male.

As a result of this male aggression provoked in part by handling guns, in America guns are the second leading cause of death (just behind car crashes) among children between 1 and 19 years old.

Couple things here. First, extending childhood to age 19 is a way to lie with charts. They want to bring in that huge number of teenage shootings which is gang-bangers killing each other over drugs.

Second, "male aggression" as the prime motivator in gun related murder is an interesting notion. We can TEST that theory right now.

Here's Mr. Hartmann's "science" section:

This goes way beyond the joke of the Small Penis Gun Club or its Facebook site. Men, it turns out, are actually hardwired by evolution and biology to react to having power over others with a boost in testosterone and an increase in aggression.

A 2006 study published in Psychological Science by Klinesmith, Kasser and McAndrew found that men who simply handled a gun were significantly more likely to give other men a higher dose of hot sauce (a commonly used research measure of aggression) right after handling the gun than were men who handled a child's toy.

For men who feel that they've lost control of their lives, or who feel dismissed or disrespected by others, this is pure catnip.

Firing a gun, in addition to raising testosterone levels like simply handling one does, actually produces a feeling similar to intoxication. As UCLA Law professor Adam Winkler points out, shooting guns triggers higher levels of adrenaline and endorphins, producing a high like riding a roller coaster.

In this regard, guns can be thought of as a drug — an intoxicating, mind-altering, power-conferring drug that leads to aggression and, in the United States, to around 40,000 deaths a year.

That whole section and all those linked studies are obvious bullshit, and If I had the leisure I'd go over each one and show y'all why. Study design, sample, all chosen to prove the hypothesis. Which isn't science, its propaganda.

But, because I'm busy, we are going to take all that at face value. For the sake of the argument, we will assume a gun in your hand is a powerful drug that makes you want to kill people.

That would mean two things. Where guns are most common, that would be the place where the most murders happen. Right? The gun is a drug, you take the drug and you go kill somebody.  That's the thesis.

Testing time, what do we actually see out there in the world? 50% of murders happen in 2% of US counties. But it is actually worse than that, because a county is a big place. When you break it down, you find that the vast majority, by which I mean over ~75% of murders in those hot-spot counties, are restricted to a few bad neighborhoods. Many neighborhoods in the "bad" counties have zero murders.

Conversely, more than half the country has no murders at all. None. And those counties which have no murders in them, do they have men there? Yes. And do those men have guns there? Yes, usually ALL of the adult men in those counties have guns. More than one, in fact. The usual number is three, a .22 rifle, a "full power cartridge" rifle like a .3006 or .308, and a shotgun.

So much for Mr. Hartmann's theory, right?

Next question, and the point of this post, there's a whole host of Leftist organizations out there beavering away, publishing bullshit like this piece every single day. All of it can be refuted with a 30 second Google search, yet they persist. WHY BOTHER?

Well, here's why:

If a driver must carry liability insurance because his car could kill somebody, why not a gun owner? Why is it that if the Newtown or Parkland kids had been killed by a drunk or even malicious driver, their survivors would have gotten a million bucks each from Geico, but the families of kids killed with guns don't?

Required liability insurance, by the way, is the most Republican/conservative of all gun control measures; it's a "free market solution."

Just as no insurance company will cheaply write insurance for a driver with a few DWIs, so, too, would they restrict people with domestic violence charges, etc. No government involvement necessary for this one, other than the simple requirement to have the policy so long as one owns a gun.

Money.

I'm sure the insurance industry would LOVE to write mandatory policies on every gun in America.  We're talking about a market of roughly 9 million new guns a year. Roughly half the households in the USA will admit to owning a gun, a wild guess tells me another 25% won't admit it. There are more guns in the USA than there are people, by a healthy margin. And the other thing we know is that none of those guns will ever kill people. How do we know? Because all the murders are concentrated in 25 large cities, leaving the entire rest of the country essentially murder-free.

Mr. Hartmann is spreading lies and hatred for money.

I'm glad we cleared that up.

Worth repeating: 50% of crime happens in 2% of America (and Canada!)

Here's the situation:

Data from 2014, the most recent year that a county level breakdown is available, shows us that 54% of counties (containing 11% of the population) had zero murders. 69% of counties had no more than one murder, and held about 20% of the population. These counties account for only 4% of all murders in the country.
The worst 1% of counties have 19% of the population and 37% of the murders. The worst 5% of counties contain 47% of the population and account for 68% of murders. The study shows more than half of all murders occurred in just 2% of counties nationwide.

Note that 2% of counties is OVERSTATING the land area involved here.

In Chicago, the story is almost identical- with admittedly higher numbers. In the first four months of 2017, 222 murders took place in the heavily gun-controlled windy city. Lott writes, "But 23 of the 77 neighborhoods in the city have zero murders, and most of the 40 neighborhoods have only one murder. Twelve of the neighborhoods have 10 or more murders."

Yes. When you look at Cook County, you see 222 murders in four months and you think "holy shit Mabel, its open warfare!" But then you look at a Chicago crime map and see that there is a thin scatter of red dots across the map, with a few forest fires of red dots. There are a few streets where somebody gets killed pretty much every night, and the rest of the place is quiet.

Now lets talk about gun control.

When the reality is that ALL the murders take place on a few streets in Chicago, and the State of Illinois is talking about banning AR-15 rifles to "save lives", what does that mean?

The first thing it means is that either the State of Illinois can't do anything about the murders on those streets, or they don't care. Outside third option, they arranged it and they like it that way.

Hanlon's Razor says "Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity." Going by that, we will assume that the State of Illinois and the City of Chicago are so profoundly fucked that they can't arrest a bunch of murderers and throw their sorry asses in jail.

This leads us to the second thing: gun control is what they are doing instead of fixing the problem.

Its genius, really. You have a problem you can't solve, so you blame it on a visible minority and you make their lives hell instead of doing something constructive. Kind of like what Hitler did with the Jews, but slower.

Canada, four wounded by gunfire at the Toronto Raptors victory celebration. City of Toronto doesn't know what to do about that. They know why it happened, for sure. There's a lot of assholes wandering loose who should be in jail. That's why. But the City of Toronto as a body is unwilling (or unable) to do what it would take to get those assholes in jail where they belong.

Enter the Federal Liberal Party. They propose to outright ban ownership of the AR-15 rifle, and make it harder for farmers and hunters to keep their rifles. Because they think they can sell the public a fairy tale one more time. Its an election year, and telling the people of Toronto how evil and bad those rednecked farmers are out there with their assault weapons and their pickup trucks is a lot easier than building a new jail and filling it with career criminals. And besides, those farmers are never ever going to vote Liberal anyway, so fuck 'em.

That's what's going on.

Update: Welcome Instapundit! Thanks for the linkage, Sarah Hoyt!
Upperdate: Welcome Northeast Shooters blog! 

Reviews: from the merely ridiculous to the Fully Woke (tm)

Reviews and awards have become an issue in our increasingly divided society. For probably 30 years I've used bad review scores as a guide to which movie I should go and see. Likewise I've used the Academy Awards for film and the Hugo/Nebula Awards to science fiction as "do not watch/do not read" list. Lately things have gotten worse, with "award winning" being code for "avoid at all costs."

There has been some uproar around one particular review this week, so I thought I'd have a look and see just how bad it was.

I give you Carlos Aguilar's review of "The Secret Life of Pets 2" at TheWrap. There will be spoilers (but not really because y'all can probably recite the "plot" of Pets 2 without even thinking about it).

This is a cartoon movie explicitly marketed for children. Keep that in mind as we roll through this thing.

The title shows us what we're in for:

'The Secret Life of Pets 2' Film Review: Cartoon Offers Outdated Messages About Marriage, Manliness"

Because a cartoon about cute puppies for children is an appropriate vehicle for messaging about marriage and manhood.

Subscript:

Come for the adorable puppies, stay for the toxic masculinity and antediluvian notions regarding love and family.

From which we are to understand that this movie has fallen far short of Full Woke (tm) and the author is very disappointed.

Milking human's collective affection for our furry and feathered pals, the original "The Secret Life of Pets" imposed the "Toy Story" formula on animals living in New York City in order to show us what they do when we are not looking.

He doesn't have a problem with the first movie in the franchise. (I should interject that I haven't seen Pets 1 or 2, but I did see Toy Story 2 and I found it to be CREEPY AS HELL. The toys are -people-? Oh, dude. That's fucked up.) But let us continue.

"The Secret Life of Pets 2," on the other hand, for which both Renaud and Lynch reprise their roles, effectively acts as an animated ode to heteronormativity, toxic masculinity and patriarchal worldviews, passed off as harmless plot points to entertain young audiences.

That's simply fascinating. Say on, O sage.

 "Pets 2's" descent into the bowels of what reads as conservative messaging begins as Katie (voiced by Ellie Kemper), Max's owner, randomly meets a young man, quickly marries and has a child.

Okay, so "girl meets boy, they get married and have a little family" is now bad conservative messaging. Got it. Uh, why is it bad?

In this fictional universe, that's clearly the only natural progression of events in a woman's life. That trope is later reinforced through the pet characters.

Oh, I get it. Getting married to a member of the opposite sex and breeding is a trope, and we're supposed to be presented with the whole QUILTBAG of pervy third-sigma from normal sex options instead. In a kid's cartoon. Okay then. Onward to complaining about the female characters!

To achieve this, she partners with dismissive cat Chloe (Lake Bell), but in no way can "Pets 2" possibly pass the Bechdel test.

So we do have some non-male-oriented scenes between two female characters, yay! But they don't pass the hallowed Bechdel Test, so boo! Because that's what's important in a kid's movie, the Bechdel Test. For fuck sakes. But let us move on...

In case it wasn't obvious, "Pets 2" makes no attempt at diversifying the notion of what a family is today. No same-sex couples are in sight as pet owners, much less as parents. Nothing that deviates from the default straight married couple is even hinted at.

Oh, the horror.

But now we get to what really got under Carlos Aguilar's saddle, the toxic masculinity part! (I know you were waiting for this ~:)

 Making matters worse, Harrison Ford is cast as Rooster, a hyper-masculine shepherd dog brazenly teaching Max how to toughen up.

That sounds terrible!

Rooster is the embodiment of phrases like "Men don't cry," and " Rub some dirt on it." This alpha dog rejects vulnerability by preaching about how sissified city dogs are. The character is disturbing in his unapologetic validation of behavior society as a whole is trying to eradicate. He equates courage with arrogance and other outdated perceptions of manliness.

Yes, apparently society as a whole is trying to eradicate cowboys who suck it up and work through the pain to get the job done, whatever job it may be. But why do we care that a cartoon dog character is a leathery old cowboy?

Defenders may argue it's absurd to attribute such weight to an animated feature, but on the contrary, this is the content to which we should be paying the most attention. Family-friendly releases have the power to communicate nuggets of knowledge to young viewers, and when the information transmitted is this regressive, it's worth raising the alarm.

Yep. There you go. It makes it harder to groom little boys into drag queens when they've seen legendary hard ass Rooster the dog git 'er dun in the cartoons on Saturday morning. They see that old cowboy, and feel the echo in their hearts. They see the mom and the dad taking care of the little baby on the screen, and they start wondering where their dad is. They begin to question if poor little Heather is getting ripped off because she only has two mommies.

Bottom line, Carlos Aguilar's complaint is that the normal nuclear family and the normal Western adult male have been presented in a positive light in a film for children. He is angry that the little tiny segment of society waaaaay out at the skinny edge of the bell curve, that 3% of humanity, has not been given center stage. Its fucking up his propaganda campaign, is why he's angry.

And that, my friends, is why awards and reviews should be used backwards. This review is different from most only in its boldness, not in its aim. Carlos Aguilar actually says what he wants, the rest try to hide it while they worm away at us. The more the critics like Carlos Aguilar hate a movie, the more likely it is to be fun.

IMPORTANT NOTE! For the reading comprehension impaired: if you are in some form of non-standard relationship, this is not about -you-. Really, I don't care what you get up to. It is none of my business what other people do in a free country. Just don't get any on my lawn, or expect me to do it your way, and we're good.

The Phantom

Update: Secret Life of Pets 2 beats XMen Dark Phoenix at the box office. So everybody agrees that little Carlos is a dumbass.

Just how dangerous are synthetic canabinoids?

This dangerous.

THE "zombie" man who died after setting himself on fire outside the White House was "hallucinating after taking Spice laced with Angel Dust".

Police sources are said to have confirmed that Arnav Gupta, 33, had taken the drug K2 which had been laced with PCP.

...

An unnamed eyewitness said: "Like a torch, his whole body was on fire.

"He was just walking like a zombie or something. Just straight, he wasn't running and screaming or anything. He was walking straight. Then they put the extinguisher on him and put his [fire] out and that's it."

He later died in hospital from burns covering 85% of his body, according to the article.

K2, also known as "Spice" is a -synthetic- cannabinoid. Meaning that it attaches to cannabinoid receptors in the human body like THC does, but it is not THC and doesn't come from the cannabis plant. They mix it up in a test tube like paint.

Watching the video (I recommend against it, because you can't un-see shit) you'll see the man standing and moving as if he doesn't feel the fire burning him. He just stands there. On fire.

That level of dissociation from the five senses is not a good thing, for a lot of reasons. It isn't good for the person taking the drug, because I very much doubt they'll ever be right again afterwards. It ain't going to wear off, my friends. We're talking brain damage so severe the victims won't be able to tie their own shoe laces or wipe their own butts.

It isn't good for anyone else either, because now we have brain-fried zombies that don't feel pain wandering around looking for more drugs. Most hand-to-hand combat techniques work by inflicting pain. These guys don't feel pain. The guy who set himself on fire didn't feel it. You could have cut off one of his limbs and he wouldn't have felt that either.

K2/Spice is one of 80+ synthetic cannabinoids currently making the rounds in the black market. K2 is not even the worst one. It is apparently pretty easy to make, as plenty of these back-yard chemists are cranking it out.

Therefore, my advice to one and all: if you or your kid wants some weed for whatever reason, get it from the legal source.

Smoking cannabis to get high is probably not good for you long term, and it is certainly a huge waste of time, but at least it won't destroy your kid's brain and the rest of his/her life with the first puff. There's plenty of very determined stoners out there that have been smoking a ton of weed since the friggin' 1960s, and they can still tie their own shoelaces.

The Advising Phantom

Lesbians join white males under the bus.

Welcome, ladies. Mind the axles.

On the very first day of Pride Month, British police accosted a group of lesbians protesting against transgender activism, asking if they were a "hate group." The lesbian group Get the L Out made a stir last year at the London Pride parade by marching with a sign reading, "Transactivism Erases Lesbians." On Saturday, the group protested transgender activism again in the northern city of Bradford, with signs reading, "Lesbian = Female HomoSEXual."

Regulars at the Soapbox will recall my penchant for saying that Leftists actually hate gays and lesbians. They basically use them as props.

Dear gays and lesbians: what do you think politicians do with a prop that isn't propping anymore? They ditch it. They throw it under the bus.

Remember five years ago all those soft-voiced, soft-handed "allies" that swore up and down they were there to support the Sisterhood forever? They were lying. They hate your guts. They'll find a way to throw you in jail, just like the 1950s.

2019 hate crime in progress. The sound is my eyes rolling.

Remember all those horrible conservatives from five years ago who told you it was a free country, and they didn't care what you did as long as you didn't get any on their front lawn? We haven't changed. We're the closest thing you've got to allies now.

Told ya.

Update: Welcome Instapundit! Thanks for the linkage, Sarah Hoyt!

Bananada! The day Canada became a banana republic.

That day was May 23, 2019. The day that the Supreme Court of Canada decided that the laws of Canada, specifically the Electrical Code which governs all electricity construction and repair in the country, can be privately owned. As of May 23rd 2019, it has been established that you have to pay money to a private company, the CSA, just to read the law. You have to buy a copy. From them.

The Supreme Court was the last chance to overturn Manson's Law, the Ruling that introduced private ownership of legislation.  Private law is now entrenched and unappealable.

As a result, any non-government employee who's ever contributed any text to legislation now owns that legislation privately.  And they can restrict public access to their law.  And they can charge for access, usage and enforcement.  And they can prevent governments from using their laws, making enforcement of law unequal, a patchwork of privilege based entirely on the preferences, biases, and financial interests of these owners of law.

As economic activity is always under a wide range of legislation, and as nearly all such legislation is contributed to by private interests, almost all economic activity is now subject to veto by any of the hundreds of contributors to the laws governing that activity.

It's more than a thumb on the scales of competition, it's a veto over every business activity in the Country given to those with vested interests in favouring one entity over another.

Emphasis mine.

Now, the above statement of fact is clearly insane. Private companies OWN the law? If you want to know the regulation way to install a light switch, you have to BUY ACCESS to the regulations. If you want to argue in court that your light switch was installed properly, you have to first BUY A COPY of the regulations.

Furthermore the company who made the light switch wrote the regulation. They can change the regulation to make your installation illegal if they don't like you. They can write the regulations to make it impossible for any other company to make a light switch. AND THEY DO. They do stuff like that all the fricking time. Ever wonder why electrical stuff is so expensive and so crappy in this country? That's why. CSA approval process, doing favors for Friends.

Who's going to do business in an environment like that? Nobody honest, that's for sure.

Now, lest anyone think this is only about the CSA, let me assure you this is only the little tip of the very big iceberg. This decision to do this flatly insane thing came from the Supreme Court of Canada. Highest court in the land. If they did this over electrical construction, try to imagine what they'll do to you on free speech, self defense, educating your kids, you car, your house and property, your savings account.

Its a banana republic now, folks. Anything goes.

Crossfit quits Facebook, Instagram: "utopian socialists"

This is going to leave a mark.

CrossFit, the branded workout regimen, accused Facebook of being "utopian socialists" and left the platform after the social network deleted a group dedicated to a diet.

The move to quit both Facebook and Instagram came in the wake of the decision to delete "without warning or explanation the Banting7DayMealPlan," a group that advocated a diet aimed at eating "food that is as close to its natural state as possible — free from processing, additives, preservatives and sugar."

Down at the bottom comes the good part:

The company then added that "Facebook's news feeds are censored and crafted to reflect the political leanings of Facebook's utopian socialists while remaining vulnerable to misinformation campaigns designed to stir up violence and prejudice."

For a company like Crossfit to quit social media is quite a big deal. One wonders where they'll find their advertising. But apparently they are not only dissatisfied with the advertising power available, they are also being censored.

Who on earth is stupid enough to censor their own customers?
The people who pay them? California SJWs, that's who.

The stampede away from social media begins.

Update: Welcome, Instapundit! Thanks for the linkage, Sarah Hoyt!

Oh noes, the TREEEEEES!!!!!!!

Cut down trees to save the planet!!!!

According to the data he gathered, Crowther suggests that about 10% of EM-associated trees could be replaced by AM-associated trees as the planet warms. "Microbes in forests dominated by AM fungi churn through carbon-containing organic matter faster, so they could liberate lots of heat-trapping carbon dioxide quickly, potentially accelerating a climate change process that is already happening at a frightening pace," the report says.

The mind reels.

Happy "Molly Norris is still in hiding" Day.

Yes friends, its that time of year again when we look back to 2010 and remember a nice girl who decided the First Amendment of the US Constitution was more important than some douchbag hillbillies in Afghanistan. So she posted a little picture on her blog, which went viral, and the FBI advised her to go into hiding and never, ever come out.

So she's been hiding since 2010, and now it is 2019.

Over a blog post.

Let's not forget.

This is why I don't believe in global warming.

Finally, some official NOAA numbers to go with the photographic evidence.

I've been saying for years that surface temperature measurements (and long term trends) have been affected by encroachment of urbanization on the placement of weather stations used to measure surface air temperature, and track long term climate. In doing so we found some hilariously bad examples of climate science in action, such as the official USHCN climate monitoring station at the University of Arizona, Tucson:

USHCN weather station in a parking lot. University of Arizona, Tucson

I have published on the topic in the scientific literature, and found this to be true based on the science we've done of examining the USHCN and applying the siting methodology of Leroy 2010.

In Fall et al, 2011 we discovered that there was a change to the diurnal temperature range (DTR). It decreased where stations had been encroached upon, because of the heat sink effect of man-made materials (asphalt, concrete, bricks, etc.) that were near stations.

With regard to this example of U. Arizona, there's an interesting thing that one notices down in Phoenix and Tucson at night. After the sun goes down, if you drive (or walk or bike)  under a bridge, you can feel the heat radiating from it. This phenomenon lasts a couple of hours at least. The desert gets cold at night, but a concrete bridge will stay warm half the night. Everyone who can see lightning and hear thunder knows this.

Therefore the siting of the official NOAA thermometer in an asphalt parking lot in front of a brick building is not accidental.

Small Dead Animals ran a long series of pictures like this one many years ago. Hundreds of sites on parking lots, roofs, next to air conditioning outlets, all kinds of arrangements clearly made to increase the temperature reading.

Hanlon's Razor says  " Never ascribe to malice that which can be adequately explained by stupidity." Stupidity could account for maybe 5% of official scientific instruments being set up completely wrong, despite all the management and supervision such things are subject to. If pressed I might go as high as 10%, because government. Unionized public employees, you know.

The number of sites not meeting official NOAA standards is more than 10%. You get up over a third, stupidity isn't an explanation anymore. That's a deliberate campaign. Its corruption.

Now, some people (and one camel) seem to think that my objection is that the surface temp numbers are not accurate, so obviously I should be satisfied by satellite data. That is because some people are IDIOTS who should not be let out without a keeper.

 

The surface temperature monitoring system has been corrupted by agenda-driven ideologues. It no longer reports the actual temperature, it reports what they want it to report. Propaganda, not science. That much is obvious.

But the surface monitoring system does not exist like an island, whole and complete, isolated unto itself. The same organization that allowed so many surface temp stations to be corrupted also controls all the other monitoring systems, and the record keeping as well. Do we actually know what the temperature was on May the 15th 1927 in Topeka Kansas? Or did they corrupt the records too? Did they corrupt the satellite data?

I think yes, they probably did. Clear, blatant and LONG TERM corruption in one part of any organization is an indicator of corruption throughout.

I don't believe anything that comes out of climate science these days, whether the numbers indicate global warming or not. Because liars lie.

The Phantom

Microsoft is trying to force me to use Linux.

Microsoft is pushing a new suite of tools for Word.

Coming soon to a word processing app you probably already subscribe to is Microsoft's new Ideas plugin. This leap forward in the predictive text trend will endeavor to help you be less offensive. Worried you might be a little bit racist? A little gender confused? Not sure about the difference between disabled persons and persons who are disabled? Never fear, Microsoft will fix your language for you.

Using machine learning and AI, Microsoft's Ideas in Word will help writers be their least offensive, most milquetoast selves. Just like spell check and grammar check function, Ideas will make suggestions as to how to improve your text to be more inclusive. On the surface, this seems like a terrible idea, but when we dig further beneath the impulse, and the functionality of the program, it gets even worse. What's happening is that AI and machine learning are going to be the background of pretty much every application, learning from our behaviours not only how we'd like to format our PowerPoint presentations, but learning, across platforms, how best to construct language so that we say what we are wanted to say as opposed to what we really mean.

They plan to take Auto-corrupt to a whole new level by suggesting different word choices for controversial concepts like "his", "she will" and "ham sandwich."

Of course you have the option of turning those suggestions off, or ignoring them. For now.

But really, do I want to be writing stories on software that counts up every time I use a gender pronoun and keeps a record of it on a server somewhere? Indeed, keeps everything I write on a remote server somewhere if I have Autosave turned on.

Yes that's right kids, if you want to use Autosave with Word, then you have to have OneDrive turned on, and the Autosave sends everything to OneDrive.

Which I am assured is -tewtally- safe and secure, dewd. Nobody could EVER use the contents of your OneDrive to train AI software, just ferinstance. Right? Oh no wait, they can. Says so in the fine print.

So really, they're fucking well copying every damn thing I do and keeping it forever someplace I can't get at it. And then SELLING IT. For which privilege I pay a yearly fee.

Yes, they really are trying to force me off their platform onto something that doesn't constantly steal my private stuff and sell it. Linux with Open Office is useable, stable and FREE.

Keep going, Microsoft. Eventually you will make me switch.

When the top female athletes are boys...

...the girls will sit on the bench.

A junior, Selina [Soule] missed qualifying for the 55-meter in the New England regionals by two spots. Two spots, she said, that were taken by biological boys.

Had the boys who identify as girls not been allowed to compete, Selina would have placed sixth, qualifying to run the 55 in front of college coaches at the New England regionals.

Instead, she placed eighth, watching the 55 from the sidelines after qualifying in only the long jump, an event in which the transgender athletes didn't compete.

"It's very frustrating and heartbreaking when us girls are at the start of the race and we already know that these athletes are going to come out and win no matter how hard you try," Selina told The Daily Signal. "They took away the spots of deserving girls, athletes … me being included."

Really, this is all down to politics over sanity. The people of Connecticut need to decide if they want to keep voting DemocRat, or if they want their young daughters to be able to play sports and go to the damn bathroom in safety.

What's very evident in this piece is the amount of naked fear these girls and their parents have about speaking out. They are petrified the Left is going to come for them. Eventually they will get tired of being afraid, and will instead become angry. And Trump will win Connecticut in 2020.

Alexa and Smart-home are spying on you.

From the Washington Post, an article outlining just how much Amazon's Alexa is recording you.

Many smart-speaker owners don't realize it, but Amazon keeps a copy of everything Alexa records after it hears its name. Apple's Siri, and until recently Google's Assistant, by default also keep recordings to help train their artificial intelligences.

So come with me on an unwelcome walk down memory lane. I listened to four years of my Alexa archive and found thousands of fragments of my life: spaghetti-timer requests, joking houseguests and random snippets of "Downton Abbey." There were even sensitive conversations that somehow triggered Alexa's "wake word" to start recording, including my family discussing medication and a friend conducting a business deal.

Yep. And that's why I don't have one. That's why all the voice activation crap is disabled on my phone too. Because voice command is an always-on internet appliance, which can and does record random conversations without use of the code-word "Alexa" or "Siri" or whatever you have.

And there is no OFF switch. "OFF!" is a software setting, not a hardware switch that stops the flow of electricity. That means that "OFF!" is a suggestion, not an enforceable condition.

But wait, there's more:

Alexa's voice archive made headlines most recently when Bloomberg discovered Amazon employees listen to recordings to train its artificial intelligence. Amazon acknowledged some of those employees also have access to location information for the devices that made the recordings. [Emphasis mine]

Yes! Location information is also stored. So they know what you said, when and where you said it, and using location data from other companies, they know who else was there to hear it.

Wait. Location data from other companies? Isn't that illegal? Why yes, it IS illegal, and they sell it anyway. Yes friends, the top four phone companies in America are selling your location data illegally. Have been for years.

And even more:

Every kind of appliance now is becoming a data-collection device. My Chamberlain MyQ garage opener lets the company keep - again, indefinitely - a record of every time my door opens or closes. My Sonos speakers, by default, track what albums, playlists or stations I've listened to, and when I press play, pause, skip or pump up the volume. At least they only hold on to my sonic history for six months.

And now the craziest part: After quizzing these companies about data practices, I learned most are sharing what's happening in my home with Amazon, too. Our data is the price of entry for devices that want to integrate with Alexa. Amazon's not only eavesdropping - it's tracking everything happening in your home.

Amazon acknowledges it collects data about third-party devices even when you don't use Alexa to operate them. It says Alexa needs to know the "state" of your devices "to enable a great smart home experience." But keeping a record of this data is more useful to them than to us.

Yep. The NEST thermostat, the network-connected lights, the power company's smart meter on your electrical service, your network connected smart TV, your Spotify account, your smart-speakers, smart doorbell... all this shit sends its data back home to the company, and Amazon keeps it FOREVER.

So yeah. The Alexa-connected sensor web in your house knows you got up to take a leak at 2AM last Tuesday, and with enough connecting of databases from credit cards and stores etc. they may know it was because you had three beers after dinner on Tuesday.

Now, I want y'all to consider that this level of surveillance and recording is far beyond what people in jails experience. Even assuming that everyone involved is acting properly and with the best intentions, its alarming.

But we also know that Facebook, Google, Amazon, Microsoft, all these companies lean HARD Left politically. Does anyone really think they don't collect dirt on people they don't like?

Are we going to sit here and pretend these guys would shrink from mining location data and recordings of Alex Jones, for example? Or Donald Trump?
 

It's not a phone. Its a tracker.

Confirming what I've been saying for years, again, 4 major USA telephone companies sued for selling user location data.

In June 2018, the four major U.S. carriers promised to stop selling their mobile customers' location info to third-party data brokers after a security problem leaked the real-time location of U.S. cellphone users. Despite the carriers' promises, a Motherboard investigation found in January 2019 that they were still selling access to their customers' location data.

Now, this is not the "location data" thing on your phone that sends your location to Google or Apple. This is the direct take from the cell towers. They're not supposed to even be able to access that without a warrant, much less sell it. But they ARE selling it.

Court mandated GPS locators offer MORE privacy to the people they are clamped on than your phone does to you.

The Phantom

Sri Lanka: first ever recorded -actual- anti-Mooselimb "backlash."

There's always a lot of loose talk after a Ram-a-Van event, a suicide bombing, a mass shooting, mass knifing or other typical atrocity where "some people did something." The media are very, very careful not to "jump to conclusions," to the point where they generally speculate that the culprit was a White Supremacist. But the unenlightened knuckle-dragging set (also know as anyone not in the media) is darkly rumbling that the culprit probably faces a certain direction five times a day, so the media goes into high gear to prevent a "backlash."

Given the evidence of what actually happens in Canada, the backlash they're afraid of is the occasional frown of disapproval, and the occasional harsh word on the Interwebz.

Dear people of the media and Leftist morons everywhere, I'd like to introduce you to the notion that frowns and strong language do not constitute a backlash.

Two people have been arrested in a Sri Lankan town after Christians attacked Muslim shops.

Residents say the mostly-Catholic mob stoned and vandalised Muslim-owned businesses in the seaside town of Negombo, where a suicide bombing targeted a Catholic church last month.

Social media was shut down and extra troops deployed onto the streets and hundreds were reportedly involved in violence over the weekend.

You can tell that Mooselimb terrorists are not really taken very seriously most places by what happens afterward. "Some people did some things" on 9/11/2001, but even though we knew who the culprits were by 9/14/2001, Americans rightly assumed that it was no big deal in the grand scheme of things. Sucks to be you, Mooselimb terrorists.

Conversely when "Easter worshipers" do some things, that's enough to get the government of Sri Lanka to shut down social media and start arresting people. Because when the Easter Worshipers start shit, that's going to be some serious shit.

"Shut up!" they explained to the child's father.

Canada is fast turning into a police state, where the government can pretty much tell you whatever the hell they want, and you have to do it.

Today's example, the truth is not a defense.

Last month, the Supreme Court of British Columbia issued an order that a father (referred to by the pseudonym "Clark") may not refer to his 14-year-old daughter (pseudonym "Maxine") as a girl or by her original name, whether in public or in private. Doing so has been ruled to constitute "family violence" because Maxine identifies as a boy. According to a separate protection order, police may immediately arrest Clark if they suspect he violated this Orwellian order.

Yes, if the father of this child mentions the fact that she is a girl, which she is, he gets a one way ticket to the Crowbar Hotel. But it gets better:

In addition to these gag provisions, the order prohibits Clark from "directly, or indirectly through an agent or third party, publish or share information or documentation relating to [Maxine]'s sex, gender identity, sexual orientation, mental or physical health, medical status or therapies," besides the Court, legal counsel, medical professionals, or any person authorized by Maxine or the Court.

The order also prevents Clark from allowing anyone besides his lawyer "to access or make copies of any of the files" relating to this ruling and order.

So essentially the defense is prevented from making public the details of the case, the ruling, or the judge's order. In other words, Shut Up! or we will hurt you. We will hurt you a lot.

Now, call me old fashioned, but this strikes me as a very big move from the law of a free country to the law of an un-free country.