Government can't even deal drugs.

From our bulging Government Failures file, a new entry: cannabis.

Love it or hate it, cannabis is a legal product in Canada. For medial purposes and for "recreational" use.

To be honest, "recreational" is a euphemism for people getting stoned at home. The nature of high-THC cannabis and regulation is that if you imbibe, as it were, you're not going to be in a "social drinker" type situation where you go to the bar and sample the fancy Scotch with friends. Weed doesn't really work that way. And of course, obviously, Health Canada has made it illegal to consume cannabis in any form at a public place. So, no smoking weed at your favorite bar, no weed brownies, no nothing. Stay home, get stoned and crash in front of the television. Sounds super fun, right?

But cannabis legalization was none the less supposed to bring with it a HUGE tax bonanza and make all kinds of people amazingly rich. Remember the cannabis stocks soaring in the market? Big things were ahead!

But now, the reality let-down.

The latest figures from Health Canada showed that as of March 31, while monthly sales of dried cannabis amounted to 7,627 kilograms, there was 30,802 kilograms of finished inventory and 143,773 kilograms of unfinished inventory in the system.

Sounds ominous, right? Sounds like they made a booboo. But what does "finished" mean vs. "unfinished"?

Meanwhile, BMO Capital Markets analysts Tamy Chen and Peter Sklar on Wednesday warned that some "unfinished inventory," defined as cannabis that is not packaged, labelled or ready for sale, may not be deemed as "not competitive" for sale on the market, based on discussions with licensed producers.

It means that in a market that moves roughly eight and a half tons of weed a month, they are sitting on 158 tons of it that's just baled up and another 34 tons that are bagged, tagged and ready to ship. Two years worth of inventory, basically.

Big problem, weed doesn't last two years. It needs to be fresh. Not sure if even cannabis oil lasts that long. It might, but after two years its getting to its sell-by date.

But how did the producers get here? Are they idiots? No they're not. Growing cannabis is extremely technical and difficult.  But someone is.

Enter... the government. Up until the election last year, the Ontario Cannabis Retail Corporation, aka the LCBO of weed, was designated to be the SOLE PROVIDER of cannabis in Ontario. Where the most people in Canada live, not to put too fine a point on it. This monstrosity was set up by the Liberal Party of Ontario under the leadership of the Mad Librarian Kathleen Wynne. It was supposed to be an Internet-based retailer to move cannabis, and it was a monopoly.

They managed to lose $42 million dollars in a year. With a MONOPOLY. And they managed to bottleneck the sales of cannabis so badly that there's a two-year backlog of inventory sitting in storage rooms around the country. Because the producers are hostage to the monopoly retailer.

I keep hearing news that there's going to be hundreds of new cannabis stores coming to Ontario. I keep wondering how those stores are going to rent retail space and pay employees ($15/hr minimum wage, friends!) when their margin is going to be between 2% and 8%. I think it would be difficult to run a hot-dog cart at 8% margin. They're going to end up being t-shirt and novelty shops that keep some weed next to the cash register.

Maybe the Weed-CBO monopoly is safe. Only a crown corporation can lose $45 million bucks in a year and call it a success.

Dear Liberals and other socialists, these incompetent government assholes who can't even make a go of selling drugs are the ones you think should be running everything. What the hell is wrong with you people?

There will be no bugs to eat.

Lately we've been hearing a lot about "insect protein", otherwise known as eating bugs to save on greenhouse gasses. Otherwise known as cow farts. We're bad for eating meat, we should be eating bugs.

But oh noes, the bug population is down!

Insects and spiders are declining in forests and grasslands across Germany, according to new research.

Scientists have described the findings as "alarming", saying the losses are driven by intensive agriculture.

They are calling for a "paradigm shift" in land-use policy to preserve habitat for the likes of butterflies, bugs and flying insects

Recent studies have reported widespread declines in insect populations around the world.

The latest analysis, published in the journal, Nature, confirms that some insect species are being pushed down the path to extinction.

It is becoming clearer and clearer that the drivers of insect decline are related to farming practices, said Dr Sebastian Seibold of the Technical University of Munich in Freising, Germany.

"Our study confirms that insect decline is real - it might be even more widespread then previously thought considering, for example, that also forests are experiencing declines in insect populations," he told BBC News.

"I think it's alarming to see that such a decline happens not only in intensively-managed areas but also in protected areas - so the sites that we think are safeguarding our biodiversity are not really working anymore."

Just in case anyone was wondering why all the German farmers decided to drive their tractors into the city and snarl traffic, this kind of thing is why. Every day a new thing is blamed on agriculture.

Greenies are coming for your inhaler. No, really. They are.

You know what's wrong with having a big government that decides everything?

Fashion.

Not just hemlines, ladies. Fashionable theories, fashionable causes, these things sweep through institutions like the flu, infecting everyone and changing policy directions on a dime.

Case in point, greenhouse gases. Its the latest fashion in government. In Canada we have a carbon tax and we're not building any pipelines, thereby ruining our own economy.

In England the National Health Service is going vegan and taking away people's asthma inhalers.

Asthma carbon footprint 'as big as eating meat'

Making the swap would have as big an "eco" impact as turning vegetarian or becoming an avid recycler, they say.
It's because some inhalers release greenhouse gases linked to global warming.
There are more than five million people with asthma in the UK.
The research looked at the environmental impact of different inhaler medications prescribed to patients on the NHS in England.
In 2017, about 50 million inhalers were prescribed. Seven out of every 10 of them were metered-dose inhalers - the type that contain greenhouse gases.
The gas - hydrofluoroalkane - is used as a propellant to squirt the medicine out of the inhaler.
Metered-dose inhalers account for nearly 4% of NHS greenhouse gas emissions, according to experts.

So they're going to be switching people to non-propellant inhalers to save the planet. Being a government institution, they will have targets and quotas for numbers switched to the LESS EFFECTIVE dry powder version.

Sounds great, right?

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

Upperdate: Welcome all you Small Dead Animals and flying monkeys! Thanks for the linkage Kate! 

Farmer uprising spreads from Holland to Germany.

There is a -huge- protest movement going on right now in Europe that nobody has heard about. Complete blackout in the international news. I saw this at Blazing Cat Fur.

Funny that this wasn't on the news.

Thousands of farmers in their tractors have taken to the streets of Germany, protesting the government's environmentalist agenda and the climate of hostility that agriculture faces from urban eco-warriors.
On Tuesday, farmers across Germany led 'tractor parades' into the nation's cities.
According to the German newspaper Die Welt, some 2,000 tractors descended upon the city of Bonn, and thousands of farmers took the same path in Hanover, Munich, Berlin, and Hamburg.

Organized by a group called 'Land Creates Connection', the farmers demanded not only a say in the formation of agricultural and environmental policies but also respect from the public who rely on the fruits of their labor.

Most people haven't heard about this because the lamestream media haven't reported it. Similarly to the massive Tea Party events with 100,000+ attendees a few years ago that went missing in the news, thousands of tractors showing up in big cities all over Germany isn't "news" that we should know about.

We also shouldn't know that Dutch farmers have been doing the same thing for some time now. Since October 1st. The only reason I knew about it was WiFi Lunchbox Guy dropped a link for me. It goes to a Twitter page. https://twitter.com/detgrim/status/1184898297217069056 

That's a lot of tractors, my friends.

Sea of tractors that did NOT get permission to be there.

So it seems that the Powers That Be are very happy for us to know if Frau Jackson's Grade 10 class showed up with signs at City Hall in Yourtown Germany to protest climate change. Less happy if we find out that the people who grow all our food showed up and kicked in the front door of Parliament because a new regulation is putting them all out of business.

And by the way, this is the "coddled and subsidized" European farmers we're talking about here, the ones North Americans think have such easy lives. Maybe that's another lie we've all been fed.

Elections have consequences. Already!

The saying is that elections have consequences. Usually we don't see those consequences the NEXT DAY after the election though.

American burger chain Red Robin says it will be closing all of its Alberta stores by Dec. 8.
Global News has spoken to all five locations the company currently operates in the Edmonton area and each location confirmed they have been told they will be shut down by that date.
A previous location in the city on 112 Street and 104 Avenue also closed earlier in the year.
The company, known for its bottomless fries and expansive burger choices, currently has a total of 17 Canadian locations. The other 12 stores operate in British Columbia.

So there's 75 people times five locations that are out of a job as of December 8th, not to mention the franchisees who are now out several million dollars for each location. Those places are not cheap to start up.

Also, Husky Oil laid off hundreds of employees on October 22nd.

Thanks, Liberals. Thanks Toronto.

Update: Encana packs it in, they are moving to the USA, taking their bat and ball with them. One of the largest and oldest companies in Canada just said "fuck it!" and left. Now that's what I call an election consequence.

Well, here we all are again. Election results.

On the surface, it looks like dirty politics and slimy propaganda are a winning combination ladies and gentlemen. The Shiny Pony lives. Surely there are a lot of articles today braying that this is a Big Resurgence of the Left.

So lets look and see what happened.

First thing that happened, obviously, is that Andrew Scheer screwed the pooch bigly this election. With the amount of truly criminal bullshit being done by the Liberals this thing was Scheer's to lose, and he did. But, the CPC is UP 26 seats to 121 from 96.

Second thing that happened, the Liberals lost influence. Hard. A majority is 170 seats, the Liberals held 177 going into this thing, and now they are down 20 to 157.

The third thing that happened, the NDP lost in every possible way. They are down from 39 seats, losing 15 seats to end up with 24.

Forth thing, and probably amounting to nothing, the Bloc won big last night going from 10 to 32, gaining 22 seats. The only thing of note about this is that the Bloc now has 32 seats despite the fact that they only got 7% of the popular vote. There's 338 seats for 30 million people, 7% should give them 24 seats. But because of the peculiarities of ridings and population density in Quebec, they swing a pretty big bat today. They can go in with the NDP and the CPC to bring down the government any time they want.

Looking at the map, the West is solid CPC blue all the way from Ontario to the BC coast. Ontario, mostly blue except for the 905 area code, Toronto/Mississauga/Burlington/Hamilton went solid Liberal. But that's where all the people live. Job done, Canadian media.

Moving east, there's a surprising amount of blue in Quebec down by the St. Lawrence river, then the middle of it is Bloc with Montreal going pretty much solid Liberal, and the Maritimes solid Liberal.

That my friends is what you call a nation divided. This is an urban/rural divide, one which is probably going to get MUCH deeper before it starts to let up. Because the urban side owns all the propaganda machinery, and the rural side owns all the food and industry.

Bottom line, Canadians didn't really care that the government is a bunch of corrupt assholes led by a child.

But at least now I know what its going to take to get them to pay attention. It'll take random blackouts, food shortages, rioting and a constant fear of death to wake them the fuck up. Venezuela north, basically. Or the West could start separation proceedings, that might work too.

12 months of legal weed already?

Happy Weedaversary everyone. Yes, the Demon Herb has been legal to buy here in the Demented Dominion for a whole year. Twelve months of getting wasted whenever you want, all legal and everything.

Tommy Chong is so happy!

Notably absent are the zillions of car accidents and hordes of brain-dead zombies shuffling about our ruined cities that we were all warned about right up until the 17th last year. I always thought it was a little suspect that the warnings and the Scientific Studies! all stopped on 10/18/2018, as if somebody threw a switch to turn off whatever was generating them.

But hey, today's a big celebration. So hoist a celebratory joint, take a little puff, and then get the hell back to work. You've got taxes to pay, peons.

The Phantom

Hardware subversion for cheap.

Something I've been wondering about for a long time is now officially a thing.

More than a year has passed since Bloomberg Businessweek grabbed the lapels of the cybersecurity world with a bombshell claim: that Supermicro motherboards in servers used by major tech firms, including Apple and Amazon, had been stealthily implanted with a chip the size of a rice grain that allowed Chinese hackers to spy deep into those networks. Apple, Amazon, and Supermicro all vehemently denied the report. The NSA dismissed it as a false alarm. The Defcon hacker conference awarded it two Pwnie Awards, for "most overhyped bug" and "most epic fail." And no follow-up reporting has yet affirmed its central premise.

But even as the facts of that story remain unconfirmed, the security community has warned that the possibility of the supply chain attacks it describes is all too real. The NSA, after all, has been doing something like it for years, according to the leaks of whistle-blower Edward Snowden. Now researchers have gone further, showing just how easily and cheaply a tiny, tough-to-detect spy chip could be planted in a company's hardware supply chain. And one of them has demonstrated that it doesn't even require a state-sponsored spy agency to pull it off—just a motivated hardware hacker with the right access and as little as $200 worth of equipment.

Here's what was actually done:

With only a $150 hot-air soldering tool, a $40 microscope, and some $2 chips ordered online, Elkins was able to alter a Cisco firewall in a way that he says most IT admins likely wouldn't notice, yet would give a remote attacker deep control.

"We think this stuff is so magical, but it's not really that hard," says Elkins, who works as "hacker in chief" for the industrial-control-system security firm FoxGuard. "By showing people the hardware, I wanted to make it much more real. It's not magical. It's not impossible. I could do this in my basement. And there are lots of people smarter than me, and they can do it for almost nothing."

Elkins used an ATtiny85 chip, about 5 millimeters square, that he found on a $2 Digispark Arduino board; not quite the size of a grain of rice, but smaller than a pinky fingernail. After writing his code to that chip, Elkins desoldered it from the Digispark board and soldered it to the motherboard of a Cisco ASA 5505 firewall. He used an inconspicuous spot that required no extra wiring and would give the chip access to the firewall's serial port.

The article goes on to explain the exploit in some detail. Short version, wiring a pre-programmed ATtiny onto the motherboard of a router is a piece of cake. Its not the smallest or cheapest thing that could be used either, just the one this guy found convenient.

Okay, so now I want you to imagine some guy soldering something the size of kosher salt to a motherboard in your Tesla. He's now got remote access to everything electronic in there. Which is -everything-. Door locks to steering and brakes, all electronic control.

Pretty bad, right? Now make your car a transport truck. Much worse. How about an airplane? Instant cruise missile.

Somebody out there is thinking about this, I guarantee you. Probably a lot of them.

What's your defense? Manual controls.

The Phantom 

Lies the New York Times told me.

Today in the New York Times, the Newspaper Of Record, "all the news that's fit to print" and etc, we have this big, big extravaganza on vehicle "emissions".

Reducing emissions from driving has been a big challenge, said Conor Gately, who led the project mapping CO₂ on America's roads as a postdoctoral researcher at Boston University. Emissions dipped during the recession of the late 2000s, but have been ticking back up since 2013.

National fuel economy standards put in place under the Obama administration have helped temper the rise in automotive emissions because the rules require cars and trucks to use less gasoline per mile traveled. But even as vehicles have become more efficient, Americans, buoyed by a strong economy and low gas prices, have been driving more miles and buying more S.U.V.s and pickup trucks, which have lower gas mileage. Freight trucking is also on the rise.

The Trump administration is expected to finalize a rollback of efficiency standards for passenger vehicles this month, a move that could significantly increase future emissions from America's cars and trucks.

So, Brown Man Good, Orange Man Bad, and how dare you peasants drive the kind of cars you want instead of put-putting around in tiny death-trap eco-mobiles like good little consumers ought to. Get a friggin' bicycle, prole!

Couple things that make this whole article a heinous lie.

First, and most important, this is not a map of pollution. Its a map of CARBON DIOXIDE which is not pollution, it is the stuff humans breath out. Plants -need- carbon dioxide, right? This is another global warming fairy tale filled with dire Greta Thunberg warnings about how your car is going to cause the end of the world.

Which is, I'm sorry New York Times, a lie.

Second, and this is my favorite part right here, they didn't measure a goddamn thing to make this map. Nope. This is an estimate.

To create their database, Boston University researchers used federal traffic data to calculate the number of miles travelled on local segments of each road in the United States and converted those miles to carbon dioxide emissions by estimating how much fuel is consumed by different types of vehicles using those roads.

and

An additional New York Times analysis used Boston University's on-road CO₂ data and population figures from the National Institutes of Health and the U.S. Census Bureau to derive total and per capita emissions for each metropolitan area.

This is an ESTIMATE based on a federal government ESTIMATE of traffic and an NIH ESTIMATE of population. Nobody counted the cars, nobody measured the CO2.

They made it up.

So, ladies and gentlemen rest easy in the knowledge that the New York Times is completely full of shit. To the brim. So full of shit in fact that it is unfit even to wrap fish.

The Phantom

More Real Oppression in China

Antifa and the other Leftist idiots like to scream about Oppression! like its something they've experienced in a Western nation like the USA or Canada.

This is the real thing right here:

The Chinese Communist Party has razed dozens of Uighur Muslim cemeteries in western Xinjiang province to create more "civilized" areas, the Agence-France Presse (AFP) reported on Wednesday.

China has taken over Uighur burial rites and replaced them with Communist Party-controlled cremations staged in "burial management centers" that ban religious activity surrounding the handling of a person's remains. Uighur locals and activists have accused China of attempting to erase the ethnic minority's history and uproot them from their ancestral home.

But wait, there's more. A Greenie connection!

The destruction of Uighur graveyards is not new. The Print reported in July that the Communist Party began rapidly constructing "burial management centers" throughout the region after destroying at least three cemeteries in Urumqi, the capital of Xinjiang. One was turned into an "ecological" park; Chinese authorities have also used a green agenda as an excuse to eradicate Uighur holy sites.

I was reading along and the notion of bulldozing cemeteries pissed me off, I must say. But then I read this:

In Hotan, another major Xinjiang city, the Csehine regime razed a 1000-year-old cemetery holding the remains of several historic figures, including Muslim crusaders from the late second millennium who brought the religion to western China.

The Communist Party has also built thousands of concentration camps in Xinjiang holding millions of Uighurs – and used the camps to excuse the replacement of private burials with "burial management centers," arguing that they are necessary because not enough young men remain free from the concentration camps to help carry bodies and perform burial rites.

First of all, a 1000 year old cemetery? Wow. We think shit that's 100 years old is old. Second of all, this is like destroying Martin Luther's burial site in Germany. Its the same thing.

So, all you Lefty snowflakes, just read all that and have a good hard think about what Oppression with a capital O really is, and who in the world is really doing it.

The Phantom

Racism at Harvard A-OK!

More legislating morality from the bench: US federal judge rules in favor of Harvard. Shocker, right?

A lawsuit, backed by President Donald Trump's administration, had challenged Harvard's use of race in determining admissions, part of a decades-old push to boost minority enrolments at America's oldest university.
Federal Judge Allison Dale Burroughs said in a long-awaited decision that while Harvard's admissions process is not perfect, it was right, for now, to factor in race to form a diverse student body.
"The rich diversity at Harvard and other colleges and universities and the benefits that flow from that diversity will foster the tolerance, acceptance and understanding that will ultimately make race-conscious admissions obsolete," she said.
The case was filed in 2014 by Students for Fair Admissions, a group led by conservative white activist Edward Blum, who previously attacked the affirmative action policies at the University of Texas.

 Love that subtle journalistic characterization there, eh? "Conservative White Activist", real smooth. The byline is AFP New York, just so you know the type of hipster dickweeds they hired.

But, obscene journalistic bias aside, what's being celebrated here is literal racial discrimination against more qualified candidates in favor of less qualified ones. That is, not to put too fine a point on it, using race as the determining factor for admission.

Back in the good old days it was all A-OK because it was only discrimination against white kids, which is always good in the minds of Lefties. But lately Harvard has been discriminating against Brownies too, because Indian and Asian (Chinese/Japanese/Korean/Vietnamese etc.) kids are showing up with SAT and high school marks in the A+++ range, over 95%. Harvard has basically said that if you have a 95%+ GPA and you're a Brownie, they don't want you. They will take a black or Hispanic kid with an 80% first. Because Diversity!!!11!

Real, live, racial discrimination.

The Federal court of the USA just said they're good with that.

So, if your kid is a brownie or a whitey and has a fucking 98% GPA because they worked their ass off, but for some reason still wants to get into Harvard to rub shoulders with the 80 percenters, you're going to need to have them dye their hair pink and claim to be transgender. Because tranny is the new black.

The Phantom

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

The sewer-pipe home. Now a reality.

Edgy new architecture, the house made from concrete sewer pipe.

Gives a new meaning to the phrase "sewer dweller."

They're called OPod Tube Houses and literally consist of reclaimed bits of industrial piping renovated inside with other left over pieces from building sites to make them into micro apartments.
"Constructed out of low cost and readily available 2.5m diameter concrete water pipe, the design utilizes the strong concrete structure to house a micro-living apartment for one/two persons," states a promo for the product. "OPod Tube Houses can be stacked to become a low rise building and a modular community in a short time, and can also be located/relocated to different sites in the city."
The pods are placed on spare bits of land and stacked on top of each other, allowing people to live their dream of being a human ant in a colony.
The sewer pipes are becoming more widespread in Hong Kong, where the cost of living is prohibitively expensive, but expect to see the trend transfer to the west very soon.

Because sea-cargo containers are too expensive now, so they use eight foot diameter sewer pipe instead. And they -stack- them. Sounds awesome, right? Sign me up!

The Phantom

DC = DemocRat Comics

DC Comics has decided that they are an unpaid propaganda maker for the DemocRat Party of the United States.

Comic book icon Lois Lane is making a return in a new 12-issue series from DC comics.
In the series, "Enemy of the People," the character reprises her role as a hard charging reporter for the Daily Planet, her newspaper in the DC universe.
This time around, Lane is covering the White House, where she gets into a combative exchange with a White House press secretary, is ejected from the briefing room and has her press pass revoked.

Revoked because she's working on what?

In the first issue, Lane is in the other DC universe, the District of Columbia, grilling a fictional White House press secretary on whether her administration is monetizing the separation of children from their families at the U.S. border.

The comic then goes on to Russia. Inevitably. Here's what the author has to say about comic book fans:

"I've seen criticism saying, 'I don't read comics to see what's going on in the real world.' Too bad. It's called art. And it has to reflect what's happening around us," Rucka says. "I don't think you can tell an honest story about Lois if you're not reflecting the state of journalism and also hostility to journalism in the world today. The danger in telling truth to power and the fear that power has of truth being told, is in and of itself, a worthy story."

"Too bad. Its called art." Well no, Mr. Rucka. It is actually called propaganda. A perversion of art used to promote a political agenda. You don't get to make a naked propaganda comic and then fob off your critics with the "art" excuse.

Its too bad I already boycott comics 100%, I'd like to be able to boycott them even harder.

The Phantom

Update: Welcome Instapunditeers! Thanks for the linkage Sarah Hoyt!

Ontario -loses- millions selling weed.

You know how we joke that the government is run by fuck-ups who couldn't make money selling dope? Guess what:

Ontario Cannabis Retail Corp. lost $42 million in the latest fiscal year, according to newly released public documents.

The provincial Crown corporation tasked with online sales and wholesale distribution of recreational pot reported revenues of $64 million for the year ended March 31, 2019.

However, Ontario's consolidated financial statements show the OCRC, which operates as the Ontario Cannabis Store, racked up expenses totaling $106 million during the period.

For those who don't know, the Ontario Cannabis Retail Corporation is not a brick-and-mortar operation. They run a WEB SITE. These incredible, unbelievable assholes spent $106,000,000 taxpayer dollars on a web site and a warehouse.

I have seen their web site. It is a steaming pile of shit. I have seen little mom-and-pop vitamin stores that had better web sites and offered better service. A do-everything custom web site for retail costs about $300,000 at the high end of the range.

A gold-plated warehouse with all the trimmings and super security would cost at most $10 million in a private enterprise setting. The producers who grow the fricking weed have entire production facilities that go from seed-in-dirt to finished-packaged-shipped product, and those cost a lot less than $100 million bucks. According to industry numbers, a grow-op costs $42 per square foot for indoor cultivation.

And that is why I am for smaller government and lower taxes. Because government is where money goes to die.

The Phantom

September 11th. Did you forget?

Twin Towers on Sept. 11th 2001 from the ISS.

It is easy to forget about these kinds of things. I forgot. I was reminded by friends this morning, who posted their reminders.

Its been 18 years. The people who did this are dead. Osama Bin Laden is dead. I should feel better, right?

I saw this as it was happening on television. I sat the whole day and watched people deal with this atrocity. They did well. They were magnificent.

Its important to remember two things. First, there is evil in the world. People will try to do things like this, out of hate. Second, the evil is small and out numbered. For every hate-filled lunatic there are a million good people.

Walk with your eyes open and your heads up, my friends.

Unclean, unclean! Leprosy in LA.

The new emerging hotness in Los Angeles is leprosy. Isn't that special?

Leprosy cases are emerging in Los Angeles County, according to a recent study revealed in a Reuters Health report and its co-author Dr. Maria Teresa Ochoa of Keck Medical Center of the University of Southern California, Los Angeles told Reuters Health that she's urging the public to "fight the stigma."

If there is a more horrifying medieval plague than leprosy, I do not want to know what it is. If you vote DemocRat, that's what you are fucking well voting for.

The Phantom

Just how full of shit are the Puppy Kickers?

We've know for quite some time now that Puppy Kickers, aka those WorldCon Wokelings who called people who were part of the Sad Puppies Campaign racists, were full of shit. To the point where this year the Red Panda Faction ran a slate trying to hack the Dragon Award.
If that paragraph makes no sense to you, this is all Science Fiction Fandom drama, you can stop reading.
If it did make sense, then this next part is going to piss you off.  (Fair warning, this link goes to Vile770, the wretched hive of scum and villainy run by China Mike the bot-farmer and manure merchant. Don't click it if you don't want to get any on ya.)

Fandom, Entitlement and Toxicity By Hampus Eckerman: On the second day of the Dublin 2019 Worldcon, I went to a panel with the promising name of "With fans like these, who needs enemies?" I hadn't really read the description, instead going by the idea that it might have something to do with fans sucking the energy out of convention organizers, whether caused by anger, entitlement or a sincere wish to help. Instead it was about how fans made life miserable for creators with George Lucas and Star Wars fandom as the prime example. Most of the panel was about the big media phenomena in SFF, Star Wars, Star Trek and GoT, but there was also an interesting discussion on why Doctor Who fandom hadn't reached the same levels of toxicity.

Emphasis mine.

Because when a guy makes a movie trilogy, and it is awesome, and it develops a huge fandom, and that fandom is two generations deep, then he sells it to Disney and they release a movie that basically craps all over the original in favor of some idiotic political propaganda effort, if the fans complain they are to be considered spoiled, entitled, and toxic. 
Which is exactly what we see with the Sad Puppies. We complained because we were sick of seeing politically heavy Leftist grey-goo grimdark bullshit winning the Hugo award. We voted against the WorldCon Wokelings fair and square, and they literally changed the rules to keep us out.
But that's not the annoying part, that's just history. Here's the part where we find out how deep the shit really is:

My first understanding of my own potential for toxicity was with the infamous Spider-Man storyline "One More Day". For you that have never heard of it, the basic plot is as follows: Spider-Man married Mary Jane in 1987. This changed the dynamics of the comic. There was no longer the possibility to add soap elements of romance to the story, Spider-Man being too much of Goody Two-Shoes to be unfaithful. Killing Mary Jane would have caused an outrage, a divorce would still have left the dynamic. And that was not the only problem. Spider-Man had given up his secret identity in the Civil War-storyline, thus even more limiting the possibilities for writing a traditional story. So the decision was made in 2007, some 20 years later, to make a drastic change: Mephisto would for some flimsy reason magic Spider-Man so he wasn't married, his identity had never been revealed, and a lot of stuff was retconned for no apparent reason, such as Harry Osbourne being alive again.
I remember the enormous *anger* I felt at the time. It felt like they were spitting in my face.

 Emphasis his.

Yeah, that's because they WERE spitting in your face, Mr. Eckerman. They didn't give a shit about the fans and the Spiderman nerds. They took a comic that had held the same continuity since 1964 and changed it as a business decision. A really BAD business decision as it turns out, because the slide their sales were on in 2007 steepened dramatically after that. Funny how that happens when you spit in the faces of the people who buy your comic.

Afterwards, I can see that most of it was a healthy reaction. I quit reading. I didn't continue, becoming more and more discontent, feeling more sidelined or out of step with the Marvel universe. Instead I found other things to read.

I've written nearly identical things about my experience of quitting comics in 1992/93. I didn't like the art, I didn't like the stories, and I didn't like the way they were screwing with the characters. Many years later I found out that there was a business crisis at Marvel in 1992, and the whole thing was coming unglued. New "talent" was brought in to put a "fresh" stamp on things, and they did so. By fucking up all the stuff I liked. I did the same thing Mr. Eckerman did in 2007, I stopped reading comics. Of course when I did it, -that- was toxic entitled nerd racism.

But that was of course not my only insight in toxicity with regards to myself. I remember a flatmate inviting her friend to a visit. The flatmate was also a comic nerd, so I remember starting to talk about comics, trying to see what we had in common, what likes we both shared, on what level we could discuss. Until she asked if I was interrogating her. And that was a clear wake-up call. What I was doing was in practice seen as if I was trying to find out if she was a "fake geek girl", that toxic concept where only women are questioned about their statuses as geeks or nerds.

This is hilarious. When guys test each other's nerd lore and each tries to impress the other with their command of the subject, that's "talking about comics." When the exact same conversation takes place with a woman, that's "toxic masculinity."

A third insight was only this year while watching first Captain Marvel and then Avengers: End Game. The sudden understanding that I didn't really get any pleasure out of these movies. I was never that much of a fan of action movies and that is much of what the Marvel movies are. I wasn't watching them as much out of enjoyment as I was out of addiction. I was watching them as a completionist, wanting to learn all the details, again building up an expertise. But building up that expertise also forced me to spend time on things that I didn't really like. Often sitting there bored while Captain Marvel was having another uninteresting fight, waiting for it to stop to at least get a bit of plot or dialogue.

Emphasis mine again. Yes friends, comic nerds are -addicts-. (And I'm sorry, uninteresting fight scene in a comic book movie and waiting for some dialogue? Dude.)

Thinking of nerds as addicts puts things in a different perspective. Not only as addicts but as persons who come to identify themselves as, let's use a grandiose expression, Keepers of Knowledge. People who have for 10-20 years built up a knowledge about a subject, are addicted to add to this knowledge, but suddenly recognize that they don't enjoy it anymore. And the frustration of needing to do things *they don't like* just to feed the addiction.

So just to recap, comic nerds (and SF fans) are spoiled, entitled and toxic if they complain when Big Corporation spits in their faces, they are full of toxic masculinity for expecting teh nerd whammyn to live up to their same level of secrit nerd lore, and they're addicts.

But, Mr. Eckerman's little trip down memory lane A) absolves him of all of the above, because B) HE of course doesn't complain, he just goes away like a good little consumer and doesn't make a fuss.

Myself, I walked away from Spider-Man and Marvel. They didn't fit my needs anymore and I moved on. Toxicity, I feel, is for those that can't move on. But I feel it is good to admit that I myself have these feelings, because that makes it possible for me to recognize them before I grow angry enough. Recognize the pattern in myself and thus being able to also see the flaws it is built on.

The rest of us, who feel moved to say something when Big Corporation (or maybe the CHORF Wokelings) spits in our eye and tells us to shut up and consume the bullshit like we're supposed to, despite the fact that he's literally repeated exactly what I've said on the same subject over the years, we are toxic racist/sexist/bigot/homophobes and we should all be... what, quiet? Crawl back into Mom's basement and go play Minecraft? Give up and go paint landscapes?

Yeah. Right. That'll happen. When Hell freezes over, mother fuckers.

So there you have it my friends. How full of shit are the Puppy Kickers? Completely. Can't get any more in there. No space for anything else. Running out their ears.

Social credit decides if you can buy a gun.

In ChicomLand their ubiquitous surveillance system gives each prole a "social credit" score. If you have bad scores then you get refused things like social services, airline tickets, luxury goods etc. Pretty much everyone I talk to agrees this is a Big Brotheristic nightmare and the Chicoms are assholes for doing it.

Well, check this out:

The Trump administration is considering a proposal that would use Google, Amazon and Apple to collect data on users who exhibit characteristics of mental illness that could lead to violent behavior, The Washington Post reported Thursday.

The proposal is part of an initiative to create a Health Advanced Research Projects Agency (HARPA), which would be located inside the Health and Human Services Department, the report notes, citing sources inside the administration. The new agency would have a separate budget and the president would be responsible for appointing its director.

...

HARPA would take after Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, or DARPA, which serves as the research arm for the Pentagon. The idea was first crafted in 2017 but has since gotten a renewed push after mass shootings killed 31 people in El Paso, Texas, and Dayton, Ohio, in August.

...

The Suzanne Wright Foundation approached the president recently and proposed the agency include a project called Stopping Aberrant Fatal Events by Helping Overcome Mental Extremes, or Safe Home, the report notes, citing two people familiar with the matter.

The document lists several technologies that could be employed to help collect information, including Apple Watches, Amazon Echo and Google Home. Geoffrey Ling, the lead scientific adviser on HARPA, told reporters Thursday the plan would require enormous amounts of data and "scientific rigor."

Stripped of bafflegab, shitheads at the Suzanne Wright Foundation are proposing to create a government system that spies on you with your cellphone and your network-attached devices. They're calling it Safe Home but it is really a Big Brother Telescreen.

Not explicitly stated in the article is the implication that if you "exhibit characteristics of mental illness that could lead to violent behavior" according to their "scientifically rigorous" algorithm, you would be denied the right to purchase things like guns and ammunition.

Aka this is a social credit system identical to the Chicom system, and if implemented will be used to send people to jail or the loony bin.

What's most chilling here is that these assholes actually think its possible to to predict and circumvent mass shootings by mentally ill people. With cell phone data no less.

In truth this proposal is so odious that I wonder if it isn't being floated to damage Silicon Valley monopolies. If government seriously proposed using Big Data to decide who's been naughty or nice, every thinking human in the country would immediately ditch their phone and go off-line permanently. If they made it a law that you have to have a phone, you park the little spy in front of a VCR playing "Its a Wonderful Life" 24/7/365.

In other news, Hong Kong demonstrators are going off the government run cell network and using a Bluetooth mesh network instead. If you take the SIM card out of your phone, the Bluetooth still works. If you are extra-mega paranoid, the cell antenna is separate from the Bluetooth antenna. Snip, you're off the cell network.

Bridgefy. https://www.bridgefy.me/

Suck it, Big Brother.

The Phantom

Women's shelter vandalized... by Lefties.

What sort of sick individual hangs dead animals by nooses and paints death threat graffiti on a women's shelter in Vancouver? Alt-Right Proud Boys? The KKK? The MAGA-hatted Trump supporters? Dare I say it, conservatives? [boo, hisss!]

Nope. Lefties.

What kind of person would threaten and harass a rape crisis center? Here in Vancouver, we have the answer: trans activists. While it might sound odd to the uninitiated that those who claim to value 'inclusivity' and 'acceptance' would also be the same people who nail a dead rat to the door of a transition house for battered women, those of us following the gender identity debate closely are all too familiar with this type of occurrence.
On Tuesday, Vancouver Rape Relief & Woman's Shelter (VRRWS) tweeted images of vandalism left on their storefront — a space used for meetings, events, and support groups. 'Kill TERFs,' 'Fuck TERFs,' 'TERFs go home, you are not welcome,' 'Transwomen are women,' and 'Trans Power' had been scrawled across the windows and door in black marker. 'TERF,' for the blissfully ignorant, is an acronym that stands for 'trans-exclusionary radical feminist.'

Down at the bottom she finally gets to the point:

Anybody should be able to say anything at all and not be threatened with death. But certainly, of all the people who should be protected from such terrorizing, it should be women who dedicate their lives to helping some of the most downtrodden among us — those with few to no resources, who are running for their lives, who have suffered immensely, and are simply trying to protect themselves and their families.

Any person who would go so far as to intimidate and threaten women who stand up for other women in this particularly disturbing way is on the wrong side of politics, never mind history. It is beyond unacceptable that the left is not only remaining silent on these kinds of attacks, but is continuing to fuel them, by claiming it is feminists who are guilty of 'hate' and 'violence,' not their comrades-in-arms.

Meghan Murphy is a writer in Vancouver, BC. Her website is Feminist Current.

Ms. Murphy is enraged that the Left, supposedly the aid and comfort of women and feminists, has turned on her and is actively attacking her personally and her friends. She is shocked, surprised, and enraged.

Because she never understood that Leftists view women as political pawns and property. To a true Leftist, women are toys. To be used and passed around among their friends, to be discarded without care when no longer amusing.

Ms. Murphy didn't get on board the TrannyTrain when it left the station, and now she's under the wheels. They'll do to her what they've been doing to capitalists, gun owners, hunters, Christians and every other target of their wrath. Her principles are inconvenient to their goal of the moment, so they'll beat the hell out of her until she shuts up and gets in line.

I'm puzzled as to why we as Canadians put up with the Left. Really, why should we sit still and let them do this type of thing, day in, day out? Isn't it about time we started demanding they behave in a civilized manner? Seriously, dead rats hung from nooses on a women's rape shelter, I think I've had enough.

The Phantom

Quantum radar using entanglement.

Now demonstrated in a lab, for real.

The device is simple in essence. The researchers create pairs of entangled microwave photons using a superconducting device called a Josephson parametric converter. They beam the first photon, called the signal photon, toward the object of interest and listen for the reflection. In the meantime, they store the second photon, called the idler photon. When the reflection arrives, it interferes with this idler photon, creating a signature that reveals how far the signal photon has traveled. Voila -- quantum radar!

This raises the possibility of undetectable radar. Also the possibility of using radar in situations where you need very low luminosity of the radar beam for biological safety.

Pi-Hole: network level ad-blocker.

Somebody mentioned this Raspberry Pi project over at Monster Hunter International today, so I looked it up and it is pretty nice.

https://pi-hole.net/

Basically this uses a Raspberry Pi computer as a DNS server to suck up all the advertisements that infest everything we do on the internet. Its a free project, runs on the cheapest possible hardware, and it apparently blocks ads like a boss. I bought a new Raspi-4 yesterday, this is a perfect project to run on it. I'm going to give it a whirl and report back on results later. (Could be much later, there's a ton of work going on here at Chez Phantom lately.)

In the mean time, here's a pretty complete video of the project from Adafruit.

The Phantom

Real oppression vs. imagined

Dear Lefties and idiot journalists,

Everybody has been going wild about how Trump is a fascist, and how Trump voters are racist terrorists, and how tyranny is here and America is a hellhole. Oh, and there needs to be a ban on guns right away, because crazy White racists are going to kill everybody!

Let me show you a place where the government can do every single thing you say you want.

Hong Kong.

Cops are gassing, beating and shooting protesters. So far the action has all been taken by the Hong Kong Police Force, who all live there in HK and have to get along with everybody after the shouting dies down. They've used essentially the same crowd control techniques the cops in the USA do, if quite a bit more vigorously. That is all about to change.

The fork is a cattle prod. Ouch.

The Chinese government is massing troops on the border in preparation for a nice healthy purging of all the "troublemakers" in HK. Just like Tienanmen Square, the troops and not local. They have some special crowd control weapons, like a giant fork with electric cattle prods on the ends, gas that will do more than make your eyes water, and AK-47s with live ammunition. Not to mention the vehicle-mounted water cannons and all the other happy-slappy horseshit they haven't told anyone about.

The cattle prod fork, cleaned up for propaganda purposes.

And why, oh why do they think they can get away with that?

Gun control. That's why.

Could the US Army roll up to Phoenix AZ with a bunch of cattle prods and think they would win? No way. They'd find themselves in pitched gun battles with the citizenry all over the city. They'd need to send the whole fricking army to do it without blowing up the whole city.

That is not going to be a problem for the Chinese People's Liberation Army. They will face a citizenry armed with bats and pieces of pipe. And they will kill them all. The ones they don't kill will be sent off to "camps", aka slave labor for the rest of their lives.

That is the true purpose of gun control. That's what it is for, and that's what it has accomplished in every single place it has been tried.

Gun control allows governments to oppress and destroy the governed.

So I hope all you IMBECILES will understand when I don't agree with your screeching and REEEEEE!!!ing that gun control is the only acceptable answer.

The Phantom 

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

White man + gun = RAAAAACIST!!! But not in Jamaica.

I came across something yesterday, and I was going to comment on it, but I couldn't bring myself to bother. It is so fundamentally stupid, it isn't even wrong. Hat tip to Blazing Cat Fur, which has all the links. First, TeenVogue:

The Second Amendment to the US Constitution is a tool of White Supremacy.

Earlier this year, for the first time in a quarter century, the U.S. House of Representatives passed a major piece of gun control legislation. Its provisions are modest at best — it would expand background checks, mandating them for all person-to-person sales, which would technically close the gun-show loophole — and the bill has stalled in the Senate.

But before the legislation was voted on, Representative Doug Collins of Georgia took the opportunity to sneak in an anti-immigrant provision. Capitalizing on the bill's mandate for widespread background checks, Rep. Collins'a addition requires the background check system to notify U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) if an undocumented immigrant tries to purchase a gun.

Earlier this week, President Trump signaled support for the anti-immigrant provision, proclaiming via tweet that "Republicans and Democrats must come together and get strong background checks, perhaps marrying…this legislation with desperately needed immigration reform." Trump's call for for stricter immigration laws came in response to the mass shooting in El Paso that left at least 22 people dead. Notably, the alleged shooter posted a white nationalist and anti-immigrant manifesto online just before launching his attack.

This is just another self-refuting Trump hatred piece of journalistic malpractice. But the point being made is being made out there a lot. They claim the 2nd Amendment is there to empower white people and dis-empower everybody else.

The truth of the matter is that GUN CONTROL has always been used to keep guns away from blacks in the USA, starting with the Sullivan Act in New York City, and this article actually shows that history of calculated racism. But then blames the 2nd Amendment, because... well no reason, really. He just does. Fairly typical of journalism these days.

Then there was this beauty here: the book Dying of Whiteness.

Why does the United States refuse to pass new gun control laws? It's the question that people around the world keep asking.

According to Dr Jonathan Metzl, a psychiatrist and sociologist at Vanderbilt University, white supremacy is the key to understanding America's gun debate. In his new book, Dying of Whiteness: How the Politics of Racial Resentment is Killing America's Heartland, Metzl argues that the intensity and polarization of the US gun debate makes much more sense when understood in the context of whiteness and white privilege.

Same argument, even more vague this time,  guns are about "Whiteness". That's so fundamentally stupid it can't be refuted. There's no point in arguing against it.

All of the above just makes me tired. What tires me is that this is the type of shit that gets traction with a sizeable minority of the public. There's about 20% of the population that eats this stuff up.

So lets cut to the chase. The island of Jamaica, which makes a lot of its income from tourism, has issued a TRAVEL WARNING telling people not to go there on vacation in case they might get killed.

The government of Jamaica has extended a state of emergency across several of its popular tourist destinations to Oct. 28, citing a significant increase of violent crime.

The warning, which applies to St. James, Westmoreland and Hanover Parishes also includes the popular Montego Bay, a frequent destination for Canadian vacationers.

Global Affairs Canada updated the emergency status on its website, which was previously set to expire on Tuesday.

Well, Jamaica is a nation of black people you know. No toxic Whiteness there, right? How bad could it be?

A local newspaper, the Jamaica Gleaner, reported that 1,616 murders took place in 2017, with 335 of those taking place in St. James alone.

Global Affairs Canada released a list of areas in Greater Kingston and Montego Bay that is reported to have high levels of violent crime, as well as citing petty crime and fraud being a common problem.

Vacationers travelling to affected areas were warned to cooperate with security officers, carry valid ID and to avoid leaving their resort after dark.

That's not the whole country, by the way. That's just the three parishes: St. James, Westmoreland and Hanover. St. James had 335 murders. That's Detroit-level numbers for St. James, the three taken together tops Chicago by a wide margin.

Jamaica also has a complete ban on firearms. Owning one is illegal. Very, very illegal. Has been since the 1960s, I think. Give or take a decade.

So there you go. Tropical island paradise that depends on tourism for money, black majority, black government, black cops, gun ban, everything the Lefties say they want. Murder rate higher than Chicago.

The Phantom

 

THIS is how its done, my friends.

You know how I talk about not hitting people with your hands, use a chair? Case study in proper use of the chair as an improvised weapon, taking down an armed murderer in Sidney Australia.

'I didn't think he'd go this far': School friends of Sydney knifeman reveal his chilling final Facebook post and claim he planned to launch attack at a music festival – as they say he was 'always weird' and recently converted to Islam

Sydney stabbing: British heroes from Manchester take down knifeman on rampage

There's some very satisfying video of this guy getting stomped on by some beefy guy in a suit who used a stacking chair on him.

And you know, despite how horrible and racist and toxic White men are, they didn't kick him to death and then drag him around the city behind a car. Weird, right?

The Phantom

Animal Rights Whackos attack UK farm.

In our continuing series on assholes attacking farms in the name of Animal rights, this is a great one.

A devastated Kent farmer has accused animal rights activists of killing thousands of pheasant chicks.

Eloise McDonald, 23, said activists stormed her small family game farm in Ashford last month and let out thousands of chicks.

She woke to find hundreds of chicks gasping for water and starving after the raiders cut through fencing and gas pipes. Around 3,000 birds are estimated to have perished, The Times reported.

Ms McDonald wrote on Facebook: "Some lowlife scumbag so-called 'animal lovers' let out 20,000 of my birds, cut all the fencing, cut gas pipes, hundreds of week-old birds dead, gasping for water and starving!"

Her cousin, Andrew Farris, who manages the farm, told the Fieldsports Channel that although they had found about 80% of the birds, a repeat incident could finish their business.

That's one side of the story. Here's the other side:

The Animal Liberation Front (ALF) has claimed claimed responsibility for the raid on its website.

It said: "We hit a game farm in the South East UK breeding pheasants for the shooting industry. We've heard that 9,000 birds managed to escape.

"It was quite an easy job, we simply cut through the netting with scissors and knives and rolled it to avoid birds getting tangled up in it. Then we entered the pens and made them fly off.

We are meant to conclude that this was a great blow for all that is good and holy, eeeevile farmers growing birds just so that eeeeevile hunters can SHOOT at them! The horror! So much better for the birds to die of thirst.

Just remember folks, its the HUNTERS that are the terrorists. Keep repeating that, and maybe these lunatics will kill you last.

The Phantom

Fandom: DISSENT IS TERRORISM!!!!

The title is a -little- bit of hyperbole, as the following quote only comes from "Fandom's Prolapsed Anus" rather than an official WorldCon, Fan-type source. I'm not going to link to it, because why give the perverted bastard a free click? But here it is, and its a beauty.

Chris M. Barkley:

This is why I love fandom, especially our family reunions each year. When the World Science Fiction Convention convenes, it boldly endorses and embraces the diversity of literature, art, criticism and culture the world has to offer. We stand as one against the bullies, liars and false pundits who would see the world burn.
Because those politicians, religious leaders, bigots, racists and white supremicists (sic) who inspire and perpetuate the violence are terrorists.
We don't negotiate with terrorists.
Neither should you.

This cri de coeur comes at the end of a big, long, rambling spiel where Mr. Barkley assures us that America is a dystopian hellhole, that Americans are racists, and that:

As far as I'm concerned, one of America's most urgent problems is that it is awash in firearms and in the grip of generations of a virulent and ugly gun culture.

So if you like science fiction and fantasy, but you're part of that "virulent and ugly gun culture" then you are not a Fan. You are a terrorist. Mr. Barkley is serving notice, he and his friends will not negotiate with you.

Hey Chris, do we get to pick our own rooms at the new gulag you're planning? I want one with a view of the gas chamber and the ovens. I like to be able to see where I'm going.

The comments section is good too. Steve Davidson, well known Puppy-kicker and publisher of Amazing Stories mag:

I'm all for doing what makes sense, but one of the things that concerns me the most is that cons/fandom does not yet have a clearinghouse for information regarding serial harassers and trolls and other troublemakers, and it should, let alone a network for disseminating solid info on people within the community who might pose a risk. Somehow, we have to reconile the fannish desire to deal with these things on the local level with the needs of the environment we currently find ourselves in.

Yes, there should be an "information clearinghouse" for "harassers, trolls and other troublemakers." They could call it the WorldCon Dept. of PreCrime. Because you never know when one of those "bigots, racists and white supremicists (sic)" might show up and do some terrorism.

Makes me wonder sometimes if any of these overweight douchbags has actually read 1984, or if they just refer to it as a manual.

The Phantom

El Paso vs. Chicago vs. Kyoto vs. Hong Kong

Dear Lefties and other assorted idiots. I'm going to try to make this as simple as I can for you.

Every time some white guy shoots more than one person in the USA, the news media goes into tear-jerker overdrive. Dayton Ohio and El Paso Texas, plus the garlic festival in California. White men with serious mental health issues, running amok with firearms in gun-free zones. New wrinkle, the on-line manifesto. I'm not linking to it, I won't give the sickos a free click. DuckDuckGo is your friend.

Nobody in media or government was screaming when Chantell Grant,and Andrea Stoudemire got killed while standing on a street corner in Chicago, attending a peacful anti-violence demonstration. That was a week ago, give or take. Down the memory hole, double quick.

And lets compare today's breathless gun control rhetoric with an atrocity in another nation, the attack on Kyoto Animation Studio. 33 dead, 35 injured, by one nut with a jug of gasoline and a lighter. This one lone diseased individual killed more people than the sarin gas attack on the Tokyo subway, and more than any of the much celebrated American nutjobs.

Oddly there are no politicians screaming for lighter control, or gasoline control. Because that would be IDIOTIC, wouldn't it? Anyone can get gasoline, any time. Right? Just the same as anyone can get a gun any time.

So really, none of this is about public safety. Nor do any of the petty pontiffs out there pontificating about Gun Free Zones believe even for a single second that it will work. Because its an idiotic idea.

Let's turn our eyes to Hong Kong to see what it is actually about. A million people turned out into the streets to tell their government to fuck off a few weeks ago. Hong Kong is famously an island of gun-free civilization in the middle of the warlike craziness that is Asia. Given to the PRC by the Brits in 1997, the people were not thrilled and are less thrilled now. They've gone on strike. Peacefully, because they don't have any GUNS in Hong Kong. Even the cops don't carry them except in special squads.

What's building up on the border with the People's Republic? The Chinese People's Liberation Army, that's what. Tanks, troops, the lot. In the coming days or weeks, I expect the PLA will roll over Hong Kong like a lawnmower, and the body count will be really something.

They'll be able to operate with complete impunity and do anything they want because the people of Hong Kong have been disarmed for a very long time.

That's why socialists like gun control.

The Phantom

Tuberculosis: I Told You So.

Sometimes is sucks to be right, and this is one of those times. Hat tip to Blazing Cat Fur

Health officials on Thursday examined a school in the southwestern German town of Bad Schönborn where a tuberculosis outbreak has infected dozens of children and adults.
A total of 109 students, teachers and other school employees have been infected, the district administration of Karlsruhe said.
Four people, including at least two students, have active cases of tuberculosis. That means they are presenting symptoms and could be contagious.
The actively sick students have been removed from the school and are receiving medical treatment, the district administration said.
"We cannot rule out the possibility that there will be new cases of active illness," Ulrich Wagner from the Karlsruhe health department told the Badische Neueste Nachrichten newspaper.

I've been talking about this for a decade now. There's a REASON that everyone gets screened for TB at the border, and that reason is what we see in action here. It is an airborn, persistent bacterial infection, and it can be fatal. Untreated, it is usually fatal. There are new, drug-resistant strains emerging in the Middle East, Africa and Asia. Not all the same one either, there's a variety.

The way you stop it is with screening, aggressive treatment and the quarantine of infected individuals. Quarantine is a necessary, unavoidable part of defending the population from this disease.

This is not a cold, ladies and gentlemen. This shit can and will kill you. If you get timely treatment, it may only scar your lungs and weaken your immune system for the rest of your life.

But here we are, fucking around with tuberculosis outbreaks because the Left likes to call people racists.

Time to put on the big boy pants, people.

The Phantom

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

LIGHTSAILS WORK!!!

The Lightsail 2 spacecraft has raised its orbit using its light sail. WOO HOO!!!

Since unfurling the spacecraft's silver solar sail last week, mission managers have been optimizing the way the spacecraft orients itself during solar sailing. After a few tweaks, LightSail 2 began raising its orbit around the Earth. In the past 4 days, the spacecraft has raised its orbital high point, or apogee, by about 2 kilometers. The mission team has confirmed the apogee increase can only be attributed to solar sailing, meaning LightSail 2 has successfully completed its primary goal of demonstrating flight by light for CubeSats.

One of the life-limiting problems with spacecraft is consumables. If you use rockets of any sort to move the spacecraft and maintain an orbit, eventually it will run out of fuel.

The light sail allows this satellite to change orbit upward without expending fuel. This technology can be used to keep satelites in space much longer, and allow them to replace mass that used to be fuel with more payload, such as cameras and related electronics.

It really works. Wow!

The Phantom

Global warming scam caught red handed again.

Here's ANOTHER official thermometer sited to increase temperature. This one is in Australia.

Count the ways this site breaches the Bureau of Meteorology own rules:

Ken Stewart finds the relevant BoM guidelines. Clearly this site is on a slope, too close to buildings, too close to tall foliage, too close to heat sinks, it should not be artificially watered, or near asphalt. It should have a 30 meter buffer zone, and not be shielded from the sun, rain or wind. BillinOz points out that it is totally screened from the southerly cold winds, and the cold air will be drained from the spot down the slope.
How much do the Bureau of Meteorology care about climate change? — About 1m out of 30m or 3% of their advertised "care" factor.  That's a a 97% Junk-Science rate. The future of life on Earth is supposedly at stake and the "experts" can't even be bothered accurately measuring the climate change they tell us we need to pay billions of dollars to solve.
Obviously every record claimed at this site is scientifically meaningless. This sort of error can't be homogenized or adjusted away, but taxpaying Australians might think that installing a proper site would be possible when we pay them over a million dollars a day.
Mt Barker's temperatures are published at their Latest Weather Observations page. As Stewart points out this flawed site is used to adjust temperatures at official superstar ACORN-SAT sites at Adelaide, Cape Borda, Nuriootpa, Robe, and Snowtown. And thus does bad data pollute Australia's temperature records and the press releases that are used to scare the public into paying more money to fix a climate problem no one can be bothered to even measure properly.
The bottom line? Ask our M.P.'s to audit the Bureau of Met. If the environment matters, there must be an independent audit. Skeptics have asked, and the Bureau threw out the whole dataset to avoid the audit. They admit they won't describe their methods. If the Greens or Australian Conservation Foundation cared about the environment, they would demand an audit like we do.
In 2015 this site was on the other side of the block next to the driveway and car. "Lucky" the BoM realized, and … moved it to another inadequate spot.

This is a common theme in official weather stations. One or two that were put up by idiots is noise. But as we've seen, hundreds of stations are like this one. Next to a house, on a hill, air conditioner peeking around the corner, next to a driveway... it goes on and on.

One or two is noise. Hundreds is a policy.

Next question, if the weather officials in Western nations have a policy of constructing lying ground stations, what else are they lying about? You'd have to assume they're lying about everything.

The Phantom

Update: Lest anyone think for a moment that the above is a mistake or an oversight... this is another one, and they included the official plan in the blog post.