Day after Weed Day: post-Apocalypse!

Well here we are, October 18th 2018, and I am not standing in the smoking ruins of my civilization. They made the demon weed legal yesterday, and the world did not come to an end.

The Ontario Cannabis Store web site was getting something like 100 orders per minute, and sold out not long after it opened. Similar situations across Canada at the Official Legal Weed Outlets. All shelled out before noon, from what I'm seeing in the news.

So there you have it, ladies and gentlemen. The official government plan was Fail On Purpose. Make weed "legal," sort of.  License its sale and growth, regulate and tax the living shit out of it, and make sure there's not enough for everybody.

Obviously the next few years the private sector will sue their way into profitability, because the way things are set up right now can't survive a court challenge. Its as if a high school cheer leading squad was given the job.

What I find interesting is the media buzz on this whole thing follows much the same pattern as when a state in the USA declares shall-issue concealed carry permits will be the law. Tons of fear-mongering, End Of The World, Blood In The Streets stories get circulated. Then the day arrives that everybody's been propagandized into terror about... and nothing happens. It was all bullshit. They were winding us up to sell papers.

By Tuesday you're not going to see the word "cannabis" in the news. That's what's going to happen. So make your life better and do what I do. Cut your TV cable, shut off the radio, and don't look at the newspapers. They're all lying to you about virtually everything, all the time, just like they lied about weed.

"LET them die!" James T. Kirk.

Happy Weed Day!

Congratulations Canada, we made it! We survived until the most important change in human history finally came. The demon weed is finally legal.

We can get wasted in peace.

Yay.

The Phantom

Illegal gun making... in Canada!

Over the years I've been yelled at by a -lot- of people over guns. Every good socialist knows that guns are horrible evil bad things, and only an insane evil Nazi murderer would even look at one in a store. I wish I was exaggerating. They're really like that.

The other favorite trope with them is that everybody is an inch away from SNAPPING!!!! and going on a murder spree. Take human, add gun, instant mass murder/death/kill. Yes, they really think that.

That's why they all love them some gun control, and they all demand a total 100% ban on civilian ownership of firearms. But not cops. Cops should have guns. Because a badge and a government paycheck are potent charms which render the police permanently sane, responsible, honest and guarantee they will never SNAP and do murder/death/kill. But anyone else will.

Essentially its moral laziness. They can't be assed to do the work to protect themselves. They think safety is something that should be handed to them on a silver platter, like television and health care.

But, being the eternal optimist, I often introduce inconvenient truths into the conversation. Such as, would you rather be shot or stabbed? Because when you ban guns, the thugs immediately switch to knives. So you are going to ban knives next? How are you going to do that? Prisoners in jails around the world make their own, under the most stringent surveillance that can be contrived by Man. You can make a knife out of a toothbrush. It just takes time and patience.

Another inconvenient truth, when you ban guns, people make their own. Yep. Just like with the knives, they get busy and make their own guns. Now, usually we see these little gun factories open up in places like Mexico, Brazil, Afghanistan, Pakistan. You know, them furrin countries where those picturesque primitive villages are, and where UNICEF goes to save the children. Places where Liberals like to send money, but they don't want to actually visit.

But not this time. No, this time the gun factory is in Montreal. This time it was a CANADIAN making guns for criminals.

A man who helped manufacture many illegal semi-automatic firearms at a factory in LaSalle faces the possibility of a four-year prison term for his crimes.

Daniel Spain, 51, appeared before Quebec Court Judge Mélanie Hébert at the Montreal courthouse on Monday for what was supposed to be the start of sentence arguments in his case. Instead, his lawyer, Joseph Elfassy, filed a motion arguing that the three-year mandatory minimum sentence he client already faces is unconstitutional.

Hébert agreed to carry over the sentence hearing to January to allow time for both sides to prepare arguments on the motion.

On March 29, Spain, an Île-Perrot resident, pleaded guilty to two counts of manufacturing prohibited firearms knowing that he was not authorized to do so. He worked Perfection Métal, a company based in LaSalle while its owner Jean-Pierre Huot made dozens of Tec-9-type semi-automatic pistols, including several that ended up being recovered by police at crime scenes in Quebec and Ontario.

I note in passing that four years for making a gun does seem excessive when you consider that one of the guys who actually used the guns is out on day parole already. The cop who killed Sammy Yatim in cold blood only got six years. The owner of the factory, Huot, got seven years.

What's important in Canada? Cold-blooded murder, six years. Making a gun, seven years. Helping make a gun, four years. Okay, Lefties? Learning yet? Not using it, just making it.

In conclusion, lets make all this crystal clear. Nobody in government cares if you get murdered. Nobody cares if there are armed terrorists, insane cops, drug dealers, or plain-vanilla lunatics running around killing Canadians. Not to put too fine a point on it, nobody in authority cares that most of the victims are black. And most of the people getting murdered in Canada really are black, or Indian.

What they care about is their next election, and their ever-expanding retirement fund. That's all. That's who Liberals are, that's what they do.

The Phantom

WINAMP RETURNS!!!!

This is made of awesome.

The charmingly outdated media player Winamp is being reinvented as a platform-agnostic mobile audio app that brings together all your music, podcasts and streaming services to a single location. It's an ambitious relaunch, but the company behind it says it's still all about the millions-strong global Winamp community — and as proof, the original desktop app is getting an official update as well.

For those who don't remember: Winamp was the MP3 player of choice around the turn of the century, but went through a rocky period during Aol ownership (our former parent company) and failed to counter the likes of iTunes and the onslaught of streaming services, and more or less crumbled over the years. The original app, last updated in 2013, still works, but to say it's long in the tooth would be something of an understatement (the community has worked hard to keep it updated, however). So it's with pleasure that I can confirm rumors that substantial updates are on the way.

They can call it "charmingly outdated" all they want, but Winamp has always been my favorite MP3 player. It does everything I want, it doesn't do anything I don't want. I'm really very happy to see it return to run on new operating systems.

Winamp currently doesn't do any of the advertising/spying/"suggesting" that Apple and Google do. It just plays the music. You put it on shuffle, it actually SHUFFLES the songs randomly, like its supposed to.

If they can resist the temptation to put spyware in the new versions, I will be happy to pay money for a copy of Winamp to put on my phone and all my computers. Once upon a time I paid money for the original Pro version, and I'll do it again.

Big Brother hack update, new evidence!

Previously, Bloomberg news asserted that SuperMicro servers had been hardware-hacked by their manufacturers in China.

Today, new evidence and a named source.

A major U.S. telecommunications company discovered manipulated hardware from Super Micro Computer Inc. in its network and removed it in August, fresh evidence of tampering in China of critical technology components bound for the U.S., according to a security expert working for the telecom company.

The security expert, Yossi Appleboum, provided documents, analysis and other evidence of the discovery following the publication of an investigative report in Bloomberg Businessweek that detailed how China's intelligence services had ordered subcontractors to plant malicious chips in Supermicro server motherboards over a two-year period ending in 2015.

But wait, it gets better:

The executive said he has seen similar manipulations of different vendors' computer hardware made by contractors in China, not just products from Supermicro. "Supermicro is a victim -- so is everyone else," he said. Appleboum said his concern is that there are countless points in the supply chain in China where manipulations can be introduced, and deducing them can in many cases be impossible. "That's the problem with the Chinese supply chain," he said.

Yep. Just like I said. Anything PC related that's made in China is fundamentally insecure, and can't be trusted in a secure network. IT guys all over the world right now are reading this article and crapping their pants. They know how much Chinese stuff is in their inventory: most of it.

The Phantom

Mini-review of Venom.

The new Venom movie came out this week. I saw it today. I give it a solid three out of five. 3/5 Its not boring, its not irretrievably stupid, they kept the SJW bullshit to a minimum. There's some good comedy, good car chases and lots of cool shit blowing up. This is not a cerebral movie, there are no deep thoughts here. But that's okay, I can work with that.

Bottom line, better than Justice League. Not a ton better, but still. We take what we can get these days.

The Phantom Film Critic.

Hey! Rats have feelings too, haterz!

Apparently there is a pro-rat advertising campaign in Paris.

The world's first public relations campaign to persuade people that rats have feelings too, and they should learn to love them, has been launched in Paris, where city authorities are waging war to exterminate the four-million strong rodent population.
"Stop the massacre of rats," is the slogan on posters on the walls of dozens of metro stations, which show pictures of cute rats and declare that rodents "are sensitive individuals" which can "feel emotions."
The campaign was launched by Paris Animaux Zoopolis, an animal rights group that aims to defend all animals regardless of whether humans like them or not.
The group's secretary Philippe Reigné said he was not aware of any other major campaigns to laud the merits of the much-maligned rodent and that the Paris one may be a world first.
"It is a political message which targets the Paris city hall, the prefecture of police, and the exterminators (of rats)," he said.
"Rats should not be seen as synonymous with filth," he said, arguing that Paris authorities are as motivated by the damage rats cause to the image of the world's most visited city as they are about hygiene issues.

Paris is lagging behind Los Angeles, the Californians skipped their rat extermination attempt entirely and went straight to the rodent population explosion.

But in case anyone was wondering -why- Typhus is making a big comeback in LA, this tree-hugging, bunny-loving, rats-have-feelings-too bullshit is why.

The Phantom

Update: Welcome Instapundit! Sarah Hoyt linked me!

Upperdate: By the news, the California Typhus outbreak has spread from LA to Pasadena and Long Beach. The rats are very well fed and healthy. Thanks, Democrats!