Panopticon surveillance now possible.

This camera thing just keeps getting better every day.

Computer scientists have created a way of letting law enforcement tap any camera that isn't password protected so they can determine where to send help or how to respond to a crime. "It's a way to help people take advantage of information that's out there," says David Ebert, an electrical and computer engineer at Purdue University.

The system, which is just a proof of concept, alarms privacy advocates who worry that prudent surveillance could easily lead to government overreach, or worse, unauthorized use. It relies upon two tools developed independently at Purdue. The Visual Analytics Law Enforcement Toolkit superimposes the rate and location of crimes and the location of police surveillance cameras. CAM² reveals the location and orientation of public network cameras, like the one outside your apartment. You could do the same thing with a search engine like Shodan, but CAM² makes the job far easier, which is the scary part. Aggregating all these individual feeds makes it potentially much more invasive.

Access means 24/7/365 access by the way. They can keep the data and run backward through it to see exactly who was on that street corner at 2pm on the second Tuesday of September 2015. They can also, given sufficient horsepower, do a facial recognition pass on accessible cameras and see if Person Of Onterest X has -ever- been in front of that camera.

But why worry about government? The Mob could do it too!

Beyond the specter of universal government surveillance lies the risk of someone hacking the system. To Maass, it brings to mind the TV show Person of Interest and its band of vigilantes who tap government cameras to predict and prevent crimes. This is not so far-fetched. Last year, the EFF discovered that anyone could access more than 100 "secure" automated license plate readers. "I think it becomes a very tempting target," says Gautam Hans, policy counsel at the Center for Democracy & Technology. "Thinking about security issues is going to be a major concern."

The potential for blackmail alone simply boggles the mind.

The Phantom

Harassment 2016: any casual comment.

Here's what it takes to get branded a "harasser" and get banned from a sci-fi con for five years these days.

From the Victim's blog, the evidence:

A guy carrying some chainmail noticed our sad little faces and asked if we were lost. Grateful, we admitted that we were looking for the con's sign-in desk. He pointed us in the right direction.

And then shit got real.

 

He lifted his arms to better display his chainmail and we realized he was an artist looking to sell his wares.

I said, "That's cool."

And it really was pretty.

Worthless in battle, obviously made for a thin, scantily-clad woman, and clearly something for cosplay.

But very pretty nonetheless.

"I'd wear that," I added.

That balding, pony-tailed dude didn't miss a beat as he pointed at Rachel and said,

"Yeah, but it would look better on her."

Ouch, man.

Just because it's true didn't mean you had to say it.

Rachel and I were both so flabbergasted at the man's cluelessness that we just fumbled goodbyes and moved along down the hallway.

In one smooth move, he had insulted me and objectified Rachel.

Sometimes, you just have to laugh.

Except she didn't laugh, she went and complained to the con management. Who then found that the above interaction violated their "harassment policy" and in due course named, shamed and banned the individual. His name is now being bandied about the interwebz as a "serial harasser", apparently other women have complained he did things similar to what is stated above.

 I do not know these people, any of them. I did not attend the con in question. I was privy to no other information than what is stated above. Maybe some other interactions than this were involved, maybe there's history, I don't know. There were allegations to that effect on other sites but, surprise, nothing was really said.
Based on this information, that's bullshit. You pique a woman's vanity, you get banned for five years? That my friends is a bridge too far.

It makes me really want to go to such a convention, for the warm, safe and welcoming atmosphere... not.

In other news, men wearing dresses will be allowed to use the women's bathroom. Anyone who objects will be charged with a hate crime and go to jail.

The Phantom

Bathroom battleground!

A female security guard has been charged with assault after ejecting a man from the women's bathroom at a store she was guarding.

D.C. police have charged a security guard at a Giant grocery store with simple assault after a transgender woman said the guard forced her out of the women's restroom.

It would seem from the story, which appears to have been written by a five year old incidentally, that the security guard was fed up to the teeth with "transgender women" using the women's bathroom, and pushed this one out of the store.

The lack of detail in the story is interesting, as is the fairly aggressive use of pronouns. This issue is getting Big Push from high offices.

Bottom line, those of you of the female persuasion are having your comfort (and safety!) thrown under the Trans Agenda bus. Pretty soon, there will be some guy in a dress one stall over from you. Be sure to use the loo at home before going out, eh?

Because clearly, the number of actual, serious about it, trans gender individuals is extremely small. The number of creepers cosplaying as women to get a peep or cop a feel will be much. much larger. In fact, I expect a veritable explosion of faux-trans creepers in the next couple of years, as this idiotic campaign continues and gains bureaucratic regulatory support.

I predict a surge in new plumbing sales, as stores and other public spaces switch from multi-stall bathrooms to single unit bathrooms with locking doors and no male/female sign on the front.

I also predict casualties, as women start getting picked off in bathrooms by mental cases, creepers and other assorted lowlife.

I'd be more sympathetic if women did not continually vote for this kind of shit. We have the Liberals and the Shiny Pony ruling in Canada right now thanks to you girls, so the fact that you're reaping what you sowed is sad but appropriate. (My apologies to those of you ladies who voted Conservative.)

The Phantom

Theranos Inc. tech doesn't work.

This is a story of simply amazing failure by the American journalistic community, both the general news side and particularly the business news side.

Just when you thought that the biggest ever "multi-billion" private company that also happens to be an utter fraud, would quietly disappear before it risked attracting even more unwarranted attention from regulators, enforcers, and criminal investigators which could potentially lead to prison time for "billionaire" Elizabeth Holmes, here she comes again reminding everyone of her fallen from grace presence, in this case with what should be the terminal news for this company, namely that as the WSJ reports (and as the company confirms) Theranos has told federal health regulators that the company voided and revised two years of results from its Edison blood-testing devices and has issued tens of thousands of corrected reports to doctors and patients.

As a reminder, the basis for Theranos ludicrous $9 billion valuation which it appears was achieved without anyone doing any actual due diligence, were the "Edison" machines which were touted as revolutionary - not just by Holmes but by the fawning media and even the Clintons. Theranos has now told regulators that it threw out all Edison test results from 2014 and 2015, effectively confirming it has no proprietary technology, and also validating that its valuation should be zero.

Cutting to the chase, Therano is a company which claimed to have developed a blood testing system that could do multiple tests on a single drop of blood. It was lab-on-a-chip technology. But sadly, it seems they lied.

What's of note is the very large list of news articles singing the praises of the company and it's founder. The Zerohedge story has many, many articles listed at the bottom, all glowing reports of awesomeness.

That's a $9 billion dollar valuation built of lies, spread by the media. How can anyone defend themselves against something like that?

The Phantom

Tuberculosis is up. Shockah!

Whenever anybody complains about open borders, Lefties are very quick to scream RAAAAACIST!!!

I believe this is because Lefties don't really interact with the real world very much. Because in the Real World, border crossings are not about keeping out people of other races. Maybe they were once upon a time, but it has been over 100 years since that was true.

These days, border crossings are to keep out fatal diseases and criminals. So when you let people cross indiscriminantly, unofficially, bad things happen.

Hall's was one of seven active cases in Vermont last year, up from two the year before. Twenty-nine states and the District of Columbia also reported more active TB cases last year than in 2014, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported in March.

After two decades of steady decline, the number of active tuberculosis cases in the U.S. inched up last year. Hall's was one of 9,563 TB cases reported last year, up from 9,406 cases the year before. The CDC is still trying to determine the reason for the uptick.

The goal set by the CDC, in 1989, of eliminating TB by 2010 — defined as less than one case in a million people — remains elusive. Even if the trend of declining cases had continued, the United States would not have eliminated TB by the end of this century, the CDC said.

"We are not yet certain why TB incidence has leveled off, but we do know it indicates the need for a new, expanded approach to TB elimination," said Dr. Philip LoBue, director of the CDC's Division of Tuberculosis Elimination, in an email.

A dual approach is needed: continue to find and treat cases of disease and evaluate their contacts, as well as identify and evaluate other high-risk persons for latent TB infection, he said.

I guarantee you the CDC knows damn well why tuberculosis is rising so rapidly all over the USA. The reason is simple: they stopped checking immigrants for TB. Now, thousands of people every year with active TB are coming into the USA in airplanes and ships and walking through the desert, and then spreading the disease.

I hate it when doctors lie.

The Phantom

Why elections matter.

Normally I ignore Twitter, but this one is too over-the-top to let pass.

Federal environment Minister of Canada Catherine McKenna, on Twitter yesterday.

Catherine McKenna ‏@cathmckenna 18h18 hours ago

DYK: The threat of #climatechange is not gender neutral? Women are more vulnerable to the effects of climate change than men.

The Shiny Pony is not the only New Age muffin in cabinet, it seems.

The Phantom

Update! Deniers are misogynists now! 

Catherine McKenna ‏@cathmckenna

Enjoy a good debate but the hateful, mysoginist tweets are brutal. Would you say these things to this your daughter, sister, mother, friend?

Facial recognition software is now.

British  music festivals are running facial recognition scans on attendees.

Last year, Leicestershire police scanned the faces of 90,000 festival-goers at Download Festival, checking them against a list of wanted criminals across the country. It was the first time anywhere in the UK that facial recognition technology — NeoFace — was used at a public outdoor event.

Privacy campaigners — and Muse frontman Matt Bellamy — expressed their fury at authorities after they casually mentioned the use of the surveillance project on Police Oracle, a police news and information website. Police didn't use any other method to warn festival-goers about the controversial initiative.

So yeah, you're getting scanned and tagged like a stray at the dog pound every time you go out, would be my guess. Because this technology is -cheap-.

Oh, and they keep the data.

"The concept of facial recognition is moving towards a Blade Runner-type future. The question is: did I really give informed and explicit consent to this? Where's the transparency?" Raj Samani, CTO at Intel Security, told Mashable.

"In the case of festivals, it raises a lot of questions around what is done with our data once the event is over," he says.

In order for facial recognition to be of use, the data has to be stored. But it's unclear how the data is stored and protected or for how long it remains and when it's deleted. 

It's nearly impossible to find out who the dataset is shared with or cross-referenced against, Christopher Weatherhead, technology officer at Privacy International, told Mashable.

"For example is the imagery being compared to law enforcement databases, medical databases, or social media profiles?" he said.

If it isn't yet, it will be by and by. Because there's always some new Bright Young Thing trying to work their way up the greased pole to the corner office.

Meanwhile, certain idiots are all happy that conventions are instituting all kinds of every tighter "weapons policies". I'd link it, but Vile 666 and Glyer don't need any more traffic.

The Phantom

FBI surveils public places in San Francisco.

I often get accused of paranoia. I post some pretty tinfoil hat stuff here from time to time.

But every once in a while, something comes along to prove, again, that I am a trusting little lamb.

Hidden microphones that are part of a clandestine government surveillance program that has been operating around the Bay Area has been exposed.

Imagine standing at a bus stop, talking to your friend and having your conversation recorded without you knowing.  It happens all the time, and the FBI doesn't even need a warrant to do it.

Federal agents are planting microphones to secretly record conversations.

Jeff Harp, a KPIX 5 security analyst and former FBI special agent said, "They put microphones under rocks, they put microphones in trees, they plant microphones in equipment. I mean, there's microphones that are planted in places that people don't think about, because that's the intent!"

FBI agents hid microphones inside light fixtures and at a bus stop outside the Oakland Courthouse without a warrant to record conversations, between March 2010 and January 2011.

If they're doing that kind of thing now, you can expect it's going to get a lot worse. Network-connected devices are so cheap now as to be throw-away for a government agency. Ten bucks for a self-powered, wifi-enabled camera and microphone combination. Add solar power, maybe fifty bucks and it can go pretty much forever. It is possible and affordable to connect every streetlight, sign and traffic signal with a surveilance device so small you'd have to take the thing apart to find it.

Previously, I'd have said that yes it's possible, but no way anyone would bother. Looks like I am WRONG about that.

The Phantom

Captain America: The tears of SJWs are sweet nectar.

SJWs -hate- the new Captain America movie.

So while Marvel was likely never going to make the homoerotic subtext of Cap and Bucky into text, would it really have hurt to keep their relationship more ambiguous? As if to put the nail in the coffin of speculation, Bucky and Cap paused for a moment in the middle of snowy Siberia to reminisce about their days chasing skirts in pre-War Brooklyn. It's a sweet, human bonding moment but one that also bristles with heterosexual virility.

That's Joanna Robinson's complaint in Vanity Fair about the Captain America movie. Cap ain't light in his loafers. Oh, the humanity. He likes girls. Whatever is a good SJW to do?

Other people other places are hating on the movie hard, because Cap isn't a post-millenial feminist #BlackLivesMatter DemocRat liberal glittery hooha quiltbag fan.

Personally I view all this outrage as very good news. I'm looking forward to going and paying a buncha money to see it. Maybe more than once.

Cry, you bitches! Cry your little hearts out and fill my cup to the brim.

The Phantom

Facebook cooks the news. Shocking, right?

Well, it appears in a new revelation that surprises no one, Facebook trends are propaganda.

Facebook workers routinely suppressed news stories of interest to conservative readers from the social network's influential "trending" news section, according to a former journalist who worked on the project. This individual says that workers prevented stories about the right-wing CPAC gathering, Mitt Romney, Rand Paul, and other conservative topics from appearing in the highly-influential section, even though they were organically trending among the site's users.

Several former Facebook "news curators," as they were known internally, also told Gizmodo that they were instructed to artificially "inject" selected stories into the trending news module, even if they weren't popular enough to warrant inclusion—or in some cases weren't trending at all. The former curators, all of whom worked as contractors, also said they were directed not to include news about Facebook itself in the trending module.

In other words, Facebook's news section operates like a traditional newsroom, reflecting the biases of its workers and the institutional imperatives of the corporation. Imposing human editorial values onto the lists of topics an algorithm spits out is by no means a bad thing—but it is in stark contrast to the company's claims that the trending module simply lists "topics that have recently become popular on Facebook."

In other, completely unrelated news Mark Zuckerberg the CEO of Facebook spends half his time partying at the White House. Looks like the Conservative Movement should be sinking money into a reliable internet search engine and a Conservative themed social media set-up.

So yes, Kathy Shaidle is RIGHT. Again. Damn it!

The Phantom

How to tell what's really going on.

If you want to know what's really going on in a country, you look at where people are spending their money. In the USA, they're breaking all records for gun sales and you can't get ammunition except at very high prices.

This April saw the most gun-related background checks of any April on record, making it the 12th month in a row to achieve a high water mark for gun sales.

The FBI ran 2,145,865 checks through the National Instant Background Check System last month, according to the agency's records. That represents more than a 400,000 increase over the previous record set in April 2014. Though the numbers represent the best April on record, the month also saw the fewest checks of any month thus far in 2016.

The trend of record-setting months began last May. In that period the background check system has seen records set for the most checks in a day, month, and year. Thus far 2016 is on pace to pass 2015 as the best year on record for gun-related background checks.

I don't know what the sales of camping equipment and dried food look like, but I would bet they're breaking records too.

Something else breaking records, pickup truck sales. Big-ass crew cab 4x4 rigs with V8s are flying off the dealer's lots.

Taken together, that looks to me like the population of the richest, most powerful country in the world getting ready for a war. They can get the hell out of Dodge, go anywhere in any weather, eat for weeks once they get there and shoot anybody who tells them "no." These are people who seem to think their cities and towns are going to become unsafe, and they'll have to leave. Or maybe fight.

That would be the smart ones. The dumb ones are week-to-week on their food stamp cards. Also record numbers. That's what the smart ones are worried about, when those cards all stop working the same day.

In the coming election, when Mr. Trump wins in a landslide over the Hildebeast (like that's a brave prediction, given the gun sales) we will be able to tell if people relax by how the gun sales move. If they keep making new records, that will not be a good sign.

The Phantom

PC is now simply good manners.

The retrenching and rearguard action begins:

"Political correctness" has long been considered a pejorative, an accusation hurled at those of us who choose our words carefully so as not to insult others. "It is invoked as a justification for some of the coarsest expressions of hatred and intolerance," Daniel Letwin, an associate professor of history at Pennsylvania State University, told me. Over the past year, I've written a number of columns that have provoked such allegations, notably when writing about language or why words matter.

Personally (and as a journalist) I prefer the Economist's style guide for reporters, which advises: "Avoid, if you can, giving gratuitous offence . . . you risk losing your readers. . . . But pandering to every plea for politically correct terminology may make your prose unreadable, and therefore also unread. So strike a balance. If you judge that a group wishes to be known by a particular term, that the term is widely understood and that using any other would seem odd, old-fashioned or offensive, then use it."

Far from restricting debate, the language of political correctness has returned a new dignity to formerly marginalized groups. "People who argue that political correctness is hijacking candid, unabashed observations aren't considering how their words are being perceived by all rather than just some others," said Robert Connelly, an adjunct professor of women's, gender and sexuality studies at American University.

In other words, "Shut up!" So, nothing new then.

The Phantom

US militia is on the border.

Here's a story about a group of volunteers patrolling the border down by Nogales Mexico.

Nogales, Arizona is more than 1,600 miles from Birmingham, Ala. In many ways, the two cities are completely different. However, they share one very important problem: they've both been impacted by the trade of illicit drugs, most notably heroin. Last year, heroin-related deaths were up by about 150 percent in Jefferson County, according to law enforcement officials. Heroin has been called an "epidemic" across our state by drug prevention groups. While not all of that product comes from Mexico, a large portion of drugs that make their way to Birmingham have been trafficked from out of the country.
In this way, what happens on the border has had a big impact on Birmingham. The drug trade is part of the catalyst for the creation of the Border Keepers of Alabama. It's a group of a few dozen men and women with the stated goal of preventing drugs and people from passing illegally through the border with Mexico. The organization, which calls itself "BOA" for short, has been met with criticism and praise. Critics call them vigilantes and racists, bent on preventing immigration into the United States. Supporters call them patriots and heroes, intent on doing the job Border Patrol agents have trouble doing alone--enforcing the law.

To put this into a Canadian perspective: If I thought it would behoove me to head down to Niagara Falls and hunt for violent drug traffickers crossing over from New York State, because my town was filling up with dead junkies, I would have already long since come to the conclusion that my government was essentially -absent- from it's responsibilities of securing the border and keeping the general peace.

Here in my area we do have some occasionally violent gang members, who like to demonstrate, burn tires and make a bloody nuisance of themselves. For ther purposes of this discussion it doesn't matter who they are, but we all know who I'm talking about. This gang's money comes from cigarette smuggling, mostly. Their continued success is due to having made a Special Deal with the provincial government of Ontario. The Liberals find it convenient to look the other way, because it's good Multicultural politics not to stomp on criminals of a visible minority. Liberals these days feel that they live or die on multiculturalism, so they let the agitators agitate and they let the smugglers smuggle. It's not such a big deal, in the grand scheme of things.

For me as a resident of the area, it remains a minor inconvenience. I adjust my choice of routes to drive on when the idiots act up, it's all good. Because even though the cops aren't busting these clowns for the variety of regulations they're breaking, whereas I'd get busted in a hot second, it doesn't really matter. Regulations on smokes are taxes, these clowns are tax dodgers. No skin off my nose.

But if they start showing up armed on my front lawn, that's another thing entirely. If they start infiltrating the countryside from across the border and casing my place for possible robbery EVERY DAY, that's not something I'm going to be able to put up with.

Because that means the cops no longer are doing what they are paid to do, which is KEEP THE PEACE. If there's armed drug cartel assholes traipsing through my yard every night, the peace is not being kept.

That's where y'all are this year in the Southern USA. The Border Patrol isn't patrolling the border. A bunch of vets from Alabama is doing it.

And yet the chattering classes still wonder why Trump is cleaning up in the Republican primaries.

My worry about Trump is not that he's a racist. I'm concerned he's talking a bunch of shit about building that wall. Because if he is, there will be a real, live shooting war along that border in the next couple of years, fought by non-government forces. It'll be the drug dealers vs. the American Patriots. That's how revolutions get started.

Most important school issue of 2016? Transgender bathrooms.

Treat this as a warning, ladies.

Yep, lots of people out there will tell you that being kind to the transgendered by letting them use whatever bathroom they want is the most important thing in high school these days. It's the issue whose time has come.

Meanwhile:

Only 37% of American 12th-graders were academically prepared for college math and reading in 2015, a slight dip from two years earlier, according to test scores released Wednesday.
The National Assessment of Educational Progress, also known as the "Nation's Report Card," said that share was down from an estimated 39% in math and 38% in reading in 2013.

Gee, I wonder if educators might be screaming "LOOK!!!! SHINY THING!!!!" with the transgender bathroom deal because they are graduating 2/3rds of their students illiterate and innumerate? One fricking third of the kids in the USA are college ready? Are you f-ing kidding me?

Read until offended Liberals and other mental deficients please note this above observation says -nothing- about people who are actually transgender or otherwise bathroom-challenged. This is about lying officials using such people as human shields.

Personally, I'm against it. You dumb-asses.

The Offensive Phantom Racist Dude

Hugo finalists announced!

Get 'em while they're hot!

When I get my packet I'll review them and report on them, which will form
The Phantom Slate!

Reactionless thrusters are now a thing.

Apparently, the EM drive is now a thing, for real. How awesome is that?

In 2012, a Chinese team said it had measured a thrust produced by its own version of the EmDrive. In 2014, an American scientist built an EmDrive and persuaded NASA to test it with positive results.

And last year, NASA conducted its own tests in a vacuum to rule out movement of air as the origin of the force. NASA, too, confirmed that the EmDrive produces a thrust. In total, six independent experiments have backed Shawyer's original claims.

The article concerns a VERY interesting discussion of inertia, and how it might be a different thing altogether from what we have assumed to date. Long story short, the EmDrive may work because inertia comes in quanta, like electrons. If you have half a quanta of inertia, the other half gets made up in thrust.

Read the whole thing, it'll blow your mind.

The (kapow!) Phantom

Passing of Prince, and Vanity

Sad to hear that Prince died yesterday. He was actually younger than me.

Another person died this year at the same age whose passing I thought I had mentioned but didn't, Denise Matthews, Vanity.

I was never a huge Vanity or Prince fan, but I always liked them on the radio or in the movies, whenever they would do something I'd pay attention at least in passing, "Oh, that's Prince" or "Look, that's Vanity."

This is Vanity at the Copa in Toronto. There's a skyscraper there now.

The way the news is playing Prince's death today, it looks like they're trying for another Michael Jackson-style blowout. It's very sad.

The poor guy died, leave us alone for once and let us remember him, eh?

Pendulums have a back swing too. Coachella: No Espanol!

A reporter from The Desert Sun/USA Today views with alarm the reaction of kids at Coachella to people singing in Spanish. (Hint, they didn't like it.)

Jose A Bastidas:

Coachella is rich in its cultural diversity. Bands from all over the world hit the stage and festivalgoers have all kinds of culinary options from burgers and French fries to Pad Thai and tacos.

Which is why I never imagined that I would experience such blatant racism in what could be considered a cultural Mecca.

"I didn't pay $350 to hear them sing," one girl told her friend.

Other people in the crowd were saying they were uncomfortable and yelling "No Español!" or "Stop singing please!"

I understand that people sometimes feel uncomfortable when they can't understand what people are saying in big crowds. But why is it that a group of people singing a song in Spanish is met with such animosity? Do people feel threatened when other cultures make themselves known in mostly white, English-speaking events? Is it OK for white girls to wear bindis and white men to wear kimonos but not OK for a group of Hispanic concertgoers to sing a song to pass the time in between sets?

The one comment that took the cake for me was after one person suggested that the crowd start singing another song to quiet down the Spanish speakers.

"Yeah, let's sing the National Anthem," a girl responded.

Scolds like Mr. Bastidas need to take a step back when they see stuff like this and appreciate that in America, people are not down with the invasion. They do not like that their schools and towns are -suddenly- getting mobbed by hundreds or thousands of strangers who look and act different.

I will add that people in Germany are not down with the sudden influx of Middle Easter types either. They didn't vote for this, or so they think.

It doesn't matter that the New People are Mexican or Muslim. It matter that they are New. Nobody likes New.

People don't generally understand how fragile the peace they see around them really is. Human beings have a mean streak a mile wide, most people don't need much of an excuse to take a swing at your head. That's the Ground State of Humanity: Mean.

So when governments decide, for reasons which are not at all apparent to the public, to have a mass migration of MILLIONS of New People, and they tell us all to basically shut the hell up and like it, tempers get hot. Kids decide to start shit up at Coachella.

My objection to the Multi-Culti fixation has never been that I'm all afeared of different cultures, different faces, different food. Personally I'm all about the different stuff. Canada is boring as watching paint dry, we needed some new kids to shake stuff up.

No, my fear has been that the government never knows when enough is enough, and what started as a good thing is going to get to be a Bad Thing very fast.

When you pressure a population, they fight back. Mostly because humans like fighting, but also to protect themselves and what's theirs. Our nice calm and peaceful land could get ugly overnight, just from the likes of Mr. Bastidas telling National Anthem Girl from the story to shut up. She's not going to shut up, she's going to get her boyfriend to kick your ass, is what's going to happen.

The transition from peaceful coexistence to warring factions is a short one.

The Phantom

Your Phone's back door is wide open.

CBS news has a piece on just how much info bad guys can get from your cell phone. Basically, anything they want.

Sharyn Alfonsi: Is one phone more secure than another? Is an iPhone more secure than an Android?

Karsten Nohl: All phones are the same.

Sharyn Alfonsi: If you just have somebody's phone number, what could you do?

Karsten Nohl: Track their whereabouts, know where they go for work, which other people they meet when-- You can spy on whom they call and what they say over the phone. And you can read their texts.

Now, doesn't this little revelation make the FBI insisting they need a special key to get into an iPhone seem extra stupid?

This is a non-government research group, they seem to have stumbled on a wide-open back door built into the cell network internationally. Imagine what the FBI and the NSA can do above and beyond what we see here.

The Phantom

The thing that makes feminists annoying is...

... that they are stupid.

What is shocking to me is that I am not particularly visible. I do not create, write about, or otherwise engage in gaming culture. Due to the years of persistent sexual harassment and threats, I maintain an incredibly low social profile and try to avoid gendering myself online. Just think for a moment how fucked up it is that I am not free to post about my hobbies, interests, or day to day life because I am a woman and the gaming community is so dangerous.
++++
It is 2015 and I am reporting the harassment to the RCMP.
"Is this like that WaterGame thing?" asks the officer. I smile in relief.
"Yes. Yes, it's a lot like that."
The officer sighs, "We'd have a lot less work if women just stayed away from dangerous, psychopathic losers." I look at the evidence in front of me. I don't disagree.
In every discussion of online harassment you will find men telling women to call the police. What you don't hear is the police telling women to stay away from gaming communities for their own safety. What would gamers say if they knew that police told women to avoid game stores the same way they avoid frat houses?
"Why is this so important to you, anyway?" The officer is blunt, but I appreciate it.
"It's my hobby. I love it. I've been doing this for twenty years."
Her response cuts me to my core, "Find another hobby or you're going to die."

For the reading impaired, of whom there seem to be legions, I will start with this: Emily Garland, the author of this piece, WAS sexually assaulted. It is a matter of public record, there is no doubt about it as far as I am concerned. That, plus a buck fifty, will get you a coffee.

Sexual predators exist. They are numerous. I will go out on a limb as say as many as 10% of adult males will fondle a woman without her consent, given the chance to do so without suffering consequences.

I could be wrong about that, the number may be lower, or higher. Maybe a lot higher. Whatever, I take it as a given that there are violent, depraved assholes in the world. I've known a few, and I have the scars to prove it. Like, actual scars. The PTSD is also really fun at times.

This article is not about that.

It's about this part here:

The response to the rampant sexual assault in the gaming hobby is predictably misogynistic. Women are expected to train themselves in self-defence and anything less is regarded as "irresponsible" on their part. This attitude is illogical, irrational, and deeply callous as it does not address the basic fact that, by the time a woman is forced to defend herself from sexual assault, a crime has already been committed against her person. Worse, any woman who has defended herself from sexual harassment in the gaming community can tell you that her self-defence was a precursor to ostracism as the men in the community embraced the predator and expelled his victim for "creating drama". As if the perpetrator of the crime wasn't responsible for the "drama" in the first place!

That's what the cop said to her. Protect yourself, get another hobby, you dumbass.

Feminists are not wrong or stupid about men being sexual predators. A lot of them are. Predators often travel in packs. Feminists are not wrong or stupid about men in the community embracing the predator and expelling his victim. That shit happens all the time. It happens in schools, sports teams, churches, kids camps, stores, offices, even daycare. No surprise it happens in the gamer community, where ugly fat kids and autistic nerds go to nurse their wounds.

You, as an adult woman, are the ONLY ONE who is responsible for your safety. The reason is simple. It is not a moral reason, a legal reason, or a social reason. The true reason is:

When shit happens to you, nobody else is going to be there.

You're going to be by yourself, up against Perv-boy, and maybe his friends too. So you better be fucking well ready to handle Perv-boy, or you're about to have a really bad day. I'd fight them for you if I could, but I'm not going to be there. They'll go after you when I'm not there.

This is the stupid. That women are somehow not the ones that have to protect themselves. That it is misogynistic to tell a woman that her safety is up to her. That if only men weren't such assholes, everything would be wonderful.

News flash: Men are dangerous assholes. Life is hard, then you die and they throw dirt on you.

The stupid:

The majority of gamers do not engage in online terrorism, but are instead complicit in lower levels of harassment. It is almost impossible to convince gamers that sexist and racist jokes are unacceptable and that they make others uncomfortable and drive people off. Indeed, raising this issue at all often results in threats and more terrorism.

The self defense solution: Do not be alone in a room with any of those perverted assholes, it's not safe.

The stupid:

 It is 2009 and an aboriginal woman is looking at the metal miniatures on the wall. My co-worker helps her as I stock the display shelves.
"Do you have any models that look like me?" the woman asks.
"We only have normal models," my co-worker titters, "I can order you the noble savage."
The woman leaves. We never see her again.

The self defense solution: This person is an asshole, stay away from him.

The stupid:

 It is 2010 and a young black man with a backpack is talking to me about the comparative merits of Pathfinder vs D&D 4th Edition. I tell him we have drop in games and wave him over to a group currently playing.
"Sup, my n*****!" the white men shout.
I apologise but the man is already out the door. I report the incident to the owner.
"I'm not throwing away good customers just because someone is oversensitive."

The self defense solution: GET A NEW JOB. Immediately. Because otherwise you boss, the asshole, is liable to do something fatal to you. Or those fucks playing D&D will.

The stupid:

It is 2001, 2002, 2003, 2004, 2005, 2006, 2007, 2008 and hands are on my ass and breasts and all over my body. Groping, fondling, feeling whatever they please.The smell of print comics gives me flashbacks now.

The self defense solution: "Find another hobby or you're going to die."

At some point, it needs to sink in that if you're getting assaulted all the fucking time, you need to change what you're doing. You need to change the places you frequent, if you're getting assaulted there. You need to change the type of people you hang around, because they're grabbing your ass. You need to develop radar to spot the assholes before they get in range. You need to carry a weapon suitable for fending off assholes. You need a friend or a whole swarm of friends to cover you.

You need to wake the fuck up and stop expecting other people to help you.

They're not going to. Even if they want to, they can't. Because they won't be there when it happens. You are on your own.

I'm almost 60 years old. I've been doing self-defense shit since I was 19. Why? Because random assholes would threaten me. Because they were drunk/stoned/high or just assholes. I got in fights. I very rapidly learned to spot the assholes that were going to start trouble, and learned where they hang out. I stopped going to those places. Places like the pizzeria. Great place to get fucked up, the local pizzeria. Always some drunk asshole looking for a punching bag. Makes life hard when that's your summer job, right?

When I got older I learned to shoot, I learned martial arts, I learned the dirty fighting things you can do with a pencil. I learned gross anatomy. I learned all kinds of weapons tactics, from guns to swords. Because I needed to. Lots of assholes around, you know?

When I go to a con, or just out for dinner, I've got both eyes open for who's going to start shit up. Because no matter how huge and menacing I am, and no matter how many more guys like me are standing around, there is ALWAYS SOMEBODY STARTING SHIT.

If big, strong, ugly old me has to keep his eyes open all the time, what the fuck makes weak, short, cute women think they should be able to breeze through life without a care?

When the majority of gamers refuse to speak up in support of those marginalised, they send the message that the hobby is full of bullies and they like it that way. "There are assholes in every group" is the rallying cry, yet that statement is nonsense to anyone who has spent the barest amount of time cultivating a healthy community. "Asshole behaviour" only persists because the majority of men are too cowardly to call the assholes what they are.

Emily Garland thinks evil men molest her because the rest of us let them. That is not the case. They do it knowing we'll kill them for it if we catch them. Just think about that for a moment. Yeah, that's what you're up against, in your Hello Kitty miniskirt.

The tragedy is that while North America is not a safe place for women to walk around alone and never has been, it is still the safest place on Earth. Guys like me keep it that way.

If there's ten guys at a gaming table, two of them are likely woman assaulting assholes and one of them is a possible rapist. Let's just run with those numbers for the sake of it. Two more of those men probably resent women because they're not getting any pussy, so they probably won't back up a woman who's getting molested.

But the other six guys will. They will cheerfully beat the shit out of the woman molesters, rapists, thieves, perverts, whatever. They will do it with joy in their hearts, because they finally get some quality ass-kicking time on the people they hate.

This is a well known fact. Rapists and child molesters are usually kept apart from the general population of criminals in jails. Because those other guys will kill them. To protect women, and children.

That's our job, as men. To protect women and children. It is why we are bigger, why we are meaner, why we react to movement instead of colour, why our muscles work different. It's why we band together and form packs. We're men. We have to. It's how we are.

Some of us are broken. It doesn't matter what broke them, they're dangerous and you have to watch for them. That's life.

You want to be a gamer? Good. Be one.
 
Be a gamer, knowing that you'll have to fight the assholes when they come for you, the same as I do.

Fight them and win. Be smart, be prepared, and never fucking walk around with your eyes shut.

Victory or death, Emily. You don't get a free pass because you're a girl.

Update: greetings Vile trolls and trollops. And JJ. Can one of you astounding idiots please demonstrate how it is NOT a woman's responsibility to protect her own life? I'm fucking well fascinated to see what you come up with.

Upperdate: Well, I had to cut and paste this from a blog which shall remain nameless, but we have an answer. From the horse's ass, as it were.

JJ said:

The Phantom: That’s the solution to women getting molested. The woman damages the molester, on the spot, during the offense, and escapes.
JJ: No, the solution to women getting molested is to teach men that it’s not okay to molest women — and when men see a guy doing this, for them to speak up and let the molester know that what he’s doing is not acceptable.
The Phantom: But hey, that’s crazy troll talk! Go comment on my blog JJ, this isn’t the place to have this conversation. I have a special post just for you, monkey boy.
JJ: Yes, that is crazy troll talk. And it’s nice that you’re trying to attract some intelligent, rational commenters to your crazy troll blog — but I have a million other things which are more interesting that I can do (including watching paint dry).

Like they do it because they don't know it's not okay. But -this- is the crazy troll blog. Fuck me.

JJ, you are the dumbest son of a bitch I've seen in ages. Lord t'underin' boy. Unless you're a chick, in which case good luck getting through life in one piece.

Just to make it easy for the idiots,

Re-posted from a comment I made at Mad Genius Club, my Official Phantom Opinion of the trans-gender issue, for anyone who cares.

"In truth, the whole trans-gender thing seems to be a very dangerous mental disorder, leading to suicide in an alarming number of cases. Double digit percentages, its safer to be a crack addict than be trans. (The read-until-offended crowd can stop here.)

The example I had the other day of the trans-woman who decided “she” identified as a dragon is one case that springs to mind. Again, I caution googlers that you do -not- want to see those pictures. The dude looks like Ralph Fiennes as Voldemort, except with bad facial tattoos and his f-ing ears and nose cut off. Like, cut off and fed to the beagles kind of cut off. With a beard. One assumes he went off the hormones, they were probably kicking his ass. Because stuff like that has side effects they don’t tell you about in video games.

So my opinion is that I do not want to live in a nation where tattoo artists and plastic surgeons are allowed to mutilate mentally ill men like that and get away Scott free.

Also, I am not a psychologist, but I do know that the treatment for people under the delusion that they are Napoleon generally does not include treating them like the Emperor of France. I’m just saying, as a general rule you don’t see that."

See also, in no particular order:

 http://phantomsoapbox.blogspot.ca/2015/06/ontario-legislates-mental-health.html

http://phantomsoapbox.blogspot.ca/2015/05/question-for-ladies-about-models-and.html

http://phantomsoapbox.blogspot.ca/2014/07/marvel-turning-thor-into-woman-wait-what.html

http://phantomsoapbox.blogspot.ca/2013/04/dc-comics-march-down-radical-rat-hole.html

http://phantomsoapbox.blogspot.ca/2015/07/government-is-always-real-problem.html

http://phantomsoapbox.blogspot.ca/2015/06/ice-releases-new-guidelines-for.html

http://phantomsoapbox.blogspot.ca/2014/11/lets-compare-art-shall-we.html

http://phantomsoapbox.blogspot.ca/2014/07/armpit-hair-is-now-political.html

http://phantomsoapbox.blogspot.ca/2011/03/and-speaking-of-burning-stupidity.html

http://phantomsoapbox.blogspot.ca/2005/11/loving-tolerance-of-canadian-left.html

Maybe I missed one where I said all gays/trans/lesbians/whatevers need to all die in a fire. Maybe somebody should spend a couple days/weeks looking for that post, where I hate the hell out of everybody different than me.

Knock yourselves out, you bunch of fucking mental deficients.

Oh and by the way, here's some consequences of official gender-bender stupidity for y'all:

http://www.blazingcatfur.ca/2016/04/10/university-of-toronto-dumps-transgender-bathrooms-after-peeping-incidents/

Because -nobody- saw that coming, right?

This is the stupidest thing I've seen in ages.

The headline says "Google under fire over 'racist' image search."

A tweet by Twitter user @BonKamona has gone viral this week and sparked an international conversation, after she drew attention to the Google Image search results she found when looking up "unprofessional hairstyles for work" and "professional hairstyles for work."

What is being argued here is that Google is RAAAAACIST because of the images that come up when you search "unprofessional" vs. "professional" hairstyles. As if Google had any control over that.

The Phantom

Oh look, Leftists paying people to lie.

From the "This Is Not Surprising" file and Small Dead Animals, it looks like a US mega foundation has actually admitted doing what we all know they did.

In a stunning admission, Lee Wasserman, Director of the Rockefeller Family Fund (RFF), today openly admitted that the Rockefellers are pouring millions of dollars into "media" organizations like InsideClimate News (ICN) and projects at Columbia University School of Journalism with a specific mission and outcome in mind.

In an interview with Reuters responding to questions about the RFF climate agenda and mission, Wasserman flatly states:

"No specific company was targeted in our push to drive better public understanding and better climate policy…..We supported public interest journalism to better understand how the fossil fuel industry was dealing with the reality of climate science internally and publicly," Wasserman said. (emphasis added)

Since the Columbia School of Journalism began partnering with RFF, the school has insisted that the Rockefeller foundations – both RFF and the Rockefeller Brothers Foundation (RBF) – had nothing to do with the content of the series making erroneous claims about ExxonMobil.

Usually these guys don't admit this type of thing, you have to dig it out of billing records and tax receipts.

The Phantom.

Batman vs. Superman, worth seeing.

Just got back from seeing Batman vs. Superman tonight. As usual, the critics panned it, and as usual they're a pack of idiots. This is a better movie than the latest Star Wars, in my opinion. Worth the ticket.

Why it is a good movie is because they followed the very successful comic book story line. There have been a few movies lately to do this, mostly Marvel Universe ones. Avengers, Captain America, on TV the very successful Daredevil, and Agent Carter. Deadpool is doing well, mostly because of the video game homage in the movie. From DC, the recent Batman movies were about the only ones to even acknowledge the comics, and surprise, they made the most money.

Movies that sucked, there have been a few. From Marvel Universe, the latest Fantastic Four reboot retreading Johnny Storm as a black kid crashed and burned. Mostly because it had nothing to do with the FF comic. The took a fairly pedestrian script, slapped an FF name on it and called it done. Stupid. DC Universe, Green Lantern was rubbish, much the same sort of reason.

Why do they do stuff like that? Here's why:

Yes, I am proposing that a major comic book institution change the race of one of its popular characters as it transitions to a new form of media. In this case, I want Marvel Studios to cast an Asian American actor to play the lead in the upcoming Iron Fist show it is developing for Netflix. It seems logical enough to me, though as always, there are fans who are urging Marvel to resist changing his race.

Yet another idiot is demanding yet another comic book character should be chopped and channeled to satisfy their pretentious racist/anti-racist/SJW horseshit of the moment. This clown has a petition going, apparently.

Is it important to cast a white guy as Iron Fist? No. It's a fucking TV show, nobody cares.

Will it suck if they stray off the story to satisfy some SJWs racist demands? Oh yes, it will most certainly suck. Because if you're going to change the races of the characters to satisfy whining idiots who don't even have any money at stake in the production, you're going to twist the whole story into A DIFFERENT STORY. But somebody already wrote the thing for you, and set up how it's supposed to be, and it WORKED that way. Iron Fist is a long running comic. We're not talking about something like Tigra that lasted a couple years, Iron Fist has been around since the 1970's.

Good on Marvel for ignoring the SJWs. May they continue to do so.

The Phantom

Tuberculosis. Just like I said.

CDC says TB cases are up this year, for the first time in 25 years.

Twenty-nine states and the District of Columbia each had more cases in 2015 than 2014, raising questions -- but no definitive answers -- about a possible resurgence of one of the world's deadliest diseases.

The overall increase was relatively small: 157 more cases, bringing the 2015 total to 9,563. Two-thirds of the total were among people born abroad, with Asians accounting for the most cases (3,007) and the highest rate (28.2 cases per 100,000 persons). By comparison, there were only .5 cases per 100,000 whites last year.

Remember I said this was coming? I hate being right.

But pay attention to this part of the statement. This is the good part:

"After two decades of declining incidence, progress toward TB elimination in the United States appears to have stalled," the CDC report said. The causes are unclear, it said, and the data need further evaluation if the reasons behind the trend are to be identified.

And...
 

 More than half of cases reported in 2015 were clustered in four states — California, Florida, New York and Texas — which have one-third of the U.S. population.

 To be clear, 2015 did not have the most cases of TB in 25 years. The number of cases has been declining for 25 years. 2015 is the first year it increased over the year before.

Meaning, despite everything the American public health establishment and their billions of dollars of funding could do, the number of cases increased. In border states. Which are being flooded with illegal immigrants from places where TB is endemic. Plus NY, which is a destination state because of its generous welfare and medicare programs.

The CDC very, very carefully does not connect those dots.

But I will. TB will continue to increase as long as people get across the US border without being tested for TB. Guaranteed.

The Phantom

Brussels attack.

It's all over Drudge and everywhere else today, a terrorist attack in Brussels. Bombs blew up and killed people.

My opinions haven't changed. I'm very sad for the people who were killed and maimed in this ACT OF WAR.

I am very angry with the Canadian, American and European authorities whose insane immigration policies made this attack possible. The frightening thing is that we can be confident there is a similar cell of killers here in Canada planning the same thing.

You get what you vote for, my friends. Belgians voted for this. Canadians voted for this. Americans voted for this.

Somebody tell me again how eeeevile Donald Trump is for criticizing American immigration policy. Go ahead, I want to hear it.

My problem with Trump is not what he says, it is that I don't think he will actually do anything he's promising. He's a limousine liberal from New York City, and to date he has not walked his talk.

The Phantom

Rob Ford, RIP

Today we lost the former mayor of Toronto Rob Ford at the age of 46, due to cancer. Not much of a run for his money, poor guy.

I was always impressed by the way he dealt with political attacks. Just took it and kept on keeping on.

Godspeed, Rob Ford.

The Phantom

Sylvia Anderson of Thunderbirds fame has died.

Sylvia Anderson, age 88, after a short illness.

Godspeed, Sylvia. You were the voice of some of my favorite childhood characters.  Lady Penelope, Dr. Venus.

I remember.

The Phantom

Gut bacteria can affect skin cancer.

This is pretty cool.

Take your probiotics, kids. ~:D

By-the-mile US car tax proposed by CBO

And there it is, ladies and gentlemen. The tax we've all been waiting for, the pay-by-the-mile tax.

An economist at the Congressional Budget Office suggested on Monday that the federal government could start charging people based on how far they drive in order to generate more government revenues to spend on highway projects.

Chad Shirley, CBO's deputy assistant director for microeconomic studies, gave a presentation that says federal gas tax revenues are falling short of federal spending on highway programs. But to resolve that problem, Shirley didn't propose less federal spending, and instead offered three suggestions.

The first is simply, "charging drivers" more the more they drive on roads.

Shirley said that one way to charge drivers more is to implement "vehicle-miles traveled charges.

CBO's presentation also said the government could get more money from drivers by charging them more when traffic is bad. Shirley calls that "congestion pricing.

A third option, Shirley said, would be "allowing tolling on additional existing interstates."

Side benefit of pay-by-the-mile, a 24/7/365 Panopticon view of the location of every single vehicle in the USA. Just imagine the datamining you could do on a thing like that.

They are going to do this.

War on men opens a new front at Harvard.

SJW's have decided that men's social clubs are the Root Of All Evil at Harvard U, and must be destroyed.

A task force charged with examining sexual assault at Harvard University is recommending that the school bar students from joining its all-male final clubs, blaming the single-sex organizations for perpetuating a "harmful sexual culture" on campus.

The task force argued in a new report that the all-male organizations, which have no formal relationship with the university, should be forced to accept women in order to fix the problem of sexual assault on Harvard's campus. The report, published this week, followed attempts by the Harvard administration to compel the all-male final clubs to accept women, an effort that the Washington Free Beacon previously reported has angered graduate members of the organizations and made current student members fear for their reputations.

The report from the Harvard Task Force on the Prevention of Sexual Assault was accompanied by several appendices, including one from the task force's so-called "outreach and communications subcommittee" that presented a set of "ideas" for the administration to deal with the final clubs. One of the proposals suggested that the school threaten students with expulsion if they join an all-male final club.

Apparently a "final club" is a social club that one attends in one's final undergrad year.

Apparently the "Harvard Task Force on the Prevention of Sexual Assault" has no would-be lawyers in it, it seems they don't understand the magnitude of legal risk that would fall upon the university if they actually expelled a paying student for membership in an off-campus club.

Apparently the SJW's at large have no appreciation of the irony that expelling people for belonging to an all-male club represents, given their commitment to "diversity."

The Apparent Phantom

White men: go kill yourself!

Arthur Chu reaches deep into the Cracker Barrel of Crazy for this one.

It's not about mental illness: The big lie that always follows mass shootings by white males

Blaming "mental illness" is a cop-out -- and one that lets us avoid talking about race, guns, hatred and terrorism

"I get really really tired of hearing the phrase "mental illness" thrown around as a way to avoid saying other terms like "toxic masculinity," "white supremacy," "misogyny" or "racism."

You know what I get tired of, dicks like Arthur Chu running around pretending that everything from mass shootings and murder down to mild unpleasantness at the checkout in Walgreen's is due to VIOLENT WHITE CONSERVATIVE MALES WITH GUNS!!!1!

Because when you look at mass shootings, assassinations and murder over the last twenty years, socialists, communists and non-whites outnumber white males. By a lot. The number of "terrorist" actions by specifically white male conservatives can be counted on your fingers.

But in fairness, this is Arthur Chu and Salon.com we're talking about. Arty doesn't have a very strong connection to Reality, generally. So expecting reason isn't... reasonable, I suppose.

Bang, white man!

5 qubit quantum computer at MIT.

Factoring large numbers may become much easier very soon indeed.

In traditional computing, numbers are represented by either 0s or 1s, but quantum computing relies on atomic-scale units, or "qubits," that can be simultaneously 0 and 1—a state known as a superposition that's far more efficient. It typically takes about 12 qubits to factor the number 15, but researchers at MIT and the University of Innsbruck in Austria have found a way to pare that down to five qubits, each represented by a single atom, they said this week.

Using laser pulses to keep the quantum system stable by holding the atoms in an ion trap, the new system promises scalability as well, as more atoms and lasers can be added to build a bigger and faster quantum computer able to factor much larger numbers. That, in turn, presents new risks for factorization-based methods such as RSA, used for protecting credit cards, state secrets and other confidential data.

The development is in many ways an answer to a challenge posed back in 1994, when MIT professor Peter Shor came up with a quantum algorithm that calculates the prime factors of a large number with much better efficiency than a classical computer.

Fifteen is the smallest number that can meaningfully demonstrate Shor's algorithm. Without any prior knowledge of the answers, the new system returned the correct factors with a confidence better than 99 percent.

"We show that Shor's algorithm, the most complex quantum algorithm known to date, is realizable in a way where, yes, all you have to do is go in the lab, apply more technology, and you should be able to make a bigger quantum computer," said Isaac Chuang, professor of physics and professor of electrical engineering and computer science at MIT.

"It might still cost an enormous amount of money to build—you won't be building a quantum computer and putting it on your desktop anytime soon—but now it's much more an engineering effort, and not a basic physics question," Chuang added.

Meaning, if you throw money at it you could decrypt pretty much anything, no matter how big the number of bits used.

The Phantom

Well, that didn't take long. Pedal to the metal on deficits!

Trudeau The Younger to follow in Elder's footsteps.

With falling oil prices eroding Canada's revenue base, newly elected Prime Minister Justin Trudeau is fully embracing deficits, with his finance minister hinting Monday the country will run a deficit of about C$30 billion ($22 billion) in the fiscal year that starts April 1.It's one of the biggest fiscal swings in the country's history that, in just four months since the Oct. 19 election, has cut loose all the fiscal anchors Trudeau pledged to abide by even as he runs deficits.

Wow. How unexpected.

The Phantom

Why am I a Sad Puppy?

Here's why.

Witch hunt!

The BURN THE WITCH!!!! Phantom

How stupid are Canadian journalists?

So stupid they are doubling down on the same Liberal Party love-fest they've been having for the last 70 years, while they circle the Great White Bowl of corporate bankruptcy.

It's been a dismal start to the year for Canada's newspapers, and investors see little sign of a turnaround.
Postmedia Network Canada Corp., owner of many of the country's newspapers, announced in January it was merging newsrooms in cities where it has two papers, eliminating dozens of jobs. Torstar Corp., publisher of the country's largest circulation paper, closed its printing plant and fired 300. Rogers Media, a unit of Rogers Communications Inc., fired 200 people. The 149-year-old Guelph Mercury shut down its print edition. Some publishers are even suggesting government support is necessary. And that was just in January.
"We're seeing a further cratering of the daily press," Ken Doctor, an independent media analyst at Santa Cruz, California-based Newsonomics, said by phone."The toll that all these years of losses in print advertising has taken is now deadening the enterprises."

Two things are happening, in my estimation. First, people are not getting their news from the papers anymore, because the papers LIE. They lie about every important issue in our society. They lie by ignoring things that are vital for us to know about, they lie by covering shit that doesn't matter at all, and finally they tell actual untruths about the stories they do cover.

Second, because people are getting their news from more reliable sources, print ads are no longer effective. People don't see them.

These are not new things. They've been in motion for twenty years now. The larger media out there has been playing ostrich.

Not one existing media company has questioned The Deal they made with the Liberals back in the 1930's. The Faustian bargain that has set the course of this country since the Great Depression is finally coming apart due to social upheaval, government following policies that are destroying Canada and new technology creating competition for the public's eyeball time.

Clearly, the Big Media Buggywhip manufacturers are going to ride The Deal down in flames. Because they are -stupid-.

Faster, please!

Update: Welcome to all you Small Dead Animals flying monkeys, and thanks for the linkage Kate!

No Twitter for you!

It seems that Twitter has discovered the fun and frolic available in silencing one' s political opponents. Oh, joy.

The folks running Twitter may be too young to have heard of George Orwell, or perhaps they simply do not care that their new advisory council sounds frighteningly Orwellian. Either way, the brand new "Twitter Trust and Safety Council" seems like a board ready to censor comments in deference to political correctness.

It doesn't help that among the more than 40 organizations that make up the council, one finds such groups as the "Dangerous Speech Project," a group with ties to the liberal John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation and to financier George Soros' Open Society Institute.

Another council member is GLAAD, formerly an acronym for the Gay and Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation (the organization now goes by just its initials). Feminist Frequency, which also seeks to monitor free speech, is another member of the council.

The council does include some groups that appear to do good work preventing cyber-bullying against the young. Absent, however, are any conservative-leaning groups.

Emphasis mine.

Diversity, you see, does not include conservatives. Just so we are all clear.

The Phantom