January 28, 2021
Oh
It's My Math lab.
Not My Meth Lab.
So the spam wasn't QUITE as toxic as I thought.
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Who Hit the Box Button?
Yesterday, I was lamenting the ridiculously low volume we were getting at work recently. Today, wow; cardboard tsunami!
This was particularly surprising as it coincided with a blizzard.
Yeah, I need to do something about that ivy.
Now Pete, Wonderduck and everyone north of the Mason-Dixon Line are all like "That's not a blizzard, that's a Thursday."
And indeed work was not materially affected...except for all the people who did not show up.
"It's a blizzard!"
" I can't open my door!"
"I can't get out of my driveway!"
" My neighborhood 's roads are impassable"
" I can't get out of bed!"
Kids today.
Despite the sudden spike in volume and dip in staffing we got everything out on time and I worked my first full day in nearly two weeks.
I also suspect from those lame-ass call-ins that the overstaffing situation is about to change.
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Brickmuppet Blog: Trendsetter
OK, not really.
However, about a week ago I noted the U.K.s decision to allow Hong Kongers to immigrate there and stated that our not doing the same was a missed opportunity for the U.S..
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January 27, 2021
Leading Indicators
Today was the first day in 2 weeks I've worked more than an hour and a half. There's been an astonishing drop in volume at my work over the last 2 weeks. There always is a severe drop after Christmas, but before Christmas we had Christmas level volume because of the COVID restrictions...which have gotten much more onerous during that time.. Now I'm not laid off, I have sufficient seniority that when they lay people off I can volunteer to be one of them and I've had errands, family issues and doctors appointments so I've taken advantage of that several days, but we're still very short of volume. Even in slack years, even in January, we did not finish unloading packages after an hour and a half on a nominally 4-5 hour shift.
Given the increasing intensity of he lockdowns and the volume of vaccines that we were getting before this week, one would expect a heavier than normal January. Indeed the first two weeks of the month (which in my 28 years of experience are usually dead) were remarkably heavy.
In general the end of January and beginning of February are a bit heavier than most of the post-Christmas winter since stores are restocking their inventory. However, this is the very time that we're seeing volume DROP.
One shipping center is not representative of the company, let alone the economy. In fact it's a ridiculously inadequate data point, but it is concerning, and the lack of pay is of some personal concern.
U.S. economic numbers lag a fair bit in relation to the current time, so I checked out the Baltic Dry Index, which is a current measure of the cost of international shipping. It is an imperfect metric, particularly now as COVID restrictions have likely added considerable overhead to shipping costs, but in general it is a leading indicator of how robust world trade is, the lower the cost the less trade is happening.
However, the BDI is an indicator of bulk raw material shipping prices, not retail. It proceeds in fits and starts with production.
Other leading indicators are at the precise moment that I type this, on a generally downward trend, but I don't know enough to say if it is precipitously so.
Note that that is a screenshot of an active, constantly updating chart that has one or two indices occasionally switching between red and green.
The sudden, unexpected drop in volume from its aberrant and bonecrushing highs to lay-offs where I am may be a localized phenomenon and should not be a cause for undue concern.
A focus group of one is a woefully inadequate data set.
However, in my 28 years of experience our volume trends quite closely with the overall economic health of the nation, so I'm very curious if anyone else here has noted any drop-offs in economic activity.
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January 26, 2021
Meanwhile: At the Freedom of Information Act Office
Over at Unwanted Blog, Scott Lowther (as part of his job) is filing FOIA requests. This morning he provided a link to the USAF FOIA Reading Room, which is spectacularly sparse on information. But, right between Telephone Directory and Slickspot PepperGrass is, uh, Teleportation.
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My Baby Sister Just Had a Heart Attack
She's 40 and has 2 kids.
I've let work know I'm going down to look after the children.
UPDATE: Well she's been released on her own recognizance and has a series of stress tests and such today and tomorrow. I called work while at the gas station and told them I can come in but they said that staffing was fine and I was already listed as off for the day. My FMLA application is obviously on hold. I'll know more tomorrow.
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January 24, 2021
Oh. They ARE Going to Finish the Trilogy.
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Perhaps Blair, or Cameron Would Be an Acceptable Compromise?
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Meanwhile, In Russia:
It looks like mass demonstrations have spontaneously broken out all across Russia in protest of the jailing of a Russian opposition party leader named Alexi Nalvany who was just arrested and jailed after returning from a trip trip to Germany. There is apparently concern for his safety since he was arrested, as he had been in Germany recovering from acute nerve agent poisoning he had contracted from his underwear (as one does). The Russian authorities refused to open an investigation into the attempted murder of a Russian citizen. Given the history of poisonings of Russian political opponents, this was particularly suss, and there seems to be genuine fear for his safety by his political supporters.
This is not just around Moscow either. There are currently protests in 109 cities across the largest country on Earth and I've heard reference to Vladivostok and Petropavlovsk in some of the video coverage. Also; according to the NYT article above, these protests are taking place in temperatures as low as minus 68 degrees Fahrenheit which would seem to indicate a certain level of passion and motivation on the part of the protestors. Over 3,000 people had been reported arrested as of 23:05 GMT.
Hundreds of thousands of people are protesting in hundreds cities in the largest country on the planet, which controls a large percentage of the worlds oil reserves and which has the largest nuclear arsenal on Earth....
This seems seems like it ought to be getting rather more coverage than it is here in the U.S.A.
I do not know anything about Nalvany or how, in what is presented to us as a country with fairly strong social media control, he got such a following, but I'm very interested in finding out. Anyone who, you know, speaks Russian or has insights into this situation...feel free to sound off in the comments.
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January 23, 2021
Big Bag o' Meat
So I placed an Amazon Fresh order and this evening my milk, fruit, curry (presumably extracted from the titanic sandworms in the vast deserts of...Vermont) were delivered to my door in 4 paper bags.
Upon inspection, I realized I'd paid for 3 of those bags.
So I called Amazon, and took an inordinate ammount of time explaining that "No...my order was fine...I just got someone else's too and it seems like a pretty consequential bag of groceries" After a few minutes I got passed far enough up the chain that I talked to someone capable of making a decision, rather than taking dictation.
It turns out that they can't send the driver back to pickup the bag for obvious liability reasons but after going through what was in the very full bag, I gather they were able to close out, or correct a concern ticket. As I went through my unexpected loot, I found that I'd scored a couple of steaks, lots of expensive sausages, children's lunch packs, TexMex cheeses, High end Swiss cheese, diet lemonade, Hamburger and...Turkey sausage. That last is, upon reflection, somewhat disturbing in concept, but less so than the realization that someone who'd spent more money on that bag than my cheap ass had on groceries all month....and had ordered them just in time for dinner...and had kids, was without what was probably their Saturday dinner. Hopefully they got the bag replaced quickly.
OTOH, Brickmuppet's eatin' lotsa' STEAK this week!
(Not sure about the turkey...sausage though.)
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Meanwhile In Colombia
Whut!?
Via.
What is this now?
Hippopotamuses are not even FROM South America.
Escobar's been dead for 30 years.
Well, it turns out that the late and not very lamented drug lord Pablo Escobar, had a private zoo and when he was forcibly retired and sent to vacation in hell, his hippopotamuses escaped.
The article rightly makes a big deal of the fact that Hippos are dreadfully disruptive of the environment, not the least because their excrements are quite poisonous to the local wildlife (and people) .
However, the article fails to mention that these beasts are a direct danger to the populace. Hippos are dreadfully territorial and vicious in a way that just doesn't happen with any herbivore in this hemisphere.
Thankfully not pictured, the poor man's dismemberment, as reported here.
Hippos are superficially cute but they are vicious, aggressive, territorial, killers that would render vast swaths of recreational areas too dangerous to visit, and if they get into the back country the monsters will be a tragic 'out of context problem' for the poor farmers and aboriginal tribes that exist in an on the rivers of South America. We've already seen in places like Florida that fairly large fauna can become endemic. These are worse than any monitor lizard, monkey, or murder hornet. I rather suspect that The Amazon and Orinoco basins are good hippopotamus habitat, and that will be tragic for the local flora, fauna, and citizenry if this invasive species is not dealt with. The goal has to be extinction and not management.
At least they'll be easier to find and cull than cane toads or kudzu.
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January 22, 2021
In Which I Annoy the Wrong People Again
One of Trumps signature issues and the reason that he got elected was immigration. The fact is that the lack of enforcement of immigration was (and soon will be again) causing massive disruptions and suffering for American citizens, particularly along the southern border. Unchecked and un-vetted the masses of people, especially those from Central America and Mexico have flooded into the country and caused some genuine disruption. Quite aside from the horrific criminal element that has attached itself like a remora to this desperate migration, the influx of people who don't know the rules, language or mores is a stress on our most vulnerable communities.
However, I think that the issue is being misidentified by both sides of the argument.
The problem is that new arrivals are NOT being screened for criminal histories nor assimilated into those values. Rather we're importing the pathologies that these people are trying to escape from. Sothwestern cities and even moreso California ones are increasingly surrounded by the sorts of favelas that these people tried to get away from, and, bypassing the immigration test they don't get a primer on U.S. civics...
I'm not nearly as concerned about immigration per se as I am the lack of assimilation with regards to civics. As long as you learn English and accept the tenets of U.S. civics like equality before the law, freedom of speech, and that the state's near monopoly of force does not extend to self defense, ( and, er, the treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo) then everything's OK. Even if you have a completely different background culture that's OK. we've got 17 vastly different ones , hundreds of reservations and thousands of ethnoburbs already.
(Nicked from Reddit, source Unknown)
America is not The Borg.
However much certain of our ruling class would like you to think that the Toni stops on the Acela corridor and boardrooms of Palo Alto are the only acceptable cultures, (aside from some exotica kept for their amusement). The US is , and has been from the beginning a collection of wildly diferent societies.
It's why E Pluribus Unum is a thing.
Having wildly different points of view that agree on the basic tenets of society (and don't mess with each other) is a good thing and can keep us on our toes. Yielding to demands that we give up these myriad quirks for the sake of unity will result in something much less interesting free and robust that America.
So as long as we are assimilating people with regard to language and civics, we're fine. The problem is that we aren't. The concerns about wage competition are legitimate, but they are occasionally overblown and separate from the concerns about demography.
I note that the people I've known from Eastern Europe, Haiti, Latin America, and even Afganistan tend to be way more "red pilled", entrepenurial, civic minded and concerned about freedom of speech ect. than most of the college or immediately post-college age native born types.
Unless, perhaps, I'm an evolutionary biologist, I'd rather have a recently immigrated member of the Falun Gong working for me than Triggly Puff.
So what inspired this rant?
Well, the UK. recently passed legislation allowing the population of Hong Kong to immigrate there en mass. I think we missed out.
5.4 million highly educated people who have seen the horrors of the social credit system up close, who have been waving American flags for a year and are highly motivated to protect free speech and hate communism would have been a fine addition to our polity. I suspect the Dems are breathing a sigh of relief that this did not happen.
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January 21, 2021
A Learning Moment
Hickock 45 is a popular GunTuber (one of the first ever IIRC). He does gun reviews, but focuses on Cowboy Action, and firearms safety. Now, he's just counting the days until YouTube yeets him. Today he and his son get an unexpected visitor who tries to explain what a STTGU is...
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January 20, 2021
Honestly, I Really Thought He Would Last a Bit Longer in Office
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See!? We Read the Comments
In the previous post about the Washington Post story about..."multiracial whiteness" Pete comments...
I don't see a contradiction, honestly. "Whiteness" is basically a compact term for "everything good, which liberals want to stamp out". It acquired its term because good things are historically associated with whites, in particular WASPs.
...and indeed the left does use the term that way.
However, I think it acquired this meaning because the left is racist in a weird Rousseauean* sort of way. First off, they buy Rousseau's silly notion of primitive savages being superior to the civilized, which is both destructive and patronizing. Second, by conflating "white" with the benefits of western civilization they are saying that other peoples don't have the mental ability to deal with this complex wonder. In essence they are espousing white supremacy.
This claim is easily falsifiable by simply invoking the names of accomplished Americans of Non-Caucasian extraction, Fredrick Douglass, G.W. Carver, Cochise, Sequoyah, Dr. King, Katherine Johnson, C.J. Walker and we'll stop there to keep the list from going on forever.
For a comparison between the West and the rest that's corrected for differences in culture, background, and opportunity one can look to the difference between Nelson Mandela and Robert Mugabe. Mandela was influenced by western ideals and was able to liberate his people and keep in check the worst primitive impulses for vengeance (until he died) whereas Mugabe turned his nation into an abattoir. He did this evil deed by simply behaving as all people usually did up till the enlightenment. Sadly Mandela's influence on the culture was not as long lasting as one might have hoped.
Nevertheless the above examples disprove the implication of the left's conflation of Western and "White" as the basically patronizing racism that it is. The weird thing is that many progressives don't see it this way because they despise much of western civilization's core concepts. Why this is is unclear. It's easy to assume that they are malevolent or simply throwback, troglodytic minds in rich, privileged bodies, but their malevolent politics aside, these are generally well educated people who think they are doing good. Trying to figure out lefty motivations is tiring and can lead to the dangerous shortcuts in the beginning of the last sentence....but by happy coincidence Sara Hoyt has, this very evening, posted thoughts on this very matter.
* That's totally a word.
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January 19, 2021
Democracy Dies in the Derpness
By now most of you are familiar with the running gag that is the intersection of current events with R.A. Heinlein's Future History, the period he called The Crazy Years.
He wasn't quite as prescient as it may seem. In his timeline, the era of looniness took place before the first moon landing and ended thereafter, whereas in ours, the first wave of Cray-Cray took place during and immediately after the Apollo program, which despite its success saw space development subsequently faceplant and suck its toes until recently when private industry began to take the lead and make real strides in space access .
Anyway, this was brought to mind by my encountering, just before I went to bed, this headline, which was so fractally crazy that it kept me up all night.
To understand Trump’s support, we must think in terms of multiracial Whiteness
'..the fuck!?'
I.
What!?
How?
I cannot even.
Nether can Dave Thompson (via), who has an excellent take on this steaming pile of orientalism.
Readers may also wish to ponder how a distaste for racial preoccupation is framed, rather boldly, as "a discriminatory worldview.â€That being bad, you see.Multiracial whiteness promises Latino Trump supporters freedom from the politics of diversity and recognition. For voters who see the very act of acknowledging one’s racial identity as itself racist, the politics of multiracial whiteness reinforces their desired approach to colour-blind individualism.
Racism is one of the most pernicious and vile evils in the annals of humankind, and the notion that treating people the same regardless of their skin color is bigoted is so far from reality as to be diseased thinking.
A.E. Van Vought had thoughts on what constitutes "crazy"...
"Craziness can be measured by maladaptive behavior. The behavior the society uses to solve one kind of problem, when applied to an incorrect category, disorients it. When this happens the whole society, even if some members are aware of the disorientation, cannot reach the correct conclusion, or react in a fashion that preserves society from harm. As if society were a dolphin that called itself a fish: when it suffered the sensation of drowning, it would dive. But a dolphin is a mammal, a member of a different category of being. When dolphins are low on air, they surface, rather than dive. Putting yourself in the wrong category leads to the wrong behavior.â€
It's hard to conceive of less correct categorizations than having "Judge people not by the color of their skin, but the content of their character" under the heading "Racist" and judging people by their ethnicity as virtuousness. Indeed, like Vought's deep diving drowning dolphin, it is the exact opposite of correct and can only lead to a grim end.
One indication that a current event might be crazy is when the best, and most succinct take is from the Babylon Bee.
However, while it's easy to dismiss the WaPo writer's perspective as crazy, it should not be dismissed out of hand that they might actually be aware of the contradictions, and therefore are evil. Dividing the nation is useful, not only to our enemies(who in the case of China have deep pockets to pay for such services) but to a subset of civil rights non-profits which has become quite a lucrative profession for a certain swath of our upper middle class. Furthermore, note the horror expressed at "color blind individualism". Ruling individuals is like herding cats...a philosophy of rugged individualism and personal freedom is a good bit check on tyranny. Conversely, tribes, or other groups can be moved about and controlled much more efficiently, like sheep or cattle, even a dog can do it. As such a collection of competing, mutually suspicious groups are easier for a totalitarian to deal with. (In much the same way, regulators prefer a few large companies to thousands of small businesses, as they are easier to keep track of and pay off or punish.)
So it is possible that this is not so much insanity as pure malevolence.
However, "multi-racial white supremacy" is such a categorical contradiction that for now, I'll grant them the benefit of the doubt and assume they're just stark-raving-cuckoo-for-Coca-Puffs.
Note though, that craziness, especially that which is hard to distinguish from evil, is not benign, quite the contrary, so we should stay aware of this nonsense and observe this numbnuttery with a wary eye, because whether crazy or evil, this affront to reason has the potential to take us down a dark path indeed.
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January 18, 2021
Oh Look: A Good Old-Fashioned Fisking
And it's an excellent example of the art too.
"He exploded a Law Professor!...With the Bill of Rights!"
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January 17, 2021
Today On SFIA
Isaac Arthur blinks in morse code.
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January 16, 2021
Recently in Occidental V-Tubery
Ewica FINALLY passed her Voight-Kamph test. There had been some "talk" because this had gone on for 7 minutes and because her business plan seems....dubious.
IronMouse continues to have issues with her new 3-D rig, but using her old one was able to council a rogue AI and a Russian cat-thingie on American Civics.
Luna the MajiKarp is a V-Tuber with a mid-sized following who sings a little ditty every time someone subscribes or follows. At the beginning of the month she got raided by Nyanners who was leading 7,000 viewers...a fair percentage of whom subbed or followed. This went on for 27 minutes.
Bunny.gif explained to her audience what reality isn't.
Nerine the Swedish werewolf provided some profound philosophical insights.
Finally Little-S reminds us that CDProjekt Red continues to provide us with comedy gold (unless one paid for the game).
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A Useful Life Hack
The Instant Vortex Air Fryer is attractively designed , its facade consisting of alternating stainless steel and a black bakelite like material.
Note however that its interior is ALL stainless steel.
That black bottom in the fry compartment is actually waxed or otherwise shiny cardboard.
Art by Luisa Rafidi, Support her on Patreon!
It should be removed for best results.
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