October 20, 2020
Oh. So THAT'S Why.
I had always wondered about that.
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October 19, 2020
Tsunami Warning for Alaska
Issued 12 minutes before I typed this.
UPDATE: The tsunami has hit.
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October 18, 2020
Bardcore Break
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Incoming Storm?
It may not seem like it, but Brickmuppet Blog does generally try to put the political posts below the fold. There are, of course some exceptions to this in an election year, and in general things like the Chinese Social Credit System or clear and present threats to free speech may not be fastidiously placed below, but we do try to not get struggle sessions in your fluff.
Of course in current year, when everything is crazy and political the policy just not always tenable.
However.....
more...
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Oh.
Source unknown (YouTube channel of creator deleted)
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October 17, 2020
Meanwhile on Mars, 2020 Looms...
.... far in the future, because (for some unfathomable reason) NASA apparently chose to start counting at Martian year one in our 1956.
In this 64th year of Martian history, ESA's Martian Express probe has detected large lakes under the South Polar icecap.
One of our Crack Team of Science Babes discusses the implications...
"Planet Mars. Liquid water. The Space Opera writes itself."
The lakes cover 75,000 square kilometers, a bit more than 91% of Lake Superior's 82,100 km. Depth and therefore volume are unknown at this time. Similar lakes are known to exist beneath the icecaps of Antarctica, Greenland, and the Canadian Archipelago, so this is not entirely unexpected. It is interesting though, both because it might represent a ready resource for future Martian settlements, and because such place could potentially be a haven for life
(Though that latter case could put up a major obstacle to proposed attempts to terraform the red planet.)
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October 15, 2020
Meanwhile in Space
It's 2020 on the ISS too.
The oxygen system on the Zvezda module of the International Space Station has failed. The Zvezda is actually the core of the life support system and for extra drama has also sprung a leak.
According to both NASA and Roscosmos, the astronauts and cosmonauts are in no danger, there being sufficient backup systems to allow contingency plans to be enacted.
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In OTHER News
It should be noted that there is other dreadful news in the world, specifically in the world of V-Tubers.
Genhin Impact is an absolutely gorgeous game and appears to be very fun to play, but, alas, it is a Gacha game with all that that implies, as Silvervale found the first time she spun a Gacha.
Projekt Melody recently discovered a terrible truth about the internet.
A collaboration between two V-Tubers suffered a translation mishap.
Via Pixy
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Oh.
The New York Post has published another expose' this one on Biden's connections to China.
Well, this mess is getting awfully cluttered.
In the interest of not letting other important scandals get drowned out, and protecting victims, I'll just post this here.
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Why the Uproar?
In the comments to the post before last, a question was asked that about the recent story regarding Biden's E-Mails. It's a question I've seen asked rather a LOT.
What I really don't get is why everyone is freaking out about this. Everyone has KNOWN this.
C: This story is troubling even to those not on the right, and confirms that what we on the right have been saying about media bias for 35 years is true and actually more scary than even we imagined.
Indeed the story is not new, and was reasonably well sourced. But there are solid reasons that this story is causing so much distress on both sides of the aisle right now.
A: The left has been denying the story about VP Biden extorting Ukrania on behalf of his son... but the New York Post article appears to be a smoking gun that not only refutes the denials, but indicates that Biden specifically, and deliberately lied before Congress when questioned about the matter.
B: However, the big reason that this "news" is NEWS is the reaction of Facebook, Twitter and other venues outright banning the story. This is the most blatant and widespread 'Ministry of Truth' crap we've ever seen in the U.S. The media are killing a story that exposes a politician they support. They are cancelling the social-media-accounts (ability to be heard) of anyone who dares LINK to the story on their platforms, and the New York Post's presence on popular social media sites has ended...presumably until they retract. So the Patricians of PaloAlto have their own 50 cent army, the implications of which are terrifying. Note too that Twitter even shut down the president's campaign Twitter feed, an action which is, in effect, a huge-in-kind contribution to the Biden campaign.
B: However, the big reason that this "news" is NEWS is the reaction of Facebook, Twitter and other venues outright banning the story. This is the most blatant and widespread 'Ministry of Truth' crap we've ever seen in the U.S. The media are killing a story that exposes a politician they support. They are cancelling the social-media-accounts (ability to be heard) of anyone who dares LINK to the story on their platforms, and the New York Post's presence on popular social media sites has ended...presumably until they retract. So the Patricians of PaloAlto have their own 50 cent army, the implications of which are terrifying. Note too that Twitter even shut down the president's campaign Twitter feed, an action which is, in effect, a huge-in-kind contribution to the Biden campaign.
C: This story is troubling even to those not on the right, and confirms that what we on the right have been saying about media bias for 35 years is true and actually more scary than even we imagined.
D: Those pictures of Hunter in the tub with the crackpipe, while pathetic, are priceless.
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Worry.
Banality is below the fold. As a contrast to that, here is some cheesecake rendered by Jun (@navigavi).
He's taking commissions on Skeb.
more...
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October 14, 2020
I'm Going to Link to This
It's not really news.
It's not unexpected.
It's been known for a while.
But I'm gonna link to it.
Because doing so has become important.
Because I can.
I do this because this dog bites man story became very important to spread to the four winds this afternoon.
Unlike a lot of people who are seeing that this story sees the light of day, I'm not stunning and brave. I don't have to sit pondering the potential cost to my livelihood and social circle that speaking this truth will entail. I don't have to ask myself "Is it worth losing my site?" "Is THIS, where I make my stand? "Will it matter enough to make the cost I pay worthwhile?"
That calculus does not trouble me, as it does so many others, because I don't do Twitter and don't have a Facebook page. I blog at Mee.nu!
Because Mee.Nu is still free, in both senses of the word.
You should probably migrate your social media here.
UPDATE: Pixy, the administrator of Me.Nu has taken a break from his usual policy of being apolitical on his tech blog to opine upon this dumpster fire at length.
UPDATE 2: Sargon also got his channel locked in the series of purges that have happened the last 36 hours.
Watch on Bitchute
In fairness to YouTube, the company says that this ban was not related to his coverage of the NY Post Story. Rather, they say they banned him for a post from some months ago in which he decried the normalization of Pedophelia.
"Wait..WHAT!? That's their cover story!?"
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How to Play Chess
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Alright. I Do Not Want to Hear ONE Word About Pineapple and Ham....Ever Again
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Truly a Fine Example of a 2020 Headline
Uh...WHAT!?
I call bullshit.
I was skeptical too, so I looked for another source (with proper grammar) and found a report on the results of the experiment. That the results of an experiment which hasn't yet happened, but were reported on 3 years ago might prove that they've at least broken causality.
However, due to a silly, neurotic concern about using a 2017 article from The Onion as a source for a story about a 2020 science breakthrough, I dug a little deeper and found the awful truth.
"Just as many parallel sheets of paper, which are two dimensional objects [breadth and length] can exist in a third dimension [height], parallel universes can also exist in higher dimensions.
"We predict that gravity can leak into extra dimensions, and if it does, then miniature black holes can be produced at the LHC.
"Normally, when people think of the multiverse, they think of the many-worlds interpretation of quantum mechanics, where every possibility is actualised.
"This cannot be tested and so it is philosophy and not science."This is not what we mean by parallel universes. What we mean is real universes in extra dimensions.
Further digging revealed stories about the LHC creating matter from light and making progress on the discovery of dark matter, but no imminent Isekai applications, or any evidence that Warhammer 40,000 might be prophecy.
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October 13, 2020
Now It's ALIENS Getting Involved in Our Elections.
As I am opposed to cattle mutilations and the destruction of crops, I guess I have no recourse but to vote for the angry cheeto.
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Overview of the Situation in Japan
Japan is locked down hard regarding international travel but they've been fairly laid back with regards to the lockdown on businesses. It's largely voluntary....aside from masks on mass transit, and there are various off and on travel restrictions in place.
Their economy is largely open now, though restaurants are suffering from what I've heard elsewhere. All in all, they seem to have been much more sensible than in many places in the U.S. They were both more cautious at the beginning when the situation looked very dire, and quickly relaxed the lockdown when it became obvious it was dangerous, but not as bad as initially feared. The state of emergency was lifted in May. Despite demographics trending quite old and this disease being lethal to the old, Japan's death rate is remarkably low.
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October 12, 2020
Blasphemer !
I was going to write something on this story, but Pixy found a video that sums up this dumpsterfire nicely.
Makes a not entirely applicable but still non-terrible intro to the previous post.
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It's Good to Learn the Mistakes of Others. It's Better Yet to Not Repeat Their Mistakes
Pete Zaitcev linked to this piece by Hillel Ofek in The New Atlantis that looks at why Islamic countries tend to have such a dearth of scientific achievement today, despite having been the undisputed world leaders in the sciences early on.
The article is well researched and informative. While my history degree did not have islamic society in particular as its main focus, this article certainly comports with what I have researched regarding the matter, and clarifies a few specifics regarding the ascendancy of a particular strain (denomination?) of Sunni thought that is generally considered to be the culprit, but as the article proposes, may well have simply accelerated existing trends within the civilization.
Honest critiques of "The Religion of Peace" are hard to come by in this day and age as they tend to be either the "woke" apologia frequently produced by todays very PC academia or the product of independent researchers who in response to that Islamophillic dynamic....overcompensate to say the least. It's a good article and I suggest you read it in full. Given today's publishing climate and academic realities I'd go so far as to call it brave.
However, the greatest relevance of the article to us today may not be what it says about another society's past, but the implied warnings it holds for our future.
While it is commonplace to assume that the scientific revolution and the progress of technology were inevitable, in fact, the West is the single sustained success story out of many civilizations with periods of scientific flourishing. Like the Muslims, the ancient Chinese and Indian civilizations, both of which were at one time far more advanced than the West, did not produce the scientific revolution.
Humans have been humaning for as much as 300,000 years over those 30 millennia there have been flashes of brilliance and periods of innovation that gave us math geometry and the ability to do engineering feats build aqueducts to bring water 56 miles from Subbiaco to the Capitoline hill and many other innovations that are not to be sneezed at, but the massive cascading tsunami of knowledge building upon itself without regard to where new knowledge came from as long as it was testable, that we've enjoyed since the renaissance and enlightenment....well that's sort of thing has started a couple of places, but such golden ages always petered out after a decade or two, or were strangled in the crib by entrenched interests (as in China and Rome)...except for the two closely linked phenomenae of the Renaissance and Enlightenment begetting the industrial revolution. These bizarre bank shots involving a series of very specific, political, cultural, and religious conditions allowed for something that had not occurred in humanity over its many endeavors over a third of a million years. Using Thomas Newcomb as a completely arbitrary start for the industrial age, we've been in this happy state for about 300 years.
That's a thousandth of the time we know that humanity has walked the earth (and we can be reasonably sure the earliest known remains were not the earliest people). So, going into the past of humanity and picking any one year there is a one in a thousand chance that one will land in a world ruled by tyranny, oppression, superstition, backwardness, malthusian cycles of despair looming over lives brutish and short with little or no hope of it ever getting better. That's the norm....the median state of humanity...the direction in which history bends.
The idea that history and the universe inevitably bends towards progress is a product of 300 years of everything getting better every year. Between 1803 and 1903 we had gone from near feudal agrarian societies of subsistence farmers, to cars, electricity, and airplanes. 66 years later there were human footprints on the moon, shortly after that we were sending rock-&-roll, bagpipe music and porn to the STARS! It is easy to see how, given the short lifespans of humans, some saw this as an inevitable trend, but it is a divergence from the mean that represents only 1/1000th of humanities existence.
Western civilization, and those others that have used its insights to rekindle and build upon their own lost glories are not examples of the arc of history inevitably bending towards progress, they are an example of a middle finger raised against the very norms of the universe. Our societies are like a kayaker fighting heroically against the flow of a maelstrom threatening to drag us down to the foetid depths that humanity will reach by regressing to its mean.
And we've stopped paddling.
Returning to Ofek's article, look what was happening in Islamic universities at about the time that Europe was beginning to leapfrog Islamic civilization.
No one paid much attention to the work of Averroës after he was driven out of Spain to Morocco, for instance — that is, until Europeans rediscovered his work.
Sounds like Averroës got cancelled.
The things that made this wondrous aberration in which we live possible are under attack from multiple quarters. The so-called cancel culture used by the cultural enforcers of "wokeness" is becoming every bit as pernicious and stifling as the ash'erite courts in stifling anything outside the accepted norms. One of the reasons that Ofek points to the Ash'erite school for Islam's fall is the inability of the Islamic leadership to reconcile reason and faith, impericism and theology. Christianity explicitly allows for "rendering unto Caesar what is Caesar's" in fact Christ himself (not a prophet or apostle) implored people to do so. There is a very distinct understanding in Christianity, that there is a separation between the secular and the sacred. (The cultural basis for the church /state separation so important to our progress). Sunni theology sees this as another example of how Christians are weak, and that Christianity is the religion of slaves.
Likewise, the secular religion that is so sweeping our ruling classes sees itself as fully integrated into the power structure and government, which its adherents see as weapons to be wielded against unbelievers. Certainly that is hyperbolic, but it does not seem to be far from the practical result. A twitter mob is little different from a sharia court, except that it cannot dispense an amputation or direct death penalty yet. It can ensure that someone who commits apostasy, or blasphemy against the received wisdom of those in charge, looses their ability to engage, their banking privileges, and their ability to live in peace. There were, of course, such blacklists, extortions and literal witchunts, in Europe, but given Europe's balkanized nature, one could leave and go somewhere else. Today, the long arm of the blue-check-stassi can reach you anywhere.
And it gets worse.
Unlike Islamic theology, which is based on the Koran, today's transgressions can change minute to minute on the whims of hash tags, and be fiendishly non-intuitive (did you know that understanding that astrology is bollocks is...SEXIST?)
The pernicious influence of Foucault, Derrida, Sarte' and others is attacking the very foundations upon which this civilizational edifice is built, and the implications are terrifying.
I'm not suggesting that there's going to be a collapse like the Greek dark age (where they literally forgot how to write and had to re-invent the alphabet) . Technologies are rarely lost. Even after the fall of Rome only a few closely held trade secrets like the chemical formula for the Roman's better concretes and the methods of hydraulic excavation were lost. The beau monde wine-moms are unlikely to discard the washing machines and microwave ovens that have liberated them from 300,000 years of domesticity. It's worse than that. You see the very technologies that make the Twittermob so effective can, as we've seen in China, enable a panopticon undreamed of in the worst nightmares of Orwell. That's a set of technologies that the beneficiaries of these toxic trends are unlikely to see fall by the wayside. Getting out from under such a system would be nigh impossible, not only because of its capabilities, but its stability. After all, freedom as we understand it has been an alien concept for the vast majority of 300,000 years.
We need to really embrace and promote the values of the enlightenment and push back against those who blame it for our ills. Because if we don't, we will not have cast off our chrysalis, and moved on to greater things in the stars, but, instead, like our many forebears we will regress to the mean...a bad place to be indeed.
This dynamic might have implications for the Fermi Paradox, but it has more urgency at the moment for us.
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Hippy-San 0n Boogie 2988
Styx has one of the more reasoned takes on the recent situation with a YouTuber (Boogie2988 ) who had a stalker show up at his house.
I'm not a fan of the YouTuber, but whatever one thinks of him, having a stalker is a dreadful thing, and having them show up at your house is absolutely terrifying, beyond the pale and not acceptable. Deadly force is authorized. However, Boogie's response was...sub-optimal. I've seen a lot of hot takes on this bit of drama over the last week but this one is notable for not being stupid.
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