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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January 14, 2021
Hopefully Not Cassandra (Updated) (Bumped)
One of the commenters here posted the following three days ago.
(Alternatively: you can lie down with dogs & get up with fleas.)
ALERT: Someone is planning a false flag event this weekend. Either the 16th, 17th, or 19th at state capitols and DC (the date of the supposed patriot event varies). Poorly designed posters have been mailed out to conservatives and conservative groups....there's some unconfirmable conspiracy theorizing in the middle...The posters call for armed men to show up at the capitols for a march...
Note that while I have not encountered one of these posters myself, other people who I trust (Including our brilliant and wise web host...praise the lathe of the maker) have verified that these posters & memes are, in fact, circulating.
So, maybe, don't show up armed in D.C. or in front of state Capitol buildings in the next few weeks.
Also, if you are aware of an imminent threat of violent mischief, and have evidence, perhaps let the authorities know.
UPDATE: Styxhexenhammer has seen these fliers too and his thoughts on the matter are similar to mine.
I should note that I don't think that most of these protests are "false flags", but I do think that they are a very bad idea and that both the Boogaloo Blockheads and leftist provocateurs are intending to hijack these to foment various flavors of chaos.
UPDATIER: As of 15:10 (Jan. 13) Dr. Reynolds over at Instapundit has now noted this too and in the comments Rick C has turned up one of the posters...and boy howdy...
Yes, it looks like the Bolsheviks and the Mensheviks are joining hands with the Tankies in doing a synchronized propeller dance to give all the oxygen they can to this impending dumpster fire.
That or these LARPers today have only ever seen commie agitprop before.
UPDATED AND BUMPED:
Don't go to these things, they will only end in tears. Also: Pixy has unearthed more evidence of derpitude
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This
...just about sums it all up doesn't it?
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January 13, 2021
Oh Wow. They're Going to Test This Thing Next Month
They've been best known until now for cool CGI animations of stuff they say they'll do eventually, but now The Gateway Foundation is announcing plans to do a 40% scale test of their fabrication robot 'D-Star'.
If this thing works, even the 40% version will have massive potential to assemble things in orbit and beyond. If Space-X gets their rockets working and produced in the quantities that Mr. Musk is promising, then we could have the solar system from Mercury to Pallas opened up in less than a decade.
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Good Grief! It's Real.
We covered the rumors of the Kel-Tec P50 before. And expressed skepticism that anything this cool could exist. Commenters reported seeing magazine articles on it, but now there is confirmation from Kel-Tec themselves via The Gun Hipster Network.
Sadly, Kel-Tec will not be getting it to market before January 20th, so there is still some doubt as to whether it will ever be available.
Without handling the thing it's hard to make any judgements on handling, but the mag change looks flakier than it should be, not because its bad in concept, but because it opens SO wide that in the dark it looks like there's too big an area that the mag might go. It's certainly not "hand finds hand".
Still, that's what practice is for and a pistol shooting 50 rounds of 5.7x28 for under a grand is quite compelling and a potential budgetary hazard.
I'd been looking at an 1858 Remington, and then THIS goes and happens.
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Signs and Portents
If you find yourself in a reality where one of the most nuanced and level headed takes on the Capital riot and subsequent Orwellian responses is coming to you from...BEARING...you are likely approaching some scary, crazy times.
Watch on Bitchute
UPDATE: To be clear, while his overview of the situation we are in post riot is as good as any, Bearing is way out in front of some people I used to read until last week in that he is emphatic that the assholes who stormed through the capitol windows and stole stuff were, in fact, assholes.
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January 12, 2021
This is Fine.
Every Deleted Parler Post, Many With Users' Location Data, Has Been Archived,
I'm OK with the events that are unfolding currently.
That's OK.
Things are going to be OK.
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STOP THE SEAL
Youtube and Facebook will no doubt ban this.
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January 10, 2021
Responding to the Purging of Parler
I was saddened to learn that MeWe wasn't Pixy's social media outlet, but I've signed up for it anyway.
I do not like microblogging, but it's good to have some other alternatives to Twitter, now that Parler is gone and Gab is the junior Bostonian Baptist Anti-Fun League circa 1947.
I'm also on Pawoo, but honestly haven't posted there since Dec 7th. Maybe some of you can post Fediverse and other alternatives in the comments.
UPDATE: While I was typing on MeWe about my curry....I burned my curry.
Gah!
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January 09, 2021
Pixy Misa or Nostradamus?
I worry about what might happen to Hololive with American Big Tech gone batshit insane. They're as apolitical as you can get, but that's probably not going to be enough.
ANSWER: It's Pixy obviously. He's generally right. Nostradamus by contrast, was full of crap.
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Meanwhile: At Alpha Centauri
This story actually transpired a couple of weeks ago but I have been waiting for the inevitable debunking. Now one of the Brickmuppet's Crack Team of Science Babes is here to inform us how that went...
"The debunking is not going quite as smoothly as expected".
Oh dear.
Allow me to explain...
A few weeks ago, radio astronomers detected an odd radio signal that seemed to come from from the nearby Alpha Centauri system, the 3 closest stars to Earth.
That's bloody coincidental, so while the press was being their usual calm selves, the scientists did what they always do when they hear an 'extraterrestrial signal', they set about trying to figure out what Earth radio signal they had mistakenly picked up.
Well, weeks later there have been some developments...sort of.
Basically all known terrestrial radio signals have been eliminated as being this.
As I understand it, the signal hasn't changed much in bearing (relative to the sun), which one would expect if it to do if it were being broadcast from inside the solar system. Moreover, this turns out not to be a particularly weak signal by the standards of radio astronomy, quite the opposite in fact, and after adjusting their readings and analyzing their parallax, they've narrowed it down to coming from the direction of Proxima Centauri, a red dwarf that is the closest of the three stars in Alpha Centauri and the closest star to Earth.
The chances of the first SETI success involving the closest star in the sky is....well, the odds of THAT seem dubious.
However, this signal is strange, and is stubbornly defying debunkery. An inability to, as of yet, debunk something that is vanishingly unlikely is NOT the same as confirmation. However, this has slipped out of the realm of press hype and into the realm of 'interesting'.
There's a good overview of this conundrum here:
Interestingly, the signal doesn't appear to be data...it's a monotone signal, like a dial tone...or a beacon.
Proxima is now known to have at least 2 planets and an asteroid/dust belt.
One of the planets, (Proxima Centauri B) is in the theoretical habitable zone from the star. However that habitable zone is very close to the star. Proxima's a small star, a tad bigger than Jupiter (though much more massive) and it's not a calm star like ours. It flares quite spectacularly. In fact it has flares that are bigger than those spewed out by our sun.
Any planet in the "habitable zone" of this dinky little star is going to get bombarded by star farts, and would require a massive atmosphere similar to Venus, and/or a terribly strong magnetic field to keep its atmosphere from being stripped away.
Note too that "habitable zone" is a bit of a provincial and vague term. Venus, Earth and Mars are in our sun's habitable zone, but only one of them is habitable by humans.
The planet in that system which has gotten the most attention is the aforementioned Proxima Centauri B, in part because it is in the habitable zone and in part because it was discovered first. It has a mass somewhere between 1.7 and 1.6 times that of Earth and an estimated surface gravity, according to Wikipedia of between .95 and 1.1 g. It's a bit bigger and somewhat more massive than Earth. Assuming it has an atmosphere, it's probably colder than Earth...but that's a big assumption, because it's so close to its star that its getting blasted by solar wind and radiation, that, in the absence of a strong magnetic field would have stripped away the atmosphere long ago and sterilized the husk.
We have some experience with the magnetic fields of roughly Earth-size rocky planets, having no less than four of them in the general vicinity. Only one of them, has a useful magnetic field. Mars has one that only extends above the planetary surface in the tropics. Venus has a weak magnetosphere caused by the impact of solar wind on its upper atmosphere, Mercury, which is about the size of the moon (but as massive as Mars) has a very weak field, and Earth has about the second strongest magnetic field in the solar system after Jupiter. Earth's anomalously strong field is actually on par with the other gas giants like Saturn. It is hypothesized that this is due to tidal forces coming from the moon and the fact that Earth still spins on its axis fairly quickly.
As we noted a while back, any planet orbiting as close to its star as Proxima b is likely to be tidally locked, that is, it's likely to orbit once per rotation (like the moon is to Earth). However, In the embedded video there is speculation that it might be in resonance, perhaps with the other, recently discovered, planet (Proxima Centauri C) much as Mercury is in resonance with Jupiter. It is unclear if this is based on models or wishful thinking, but this would at least mean that it would have a day/night cycle. However, even generously granting that possibility, it likely still does not rotate fast enough to generate a sufficient magnetic field to protect it. There is also a data artifact noted in passing on page 8 of this paper that opens the remote possibility that the planet might have a moon (how that could possibly work so close to the star is unclear). There is a video discussion of this planet and the solar system in general here.
The study confirming Proxima b also indicated there might be another, smaller planet with an orbital period of 5.15 days (Noted on page 7 of the previous paper) but Proxima d is, as yet, unconfirmed.
The only other planet confirmed to be in the system in the system, Proxima Centauri C is either a small ice giant (would that be an ice orc?) , or a big rocky world. It is quite frigid and fairly far from the star, being outboard of what appears to be a dust or asteroid belt. This is all based on inferences from the wobble and red-shift of the star, but, recently astronomers were actually able to take a direct picture of Proxima C. While this dark frigid world elicits little interest from those looking for life signs, the ability to directly take a picture of a planet in another solar system is cool indeed. So what does this boring thing look like?
Yes the bigger planet in the system we are "getting signals from" is 'glowy', way bigger than it should be, and appears to be vastly less dense than a planet.
Wow.
One possibility is that this planet has a massive ring system, that, like those of Saturn and Chariklo, is coated in highly reflective ice.
Uncredited NASA artist's conception of Proxima-C via
For reasons of propriety, we will, of course, dismiss out of hand the notion that Proxima C is an alien megastructure.
"Science Babe" is actually Rio Futaba as imagined by Uname.
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January 08, 2021
Short Vacation
Image is, sadly, not representative of where I went.
Art by Don Davis
more...
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January 07, 2021
On The Importance of not Becoming the Monsters One is Fighting
First let me say that I condemn and disavow those who stupidly decided yesterday to get in touch with their inner Antifatard and charge the Capitol building.
This was stupid.
This was foul.
This was wrong.
The purpose of the exercise is to oppose the left, not BE the left.
These idiots are jus as bad as Antifa, BLM and all the other thugs we suffered from last year.
And that is an important component of trying to understand how we got here.
( Note to the linguistically impaired: Understanding is not endorsing, or defending. These actions are indefensible.)
For some time people have had the following explained to them in the most sanctimonious and arrogant way possible.
And anyone who disagreed was called everything but a child of God.
None of this excuses the vile shit that went down at the Capitol yesterday, but it does put it into context.
I and many other conservatives are denouncing these fuckwits in exactly the same way we denounced the riots of last summer... and while it's good to FINALLY have a bipartisan denunciation of political violence, in stark contrast to the previous situation, if AOC and her co-religionists can't disavow their previous statements in favor of insurrectionists, they only make the problem worse.
Because the message that the riots, and the election sent is that only those who violently protest will be taken seriously.
Trump is a carnival barker and a narcisist. But Trump did not do this. He sure as fuck could have chosen his words better, but he did not start this riot. The rioters are people, with agency, and they chose to be little shits.
Furthermore, the left has spent a year normalizing political violence.
This does not excuse the vile actions that took place yesterday. It makes them even more reprehensible, because those stupid actions served to malign the hundreds of thousands of protestors who were there to peacefully protest and it deprives the public at large of any hope that either side denounces violence.
I have seen it noted on other blogs that this wasn't any different from the many times that lefty loons broke into the Capitol during hearings, votes or state of the union speeches except that the capitol police did not shoot any of those protestors to death....
Outside the Supreme Court 2018
...which almost seems like a fair point until you realize that our side is the one that is supposed to stand against this darkness. Another fact frequently noted is that aside from the broken windows, this was a remarkably sedate riot, with little looting or burning, and while that is, indeed true, the riot was still a damned RIOT. Furthermore, the sacred nature of the venue rather negates that argument.
There is one big caveat however.
This is not a defense of this indefensible action but a fact and a warning.
If riots are the rules by which the political game is to be played going forward, both sides are eventually going to follow those rules. The only thing that had kept conservatives from responding in kind ( Instead famously leaving protest areas cleaner than when they showed up) was a faith that the system could work for them, the bourgeoisie values that were the key to their standard of living and a sense of civics. All of these have been under constant attack, especially in schools to the point that the younger generations are starting to see those cultural checks as indicators of gullibility.
This is a dangerous place we are in, and if the nation goes over the precipice, a fair amount of the blood spilled will be on the hands of those who acted so stupidly yesterday. And on those who have unimaginable cultural influence and have so normalized this sort of behavior when it was their allies doing it.
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