Author: VD

Please to commence to spiral

It was interesting to observe the reactions by many commenters yesterday to information that happened to challeng some of their assumptions about the world. Now, rather than resorting to simple Boomer “how dare you” rhetoric, let’s simply look at this pair of photographs logically. I don’t know about you, but I can think of at least seven obvious possible explanations for this apparent anomaly:

  1. There were other boots used by the Apollo astronauts with different treads.
  2. There were other humans on the Moon who were not Apollo astronauts.
  3. There were aliens on the Moon! Aliens that wear boots and have feet roughly the size of a man’s foot.
  4. Photoshop!
  5. The second photograph was not taken on the Moon and the bootprint was left by a studio technician wearing boots with different treads than those worn by the fake astronauts.
  6. One of the astronauts drew the alternate bootprint with his finger.
  7. A studio technician drew the alternate bootprint with his finger.
Now, how do you rank the probabilities of these seven alternative scenarios? And what do you think this pair of photos proves?

UPDATE: I think it looks a bit like someone with a moon boot stepped on top of a track left by the herringbone-tread wheel of the lunar rover, except the track ends and, at least in this photo, only half of the track appears to be present.

Christianity isn’t etiquette

Matt muses over what I would call “churchianity” rather than “Middle Class Christianity”, but the point is essentially the same:

A lot of what is called Christian morality today is not necessarily Christian, but more accurately described as Middle Class Christianity. It is the Christianity influenced by the Victorian era politeness and the rather quiet in door working spaces of many Christians, who tend heavily towards the middle class.

Here are examples of the difference:

Middle Class Christianity: Don’t be harsh and use mean words to those who come to you, especially if they are in need.

Christianity: Jesus said to the Syrophoenician woman: You don’t give the children’s food to the dogs (Matt 15:21-28, Mark 7:24-30).

Middle Class Christianity: It is wrong to even insult those who reject the message of Jesus.

Christianity: Jesus said to the disciples to shake the dust of their feet when leaving an unbelieving town or even home (Matt 10:14). A visible and very offensive gesture in his day. Use your imagination to think of similar offensive gestures

Middle Class Christianity: Quiet kindness and addressing your audience in calm smooth tones is the way to address people. Don’t use ad-hominins, stereotypes, or harsh language.

Christianity: Jesus in the gospel of Matthew: Woe to you Pharisees, you brood of vipers, you snakes, you white-washed tombs, you rotten corpses twice dead, you sons of hell (Matt 23).

Your average Churchian is the modern equivalent of a Pharisee, wrongly thinking himself superior to Jesus Christ and shaking his head in judgement of what he sees as the Son of Man’s inferior comportment.

BRUN CREEP

Since the impeachment isn’t going so well, Democrats are retreating to a proven tactic to get the God-Emperor out of office:

Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren’s presidential campaign says its headquarters in Manchester, New Hampshire, was broken into, along with other offices in the same building. Andrew Taverrite, Warren’s New Hampshire communications director, says in a statement that the break-in occurred Wednesday night and “we have no reason to believe this was targeted to the campaign or is anything further than a regular break-in.”

I don’t think this will work either.

Cutting off the cash

The Deep State is raging at Trump’s persistent attempts to cut off the flow of funding to them:

High-placed federal law enforcement sources dropped a bombshell, claiming the renewed push to impeach the president is rooted, in part, in President Trump’s move to pull the United States out of the conflict in Syria — and stop untold millions in dirty cash from flowing into the deep state’s pockets.

“This isn’t about the Kurds, it’s about the cash,” one FBI source said.

And that cash is no chump change; it’s millions and millions of dollars flowing into the coffers of crooked politicians and deep-state pockets worldwide.

Federal sources paint a dark picture here, alleging crooked politicians and their benefactors are fuming. For years, it is alleged, deep state players have been raking in millions in illicit profits through the manufacturing and distribution of narcotics in Syria.

But that profitable network could stop producing its riches for U.S. players if the cease-fire Trump negotiated continues and if Trump’s plan to remove U.S. personnel from Syria commences.

Well, that and trying to keep themselves off the scaffold for their treason, of course.

The Blue Marble myth

Owen Benjamin explains how technology outruns the Big Lies:

What is the coolest thing you’ve ever done as part of your job at Goddard?

The last time anyone took a photograph from above low Earth orbit that showed an entire hemisphere (one side of a globe) was in 1972 during Apollo 17. NASA’s Earth Observing System (EOS) satellites were designed to give a check-up of Earth’s health. By 2002, we finally had enough data to make a snap shot of the entire Earth. So we did. The hard part was creating a flat map of the Earth’s surface with four months’ of satellite data. Reto Stockli, now at the Swiss Federal Office of Meteorology and Climatology, did much of this work. Then we wrapped the flat map around a ball. My part was integrating the surface, clouds, and oceans to match people’s expectations of how Earth looks from space. That ball became the famous Blue Marble.

I was happy with it but had no idea how widespread it would become. We never thought it would become an icon. I certainly never thought that I would become “Mr. Blue Marble.”

We have since updated the base maps by increasing the resolution and, for 2004, we made a series of monthly maps.

Notice that ALL of the hemisphere photography we think we’ve seen has turned out to be nonexistent. It’s becoming clear that from the evolution fairy tale to the Blue Marble fraud to the dinosaur fraud and the satellite myth, the world is very, very different than we have been told it is. What is the point? To deceive you into serving Satan rather than God.

The satellite balloon technology also explains how the US can keep putting up satellites despite not having any rockets capable of sending up astronauts. I particularly enjoyed the video of the NASA satellite released by the Space Shuttle that was dangling from a wire.

Mailvox: Army rot in OCS, part II

This is a continuation of the email that was first posted on October 20 from a US Army officer observing the current state of the US Army:

Low Quality Training
If we even get it all. While at OCS 75{70c7b7f7aab8b67ba35de4bcae63b8a0d68f374a6be07ec7eab7f6e1cd2f43c9} of the material I have either had to self-teach or rely on help from prior/in-service candidates. Notably, I only got trained on the machine guns by prior-service Marines. This is partly due to manpower shortage in the trainer cadre, as we only have about 1/3 of the regulation amount. This is a good time to mention that the Army has a manpower crisis at the moment. It is also due, however, to mentality. You’re supposed to be a “leader,” which includes knowing things that you don’t know, like how land nav works. Except real life doesn’t work like that, and invariably for military-related tests the prior and in-service candidates come out ahead of the others by 1-2 standard deviations in scores.

An ABUNDANCE of Foreigners of Dubious Loyalty
I would be a rich man if I had a dollar for every time in the military I have heard a peer say “my country” in reference to not-America, and usually not even a country in the West. The foreigners that have been recruited with reckless abandon do not see the empire as being their peoples, and when the chips are really down I don’t trust their fealty at all. Of course, saying as much aloud would be grounds for disciplinary action. These foreigners aren’t evil. It has been many a time that a black peer has helped me when no one else would, or I have helped them. Yet the fact remains that they do not, and never will, view the US as really theirs. None of them do. The separation of blood is just too much.

Appalling Historical Ignorance Among Officer Candidates
They give us a crash course history class and test which is considered extremely difficult. Naturally, the NuBoomers and foreigners had trouble finding space in brains cluttered with porn, trash media, and schemes to get foreign relatives American money and citizenship for such information. The complaints during the whole course were extremely loud. “We don’t need to know about the past,” was a common one I heard. As for the knowledge they had before the course, one remark I overheard a foreign female candidate make tells it all. “I learned something today, haha” I heard her say the week after the test to another female with a Hispanic name, “I thought Abe Lincoln led the Confederacy. That was actually Jefferson Davis.”

Top-Brass Fantasies of Beating Up Russia AND China Simultaneously in Conventional War
There’s a publication called the Army Times that they sell on racks in the PX. Two covers have caught my eye, leading me to purchase the issues: One discussed new army plans to use tactical nukes to win conventional battles. The other went into detail about the Army’s initiative to revive its capacity to conduct “big unit” (read: conventional, pitched-battle) operations. This flushes with other peeks at the higher-ups of the imperial military, as when the Army Infantry School commandant told us in a lecture that it had been a mistake to implement the Brigade Combat Team (a replacement for the divisions designed to be rapidly deployable and fight vastly inferior insurgent forces with only minimal losses being tolerable) and that the Army was rushing to get rid of it in favor something bigger. I interpret this to be downstream of the imperial elites realizing that they are on track for another world war with a Sino-Russian Alliance and are now scrambling to transform their peasant-terrorizing, Christian-betraying, Israel-serving mercenary force into a serious military capable of fighting the up and coming superpower and its friend the Russian phoenix.

In such a war the US in such a war would not be fighting a country exhausted by a more serious war on another front (WWII Germany) or one which possesses vastly inferior technology and resources (WWII Japan), but one which wields full-spectrum superiority once the new Alliance overcomes the barely-relevant technology gap. For your readers, in case this shows up on the blog, I say the tech is barely relevant, because how many wars since WWII has technology helped America win? Oh sure, it helps tactical victories. Yet America has by now a chronic, damning track record of an inability to translate tactical victories into strategic ones. The empire, including its vaunted military, has simply ceded too much ground to degeneration and demoralization to have any hope of fighting as, say, Rome did against Carthage.

At best, I think it will perform more akin to Austria in WWI. At worst it will just come into contact with the Sino-Russian Alliance, lose a major battle, and then the whole shebang will come unglued as the mask comes off concerning loyalty and competence within the ranks. God help us all.

Ace of Spades abandons neoconnery

It’s certainly taken long enough, but conservatives are FINALLY beginning to see through the neoclowns:

When I was younger and less experienced — and had seen less war — I was a big believer in the Rumsfeld Doctrine, “if the problem seems unsolvable, enlarge it,” that is, don’t chew about the edges if chewing about the edges doesn’t solve things, but go for the whole sandwich if need be.

I also believed the empty Neocon slogans about appeasement and Hitler and Clinton “just kicking the can down the road” in Iraq.

The empty sloganeering went like this: If we don’t permanently solve our diplomatic/military crises once and for ever, then we’re just “kicking the can down the road” and deferring problems until later.

But watching the Iraq and Afghanistan (and Libya and Syria) fiascoes, I’ve now come to understand a few things:

First, it is extraordinarily difficult to “solve” massive societal problems in foreign fucking countries. The cancer in Middle East states goes right down to the bone.

We haven’t managed to rid America of the Communist Delusion after one hundred years. And we think we’re going to cure Islam of Islamism?

It may be simply impossible to “fix” such things, and even if it is theoretically possible, it might take far more wasted men, severed limbs, and pallet-fulls of money than we are willing to spend.

Second, Americans are a bit mercurial in matters of war: They are occasionally keen on it, but quickly tire of it.

We have now had a pretty firm trial run of how many years of war America is willing to tolerate, even if offered terrific provocation (such as 9/11). The answer turns out to be “three to four years, maybe.”

Hell, even the liberal wing of the War Party — the Neocon NeverTrumpers — began calling anyone who proposed additional screening for Muslim travelers an anti-American racist within three years of 9/11.

Which brings me to the third point: Wars must be sharply limited in goals, with clearly defined victory conditions and a firm exit strategy, and must not be permitted to endlessly mutate new goals and thus new end-points.

And we must not “nation build.”

There is no question of how “it may be simply impossible”. It is impossible and it has always been impossible and those who have pushed for it knew that from the start. It won’t be long until conservatives finally start NOTICING and understanding why the neoclowns have been incessantly pushing for permanent war in the Middle East. Which, of course, is why the Alt-Right – which is to say the Post-Conservative Nationalist American Right, however you want to label it – has always been inevitable.

Of course, it could take longer than one would expect, because conservatives are almost terminally stupid.

It’s absurd. It’s already been tried and it already failed. Shall we keep on doing it, then? I think I’d rather just eat the whole sandwich and invade Iran.

Because that’s supposed to be less absurd? Since Ace has apparently just discovered military history, perhaps he will follow my suggestion to read about a little historical episode known as “the Sicilian Expedition” and a concept called “imperial overstretch”.

Blizzard, converged

It’s always informative to see how SJWs regularly ignore their own Terms of Use in order to serve the Narrative:

Blizzard Entertainment, the company behind World of Warcraft, Hearthstone, and Diablo forced the guild “Make Azeroth Great Again” to change their name.

WoW Classic player and the leader of the guild Cogblast spoke to GameByte after they reported another guild called “GAY BOYS” was forced to change their name.

Cogblast told Gamebyte, “[Blizzard] did the same thing to my WoW Classic guild ‘Make Azeroth Great Again,’ which was just a tongue-in-cheek name for what was really just a social guild. We got it changed back, and then twelve hours later it was force-changed again.”

Related: Activision Blizzard Bans Hearthstone Grandmaster Winner Blitzchung After Supporting Hong Kong Protests

Cogblast shared emails he received from Blizzard with Gamebyte that detailed the name would be changed with the specific infraction being an “inappropriate name” and that the guild had been reported multiple times.

In fact, the original email stated, “Due to these player reports we have renamed your World of Warcraft Guild.”

However, a subsequent email from a Blizzard Game Master detailed that the name should not have been changed. The Game Master told Cogmaster, ” took a look here and I am very sorry this happened. I fixed your name and removed the penalty from your account here.”

They added, “You are correct that the name does not break our [Terms of Service].”

However, as Cogblast told GameByte, the name would be forcibly removed again.

Cogblast explained, “[A Blizzard rep] contacted me in-game [and] he basically told me that the name was not ‘RP friendly,’ and that this standard was at least partially based on the opinions of the server.”

Sometimes it matters, and sometimes it doesn’t. Regardless, their hypocrisy knows no bounds, so we should not hesitate to force them to conform to our standards and social mores.

Extradition bill withdrawn

The Hong Kong government backs down

Hong Kong authorities officially withdrew the extradition bill that has sparked months-long massive protests and violent riots across the city. The city’s security chief John Lee announced that the bill was effectively withdrawn on Wednesday. In response, several opposition lawmakers tried to heckle Lee’s speech, demanding his resignation.

The bill, which would have allowed the extradition of criminal suspects from Hong Kong, China’s self-governing territory, to mainland China triggered massive protests in summer. Protesters and human rights campaigners feared that Beijing may use the legislation to target dissidents.

My guess is that this is a smart tactical move by the Chinese government to defang what had become an entry point by the CIA and the NGOs attempting to transform the organic protests into a Color Revolution. It surgically removes the nominal basis for the protests, thereby removing the moral high ground – such as it is – from the protests if they continue.

I don’t see this as being much of a victory for the protesters, though. I understand the fears concerning extradition being applied to dissidents, but is it really good news that murderers can continue to live in Hong Kong without fear of even being arrested, much less charged and convicted, for their crimes? It seems to me a compromise that limited extradition to being applied to those suspected of murder would be reasonable and serve the interests of both the mainland and the SAR.

They have no one

Democrats are gradually coming to the horrifying conclusion that they don’t have anyone who can beat the God-Emperor:

When the 2020 Democratic presidential contest kicked off earlier this year, the massive field was hailed as the most diverse in history, with candidates who spanned the ideological spectrum and offered enough in a broad buffet of options to entice any voter. But after 10 months of campaigning and 15 hours of nationally televised debates, another emotion is rising: anxiety.

Party leaders and activists are citing weakness in all of the leading contenders, including former vice president Joe Biden, who has been forced on the defensive about his family’s ethics, performed haltingly in debates and set off alarms with his poor fundraising. They also fret that the two other top-ranking candidates, Sens. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., and Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., are too liberal to win a general election. Other candidates have had moments to shine, but none yet has fully transformed that into anything approaching momentum.

Oprah Winfrey, an early backer of Barack Obama who was initially enthusiastic about former Texas congressman Beto O’Rourke, has repeatedly begged Disney CEO Bob Iger to jump into the race. Hillary Clinton, according to two people close to her, has not ruled out jumping in herself, a sign that she is hearing similar dissatisfaction.

“You can imagine much stronger candidates,” said Elaine Kamarck, a Democratic National Committee member. She pines for Sen. Sherrod Brown, D-Ohio, who declined to run, or an outsider like retired admiral William McRaven, who oversaw the 2011 raid that killed al-Qaida leader Osama bin Laden.

John Coale, a major donor to both Bill and Hillary Clinton, was more blunt. “They don’t have anybody who can win the general,” he said.

Smells like Trumpslide 2020 to me.