Author: VD

Collusion was Fake News

Now those who perpetrated the failed coup are rapidly backtracking:

Former CIA chief John O. Brennan now says his months of attacks on President Trump may have been based on “bad information.”

One of the president’s harshest critics had a muted tone on Monday as he discussed special counsel Robert Mueller’s Russia report on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe.” No evidence was found to support the claim that Mr. Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign “conspired or coordinated” with Russia.

“Well, I don’t know if I received bad information but I think I suspected there was more than there actually was,” Mr. Brennan told host Joe Scarborough. “I am relieved that it’s been determined there was not a criminal conspiracy with the Russian government over our election.”

Mr. Brennan said in December 2018, for instance, that Mr. Trump should prepare for the “forthcoming exposure of your malfeasance & corruption.”

“We need an actual leader — our Nation’s future is at stake,” he tweeted Dec. 31.

The former CIA head said he still maintained that some conversations between Mr. Trump’s campaign and Russians were “inappropriate.”

Now it’s time to let the trials for treason begin.

Unauthorized: Urban Apocalypse

We’re pleased to announce the newest addition to UNAUTHORIZED.TV on the SURVIVE channel: Urban Apocalypse. This is a bilingual program featuring the highly-respected Italian-Swiss survivalist Piero San Giorgio.

We are working on adding subtitles to some of his more important French-language videos, but in the meantime, we have made eight of his English-language videos available to subscribers, including his interview with Noam Chomsky and his address to the European Parliament. I particularly recommend the video entitled The Center Cannot Hold.

Urban Apocalypse is the first of two new programs we are adding to SURVIVE to go with David the Good’s Grow or Die. The second will be announced in April.

Scientists don’t understand statistics

Which is why it’s good that hundreds of them are signing on to an effort to abandon the concept of “statistical significance”:

Let’s be clear about what must stop: we should never conclude there is ‘no difference’ or ‘no association’ just because a P value is larger than a threshold such as 0.05 or, equivalently, because a confidence interval includes zero. Neither should we conclude that two studies conflict because one had a statistically significant result and the other did not. These errors waste research efforts and misinform policy decisions.

For example, consider a series of analyses of unintended effects of anti-inflammatory drugs. Because their results were statistically non-significant, one set of researchers concluded that exposure to the drugs was “not associated” with new-onset atrial fibrillation (the most common disturbance to heart rhythm) and that the results stood in contrast to those from an earlier study with a statistically significant outcome.

Now, let’s look at the actual data. The researchers describing their statistically non-significant results found a risk ratio of 1.2 (that is, a 20{2b1141b7891b3a9a6e789b6011ce7f6b4c83be08b36e8974656edf3aca7b95b9} greater risk in exposed patients relative to unexposed ones). They also found a 95{2b1141b7891b3a9a6e789b6011ce7f6b4c83be08b36e8974656edf3aca7b95b9} confidence interval that spanned everything from a trifling risk decrease of 3{2b1141b7891b3a9a6e789b6011ce7f6b4c83be08b36e8974656edf3aca7b95b9} to a considerable risk increase of 48{2b1141b7891b3a9a6e789b6011ce7f6b4c83be08b36e8974656edf3aca7b95b9} (P = 0.091; our calculation). The researchers from the earlier, statistically significant, study found the exact same risk ratio of 1.2. That study was simply more precise, with an interval spanning from 9{2b1141b7891b3a9a6e789b6011ce7f6b4c83be08b36e8974656edf3aca7b95b9} to 33{2b1141b7891b3a9a6e789b6011ce7f6b4c83be08b36e8974656edf3aca7b95b9} greater risk (P = 0.0003; our calculation).

It is ludicrous to conclude that the statistically non-significant results showed “no association”, when the interval estimate included serious risk increases; it is equally absurd to claim these results were in contrast with the earlier results showing an identical observed effect. Yet these common practices show how reliance on thresholds of statistical significance can mislead us…. The trouble is human and cognitive more than it is statistical: bucketing results into ‘statistically significant’ and ‘statistically non-significant’ makes people think that the items assigned in that way are categorically different. The same problems are likely to arise under any proposed statistical alternative that involves dichotomization, whether frequentist, Bayesian or otherwise.

Unfortunately, the false belief that crossing the threshold of statistical significance is enough to show that a result is ‘real’ has led scientists and journal editors to privilege such results, thereby distorting the literature.

It’s important to remember that most scientists have no more training in statistics than any other college graduate. And even if they did sit through an extra class or two devoted to the subject, that doesn’t mean they are any good at it.

You failed parenting

I don’t even know where to begin with this:

In her practice, Dr. Levine said, she regularly sees college freshmen who “have had to come home from Emory or Brown because they don’t have the minimal kinds of adult skills that one needs to be in college.”

One came home because there was a rat in the dorm room. Some didn’t like their roommates. Others said it was too much work, and they had never learned independent study skills. One didn’t like to eat food with sauce. Her whole life, her parents had helped her avoid sauce, calling friends before going to their houses for dinner. At college, she didn’t know how to cope with the cafeteria options — covered in sauce.

That’s one benefit of having been raised in a family with a Marine Corps tradition. From childhood, one is informed that there is always and only one answer to every obstacle: improvise, adapt, and overcome!

No collusion, no obstruction

No wonder the media is weeping and gnashing their teeth over the Mueller report:

“[T]he investigation did not establish that members of the Trump campaign conspired or coordinated with the Russian government in its election interference activities.” On the question of obstruction of justice, Barr writes that while Mueller’s report “does not conclude that the President committed a crime, it also does not exonerate him.”

Now that’s over with, let’s see the President get on with draining the Swamp and building the Wall.

The midwit’s pain

Nothing burns a gamma’s soul like public humiliation:

Dr Jordan B Peterson@jordanbpeterson
I’ve never encountered a writer as self satisfied by his own intelligence as this one

Dr Jordan B Peterson@jordanbpeterson
With the clear exception of Vox Day.

Some readers have asked me why Peterson is mentioning Jordanetics now after ignoring it for several months. The reason is that he’s had a very bad week and discovered that despite his success, he’s still not accepted by the intellectual elite whose approval he craves, so he’s lashing out at everything that is causing him emotional pain.

Gammas never forgive and never forget, which is why they’re capable of erupting angrily over something that happened years ago, even when everyone else has forgotten it. In Peterson’s mind, his rejection by Cambridge and the contempt with which he is treated in Jordanetics are essentially the same thing, it’s a malicious refusal to grant him Special Smart Boy status.

Speaking of midwit:

Thank you Niall, for your support @nfergus I’m going ahead with a series of Exodus lectures, regardless, but I think they will be lesser because I will not have had the opportunity to consult with a diverse group of experts.

I think they will be “lesser” too, but more because Dr. Peterson’s grasp of both the Bible and the English language are questionable.

So that’s it?

We’ll see, but it sounds like a whole lot of nothing is all Mueller found:

Attorney General William Barr has scoured special counsel Robert Mueller’s confidential report on the Russia investigation with his advisers, deciding how much Congress and the American public will get to see about the two-year probe into President Donald Trump and Moscow’s efforts to elect him.

Barr was on pace to release his first summary of Mueller’s findings on Sunday, people familiar with the process said.

The attorney general’s decision on what to finally disclose seems almost certain to set off a fight with congressional Democrats, who want access to all of Mueller’s findings — and supporting evidence — on whether Trump’s 2016 campaign coordinated with Russia to sway the election and whether the president later sought to obstruct the investigation.

Barr and Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein, who appointed Mueller and oversaw much of his work, analyzed the report on Saturday, laboring to condense it into a summary letter of main conclusions. Mueller delivered his full report to Barr on Friday.

I’ve been under the weather all weekend, hence the non-posting. Expect normal service to resume on Monday. On the plus side, however, AH:Q #1 is now illustrated and colored, so it will be out soon.

A race, not a religion

This news should conclusively end the long-running shell game:

Judy Maltz reported in Haaretz that the Israeli Rabbinate, which controls conversion, marriage and divorce in Israel, is using DNA testing to verify a person’s Jewishness. Since a person who isn’t Jewish can’t marry a Jew in Israel, which has no civil marriage, the rabbinate is using the DNA test to deny people they consider non-Jews the civil right of marriage.

As if it wasn’t already obvious when Ben Shapiro was bragging about being 100 percent racially pure.

It needs to be said

Dr Jordan B Peterson@jordanbpeterson
Because it needs to be said, apparently here’s what the Alt-Right, in its own words, thinks of my work (much as I hate to advertise the book).

The amusing thing is that anyone who reads Jordanetics is going to realize that Jordan Peterson isn’t an “alt-right darling”, in fact, he isn’t of the Right at all, he’s something much worse and considerably more disturbing than even his most vociferous left-wing critics are claiming.

I look forward to the inevitable one-star fake reviews from the buckos. Because that will TOTALLY stop people from reading it. LEAVE JORDY ALONE!

Devil Mouse to cut up to 10,000 jobs

Disney appears to be a lot more likely to shut down Marvel Comics than anyone likely believes. They’ve already shut down Fox 2000, which produced more revenue from a single movie release than comic sales ever could:

Disney still hasn’t disclosed an official number of jobs they plan to cut. Analysts estimate 4,000-10,000, though several employees say the number being floated among people in the know is closer to 3,000….

One employee on the TV side told THR how disheartened the television employees were at witnessing the carnage in film, but later the ax began to fall there, as well, with 20th Television president Greg Meidel let go.

Disney also laid off Fox Consumer Products boss Jim Fielding, and sources say that of about 50 U.S.-based staffers in that division, five have received pink slips. “I’ve never seen anything like this — from any company,” says a Fox employee who witnessed Thursday’s drama.

Disney has said all along that it intends, due to the merger, to save $2 billion annually by 2021, and such rhetoric usually means jobs will be lost. “This is what happens in mergers,” explains Northlake Capital Management founder Steven Birenberg. “It’s partially the point, as cost savings boost the financials.”

It’s possible that the cost savings will be limited to the Fox acquisition, but in light of the multi-year decline in Marvel revenues combined with the budget imperative, it wouldn’t exactly be shocking to see them shut down the production and pursue a licensing strategy.