Category: Uncategorized

As if they don’t

It was really rather stupid of the US government to imagine that public claims China was spying on consumers through their devices weren’t going to rebound hard on the US tech giants:

China has accused Apple of monitoring its users through spyware on its phones and computers.

The Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs said today that the world should be wary about the US tech company because it had assisted Washington to spy on ordinary users as well as country leaders ‘for as long as 10 years’.

Beijing’s spokesperson made the allegation after the United States claimed Chinese company Huawei could be collecting intelligence for Beijing and urged its allies to block the firm from their 5G networks. Hua Chunying, a spokesperson from the Ministry, also accused American IT provider Cisco of secretly collecting information from its users through the firm’s devices. Hua said: ‘As early as 2014, Apple acknowledged in a statement to have extracted personal data including short messages, contact lists, pictures from its users’ mobile phones through a “back door” in its system.’

She added: ‘According to leaked information by project PRISM, American people barely have any personal privacy in data including their phone calls, communications, documents and voice recordings in front of US intelligence. In additional, leaders from 35 countries – including some of America’s most intimate allies – have had their phone calls monitored. Some of them have been monitored for as long as 10 years.’

Just wait until they start going after Facebook and Google. I really fail to see how “you don’t want to let them spy on you, you should let US keep spying on you” is likely to be a successful sales pitch.

Help, Fellow Americans!

Great news! Hollywood is full of genuine, true blue heritage Americans defending traditional American ideals again! The Atlantic helpfully alerts us to Hollywood’s Great Leap Backward:

The fate of the Hong Kong booksellers has caused an outcry around the world, with independent news outlets and free-speech advocates warning of a return to totalitarianism. “It’s an attack on the publishing industry from all aspects,” declared Yaqiu Wang of Human Rights Watch in a recent New York Times article.

This outcry is wholly justified. But as a longtime observer of a different medium that has also been losing ground to China’s censors, I have to wonder: Why isn’t there a similar outcry about China’s mounting attack on the film industry, not just in Hong Kong but also in the United States?

Over the years, the U.S. government has often praised and defended Hollywood films as a key component of American soft power—that is, as a storytelling medium that can, without engaging in blatant propaganda, convey American ideals, including free expression itself, to foreign populations around the world. But Hollywood has long since abandoned that role. Indeed, not since the end of World War II have the studios cooperated with Washington in furthering the nation’s ideals. Instead, the relationship today is purely commercial—on both sides. For example, Hollywood frequently enlists Washington’s help in fighting piracy and gaining access to foreign markets. But even while providing that help, Washington refrains from asking Hollywood to temper its more negative portrayals of American life, politics, and global intentions. (The exception is the Department of Defense, which insists on approving the script of every film produced with its assistance.)

Things are different in China. In that country, which is fast becoming the world’s largest and most important movie market, the ruling Communist Party exercises no such restraint. On the contrary, Beijing has a very clear idea of how a film industry should operate—namely, as an essential part of the effort to bring public opinion in alignment with the party’s ideological worldview.

And here we were worried about those (((Hollywood values))) relentlessly attacking America, Christianity and Western civilization. It’s reassuring to be informed that, contrary to our spurious concerns, Hollywood is actually, and has always been, full of real White Anglo-Saxon Protestant Americans standing up for traditional American ideals.

So, naturally, we must rise to defend these great champions of America and the West against the Chinese incursion, because these terrible Chinese interlopers just don’t respect those ideals, right? Or, you know, Americans could always just sit by and watch Hollywood burn as the People’s Liberation Army marches right over it and holocausts the global propaganda machine. Whatever shall we do?

 Looks like it’s time to toast some marshmallows. And the jump to China is definitely off, as it looks like we’re about to be informed that Xi is the New Hitler.

Washington Free Beacon senior editor Bill Gertz said on Friday that under Chinese president Xi Jinping, the communist state has become a “communist nightmare.”

Gertz appeared on The Mark Levin Show to promote his new book, Deceiving the Sky: Inside Communist China’s Drive for Global Supremacy, in which he describes how the “China threat” has transformed radically since the 1980s.

“It really took a turn for the worse under the regime of Xi Jinping, the current Chinese leader, who has advanced what he calls the China Dream, which is really a communist nightmare,” Gertz said. “He has his eyes set on global hegemony, he wants China to be the dominant superpower in the world, and in order to do that, he has to diminish the power of the United States. Xi Jinping has become the new Mao, the new emperor.”

I wonder what went on behind the scenes over the last few years? Regardless, it’s evident that China has made it abundantly clear to the relevant parties that they are not at all interested in having their olam tikkened.

Transport wiki >>> IG

If you use Chrome or Brave, there is absolutely no need to utilize Wikipedia ever again. All you need to do is add the Transporter extension and you’ll automatically be transported to Infogalactic every time you click on a Wikipedia link.

This extension allows the user to move between Wiki and IG.

Auto-redirects from Wikipedia to Infogalactic’s version of that page (whether entering via a link or the address bar).

Clicking the extension button shuttles you back to the Wiki version and disables auto-redirect for that tab, and clicking again takes you back to Infogalactic. If you navigate away, on that tab, to some website outside either Wiki or IG, it’ll reset the behaviour back to auto-redirecting. 

Behaviour is also bound to the tab in which the clicking took place. If you click the button, thus disabling auto-redirect, and open a new tab, that new tab will obey the default redirect behaviour, i.e. taking you to Infogalactic if you visit Wikipedia.

There is also a Firefox version.

This is what it sounds like

Do NOT ever attempt fiction if you are not a professional writer of it. Believe it or not, there is actually an amount of skill involved in creating a sense of verisimilitude in storytelling. And the first lesson is this: write what you know. Which means, if you are an individual from one identity group, do not attempt to invent details about other identity groups. You WILL get it wrong. In fact, you will not only get it wrong, you will get it LAUGHABLY wrong.

Michael Harriot dissects Joe Biden’s tale of an encounter with a gang leader named Corn Pop that was the highlight of his 1962 Negro Summer Safari Adventure.

I’m always astounded by the imaginings of white people as it relates to race. Many of them have this fictionalized jigaboo version that is almost alien-like. And one of the greatest examples of this ever is Joe Biden’s story about Corn Pop the gangsta.

Now it has already been demonstrably proven that Biden will make stuff up. But any black person who hears this story will automatically give you the side-eye and  says: “nigga please.”

It begins when Biden was working as a lifeguard at a pool.

Now Biden is like, 176 years old, but he’s still in pretty good shape. This supposedly happened in the summer of 1962. Biden says that, instead of hanging out all summer, he decided to take a job working as a lifeguard at a black pool.

So, that summer, Biden was the only white lifeguard at Prices Run swimming pool in Brown-Burton Winchester Park. He says he did it—y’all, I SWEAR this is true—”in hopes of learning more about the black community.” Yes, that’s an actual quote.

Biden says that he became popular at the pool because many of the black people in Wilmington, DE had never talked to a white person before. This raised by bullshit-o-meter, so I decided to look it up. In 1960, Wilmington was 73{ca04638509ab7618004169842ba062d20ec7073b69e1f0489735ce6a44ff3be4} white, according to census records

Anyway, during Biden’s Negro Summer Safari Adventure, one day, all of the town gangsters came to the pool. Now I know what you’re thinking, but don’t stereotype. Gangbangers are NOT a monolith.

Why can’t a real street nigga enjoy a nice refreshing dip? Sometimes a thug wants to play Marco Polo, too. Well, the gang that invaded Biden’s pool was called the Romans, which sounds gangsta AF. And the leader of the Romans was a dude named Corn Pop.

Now if you’re black, I know this shit sounds like some white kid tried to make a gang fairy tale for a sixth-grade play because you and I know there ain’t no squad led by a nigga named Corn Pop going around terrorizing Delaware pools.

But, I guess, in white people minds, thugs get two weeks vacation and go on retreats at city pools. Anyway, Biden says he had no idea that Corn Pop was the duly elected leader of the hood niggas. So when Corn Pop began bouncing on the diving board, which was against the rules,

Biden told him:

“Esther Williams! Get off the board, man…”

Then Biden kicked Corn Pop out of the pool. (I know you’re thinking “Who TF is Esther Williams?” She was a famous swimmer in the 50s. But I admit, I thought he was talking about the lady who played Florida Evans, too)

Anyway, after he kicked the probably fictitious Corn Pop out of the pool, everybody was like: They told Biden that Corn Pop carried a straight razor and was gonna be waiting for him when he got off work. Now you and I both know that, if this was true, Biden would’ve just called the cops to walk him to the car.

But this was in 1962, and before 911, you had to dial a whole seven numbers. Plus, Biden said that he knew that if he called the cops, he wouldn’t be allowed back into the African American community

Nigga, what?

Anyway, Biden says, instead he wrapped a six-foot metal chain around his arm and wrapped that in a towel. Because everyone knows there are ample black chains just laying around the “African America community” but no police officers.

When he went out to the car, Corn Pop was indeed waiting for him. But Biden went Clint Eastwood on Corn and told OG Pop from the Romans:

“You might cut me, Corn Pop, but I’m going to wrap this chain around your head before you do.”

Again, that is a direct quote.

And guess what happened?

Just like that, my nigga CP put down the straight razor and he and Biden became friends. From that day own, Biden was untouchable in the black community because Corn Pop vouched for him

Again, STOP LAUGHING!

Now I don’t know how it works where you live, but in my hood, you don’t actually get a laminated street credential card from the neighborhood thug council but, then again, I’ve never been on the mean streets of Wilmington. But this story is actually recounted in Joe Biden’s 2007 autobiography AND is retold in the Washington Post, here.

But this is not about Biden.

This is a celebration of the life of a straight razor-carrying certified street thug who I’d bet my pinky toe never existed. But if you ask Biden, I bet he’d say Corn Pop has passed on.

RIP my nigga Corn Pop. This is how it sounds when thugs die.

Of course, back in the 1970s, when Joe Biden was still semi-coherent, white Boomers knew so little about blacks that a water-loving gang leader named Corn Pop who carried a knife might have actually sounded credible to them. I very much doubt there is a single member of the Gen-X generational cohort, be he red or yellow, black or white, who could have heard that story with laughing out loud and immediately calling BS on it.

And “the Romans”? He might as well have said Corn Pop was the leader of the Sharks and threatened him with a scary doo-wop number sung acapella.

Boomers are such cheeseballs. They believe everything they are told by anyone they recognize as an authority figure.

Ceterum, non enim ad lunam.

RIP Rick Ocasek

Another leading musician of the ’80s is gone:

The lead singer of The Cars has died at the age of 75 after being found ‘unconscious and unresponsive’ in his Manhattan townhouse.

Ric Ocasek was discovered by estranged wife Paulina Porizkova at around 4.14pm inside his Gramercy Park home in New York, Page Six reported.

The frontman was pronounced dead at the scene and appeared to have died from natural causes.

The Cars were my first favorite band as a teenager. Their sound was definitely new and different, as they bridged the gap between guitar rock and synth pop in a way that pretty much defined the New Wave.

Paper vs blood

Paper Americans discover that not everyone is inclined to pretend that paper is thicker than blood:

Two young Americans, Victor and Cynthia Liu, are “trapped” in China, increasingly desperate and despondent because Chinese authorities have blocked them from leaving for more than a year.

“They are trapped. They are alone. They are desperate to come home,” David Pressman, the siblings’ New York-based attorney, told USA TODAY. “They are literally breaking down.”

The Lius are subject to a so-called “exit ban,” and they’re not they only ones.

Another American citizen, Huang Wan, says Chinese officials are using a “fake” legal case to prevent her from returning to the United States. An Australian resident, Yuan Xiaoliang, has been barred from leaving China for more than eight months, and her husband, an Australian citizen, has been arrested on suspicion of spying, according to Australia’s foreign minister.

The State Department has warned Americans about China’s growing use of exit bans – stating in a Jan. 3 travel advisory that Chinese authorities have sometimes used exit bans to keep Americans in China for years…. Thomas Kellogg, executive director of the Center for Asian Law at Georgetown University Law Center, said China has long used exit bans to stop its own citizens from leaving the country, particularly human-rights activists or other dissidents. But authorities are increasingly using the tactic to harass Americans and other foreign nationals, particularly those of Chinese descent, he said.

What defines a man? Is it is his paperwork? Or is it his DNA? It’s extremely informative to see who is on the side of science and the truth and who is not. The obvious and relevant logic dictates that one cannot simply declare a Chinese man to be an “American” due to his beliefs any more than one can declare a man to be a “woman” or a “fish” on that basis.

NFL open thread

Skol Vikings!

UPDATE: Kirk Cousins is the Charlie Brown of quarterbacks. It’s FIRST DOWN. The RBs are running right over the Green Bay defense, which appears to be almost gassed. Your first two reads are covered. THROW THE BALL AWAY!  Whatever you do, DO NOT TRY TO BE THE HERO.

Naturally, he decides this is the perfect moment to throw an off-balance, under-pressure pass to the corner of the end zone, where Diggs is double-covered. Interception.

This is why the NFL doesn’t have guaranteed contracts.

Coin flips are more reliable than science

The reproducibility crisis in scientistry is even worse than we science skeptics had thought.

Science is facing a “reproducibility crisis” where more than two-thirds of researchers have tried and failed to reproduce another scientist’s experiments, research suggests. This is frustrating clinicians and drug developers who want solid foundations of pre-clinical research to build upon.

From his lab at the University of Virginia’s Centre for Open Science, immunologist Dr Tim Errington runs The Reproducibility Project, which attempted to repeat the findings reported in five landmark cancer studies.

“The idea here is to take a bunch of experiments and to try and do the exact same thing to see if we can get the same results.”

You could be forgiven for thinking that should be easy. Experiments are supposed to be replicable.

The authors should have done it themselves before publication, and all you have to do is read the methods section in the paper and follow the instructions.

Sadly nothing, it seems, could be further from the truth.

After meticulous research involving painstaking attention to detail over several years (the project was launched in 2011), the team was able to confirm only two of the original studies’ findings.

Two more proved inconclusive and in the fifth, the team completely failed to replicate the result…. According to a survey published in the journal Nature last summer, more than 70{ca04638509ab7618004169842ba062d20ec7073b69e1f0489735ce6a44ff3be4} of researchers have tried and failed to reproduce another scientist’s experiments.

Science is not a metric for truth or reality. One should NEVER rely upon scientists’ opinions about anything, because when science is actually reliable, we call it ENGINEERING.

When the gold standard is forty percent, you might as well rely upon flipping a coin.

That which is not wanted

If you don’t care about the subject of a post, that’s fine. But if, for whatever reason, you choose to comment and explain a) that you don’t care about the subject of a post, or, b) why you don’t care about the subject of the post, you will be banned.

If we’re discussing football, those who don’t follow football are not welcome to join the discussion. If we’re discussing Mongolian music, those who don’t like it are not welcome to join the discussion. If we’re discussing video games, those who don’t play them are not welcome to join the discussion. And if you don’t understand why people are interested in the subject of a post, keep your curiosity to yourself. It’s not your concern, it’s not your problem, and it’s not your business.

No one is asking for your opinion.

In short, if you cannot control your male gammatude, your female solipsism, or your narcissism, you are not welcome to comment here. Read all you like. But don’t comment. We don’t want to hear it.

Two days….

Don’t even think about reacting, let alone overreacting, to Trump helping out a political ally in an election fight. Not for at least two days.

U.S. President Donald Trump said on Saturday he had spoken with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu about a possible mutual defense treaty between the two nations, a move that could bolster Netanyahu’s re-election bid just days before Israelis go to the polls.

“I had a call today with Prime Minister Netanyahu to discuss the possibility of moving forward with a Mutual Defense Treaty, between the United States and Israel, that would further anchor the tremendous alliance between our two countries,” Trump said on Twitter.

He added that he looked forward to continuing those discussions later this month on the sidelines of the United Nations General Assembly session in New York.

Netanyahu thanked Trump, saying in a tweet that Israel “has never had a greater friend in the White House,” and adding that he looked forward to meeting at the U.N. “to advance a historic Defense Treaty between the United States and Israel.”

Then again, perhaps things are a little more complicated than they look on the surface….

In a televised interview with Israel’s Channel 12 later on Saturday, Netanyahu made a direct appeal to voters based on the treaty. “I’m going to get us a defence pact that will provide us with security for centuries but for that I need your votes,” he said.

What is Netanyahu working toward, a defense pact with China? He has to know that the USA won’t even be around for decades, let alone centuries.