Category: Uncategorized

The Shapiro of sports

It’s all about the talent, right? The talent and experience, right? The talent, the experience, and the intelligence, right? It can’t possibly be about ethnipotism, right?

Fans are going to watch NFL games, the NCAA Tournament, the NBA playoffs, etc., no matter who is calling the action. This is true for the NFL draft as well. So with ESPN needing a host for this year’s draft after parting ways with Trey Wingo, the network reportedly has turned to Mike Greenberg.

You’d think the network would want to use someone who has a connection to the NFL or college football, but that isn’t nearly as important as the opportunity for cross-promotion Greenberg provides…. ESPN broke up a successful morning radio show (Mike & Mike) so it could give Greenberg his own morning show (Get Up) and then ended up giving Greenberg his own radio show (Greeny) too.

So it’s not a shock ESPN would go out of its way to give the public even more Mike Greenberg. Now this is the part where I’m supposed to get snarky and say ESPN is giving us more Mike Greenberg even though no one has ever asked for more Mike Greenberg. 

Here is a prediction. The NFL is going to start falling harder and faster in terms of ratings and fan interest, just like the NBA. And no one in the media is going to be able to explain why, because explaining requires undersanding, understanding requires noticing, and noticing is very much discouraged these days.

I guarantee there are a few talented, intelligent individuals with NFL and college football connections who are noticing, though. I suspect the author may be, at the very least, suspicious, given the hilarious dagger at the end.

Personally, I’d prefer someone who is somewhat entertaining….

Civnat fail

 Donald Trump Jr. clearly doesn’t understand the gatekeeper issue any better than his father did.

Guys let’s all help @prageru stop big tech bias sign up here to get in the fight! They are on the frontlines of this issu and need your help!!! It’s a fast and easy signup For something that truly matters

– @donaldtrumpjr

Substituting one neoclown thought policeman for another neoclown thought policeman is not going to accomplish anything. It would be amusing if it wasn’t so tediously predictable. FFS, Dennis Prager has already banned people for thought crime. He’s about as convincing a champion of free speech as Torquemada or Josef Stalin.

Any institution that is not explicitly Christian and Nationalist will be subverted by not-Christians and globalists. Civnattery is guaranteed failure.

Melkor and the Leviathan

The Forge of Tolkien 22, MELKOR AND THE LEVIATHAN, is now on #UATV.

As the Ainur sang the themes unfolded to them by Iluvatar, the greatest of their number, Melkor, or “he who rises in Might,” became impatient that Iluvatar took so little thought of the Void. Conceiving thoughts of his own, Melkor began to make a music of his own, troubling some of the Ainur, but drawing others to his theme. Soon there arose a great storm about Iluvatar’s throne, as the two musics strove against each other—until Iluvatar rose and incorporated Melkor’s discord into his own. What place did Melkor’s discord have in the story of Creation? Why did Iluvatar not simply strike Melkor down? 

In this episode, Professor Rachel Fulton Brown explores the backstory of the angels’ fall as it appears—and does not appear—in the Scriptures upon which Tolkien drew for his characterization of the Ainur. What does Melkor have to do with Satan? What role did the sons of God have in bringing wickedness to the world? And where does the Leviathan come in?

Lockdowns are Fake Science

Isn’t it interesting how the “Follow the Science” crowd immediately ignores the actual scientody in favor of appeals to the authority of scientistry as soon as their hypotheses are subjected to the actual scientific method?

This is becoming repetitive already but it’s very much worth repeating: lockdowns don’t work and a new study has come out re-confirming that fact.

Medical experts Eran Bendavid, Christopher Oh, Jay Bhattacharya, and John Ioannidis published just two weeks ago at the European Journal of Clinical Investigation their research on “Assessing Mandatory Stay-at-Home and Business Closure Effects on the Spread of COVID-19.”

They studied “COVID-19 case growth in relation to any NPI [non-pharmaceutical interventions; i.e., lockdowns: mandatory stay-at-home and business closures] implementation in subnational regions of 10 countries: England, France, Germany, Iran, Italy, Netherlands, Spain, South Korea, Sweden, and the US.” They then examined “case growth in Sweden and South Korea, two countries that did not implement mandatory stay-at-home and business closures, as comparison countries for the other eight countries (16 total comparisons).”

Their findings? “While small benefits cannot be excluded, we do not find significant benefits on case growth of more restrictive NPIs. Similar reductions in case growth may be achievable with less restrictive interventions.” In short: there was no practical difference in effect between countries that locked down and those that didn’t. Or even shorter: whatever benefits lockdowns give are dwarfed by their enormous costs.

This study was complemented by Canadian infectious disease expert Dr. Ari Joffe in his study “COVID-19: Rethinking the Lockdown Groupthink” (November 2020). Here, he stated that “The costs of lockdowns are at least 10 times higher than the benefits. That is, lockdowns cause far more harm to population well-being than COVID-19 can.”

All the lockdowns should be ended immediately. They literally accomplish worse than nothing. The science, as they say, is settled.

Dr. Seuss is racist

And this is why you need to buy hardcover books. Preferably in leather.

Sixty-four years after his creation, the Cat in the Hat turned into a racist.

For over 20 years, March 2 has been recognized as Read Across America Day in honor of Dr. Seuss’ birthday. Now, some useless, far-Left educator group known as Learning for Justice is “demanding” that Dr. Seuss be canceled because of his, wait for it, “racial undertones.” According to The Daily Wire, gutless-run school districts like Loudoun County Public Schools, one prominent in Virginia, are already taking the marching orders, telling its teachers to “avoid connecting Read Across America Day with Dr. Seuss.”

After carefully reviewing books like One Fish, Two Fish, Red Fish, Blue Fish, Loudoun County Public Schools found that Dr. Seuss is not suitable for “culturally responsive” learning.

Here’s the statement. Get ready, it’s good:

“Realizing that many schools continue to celebrate ‘Read Across America Day’ in partial recognition of Dr. Seuss’ birthday, it is important for us to be cognizant of research that may challenge our practice in this regard. As we become more culturally responsive and racially conscious, all building leaders should know that in recent years there has been research revealing radical undertones in the books written and the illustrations drawn by Dr. Seuss.”

The lesson, as always, is this: sink the damn ships! 

Bow down before the one you serve

It’s not as if Jesus Christ didn’t warn Americans about the nation that seeks to rule over them.

You belong to your father, the devil, and you want to carry out your father’s desires. He was a murderer from the beginning, not holding to the truth, for there is no truth in him. When he lies, he speaks his native language, for he is a liar and the father of lies.
– John 8:44
The lesson, as always, is this: sink the ships.

Google locking down Chromium

It looks as if Google is attempting to expand its domination of the browser market:

At this moment, Google Chrome is responsible for over 60{3549d4179a0cbfd35266a886b325f66920645bb4445f165578a9e086cbc22d08} of browser usage. (The exact number differs based on what graph you look at.) If you look at the numbers, Chromium-based browsers like Edge, Brave, Opera, and Vivaldi are starting to eat into Chrome’s number. Take Microsoft Edge for example. The first preview builds were released in April of 2020. By October of that year, it had reached 10{3549d4179a0cbfd35266a886b325f66920645bb4445f165578a9e086cbc22d08} market share and pushed Firefox to number 3. (Part of that market share, undoubtedly was caused by Microsoft pushing an update to replace Internet Explorer 11 and Edge Legacy with the new Chromium-based version.) If we learned one thing through the years, it’s that Google likes to dominate.

While it’s true that most of Google’s browser competitors use their own servers to store user bookmarks and passwords, they still use the same extensions as Chrome. For many people, it’s important to have access to certain extensions for work or fun. To borrow a familiar metaphor, the browser is the platform and the extensions are the applications that the user needs or wants to use.

What would happen to these Chromium-based browsers if Google blocked their access to the Google Chrome Store? Without access to their familiar tools, would they stay with Brave or Edge? I think many would switch back to Chrome because people tend to choose the path of least resistance.

The inherent problem with creating a new browser/platform is getting people to create addons/extensions for it. Case in point: before Microsoft switched to Chromium, it only had a few add-ons available. The majority of browser extensions are created by people as a hobby and maintaining two or more codebases seems more like a job than a hobby. The bottom line is that people would be less likely to create extensions, thus reducing the usability of the browser and leading to a loss of market share.

If you don’t think Google could do this, think again. Google has an iron grip on the Chromium project. As Steven Vaughan-Nichols points out “whatever Google wants to do with Chromium, Google can do it and it doesn’t matter what anyone else wants. This is not how open source is supposed to work. I think it’s time for all those Chromium developers out there to have a serious talk with Google. The vast majority of open-source projects don’t have a single company calling all the shots. Why should Chromium?”

Google Only Supports Open Source when It Benefits Them

Keep in mind that Google has a history of using open source to gain market share and then abandoning it. Android is the biggest example. From the beginning of its time with Google, Android was touted as THE open-source phone operating system. The Android Open Source Project was used by several projects to create their own version of Android. This helped make Android popular.

Then at a certain point, Google introduced an app called Google Play Services. This app is not open source and contains all of the stuff you need to access Google’s services. I’m sure that there is a workaround, but most people don’t want the added responsibility of tinkering with their phone to get it to work. (There is a minority who enjoys doing that and you know who you are.)

Another example is the Metastream saga. Back in 2019, a guy named Samuel Maddock created a side project named Metastream. It was going to be an Electron-based browser that would allow users across the web to watch videos at the same time. The videos would be synced up so that the users would enjoy the experience together. The only problem was that Samuel needed access to a DRM provider so that his users could watch videos on services like Netflix or Hulu.

For Electron/Chromium-based browsers, there is only one option Google Widevine. So, Samuel attempted to get a license for Widevine. Four months later, he got a response stating that “I’m sorry but we’re not supporting an open source solution like this”. In a follow up post, Samual listed other projects that ran into issues with Widevine and were left in the cold by Google. He also quoted Brian Bondy, Co-founder and CTO of Brave, who said, “This is a prime example for why free as in beer is not enough. Small share browsers are at the mercy of Google, and Google is stalling us for no communicated-to-us reason.”

City of whispers

An occupied city is a quiet city:

DC is a city of whispers and if you’re having lunch there (which is a ghost town because no one wants to get their pic taken without a mask) you’ll hear curious House members asking why not a single GOP member signed the letter to Biden to take his nuclear button away.

Presumably Pelosi wanted control of the nuclear arsenal and the GOP wasn’t interested in giving her the nuclear football. Second, House members are curious why Biden missed the State of the Union address scheduled for the 23rd (the media has kept the cancellation quiet). 

It just keeps getting curiouser, doesn’t it? 

When will they learn?

Clay Travis avoids the frying pan, which is nice.

Tired of the “woke” mainstream sports media and big tech companies spouting far-left rhetoric, while refusing to accept any other opinion? As always, OutKick has an alternative for you. Introducing Outkick.locals.com, a new subscriber-based platform designed to allow you to engage with OutKick founder Clay Travis, as well as OutKick contributors and fans.

Clay and other OutKick contributors will be active within the outkick.locals posting text threads, pictures, videos, and responding to your posts. You can ask questions, discuss and debate with each other, and share content or things you may see elsewhere in the sports world.

Locals.com, is a creator crowdfunding site cofounded by Dave Rubin and Assaf Lev. It started in 2019 and is based in New York City. The site was founded after Rubin and Jordan Peterson left Patreon in protest of their policies on creator deplatforming.

10 out of 10 for intentions. 2 out of 10 for execution. At best. This is all too reminiscent of the whole “Forget Twitter, I’m going to Parler!” routine. 

It amazes me how few people recognize the gatekeeper routine.

Motivation

Kevin Garnett explains why you never, ever, talk trash to an individual who finds motivation through competition:

Every NBA fan knows former Timberwolves star Kevin Garnett was a legendary trash-talker. However, there was a time when that trash talk came back to burn him. Appearing on Wednesday’s Jimmy Kimmel Live! Garnett revealed that when he was 19 years old, his teammate J.R. Rider got off to a hot start during a game against the Bulls and that got Garnett chirping at Michael Jordan. Garnett says he’s paid for it ever since.

“I was playing great, probably the best I ever played in my life at this point, and it’s against the Bulls and J.R. Rider is having an unbelievable game, too, and I’m feeling 19,” Garnett explained to Kimmel. “I’m like, ‘Yeah, keep going, you’re killing him. Woo!’ In the short form of it, I woke up a sleeping dog. … It just turned bad, Jimmy, it turned really bad. And it turned bad quick.”

Even Rider knew it wasn’t smart to push Jordan’s buttons.

“J.R. told me to calm down,” said Garnett. “He was like, ‘Yeah, we’re having a good game, but chill. He can hear you.’ I was like, ‘Who cares? Keep going!’”

Not only did Jordan then torch the Timberwolves, he continues to let Garnett know about it.

“Whenever I see Jordan he does the same thing every time,” said Garnett. “He palms my head and he says, ‘Remember the game I gave you 40 in three quarters?’ And then he has this sidekick … around him and he’s like, ‘Pull that up.’ And then a guy goes and pulls it up!

I’m like, ‘What is this?’ This is really Jordan Brand. Who walks around with content? Like, tee it up. It was an experience in which I quit talking trash to Michael.”

Michael Jordan is such a psychotic competitor. It’s truly inspiring. He takes the art of dead horse beating to previously unimagined heights.