Red Scarves vs Yellow Vests

Smug dickhead says: “France has let itself go for too long.
We must reframe everything at a supra national level
Europe can force nations to do things they are not ready to do for fear of their people
“simply as that” the dickhead says
Europe must impose its will on the nations
Dickhead says he’s the organizer of red scarves
says “we must show these seditious they are not the will of the people”
they should go back to work if they even have a job (looks smug)
he says “we are the people”
their will (gilets jaunes) will be constrained by force if necessary (he seems certain of this)
in the end, the state will win, macron will win, EU will win

RT reporter: do you back macron 100{9f98116018ff6c328dc55792d496f6b718acbf13f64942fc915b733dd5f493cb} against gilets jaunes?

dickhead: macron let the fire spread, should have been much firmer, 2 months passed, repression was not enough (!!!)

RT: gilets jaunes leader Rodriguez lost an eye, uh…..

smug dickhead: look at venezuela, 27 dead in one day! France is way too gentle, not firm enough.

RT: (baffled)

smug dickhead: yeah we need a firmer stricter police power to help calm down this crowd (he uses a derogatory expression)

Must be that 115 IQ

Remember, Harvard law professor Laurence Tribe is only successful because he is so much more intelligent than you are. Although I have to admit, I do fight it a little remarkable that Mr. Tribe, who is just as American as any Son or Daughter of the American Revolution, somehow managed to become famous for being a “constitutional law scholar” despite obviously not knowing that the SENATE Majority Leader does not appoint members of the House of Representatives to House committees.

NO CONSPIRACY! Remember that. NO CONSPIRACY!

Go West on audio

Both books of Peter Grant’s very well-regarded Western series, The Ames Archives, are now available in high-quality, DRM-free MP4 format on the Arkhaven store.

BRINGS THE LIGHTNING

When the Civil War ends, where can a former Confederate soldier go to escape the long memories of neighbors who supported the winning side? Where can Johnny Reb go when he can’t go home?

He can go out west, where the land is hard, where there is danger on every side, and where no one cares for whom you fought – only how well you can do it. Walt Ames, a former cavalryman with the First Virginia, is headed west with little more than a rifle, a revolver, and a pocket full of looted Yankee gold. But in his way stand bushwhackers, bluecoats, con men, and the ever-restless Indians. 7 hours, 57 minutes. $11.99.

ROCKY MOUNTAIN RETRIBUTION

Ambushed on their way south, Walt and his men uncover a web of corruption and crime to rival anything in the big city. And rough justice, Western-style, sparks a private war between Walt and some of the most dangerous killers he’s ever encountered, a deadly war in which neither friends nor family are spared.

Across the mountains and valleys of the southern Rocky Mountains, Walt and his men hunt for the ruthless man at the center of the web. Retribution won’t be long delayed…and it cannot be denied. 8 hours, 40 minutes. $11.99.

Predicting the past

This is a useful exchange about linguistics that many TENS defenders really need to read and take to heart:

Q: When the weatherman makes a prediction, we call it a forecast. If a scientist makes an estimate about something in the past (ex. the cost of a candy bar in 1850), what do we call it?

A: A forecast is an extrapolation; it uses past and present observations to predict the future. To take a simple example, if I give you the series of data from successive years as 2,4,6,8 … you may reasonably extrapolate forwards to forecast that the next year’s number is 10. A hindcast (this is the term you are looking for) is also an extrapolation from a set of past observations to a time previous to those observations. For example, if I give you 15, 12, 9 for three years, you may reasonably extrapolate backwards to hindcast that in the previous two years the numbers were 21 and 18.

I would prefer the term “postdiction” to refer to what evolutionists commonly do when they are backtesting claims based on their TENS-flavored theories. This is, of course, in response to a gentleman who was insisting that the past can be predicted:

Vox, you can make predictions about history and past events that are not yet known but your theory predicts and such predictions have been made and found in the field of evolution. Ah I understand your confusion.  You are linking evolution to financial modeling.  The problem with that is that once you have a financial model and use it; the market adapts to that model such that it is no longer predictive because other people will copy the model so you cannot beat them. Genetecists not agreeing and being wrong about the gene mutation rate is not

To which I replied:

A prediction of a past event is not a prediction. Predictions do not concern the predictor’s present knowledge, they concern actual events taking place in the future. If I “predict” that the New York Yankees won a World Series game prior to 1950 – and I honestly don’t know since I don’t follow baseball – that does not make my statement a correct prediction if it turns out to be correct. Your core conception of “prediction” is false. Prediction is not based on knowledge of events, it is based on the timing of events. Look at the etymology of the word. “to say BEFORE”. That means before it HAPPENS, not before you happen to learn about it. What you are describing would be better described as postdiction.

Of course, TENS has proven to be a near-complete failure even as a postdictive model. The interesting thing is that outside the topic of evolution, atheists and other skeptics tend to abhor postdiction and regard it as being indicative of intellectual sleight-of-hand.

Remain embraces Leave

If the British Members of Parliament are foolish enough to force a second referendum on leaving the European Union on the British people, they’re going to be shocked by how many more people vote for Leave. As a result of their devious, anti-democratic machinations, even die-hard Remainers are publicly endorsing No Deal Brexit.

It’s time to end this one way or another. I’ve written about the dangers of a No Deal Brexit. I believe they are real, not some Project Fear construct. But we cannot continue with this paralysis.

There is nothing MPs will learn about Brexit in nine months, or nine weeks, or nine days that they do not know today. The time for more excuses, extensions and procedural sophistry is at an end.

Many MPs think that, by blocking all other avenues, voters will opt to stay, rather than risk No Deal. But they are dangerously deluded. If forced to choose between No Brexit or No Deal, most people will opt for No Deal. And I know this because I’m one of them.

MPs have had their chance. They’ve had their opportunity to set aside their petty differences and allegiances and vanities. And they have failed.

I was a committed Remainer. But this morning I’m now a hard-Brexiteer. I finally understand where the anger comes from.

I don’t think the treasonous MPs will be successful, in part because it is becoming obvious that the public is going to turn on them with a vengeance, in part because the Queen has made her position on the matter clear in her own subtle way. This is probably all political thud and blunder of no consequence whatsoever. But, until the act is successfully accomplished, it cannot be considered done and dusted.

DARKSTREAM: The Descent of TENS

This stream is little more than an hour-long distillation of things I’ve previously written to explain my skepticism regarding the theory of evolution by natural selection, or, more properly, the Theorum of Evolution by (probably) Natural Selection, Sexual Selection, Biased Mutation, Genetic Drift, and Gene Flow, but a number of the viewers apparently found it to be of interest.

My seven core reasons:

  1. The evidence doesn’t exist.
  2. The historical timelines that purportedly support it are constantly mutating.
  3. The theory is a complete failure as a predictive model.
  4. The theory is scientifically and technologically irrelevant. There are no evolutionary engineers.
  5. Theoretical epicycles are increasingly required to maintain its viability.
  6. The theory is a repeated failure as an explanatory model.
  7. There is a very long track record of scientific fraud surrounding it.

My favorite quote about the scientists working in the field of evolutionary is definitely this one:

Scientists usually do not use experimental data because such experiments can be difficult to conduct and because they are very time-consuming.

La Guerre des Gilets Jaunes continues

The protests will continue as long as Macron refuses to resign:

Violence erupted in France for the 11th Saturday in a row today as thousands of so-called Yellow Vest protestors demonstrated against President Emmanuel Macron’s government. It came two days after the head of state had accused British politicians of ‘tearing society apart’ by allowing a Brexit referendum in Britain, but today the chants in his own country were for his resignation.

The worst early violence was in Paris, and in northern towns including Evreux and Rouen, in Normandy, where tear gas and baton charges were used by police to restore order…. Today’s ugly scenes came on the 11th Saturday in a row of violence that now routinely reduces cities and towns to battle zones.

Mr Macron has since pledged that any attempt to damage pubic property will be treated with the ‘most severe action possible.’ Despite a range of concessions by President Macron including scrapping green taxes of diesel and petrol, the Vests continue to call for him to step down.

The anti-democratic whores of the EU do not represent the people. The Macron government is illegitimate and against the interests of France.

Lawsplaining

Nick Rekieta and I will be discussing the law and its relation to comics, crowdfunding, and culture.

Join me for a conversation with Vox Day.  Many of you know of Vox, Some of you probably hate him, some of you probably love him.  He’s a guy who causes visceral reactions, but do you know what he’s actually doing?

I was a little late, so the link begins when I actually showed up for what turned out to be a two-hour conversation. Vox Day Talks Comics, Crowdfunding, and Culture

TENS continues to degrade

Notice that the evolutionary skeptic’s position has consistently proven to be more reliably scientifically post-predictive than the mainstream evolutionist position:

The observation that Galapagos finch species possessed different beak shapes to obtain different foods was central to the theory of evolution by natural selection, and it has been assumed that this form-function relationship holds true across all species of bird.

However, a new study published in the journal Evolution suggests the beaks of birds are not as adapted to the food types they feed on as it is generally believed.

An international team of scientists from the United Kingdom, Spain and the US used computational and mathematical techniques to better understand the connection between beak shapes and functions in living birds.

By measuring beak shape in a wide range of modern bird species from museum collections and looking at information about how the beak is used by different species to eat different foods, the team were able to assess the link between beak shape and feeding behaviour.

Professor Emily Rayfield, from the University of Bristol’s School of Earth Sciences, and senior author of the study, said: “This is, to our knowledge, the first approach to test a long-standing principle in biology: that the beak shape and function of birds is tightly linked to their feeding ecologies.”

Guillermo Navalón, lead author of the study and a final year Ph.D. student at Bristol’s School of Earth Sciences, added: “The connection between beak shapes and feeding ecology in birds was much weaker and more complex than we expected and that while there is definitely a relationship there, many species with similarly shaped beaks forage in entirely different ways and on entirely different kinds of food.

“This is something that has been shown in other animal groups, but in birds this relationship was always assumed to be stronger.”

I’m not even remotely surprised by this, although I am certainly amused given the central importance of bird beaks to the history of TENS. The more that biological science advances, particularly on the genetic front, the weaker, the less necessary, and the more obviously false the theory of evolution by natural selection is consistently proving to be.