Wednesday, July 1. 2020
Webinars can be hit or miss. The New York Adventure Club, due to the obvious difficulties of getting out these days, have some on offer. I took in one on Five Points that was excellent, and there is one on July 21 about the Brooklyn Bridge that I have signed up for. $10 isn't too much, I guess, though I'd rather do tours on foot (boy I miss the Urban Hike and I hope we can pull one off in the Fall...I was thinking of focusing on movie locations this time).
If you're interested in spending an hour and learning about NYC's history, here's a great way to do it. Just click the link and see what they have to offer.
 Genetic clusters in the US
Dr. Scott Atlas Calls For Schools To Reopen: "This Is The Most Irrational Public Policy Probably In Modern History"
Kneeling in the Church of Social Justice. America certainly has work to do on race, but ritual and symbolic acts aren't the way forward.
California Legislature Votes to Strike ‘the State Shall Not Discriminate’ from Constitution, Opening the Door to Legalized Discrimination. Equality before the law is at the heart of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.
The ‘Diversity’ Trap - Progressive ideas about diversity have taken over the corporate world but they offer a skin-deep version obsessed only with color and conformity
Marginal Rev:
Social media has messed with our minds. The madness of crowds used to be limited by geography, time, and transaction cost–all of which have been lessened by social media. As a result, the crowds are now bigger and madder. And our brains, which are finely tuned to listen to the crowd (meaning the tribe or village ala Dunbar’s number), are overwhelmed when the crowd is in the thousands or millions. We should discount signals which come at the cost of a tweet but we can’t and so the pressures to conform are intense. If your job isn’t protected, stay off social media or at least use a pseudonym. Even if you do nothing today, the crowd may come after you years later so you can never feel safe.
St. Louis Homeowner Speaks Out After Confronting BLM Militants with Firearm, ‘The Only Thing That Stopped the Mob Was my Rifle’
The Mobs Are Coming for the Progressives
De Blasio Announces Proposal To Slash NYPD Budget By $1 Billion, Divert Cash To ‘Young People’
Police ‘Reform’ and the Making of a Racism Narrative
Scholar forced to resign over study that found police shootings not biased against blacks. Union rep tells College Fix that university should not share data that runs afoul of its support of BLM protests
VDH: The Strategies of Dementia Politics
It took more than five years, but the corporate media finally have the tools and strategy to successfully defeat President Donald Trump.
First Arrests Made Under New Hong Kong "National Security" Law As Thousands Flood The Streets In Protest
India Bans TikTok, Other Chinese Apps Over Security Concerns
Tuesday, June 30. 2020
Kimball: America’s current straits represent the victory of 1960s radicals
Roger K is a smart guy, but I think he's wrong about this. This sort of power stuff has gone on, on and off, since the 1800s. Race just happens to be the hook right now.
Does the hook bring you back?
Sunday, June 28. 2020
18 shot in 24 hours as spike in gun violence in NYC continues.
Guns just keep going off. Maybe hot weather causes it. Climate change?
Four Children, Including 1 Year Old, Killed In Chicago As Violence Spikes In City
Saturday, June 27. 2020
What It’s Like to Live in a City Full of Moose
Revisiting Mengele’s Malignant “Race Science”
The Declining Case for Municipal Recycling
Journalist Absolutely DESTROYS California Officials on Coronavirus and Face Masks
UK Government: “we must seize the opportunity to make the COVID-19 recovery a defining moment in tackling the climate crisis”
1 in 5 Ballots Rejected as Fraud Is Charged in N.J. Mail-In Election
VDH: When states go wild
Noonan in WSJ: The week it went south for Trump
JUDGE BLOCKS NEW YORK’S LIMITATION ON OUTDOOR RELIGIOUS SERVICES
Does the Black Community Support Abolishing the Police?
Then They Came for Abraham Lincoln Week in Higher Education
Tear Gas And Dumpster Fires: Antifa Militants Try to Take Over Portland Police Station
Ace:
I vote we should surrender and appease some more.
Even though following the C*ck plan of giving them the confederate statues doesn't seem to be working.
Quite the opposite: Meeting aggression with weakness seems to have just encouraged more aggression.
Weird that alleged "Reagan Republicans" would have to relearn that in 2020.
Abraham Lincoln at UW-Madison is the latest target of cancel culture
Friday, June 26. 2020
He tries again to get canceled. A good one.
Good fun. He is right that Obama and Biden behaved like traitors to the country, but few will say so. And he is right: the media is designed to make people upset.
Thursday, June 25. 2020
VDH: 2020 Election Will Be a Contest of the Angry
I am not angry. Anger is unhealthy for body and soul.
Wednesday, June 24. 2020
Even I am finding it difficult to keep up a solid routine. Maybe making excuses, but I had a good daily routine which blew up and with all of life complications, it has not been good.
I do not like the new rules at my gyms. I will not deadlift with a mask on, and forget cardio with a mask. That is just unhealthy.
I'll be back to my trainer's home garage on Monday for my heavy weights, I hope. Legal or not, I do not care.
What about you all?
At Quillette, The Great Awokening and the Second American Revolution
"Revolution"? I don't think so. Just a bunch of young white kids with nothing to do. Breaking things is much easier than making things.
Tuesday, June 23. 2020
I agree with this guy: For someone like me, that is a real tragedy and so I would like to understand how this new reality came about.
There are distinct and deep-rooted traditions of rational empiricism and religious sermonizing in American history. But these two modes seem to have become fused together in a new form of argumentation that is validated by elite institutions like the universities, The New York Times, Gracie Mansion, and especially on the new technology platforms where battles over the discourse are now waged. The new mode is argument by commandment: It borrows the form to game the discourse of rational argumentation in order to issue moral commandments. No official doctrine yet exists for this syncretic belief system but its features have been on display in all of the major debates over political morality of the past decade. Marrying the technical nomenclature of rational proof to the soaring eschatology of the sermon, it releases adherents from the normal bounds of reason. The arguer-commander is animated by a vision of secular hell—unremitting racial oppression that never improves despite myths about progress; society as a ceaseless subjection to rape and sexual assault; Trump himself, arriving to inaugurate a Luciferean reign of torture. Those in possession of this vision do not offer the possibility of redemption or transcendence, they come to deliver justice. In possession of justice, the arguer-commander is free at any moment to throw off the cloak of reason and proclaim you a bigot—racist, sexist, transphobe—who must be fired from your job and socially shunned.
Video: Are you ready America?
A darn good piece. And what's the deal about Teddy Roosevelt?
Monday, June 22. 2020
What the hell is going on in this country? When did we, the majority, stop speaking up for ourselves? Crimes against common sense seem to happen every week, yet most of us stay silent.
Georgia House Advances Bill To Dissolve Police Depts Statewide…
Seattle Police Union Chief Begs For ‘Leadership’ After Fatal Shooting In CHOP; CHOP Defends ‘Defund The Police’
" I suspect this attack on an important Hispanic figure in US history will not endear this mob, or those who support it, to the many Americans who really care about Hispanic heritage in our country."
Theodore Roosevelt Statue To Be Removed From NY Museum Of Natural History
Huh?
George Washington Statue, Toppled by Anarchists, Causes 'Harm': Portland's Regional Arts and Culture Council
Historical Illiterates Deface Statue Of Miguel De Cervantes, A Former Slave…
Protester Geniuses Tear Down A Statue Of Ulysses Grant, Who Led Fight To End Slavery
San Francisco Allows Protesters to Topple U.S. Grant, Francis Scott Key Statues
Related, It's Time To Cancel The Democratic Party For Its Long History Of Racism
A Labor Council Has Expelled Seattle's Police Union. Good. Police unions exist to protect cops at the expense of the public.
Trump Supporter Bruce Carter, Who Happens To Be Black, Busts CNN Using Him To Create Fake News – Video…
The ‘cancel’ crew will come for you someday soon
The ACLU's 'Death Star' Client in Its Title IX Lawsuit
Venezuela hosting "disappearances"
Sunday, June 21. 2020
I hope all our readers who are fathers enjoy this day with their families.
My father and mother divorced when I was 8, though he'd already left the house when I was 6. For a good portion of my life, my memories of him were of weekend visitations, driving around with 4 kids in Triumph TR5, (2 in the front, 2 in the 'back', which wasn't really a seat). There was a period of several years when he lived in Micronesia with his wife and my half-sister, so our direct contact was minimal. By the time I was 14, I was usually taking a bus to see him for weekends, once a month or so, or for a week in the summer. Eventually I spent three full summers with him while I worked at the Jersey Shore. I was in college, and it was a good place to spend my summer months.
Divorce is difficult on everyone involved. I remember spending time being angry at my father for leaving. I give my mother a lot of credit for knowing that it's important for children to have a father in their lives, encouraging and enabling us to take time to see him. Even scolding us when we spoke ill of him. Eventually, as I got older and more educated, my relationship with my father became much closer. I am lucky to still have him around, and I will be seeing him later today for the first time in 4 months (thanks to this lockdown).
In a way, I may have been lucky, as my mother remarried, and I wound up having a step-father (though he was not officially a step-father as I still had my father). A tough WWII vet, a good man who did his able best to raise 6 children, 4 of which were not his own. He passed 15 years ago. I was able to have conversations about the war, the Depression (which he grew up during) and learned about real estate (his profession). He was a do-it-yourself man, unfortunately not very skilled, but taught me how to do plumbing, auto, and minor electrical work. There were things he passed on to me that my father never could have.
Being a father has no template. We are certainly not perfect. Hopefully, our mistakes are good learning experiences, for both us and our children.
Today will be a good day to share some of the better stories, both good and bad, with our fathers or our children. Of course, we can do that any day, but it's nice to have a day to really focus. Enjoy your day with your family.
Saturday, June 20. 2020
CHOP (was CHAZ) is going so well with the whole "peace and harmony" thing. On a related note, the name change is meaningful.
We had a lovely June visit to Wellfleet. Cool weather, blue skies, perfect for hiking and biking. The only downside is that not many places are open yet, including the beach sticker place. We worked around it. Lots of restaurants closed forever, some open with outdoor seating.
Why Maskachusetts? You can imagine. Masks in cars, masks walking the dog, masks walking the beaches, masks on runners and bikers. Crazy.
Well, we decided to do a stretch of the Cape Cod Rail Trail (CCRT). Rent a bike and off you go. It is wonderful, riding through marshes salt and fresh, antique villages where you can stop for coffee, woodlands. It's the old railbed for the train from Boston to Provincetown but as of now the relatively flat route is only Wellfleet down to Dennis.
Anyway, at one road intersection I pulled to a stop behind a distinguished professor-looking guy who scolded me "Too close, too close." I said "Sorry, I did not expect you to stop." He raised his voice: "It's not a fucking joke."
By then, Mrs. BD was on the other side of the crossing with that guy's wife, who put her arm over her face and yelled at her "Corona, Corona!" Yelled like a crazy lady.
Mind you, Mrs. BD and I are fairly polite and refined people, but Mrs. BD had had it and responded to the lady "Finally, I have met a real Karen." We went off ahead of them to their relief.
She may not have known what a "Karen" is.
By the way, neither of that couple had a mask on.
|
