Sunday Morning Book Thread - 09-01-2024 ["Perfessor" Squirrel]

Welcome to the prestigious, internationally acclaimed, stately, and illustrious Sunday Morning Book Thread! The place where all readers are welcome, regardless of whatever guilty pleasure we feel like reading. Here is where we can discuss, argue, bicker, quibble, consider, debate, confabulate, converse, and jaw about our latest fancy in reading material. As always, pants are required, unless you are wearing these pants...

So relax, find yourself a warm kitty (or warm puppy--I won't judge) to curl up in your lap, and dive into a new book. What are YOU reading this fine morning?

Posted by: Open Blogger at 09:00 AM | Comments (387) | Trackbacks (Suck)

Daily Tech News 1 September 2024

Top Story

• Bluesky Social has seen record levels of user signups after the Brazilian Communist Party banned Twitter. (Tech Crunch)
  
  The depravity here is threefold:
  
  First, a psychotic judge in Brazil violated the country's laws in pursuit of, well, violating the country's laws some more.
  
  Second, the banning of Twitter only rated an "in brief" item on Tech Crunch, while this full article is spinning it as a win for a favoured site (as in, not connected to Emmanuel Goldstein).
  
  Third, this message from Bluesky's CEO:

  good job Brazil, you made the right choice

  This is rather like Belgium congratulating Germany on choosing to invade Poland and not, well, Belgium.
  
  
  

Posted by: Pixy Misa at 04:00 AM | Comments (233) | Trackbacks (Suck)

Saturday Overnight Open Thread (8/31/24)

*****

The Saturday Night Joke

Nick the Dragon Slayer had a long-standing obsession to nuzzle the beautiful Queen's voluptuous breasts, but he knew the penalty for this would be death.

One day he revealed his secret desire to his colleague, Horatio the Physician; the King's chief doctor.

Horatio the Physician exclaimed that he could arrange for Nick the Dragon Slayer to satisfy his desire, but it would cost him 1,000 gold coins to arrange it. Without pause, Nick the Dragon Slayer readily agreed to the scheme.

The next day, Horatio the Physician made a batch of itching powder and poured a little bit into the Queen's brassiere while she bathed. Soon after she dressed, the itching commenced and grew intense.

Upon being summoned to the Royal Chambers to address this incident, Horatio the Physician informed the King and Queen that only a special saliva if applied for four hours, would cure this type of itch, and that tests had shown that only the saliva of Nick the Dragon Slayer would work as the antidote to cure the itch.

The King quickly summoned Nick the Dragon Slayer.

Horatio the Physician then slipped Nick the Dragon Slayer the antidote for the itching powder, which he quickly put into his mouth, and for the next four hours, Nick worked passionately on the Queen's voluptuous and magnificent breasts. The Queen's itching was eventually relieved, and Nick the Dragon Slayer left satisfied and was touted as a hero.

Upon returning to his chamber, Nick the Dragon Slayer found Horatio the Physician demanding his payment of 1,000 gold coins. With his obsession now satisfied, Nick the Dragon Slayer couldn't have cared less and, knowing that Horatio the Physician could never report this matter to the King, shooed him away with no payment made.

The next day, Horatio the Physician slipped a massive dose of the same itching powder into the King's shorts.

The King immediately summoned Nick the Dragon Slayer...(H/T AZ deplorable moron)

Posted by: Misanthropic Humanitarian at 09:49 PM | Comments (465) | Trackbacks (Suck)

Saturday Evening Movie Thread [moviegique]: Be With You

We had a great run of movies this fortnight-and-a-half, an easy feat when your viewing is almost entirely classics. The Conversation, Legends of the Fall, Army of Shadows, Rear Window, and...uh...Point Break. (OK, I saw the last via Rifftrax, but you know, it's a cheesy movie but a fun one.)

The only new movie we saw was Strange Darling a shot on 35MM crime/thriller/horror which hearkens about the '70s by way of the '90s. It's worth a review of its own but I had to get book four to the editor and today is a rare chance to go see Korean movies with The Boy (who has been increasingly busy as well).

But The Boy pointed out that one thing Strange Darling did so well was something Korean movies do excellently and that is: recontextualizing something you've seen in a new light. So I thought I'd revisit one of my favorite Korean films, the life-affirming Be With You.

Right here. This, this sort of movie, this is the reason we go see Asian films.

They show them on the wall of this little tunnel.

Posted by: Open Blogger at 08:27 PM | Comments (128) | Trackbacks (Suck)

Hobby Thread - Aug 31, 2024 [TRex]

Welcome hobbyists! Pull up a chair and sit a spell with the horde in this little corner of the interweb. As previewed last week, a spin of the Ace of Spades wheel of hobbies has come up with a theme of model building this week.

What do you build? What scale? How detailed to you get? Do you have stacks of boxes of unbuilt models? Did you build as a child? Do you built from kits or from scratch or both? Do you build dioramas? How do you display your finished work? Race cars? Road cars? Airplanes? Jets? Tanks? Ships? Space vehicles? Buildings? Do you have a dream project that you would like to tackle someday?

Looking for horde help to make this work. We're here to talk about model building. We are looking for models that you build, customize, repair and display. Models do not need to be elaborate. As usual, keep this thread limited to hobbies. Politics and current events can wait for other threads. Play nice. Do not be a troll and do not feed the trolls. Pants not required.

Posted by: Open Blogger at 05:30 PM | Comments (178) | Trackbacks (Suck)

Ace of Spades Pet Thread, August 31

* * *

Happy Labor Day Weekend and welcome to the almost world famous Ace of Spades Pet Thread. Thanks for stopping by. Kick back and enjoy the world of animals.

Would you like a treat?

Let's relax a little with the animals and leave the world of politics and current events outside today.

Posted by: K.T. at 03:24 PM | Comments (94) | Trackbacks (Suck)

Gardening, Puttering and Adventure Thread, August 31

Happy Labor Day Weekend! Got guests in the back yard? Serving anything from the garden?

About the photo above:

This iron kettle has been in my family for several generations, mostly used indoor to hold kindling . I don’t have a fireplace and I don’t hang on to magazines so I drilled some holes in the bottom. The first couple of years I planted flowers directly in the kettle and, of course everything got fried because , duh, metal gets really hot in full sun. This hibiscus is in its original nursery container, and sits in a bucket. Still, I have to water it every other day, leaving at least an inch of water in the bucket. I love the red throat. The flowers are 5” across.

Liz953

I love it!

Posted by: K.T. at 01:33 PM | Comments (47) | Trackbacks (Suck)

California as a ridiculous oligarchy

Sacramento-San Joaquin River Delta

California as Saudi Arabia

Happy Labor Day Weekend from a part of California that's not all that "woke". Sometimes we wonder how there can be so many differences between the "woke" and "unwoke" parts of the state. Back in 2018, a U.S. News study ranked California worst in quality of life, particularly in the categories of environment and social engagement. But there are a lot of people who can still pretend that things are going great in the state, and for some people, things still ARE going pretty well! Problems in the state are not distributed equitably.

California is blessed with a lot of natural advantages which the uniparty government is busy squandering. A lot of people wonder how the state has not collapsed yet.

Back in April, NorCal Sierra Foothills Lurker sent in a great summary piece by Stephen Green on just how ridiculously profligate Sacramento can be:

"I could have sworn I had another $73 billion around here somewhere," California Gov. Gavin Newsom, possibly.

$73 billion is the size of California's budget deficit this year, a deficit bigger than the annual budgets of 41 other states. It's at times like these — another is when you wake up in a location you don't recognize without your pants — that the people involved in creating the mess must ask themselves, "How the hell did that happen?"

The fact is that before finding themselves in a $73 billion hole, assemblycritters in Sacramento had so much money coming in that they barely knew how to spend it all. I'm kidding on that last point, of course. Just as quickly as California found itself with a $100 billion surplus in 2022, Newsom announced big plans on how to squander every cent of it.

And his Team was right there with him.

But what it comes down to is that Sacramento found itself with a tidy little sum and, instead of tucking it away for a rainy day, blew it all on pet projects and vote-buying. Here's that rainy day, as the song says, but the irony is that California was seeding the clouds.

Like every other state during this country's stupid, useless, and economically suicidal COVID lockdowns, California was given oodles in federal funny money to paper over the lockdown damage done. Much of that money came from Presidentish Joe Biden's inflationary American Rescue Plan Act (ARPA) of 2021.

You'll totally believe what happened to the ARPA money, as detailed by Assemblyman Joe Patterson (R-Rocklin). . .

In essence, Sacramento did spend the same money twice — it's just that they put the first half on the credit card and the other half came from their rich uncle in Washington.

And that, ladies and gentlemen, is how you go from a $100 billion surplus to a $73 billion deficit in little more than a year. California's $173 billion turnaround from red to black is unprecedented in the histories of all 50 states.

In other words, half went on the California credit card and half went on the National credit card! YOU are the rich uncle!

*

Can you think of another team that might be prone to over-spending? (Great piece. Thanks, J.J.)

*

A few days ago, Stephen Green quoted Peter Thiel from a post on Battleswarm Blog:

“It’s not the way you might want to design a system from scratch, but it’s pretty stable. People have been saying Saudi Arabia is ridiculous, it’s going to collapse any year now. They’ve been saying that for 40 or 50 years. But you know, if you have a giant oil field you can pay for a lot of ridiculousness… I think that’s the way you have to think of California. There’s things about it that are ridiculous, but there’s something about it. It doesn’t naturally self-destruct overnight.”

Even if Elon Musk and some others leave and there's poop on the sidewalks of San Francisco, there's still a lot of money coming into the government in California.

Posted by: K.T. at 11:15 AM | Comments (160) | Trackbacks (Suck)

The Classical Saturday Morning Coffee Break

(I can so relate. How about you?)

Good morning boys, girls and everything in between. Difficult to believe September begins tomorrow. Enjoy summer while you can. I know I am.

Posted by: Misanthropic Humanitarian at 08:37 AM | Comments (329) | Trackbacks (Suck)

Daily Tech News 31 August 2024

Top Story

• Brazil's spiral into becoming the North Korea of the Southern Hemisphere continues to accelerate. (AP News)
  
  Tomas de Torquemada of the country's Supreme Federal Court has ordered all ISPs in the country - presumably somehow including Starlink - and all app stores to block access to Twitter.
  
  Torquemada also ordered app stores to remove VPN software, and ordered a fine of $8900 per day for any company or individual using a VPN to access Twitter.
  
  The justification for this is that Twitter doesn't have a legal representative in Brazil. (Nor I should note does this blog. Does Torquemada know how the internet works?)
  
  The reason Twitter doesn't have a legal representative in Brazil is that Torquemada threatened to jail her, and when she resigned, froze her bank accounts.
  
  
  
• Space rocks.
  

Posted by: Pixy Misa at 04:00 AM | Comments (277) | Trackbacks (Suck)

Speaking Words Of Wisdom, ONT

Hello Horde! Welcome to Friday night. On with the memes!

Posted by: WeirdDave at 10:00 PM | Comments (417) | Trackbacks (Suck)

Eerie Weather Cafe

Unreal clouds over Harrodsburg, Kentucky
no seriously they look like they were made
by the Unreal Engine in 2006
You Got the Lightning Gun
via @TheFigen_

Sorry I deleted the last thread. I just realized I need open thread content for Monday and here I am wasting two good videos at the end of the day when a Cafe's coming up anyway.

Pretend you didn't see those videos on Monday.

Sidewalk-surfing doggo gives zero ruffs about pedestrians, just like a human skateboarder.

Newborn baby goat. Don't make fun of his Giant Head.

Jumping off a river in Switzerland. Don't ask how they know it's safe to jump, with no one passing beneath them. I think they're just Hope-Leaping.

He developed this trick pool shot -- with the cue ball going into the pocket, but then coming back out -- to celebrate Easter.

The new guy is rude.

Bunny agility contest.

Adoption day. Free smiles for everyone.

Not all geese are assho.

There's so much pouncing going on here I don't know who's from which party.

King of the Jungle.

When you care about your dumb friend.

Dog stack.

Purr-kour.

Some note that those wingsuit videos never show a guy smashing into a rock. Well, here's a video showing a female freerunner having a really bad fall, getting her arm and hand broken in multiple places, and going through recovery. It's tough at first, but her perseverance pays off, and she's back out trying to kill herself again (Instagram/IG).

More transforming furniture (Instagram/IG).

What your cat does when he's not bothering you (Instagram/IG).

Cat making crazy sounds (IG).

Unpleasant video of pilots in high-g training (IG).

Posted by: Disinformation Expert Ace at 07:20 PM | Comments (320) | Trackbacks (Suck)

Pre-Cafe Thread

Posted by: Disinformation Expert Ace at 06:57 PM | Comments (62) | Trackbacks (Suck)

The Week in Woke

The Guardian: Male bonding doesn't have to be about "bravado and bros." It can also be about spray-painting your pubic hair and dancing with other naked men on stage.

Dr. Evil comments: "Riiiiight."

Male bonding doesn't have to be about bravado and bros. Dancing on stage naked taught me a better way

I have a feeling Uncle Touchy taught him this "better way" some years back.

Friendships based on sport and alcohol don't always allow us to be our true selves. Shared vulnerabilities enrich our lives

This "man" is appearing twice weekly in some naked gay production of Wagner's The Flying Dutchman.

He claims that his body issues often compel him to seek "validation from women."

Dr. Evil again: "Riiiight."

On stage, the spray paint made our pubic hair hard, and the voices of the opera singers made our hair stand on end as we danced around with them in the illuminated darkness, our facial expressions frozen. A captivating experience of sound, light and movement.

We were fragile, powerful, ridiculous and funny at the same time. Our cocks dangled in unison to the music. Male togetherness, so often difficult to combine with presence, vulnerability and meaning, seemed in this context easy and self-evident.

Previously, relating to men in groups had scared me; it was simply not possible to for me to hang out with a group of men without freezing up. But this was different.

I have been thinking about this experience since the return of war to Europe. Sweden has abandoned its neutrality and we are told we must be prepared for the threat of Russian aggression, for war. The military has long been one of the most glorified forms of male association in our culture, in movies and in books. A powerful, noble male bond is forged via a shared will to compete against another group of men, to the death if need be.

The military may now be an outdated picture of ideal male companionship, but large groups of men doing anything together other than playing sports, performing, drinking or fighting can still be hard to imagine. Intimacy between men in groups, when it occurs, is traditionally created by an external threat, imagined or real. If that pressure is missing, we still often become incapable, lacking common points of support.

Group settings in which men are allowed to be sensitive beings can be difficult to find beyond the high-pressure arenas of professional sports. Within the limited confines of these ritualistic forms all the emotional and relationship issues that men have to grapple with must be confronted.

But the oppression is palpable....

A motley collection, we sat in dressing gowns in the smoking room and waited for our next call. We felt free to sit there and chat about everything and anything. After a few months of stripped-down waltzing, the arias and the community had etched themselves so deeply into my body that, 20 years later, I still struggle with the impulse to throw off my clothes and dance when I hear the notes of Wagner.

Expressions of male friendship have changed since then. I now go to the gym two days a week with my gym bros, and while we work out we can talk about almost anything. A friend and I recently started a podcast about culture and masculinity....

It's called, coincidentally, "The David French Show."

The big problem we still have with masculinity and friendship is that, like art and literature for that matter, friendship involves ceding control and becoming vulnerable in the eyes of another person. Masculinity doesn't have to be about football and pub bravado any more than it need be about war. Likewise, male mutual support can be found in the most surprising places. But my question would be: has the male community modernised enough to allow this vulnerability?

...

Exposing our true selves can release us from the trap of received ideas about masculinity; it lets us take ownership of our essential fragility and, even at the risk of disappointment, makes us more human.

Senor Chang has my proxy.

Posted by: Disinformation Expert Ace at 06:00 PM | Comments (225) | Trackbacks (Suck)

RFKJr's Running Mate Nicole Shanahan Releases an Ad So #Based That I Grew Balls on My Knuckles

Good stuff:

Posted by: Disinformation Expert Ace at 05:00 PM | Comments (250) | Trackbacks (Suck)

Hollywood Bust: Technicians, Craftsmen, and Below-the-Line Workers Being Laid Off in Droves

Before getting to that, Strong and Diverse Plank of Zero-Charisma Wood Amandla (Amandla, lol) Stenberg has some Thoughts about why her piece-of-shit garbage-fire show failed so badly:

The Acolyte star Amandla Stenberg revealed that she is "not surprised" that the Disney+ series set in the Star Wars universe was canceled after one season following the "vitriol, prejudice, hatred and fateful language" that the cast received from internet trolls since the series was announced and through its cancelation earlier this month.

Stenberg had dual roles in The Acolyte, as twins Osha and Mae, who fall on opposite sides of The Force. The actress spoke out on her Instagram Stories on Wednesday night about her experience with fans, whose relentless vitriol made her feel compelled to respond to, as she says, "honor my value system."

"I'm going to be really transparent and say that it's not a huge shock for me," Stenberg told her fans of the show's cancellation after one season. "Of course, I live in the bubble of my own reality, but for those who aren't aware, there has been a rampage of vitriol that we have faced since the show was even announced -- when it was still just a concept. No one had even seen it. That's when we started experiencing a rampage of, I would say, hyper-conservative bigotry and vitriol, prejudice, hatred and hateful language toward us."

One of the most important skills needed to improve and succeed is the ability to take criticism, evaluate it as either valid or invalid, and then adjust one's performance and improve oneself as needed to improve.

DEI mandates that no criticism of any Privileged Minority is ever valid, and thus they never feel the need to improve.

It's one thing for a talentless actress like Amandla Stenberg to sleepwalk through yet another crap piece of Disney Star Wars "content." The real problem is with DEI "doctors" who think it's racist that you expected them to know that this medicine could cause potentially-fatal allergic reaction, or this DEI engineer who thinks it's sexist to expect her to accurate calculate the maximum load of a bridge's supports.

On to the layoffs.

Much of the slump in Hollywood has nothing to do with politics. Studios and streaming services overpaid and overproduced "content" to fill their streaming start-ups with. It was never sustainable for these companies to spend literally billions on streaming "content." It was all a loss-leader -- they all overspent to attempt to be one of the two or three companies that survived the Streaming Wars. All that had to end eventually.

Hollywood also bet big on the idea that if it produced expensive IP exploitation films crammed with CGI, they would spend $200 million to make a movie, but be virtually guaranteed to make $500 million to a billion plus.

This bet has turned very sour over the past few years. People are no longer impressed by CGI and are sick of the simplistic, shallow, machine-like stories that are told by almost all CGI-driven movies. So that was also a crash that was bound to arrive sooner than later.

That said, the fact that half the country loathes Hollywood and wishes to boycott them doesn't help.

LA Times: It's a Summer of Layoffs in Hollywood.

Last year, Hollywood braved the summer of strikes. This year, a cruel mirror image has appeared: a brutal season of layoffs.

The entertainment industry is reeling from cuts at Paramount Global, which last week began a deep cost-cutting effort that is expected to eliminate 2,000 jobs, or 15% of staff, by year's end ahead of a long-in-the-works ownership change.

...

The workforce reduction is just another example of the full-on reset the film and TV business is enduring in the aftermath of the streaming wars. Debt-saddled Warner Bros. Discovery recently targeted nearly 1,000 cuts in its latest round of downsizing. Walt Disney Co.'s TV division last month shed 140 workers, the latest in a round of layoffs at the Burbank company.

Studios used the writers' and actors' strikes as cover to reduce their spending after losing billions of dollars trying to catch up with Netflix. All the while, the cable TV business continued to disintegrate, like a slowly melting glacier that suddenly broke into pieces.

I'm very happy I cut the cord. I recommend it to everyone. Cutting the cord is like shedding thirty pounds overnight.

Paramount's and Warner Bros. Discovery's decisions to write down the value of their cable networks felt like an admission that the TV business had reached a point of no return, and that once formidable brands including TNT, HGTV, MTV and Comedy Central had lost relevance.

...

For the workers in the entertainment industry who've been struggling to find jobs since the "hot labor summer" and fall concluded, there's been little relief so far. Only recently have glimmers of hope started to emerge, and optimism has been blunted by the sense that the business is smaller than it was a few years ago, when companies simply couldn't get enough content.

...

[G]reen light activity was still down 9.9% compared with the first half of 2023, according to Ampere data. Even more dire are comparisons with the first half of "peak TV" year 2022, when the companies commissioned 1,515 programs in the U.S. and Canada. Taking a more global view, the data also show that a large portion of the newly commissioned shows and streaming movies are being produced abroad and for less money.

...

There's a reason "Survive till '25" has for months been the mantra of below-the-line workers, writers, actors and others looking to get on with the business of making shows and movies. The phrase echoes the refrain of fans of beleaguered sports teams and people waiting for an $11-billion annual box office: "We'll get 'em next year."

Hollywood is slowly getting back to work, but the days of peak TV aren't coming back. Some entertainment companies are commissioning more shows again, but the comeback remains incredibly slow. When will Hollywood workers struggling to find work get some relief?

Unfortunately, it's the more blue collar workers -- who are not nearly as left-looney as the higher-paid actors and soulless producers -- who are bearing the brunt of the recession.

Production designer Dave Blass wrapped his last big project, filming the Paramount+ series "Star Trek: Picard" in Toronto in 2022 before the Writers Guild and SAG-AFTRA walkouts hit last year. Even now, almost a year after those strikes ended, the two-time Emmy nominee for "Justified" says Hollywood's production designers, set decorators and their crews still have little work.

"I'm just trying to stay positive and get through this," says Blass, 55, adding that others are far worse off. "Most people have been hanging on by their fingernails, and they're running out of fingernails. I know Emmy Award winners who are driving around delivering auto parts."

To pay bills, Blass has taken short-term graphic design gigs and sold autographs at "Star Trek" conventions. He is taking lessons to become a FAA-licensed drone photographer for real estate listings. "It's like you're starting from scratch," he says.
As a member of what is broadly known as the art department -- production designers, set decorators, art directors, graphic artists, illustrators, model makers, scenic painters, construction crews and more -- Blass belongs to the vast pool of below-the-line talent who do not earn profit participation or residuals. Nevertheless, during the 2023 strikes, these artisans picketed in solidarity with the writers and actors who continue to make money after the final frames are shot.

The hourly workers (with rates that start around $40 an hour) and flat-fee weekly contract players of the art department are responsible for transforming the blank canvases of soundstages and back lots into the suburban cul-de-sacs and intergalactic space stations you see on-screen. Yet despite the recent ratification of their own union contracts, with a 7% pay bump in hourly rates for the first year, many art department workers are still looking at plummeting bank balances and blank work schedules as Hollywood's TV and film businesses contract and the flight of production overseas contributes to a painful industry slowdown.

...

After 18 years, Jennifer Fulmer, a set decorator on four seasons of ABC's "black-ish" spinoff "Grown-ish," says the slowdown has made her feel like she's stepped back in time to the early years of her career. She hasn't worked since March, and her income has dropped by half.

"I know a lot of people who have moved. One set dresser I know is working as a lifeguard this summer," she says. Fulmer earns money from an Airbnb in Big Bear that she owns and decorated, and she has been considering a side hustle helping people decorate their Airbnbs or doing event planning.

I'm not happy about innocent people losing their jobs, but there's no other way to teach the higher-ups a lesson.

Posted by: Disinformation Expert Ace at 04:00 PM | Comments (270) | Trackbacks (Suck)

James Varney: Public Schools Have Adopted the Same Strategy With Repeat Pedophiles That the Catholic Church Did -- Just Ship 'em Off to a Different District

Weird how the leftwing Marxist media was so outraged that the Catholic Church simply moved child-molesting priests to different dioceses, but when their political allies the teachers unions take the exact same strategy of playing Hide the Pedophile, they take zero interest.

I don't think we'll be seeing any Oscar-winning movies about the brave Marxist media getting to the bottom of this pedophile ring.

To outward appearances, Michael Allen was a revered high school coach in the tiny community of Little Axe, Oklahoma -- a caring, charismatic leader who mentored star athletes on his girls' softball and boys' baseball teams.

All of that changed when Allen and fellow coaches showed up at a 2002 spring break trip by Little Axe High School students to South Padre Island, Texas, some 750 miles south.

Ashley Terrell, a 17-year-old senior, and a friend were coaxed to the coaches' hotel room where a party with alcohol led to Ashley blacking out. She woke up to find Allen in bed with her while her friend cried out for her from the bathroom, alleging she had been abused by another coach. Scared and confused, the girls fled the room.

Ashley quickly told her mother and school officials, including a school security officer she confused with a police officer. They assured her the matter would be handled. But Allen was never arrested or charged with any crime. He resigned quietly from Little Axe in 2002. In the years since, he has coached or taught at seven other Oklahoma high schools, according to state records, a development Ashley found appalling.

"I watched them pass the trash right in front of me," said the woman, now Ashley Rolen, 39, an Oklahoma City entrepreneur married to a pastor. She is working to publicize the problem of sexual misconduct, particularly among K-12 school employees. "My story is significant but not unique," she notes ruefully.

Rolen's case illustrates a shadowy and largely undocumented aspect of the national crisis involving the sexual abuse of K-12 students by teachers, administrators, coaches, bus drivers and other staff. Experts say the hundreds of school employees arrested each year and the more than $1.2 billion in related settlements paid out by school districts in just the last decade represent a mere fraction of the problem in a system that works to deny and hide the abuse of minors.

There is no national data for sexual misconduct involving K-12 school employees, according to the Department of Education.

Of course, why would there be. The feds collect national databases about rape but when it comes to their political allies the teachers unions raping children, they want to keep the matter unknown and hidden from the public.

There's an adage in the self-improvement field: What gets measured gets improved. Conversely: If you're not measuring, you're not improving.

In other words, you cannot hope to gain any improvement in a skill unless you regularly measure your progress in it. Otherwise, you'll just forget about it and stop trying.

That's why the feds don't measure the sexual abuse committed by their allies the teachers unions and their unofficially-tolerated pedophile rings: they don't want the situation improved. They don't want their dear civil servant brothers and sisters to have their precious careers damaged by "little slip-ups" of child molestation and even rape.

They want everyone to just forget about it like they forget about New Year's resolutions.

The most recent outside research estimates only 5% percent of K-12 sexual misconduct cases are turned over to law enforcement, and only a fraction of those result in prosecutions.

"Given what we already know, based on existing research, it is of epidemic proportions and is deliberately ignored by the powers that be," said Terri Miller, president of the advocacy group SESAME (Stop Educator Sexual Abuse Manipulation & Exploitation).

Victims of sexual misconduct by school predators may number in the millions, which would surpass the size of similar scandals in the Roman Catholic Church or the Boy Scouts, according to reports from academics and think tanks.

The Defense of Freedom Institute, a conservative advocacy nonprofit focused on education and workforce issues, concluded in a study last year that "the ease with which school officials can pass sex abusers to other districts" helps explain why complaints of sexual violence filed with the U.S. Department of Education's Office for Civil Rights more than tripled between 2010 and 2019. The U.S. had 49.5 million K-12 students in the last school year, according to federal figures.

News accounts as well as litigation surrounding K-12 sexual misconduct cases illustrate aspects of the problem Miller describes as "mobile molestors":

A January lawsuit against Clark County Nevada schools around Las Vegas alleges union contracts protected predators who would drift from one school to another, racking up new victims along the way.

* The Tahoma, Washington, school system settled a case last year in which it admitted it was "negligent in continuing to employ a former paraeducator after reports he was sexually abusing and grooming students."

* An Oregon case was settled for $3.5 million in March, the state's largest such settlement, after a judge ruled the plaintiff could proceed with a claim of "state created danger" because officials had failed to act.

* In Camden, New Jersey, Wasim Muhammad plans to resume duties this month as Camden School Advisory Board president two months after the district settled for $2 million a lawsuit from a woman who said Muhammad sexually abused her when he taught there decades ago.

* Also this month, a teacher hired by Stamford, Connecticut, schools was revealed to have previously been investigated for inappropriate behavior with students in New York City schools.

Such recent examples confirm a long-term and continuing trend. A 2010 report by the Government Accountability Office to a House Committee found that in a majority of cases it reviewed the predators should have been stopped earlier.

"At least 11 of these 15 cases involve offenders who previously targeted children," the report said. "Even more disturbing, in at least 6 cases, offenders used their new positions as school employees or volunteers to abuse more children."
Sidebar: A School Sex-Abuse Suspect Who Didn't Get Away

The problem and the cover-up are not limited to public schools. The prestigious Horace Mann School in New York City covered up rampant sexual abuse by staffers in the 1970s, before reaching private agreements with dozens of former students and apologizing in 2013. A Boston Globe "Spotlight" investigation found widespread sexual misconduct buried in the records of hundreds of elite New England private schools, including extensive failures to act promptly at St. George's School in Rhode Island.

Notice that the ultraliberal Marxist Boston Globe -- which had a heroic movie made about its investigation into pedophiles in the Catholic Church -- is willing to expose pedophile teachers at private schools.

But not at the bastions of their leftwing government-school teacher union allies.

...

An offender may have scores of victims. The Government Accountability Office cited four reasons such predators are able to filter through the system, hurting students over many years in multiple locations:

* Resignations that allowed the school to consider the matter closed and then even recommend the departing employee to a new school.

* Failure to "perform preemployment criminal history checks."

* Checking applicants' fingerprints only against regional rather than national databases.

* And the simple failure to "inquire into troubling information regarding criminal histories."

These "oversights" are deliberate. When institutions serially "fail" to accomplish their stated mission, it's time to recognize that their stated mission is not their real mission.

Their real mission is to protect pedophiles -- and any other government-school union member.

"Passing the trash has created a pool of mobile molesters in our nation's schools," said Miller. "And we won't know about them until some brave person or bystander comes forward."

Multiple explanations have been given for the system's frequent failures to stop predators, ranging from bureaucratic inertia to contracts that protect teachers or administrators. Whatever the cause, Amos Guiora, law professor at the University of Utah, believes failing to address sexual misconduct at its source, and thus enabling predators to offend again, lies at the heart of the matter.

"All of these incidents would be preventable after the very first instance if the perpetrator were not protected," he said. "If they know they will or might be protected, the pattern will continue. Bad as the perpetrator is, without the enabler, he can't operate."

Read the whole thing at Real Clear Investigations.

Because the media is covering up for the pedophiles it allies with, James Varney shouldn't expect to have his life-rights bought up by Hollywood, unlike the Boston Globe editors and reporters.

Below, a related video from James Lindsey: when you see woke institutions "fail," they're not actually failing. They're actually accomplishing the goals they set out to accomplish.

It's just that their publicly-stated goals are not their real goals.

Their real goals are the destruction of civilization, so that communism can rise up as a solution (to the very problems deliberately caused by communist destroyers).

Posted by: Disinformation Expert Ace at 03:00 PM | Comments (210) | Trackbacks (Suck)

Is RFKJr. the Key to Attracting Suburban "Health Moms"?

The realignment of left and right has broken a lot of the political ice that kept people frozen into positions they've held so long they've forgotten why they adopted them in the first place.

One area where the left and right are more aligned than before is on matters of health. There are a lot of right-leaning gym bros who have looked into what they might have previously rejected as "silly health worryism" from the left, and found those positions have some merit.

For example: Hollywood has long been a bastion of "left-wing anti-vax nuttery." Now many on the right have adopted vax-skeptical positions.

Women have tended to be much more health-conscious than men and have been more willing to look at new thinking on the issues. Men, especially conservative-leaning men, tend to dismiss all "new thinking" as faddish and Obviously Wrong.

You know, I thought the same thing about the Atkins diet. Faddish and obviously wrong! But Atkins' book explained that this wasn't faddish and new -- and that Akshually, the old thinking had been, for one hundred years of medicine, that carbohydrate causes weight gain, not fat.

It was only in the late 70s and then more seriously in the 80s that the "old thinking," that carbohydrate causes weight gain and dietary fat is relatively benign, got displaced in favor of the theory that dietary fat was the enemy and we should replace fat with lots and lots of carbs.

And that "new thinking" was pushed by... the federal government, which, of course, always gets everything right.

Anyway, I think that these simple rules-of-thumb about whether a theory is "new" or "time-tested" is simplistic -- new, as of when? Is "eating naturally" a "new," "Hippie" idea? Weren't people doing that for 10,000 years?

RFKJr.'s endorsement of Trump, and pushing of health as a major issue -- why are chronic diseases worse than ever? Why are children, especially, sick with chronic illnesses at great rates than at any other point in history? -- might drag some of these "Health moms" to the Trump side.

Maybe.

Out: Soccer Moms and Security Moms. In: Health Moms.

Is RFK Jr. the secret to suburban women?

Everyone says that Donald Trump needs to recruit suburban women voters. Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. may be his secret weapon. We used to hear about soccer moms, but RFK, Jr. may be able to mobilize a new group, the Health Moms.

Several years ago, I was eating lunch at one of the concourse "sidewalk cafes" in the Houston airport when I noticed that a guy sitting a few tables away was attracting a steady stream of attractive, middle-aged, soccer-mom types stopping by for autographs. I had no idea who he was, but I asked my waiter who said he was a vaccine activist. Apparently he was a rock star among yoga pants wearing moms who worried about vaccine safety and the like. (This was pre-Covid).

In that crowd, RFK, Jr. is a much, much bigger rock star. And the suburban Health Moms who don't trust the establishment on health issues are numerous and don't just fall on the right.

In fact, the crunchy, health-conscious mom shopping local and organic, avoiding high-fructose corn syrup and canola oil, and suspicious of the prescriptions and proscriptions of the medical establishment, has generally been found on the left, though that has changed in recent years to a degree. Popular Instagram accounts like House in Habit, with over 1.2 million followers, talk about this stuff all the time to huge audiences.

A lot of gym bros have adopted this as Bro Science.

...

Government nutrition guidelines have as much to do with what foodstuffs the government wants people to buy as what is good for them. (As even NPR has reported, concerns about eggs and cholesterol were made popular by President Lyndon Baines Johnson, trying to hold down food prices in a time of inflation. Johnson told the Surgeon General to issue an alert about cholesterol in eggs, so people would buy fewer and the price would fall.)

The "food pyramid" is a joke, the FDA does a poor job of policing foods and additives, and Americans are way too fat, and it's not just because we aren't exercising enough.

People care about their health, but people -- especially many mothers, I suspect -- care even more about their children's health.

...

What matters for the election is that RFK, Jr. is talking about that stuff -- under the rubric of "Make America Healthy Again" -- and the Health Moms are listening, and now he's endorsed Trump. This election is likely to be close. And close elections are decided at the margins.

Glenn Reynolds adds:

[As always, if you like these essays, please take out a paid subscription. I will thank you, and my family will thank you.]

Kamala Harris says she is very interested in telling people to eat less red meat-- a health prescription right out of 1970s junk "science."

But I'm sure she'll change that position soon enough.

Posted by: Disinformation Expert Ace at 02:00 PM | Comments (351) | Trackbacks (Suck)

Claim: CNN Taped 41 Minutes of Puffball Interview With Kamala But Edited It Down to Just 18 Minutes

The filthy Gaslight Media are just corrupt fonts of endless propaganda and disinformation.

Is this claim true? I don't know, but I'll run with it the same way CNN ran with the "Russian Collusion" and "Russian Disinformation Laptop" hoaxes without checking even a little bit.

Allegations have surfaced that CNN aired just 18 minutes of a 41-minute joint interview with Vice President Kamala Harris and Minnesota Governor Tim Walz. A social media user claiming inside knowledge suggested that significant portions of the interview were cut due to objections from Harris's team, raising questions about what may have been omitted.

Key Details:

A Twitter user, Paulie (@PkgcGop), who claims to have inside knowledge at CNN, tweeted that the network had 41 minutes of footage but that "Kamala Harris and her team objected to over half of the already taped interview."

Paulie alleged that Harris's team pressured CNN into cutting significant portions of the interview.

Paulie also tweeted that Harris avoided answering tough questions about how she could support both the Green New Deal and fracking, suggesting that these segments were removed because "she didn't have an answer for it except to say she will 'get it done.'"

...

During the aired portion, Harris was questioned on several key policy issues, including her past statements on fracking. When asked by Bash if she still supported banning fracking, Harris claimed, "No, and I made that clear on the debate stage in 2020... I kept my word, and I will keep my word."

Harris also addressed the issue of immigration, particularly her role in addressing the root causes of migration from Central America. She claimed that her work as vice president had "resulted in a number of benefits," including a reduction in the number of immigrants coming from the region, despite crossings reaching record highs. However, when pressed on why the Biden-Harris administration waited three and a half years to implement sweeping asylum restrictions, Harris cast blame on Trump, claiming that they had worked with Congress on a border security bill, which Trump and Congressional Republicans did not endorse: "He told his folks in Congress, 'Don't put it forward.' He killed the bill."

Governor Tim Walz also took part in the interview, discussing his military service and the importance of addressing gun violence. Walz candidly acknowledged a past misstatement about his military service, saying, "My wife the English teacher told me my grammar's not always correct."

LOL, that's what you're going with?

Arkansas Senator Tom Cotton later commented on the pair's performance, questioning Harris' ability to handle high-stakes situations. "Kamala Harris needed Tim Walz as a heat shield and ended the interview after 18 minutes? How will she handle her first summit with Putin or Xi? Will she insist on a break after 18 minutes to get new talking points? Kamala Harris is dangerously unprepared to be our commander-in-chief," Cotton remarked.

From what I saw of it:

1, Dana Bash spent a lot of time asking personal-interest and "humanizing" questions of Kamala Harris. But that's what her DNC speech was entirely about, and what all of her ads are about. In other words, Kamala's using all of her efforts to get that (fake) biographical background out. Why would a "journalist" ask her about what she's already talking exclusively about? Wouldn't a real journalist spend all of her time probing about what Kamala Harris doesn't want to talk about -- like what the hell her policies are? Her responsibility for the border chaos and Afghanistan bug-out? Her participation in the Biden Dementia Cover-Up?

2, The few questions Dana Bash asked about issues like these consisted of a single question, usually phrased as "How would you respond to critics who say..." or "How would you reassure voters who are worried about..." There was no follow-up, no probing past her first pre-scripted talking point answer, no raising of points that contradict her current claims. In other words, she did the standard leftwing media trick of pretending to ask "the hard questions" while in fact merely offering a Democrat ally the chance to push their scripted talking points to the public in the guise of authentic, spontaneous conversation.

Plus, Dana Bash now allows Harris -- and Walz -- to claim, like Hillary Clinton did about Whitewater, "Those questions have already been answered." They were never answered; she evaded answering, or lied. But having given her pat lawyered-up answers to one friendly conspirator "journalist," she was then immunized against ever having to answer them again. She just kept repeating "Those questions have already been answered" forever.

So now, if you want to ask Walz about why he repeatedly -- not once, but repeatedly -- told "journalists" that he had served in Iraq and/or Afghanistan (he seemed confused on the point), he can just say, "I answered all those questions when Dana Bash asked them.

If you want to ask Kamala Harris why she participated in the cover-up of Biden's dementia, she'll just say, "Those questions have already been asked and answered." Even though Dana Bash never, ever even came close to asking this. All she asked about was something like, "Do you stand behind your prior support of Biden?" She never asked why Harris lied, or what she knew and when she knew it.

But, you know: Those questions have now all been answered.

And, hello everybody!

Happy Friday before a three-day weekend (for those with Monday off, at least).

Hope everyone has fun plans. Or sexy shelf-organizing plans.

Below: A couple of stories which I've had in tabs for a few days and figure, might as well post them.

Posted by: Disinformation Expert Ace at 01:00 PM | Comments (409) | Trackbacks (Suck)

Biden-Harris Administration Brings Joy to Employers By Depressing White Collar and Blue Collar Wages

As your wages contract in the midst of high, unstoppable inflation, please remember: Kamala Harris is practicing the "politics of joy," as her media propagandists have dubbed it. She is above petty concerns about real wage losses and stagflation: She's all about bringing joy.

This is "vibes" election, not a "facts" election. Racists.

Via Hot Air, the Wall Street Journal reports a general reduction in wages.

Pay for many white collar recruits shrank last year, and now wages for new hires in construction, manufacturing, food and other blue-collar sectors appear to be ebbing too, according to an analysis of millions of jobs posted on ZipRecruiter.com.

Job seekers report seeing roles that once offered salaries between $175,000 and $200,000 a year ago now being advertised for tens of thousands of dollars less, a change that has had them rethinking their pay expectations. Companies are also moving job openings to lower-cost cities or offering them as lower-paying contractor roles, recruiters and corporate advisers say.

The push to reset employee salaries reflects a power shift in the cooling hiring market.

If there is a silver lining to this stormcloud, it's that a fall in wages will help bring down inflation.

So, problem solved? No, not even close. While falling wages might eventually help bring down the Bidenflation, for a long period we might have falling wages plus rising prices. These things do not perfectly coincide with each other. A wage bubble may pop, but it may take a year for that to impact prices for goods.

Add in the fact we're tipping into a recession and The Fed has no more bullets left for forestalling it, except creating more inflation. So we'll see falling wages, rising prices, and a contraction in jobs.

So people may see the terrible post-Carter recession of 1982-83. Biden and Harris will end their fake presidency and vice-presidency with a perfect economic storm. And this will not Bring Joy, I can assure you.

There's more great news for the Biden-Harris economy: Dollar General is reporting a "record drop" in sales.

Usually downscale stores and fast food restaurants are seen as a good hedge in a recession -- almost recession-proof and inflation-proof, as it were. After all, even poor people have to buy something.

And yet a dollar store is crashing.

Beege Wellborn:

The party of the poor and disenfranchised has done a fine job of "opportunity" and "making life affordable" when their inflationary indulgences have crushed lower wage earners and poorer Americans so severely that even Dollar General becomes an extravagance.

Posted by: Disinformation Expert Ace at 12:00 PM | Comments (328) | Trackbacks (Suck)