First-World Problems...

The straw is ubiquitous! WD-40 probably began it, but it seems like every aerosolized chemical has that nifty applicator. And I get it! They work pretty well. But what about storage after that first use? The straw probably has a bit of lubricant on it, so the little bit of tape that held it onto the side of the can isn't going to work. And leaving it in the nozzle is a plan to fail, because it will get knocked off the second you turn your back.

Do I have to move to a new house with aerosol applicator straw storage?

Posted by: CBD at 02:00 PM | Comments (266) | Trackbacks (Suck)

The Fall Of Boeing Is Complete: Imagine How Bad They Must Be To Be Called Out By NASA!

An honest appraisal of the many departments of the federal government would be hard-pressed to find an efficient and competent one in the sea of catastrophically wasteful and downright damaging divisions.

Okay...I can think of one. The United States Mint and the Bureau of Engraving and Printing does a pretty good job of producing our coins and bills. Far too many, but that's a different issue. And they are probably pathetically inefficient, but at least the end result is of good quality.

But in the main, the federal government is a pathetic collection of career apparatchiks, layabouts, no-nothings, no-shows, thieves, and the flat-out laziest people in the country. So when they criticize one of their biggest contractors, you know something is up!

NASA Inspector General Report Criticizes Boeing's Quality Control

The report pointed to 71 “Corrective Action Requests”(CARs) issued by the Defense Contract Management Agency (DCMA) at Michoud between 2021 and 2023 to address “deficiencies in quality.”

NASA’s OIG said this is a “high number of CARs for a space flight system at this stage in development and reflects a recurring and degraded state of product quality control.”
“Boeing’s process to address deficiencies to date has been ineffective, and the company has generally been nonresponsive in taking corrective actions when the same quality control issues reoccur,” the report said.

And if you think that sounds bad, here's an article that makes it sound even worse! NASA Investigation Finds Boeing Hindering Americans' Return to Moon

Maybe Boeing fell behind on their bribe schedule, or maybe their corporate culture's shift from an incredible engineering company to an MBA-driven financial company has something to do with it. Add in the frantic and all-encompassing dedication to DEI over all other considerations like design, engineering and production excellence, and we might have a hint at why Boeing has turned to absolute sh*t. Over budget, behind schedule, substandard quality, designs that simply don't work...that doesn't signal a company that is in control.

Contrast that to SpaceX, which developed its first rocket from scratch for about $100,000,000. They had their first successful launch 15 years ago, and SpaceX is now the preeminent space launch organization on the planet.

And all without a robust DEI program! How did they do it?

Posted by: CBD at 12:00 PM | Comments (346) | Trackbacks (Suck)

Sunday Morning Book Thread - 08-11-2024 ["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 (he's always in the last place you look...). 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, dust off those textbook covers, and dive into a new book. What are YOU reading this fine morning?

Posted by: Open Blogger at 09:00 AM | Comments (344) | Trackbacks (Suck)

Daily Tech News 11 August 2024

Top Story

• A Florida data broker called National Public Data collected the personal information of essentially everyone in the US, UK, and Canada, and then got hacked. (The Register)
  
  2.9 billion records including names, addresses, and government ID numbers, plus information on relatives and address changes going back thirty years.
  
  Exactly how National Public Data got access to all this information is an unanswered question. They certainly didn't ask the people the data refers to, nor did they make any public announcement that they were doing this.
  
  
  
• The solution to that "unfixable" AMD security flaw from yesterday turns out to be a $9 SPI flash programmer.

Posted by: Pixy Misa at 04:00 AM | Comments (365) | Trackbacks (Suck)

Overnight Open Thread (8/10/2024) [J. Edgar Phallenburger IV]

Another hearty thanks to Ace for giving me another opportunity to host an ONT! What an honor! I always thought that because I know a few things about him that he would keep me far, far away from the keys to this place, but for some inexplicable reason he called me a few days ago, screeching about left-handed screws and reversible drills. Then his voice got weird and quiet and he said something about the toilet paper in jail and then he offered the ONT!

It reminded me of the time he got caught smoking in the bathroom at school. Fifth grade? Sixth grade? One of the teachers walked in, so he flushed the cigarette (joint?) and went through the window, straight into the arms of the dean of students, who was not amused. I think he got 10 strokes!

But he got him back a few years later...Ace took his car keys and dropped a deuce in his trunk! He never got caught, although he was suspected.

Posted by: Open Blogger at 10:05 PM | Comments (518) | Trackbacks (Suck)

Saturday Evening Movie Post: Oddity, plus The Vourdalak and Red Desert [moviegique]

There were a couple of points of note on our journey to see the Irish horror film, Oddity.

It had opened on July 19th, after a flurry of other horror flicks, and The Boy and I had gambled on The Vourdalak, a peculiar French film based on a story by Aleksei Tolstoy. (That's the 19th century's Aleksey Konstantinovich Tolstoy, not the 20th century's Aleksey Nikolayevich Tolstoy. Even Russian authors have confusing names.) We enjoyed this folkloric tale of a French dandy who finds himself adrift in the Balkans among a family whose ancient patriarch has gone to fight the Turk and returned...a vourdalak!

Two things really stood out: First, the French dandy is a rich character, vain and spoiled and definitely #metoo bait, but while not especially brave, he has a moral core and actually does a few right things at some personal risk. It was frankly a more strongly drawn character than we see these days in serious dramas.

Second, the vourdalak himself is played...by a puppet. A large puppet, but a puppet nonetheless, or maybe even just a doll. This probably knocks a few potential viewers right out, but The Boy and I loved it. It was far superior to using CGI, and it created a different kind of "uncanny valley", an edge of insanity to the spooky proceedings.

It's actually strongly reminiscent of pictures of people rescued from the camps in WWII.

Posted by: Open Blogger at 07:30 PM | Comments (266) | Trackbacks (Suck)

Hobby Thread - Aug 10, 2024 [TRex]

Welcome hobbyists! Pull up a chair and sit a spell with the horde in this little corner of the interweb. A spin of the Ace of Spades wheel of hobbies has come up with a theme of painting and animation for this week.

Do you paint or draw? Do you work in oils or watercolor? What subjects? Is painting a life-long hobby or something picked up later in life? How did you learn? Were you inspired by a style from another painter or did you chart your own course? Have you had spectacular failures that are funnier in retrospect? For the animators, did you learn to draw flip booklets as a start? Do you pay homage to the animators that did the legendary movies by hand? Have you moved to animation on computer?

Do you believe that every picture tells a story?

TRex has limited knowledge of this world and certainly has no skills (little arms are not good for painting or drawing). Looking for horde help to make this work. We're here to talk about those who paint and animate. As usual, keep this thread limited to hobbies. Politics and current events can wait for other threads. Play nice. Don't feed the trolls. Pants not required.

Posted by: Open Blogger at 05:30 PM | Comments (185) | Trackbacks (Suck)

Ace of Spades Pet Thread, August 10

* * *

Good afternoon 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 03:28 PM | No Comments | Trackbacks (Suck)

Gardening, Puttering and Adventure Thread, Aug. 10

Hi, everybody! Hope everyone is safe from the storms and fires! Anybody taking precautions?

Today, Don in Kansas has some interesting thoughts on color and horticulture:

What color?

Horticulturalists see colors differently than most people. I’ve mentioned before that “coerulea” forms of orchids look lavender to me, not blue. Something similar happens with daylilies. This is “Hall’s Pink.”

Does that look pink to you? Parts of it may look a bit pinkish, but overall I’d call it orange.

What would you call it?

Posted by: K.T. at 01:15 PM | Comments (64) | Trackbacks (Suck)

Black Swans and Swan Songs

Have you notice an increase in unexpected events in the past month or two? Can you list any?

A black swan event is a rare, unpredictable occurrence that has a significant impact on the world. It's often characterized by its unexpected nature, the severe consequences it brings, and the tendency for people to rationalize it in hindsight as if it could have been predicted. The term "black swan" originates from the ancient belief that all swans were white, a belief that was proven false when black swans were discovered in Australia. This serves as a metaphor for the idea that just because something hasn't happened before doesn't mean it's impossible.

Posted by: K.T. at 11:10 AM | Comments (397) | Trackbacks (Suck)

The Classical Saturday Morning Coffee Break & Prayer Revival

(What an order!?!?!)

*****

Good morning Horde. August keeps rolling along. Chilly morning here, so plenty of coffee to be consumed.

Before we get into what is good for us and our Prayer Revival, just a few housekeeping matters to go over. (Rulz for those of you in Black River Falls)

1. This is an open thread, please feel free to lurk, opine and/or bloviate.
2. Be nice to one another. And please don't jump on the furniture.
3. Running with sharp objects? You are on your own. Do you feel lucky?
4. Have a nice weekend.

Posted by: Misanthropic Humanitarian at 08:45 AM | Comments (353) | Trackbacks (Suck)

Daily Tech News 10 August 2024

Top Story

• Users are fleeing X (formerly Twitter) in droves and signing up for Threads (Meta's, which is to say Facebook's, Twitter clone), except that not a single word of that is true. (Tech Crunch)
  
  In an article that looks suspiciously like legitimate reporting, Tech Crunch looks at claims circulating on Threads, finds them false, and spills the beans.
  
  In reality Twitter's user base is growing, and Threads is stagnant at best.

Posted by: Pixy Misa at 04:00 AM | Comments (228) | Trackbacks (Suck)

A Succulent Chinese ONT

Friday again! Time to kick back and start the weekend with the week in memes.

Posted by: WeirdDave at 10:00 PM | Comments (541) | Trackbacks (Suck)

Dog Transportation Cafe

Christ of the Abyss,
a submerged bronze statue in Genoa, Italy

Tonight's cafe is mostly links to Instagram, so if you want to avoid giving Instagram the $0.00 when you click a link without being served an ad, you might want to boycott the links.

Dogs: Man's best friend who sometimes wants to help man die in a fire.

High hopes.

BMX shredding.

A little jet-skiing through huge cataracts.

Good doggie hangs up his leash and cleans all his paws at a low sink when he gets in from a walk.

Nap time for elephants.

Pulpit Rock in Norway.

Belugas swimming. They're not doing anything cute this time, except being their cute beluga selves.

What is claimed to be Virginia's most dangerous trail, the "Old Rag," is hiked by a girl with a nice thicc booty. A little something for everyone.

A backyard test take-off of a garage-built F-35B VTOL jet.

Sometimes a hurricane brings people, and dogs, together:

These are the dogs of @dorchesterpaws. Or at least, they were. This weekend, every single one of them found a foster home. As Hurricane Debby approached landfall, this rescue in Summerville, South Carolina, knew it needed to act fast. Their area is forecast to get more than 20 inches of rain this week, leaving almost 300 animals in kennels that would soon be underwater. Dorchester Paws put out a call for volunteers to step up and clear out the shelter during the storm, and their community answered in a big way. People lined up the next morning to pick up pets, and by Sunday afternoon, every single dog and cat in their care had a foster home to ride out the storm in. "We haven't seen an empty shelter for over 15 years so we are just so grateful," the shelter told us. This wouldn't have been possible without the coordination of the staff and the community of volunteers who opened their hearts and homes to animals in need. We hope everybody stays safe during the impending rains.

Scroll right to see different videos of the mutts and their rescuers.

Bringing city dogs out to the country.

Posted by: Disinformation Expert Ace at 07:30 PM | Comments (348) | Trackbacks (Suck)

Wokeness Intensifies

From the New York Times: The coordinated attack on the French train system that left the country paralyzed on the eve of the Olympic Games was committed by antifa-type anarchist wokies.

One potential clue being examined by investigators is an anonymous email which was sent a day after the attack to The New York Times and other media organizations and which celebrated the sabotage. It claimed that the attacks were intended to disrupt the Olympics, which the email called a "celebration of nationalism" and a "testing ground" for mass policing that shows how states "subjugate populations."

The email, which was signed "an unexpected delegation," in a reference to the Olympics, was sent from an anonymous email address created on Riseup, a platform that "provides online communication tools for people and groups working on liberatory social change," according to its website.

The text of the email criticized France's weapons export industry, condemned police brutality, castigated French companies like Total or Alstom for wreaking social and environmental havoc and took a dim view of France's high-speed train system.

"Railroads are not an innocuous infrastructure," the email said. "They have always been a means of colonizing new territories, a prerequisite for their devastation, and a ready-made path for the extension of capitalism and state control."

"Far right thugs" are rioting in the UK, protesting what they claim is a "two-tier policing system," wherein, if you can believe this, Muslims and leftists like BLM are permitted to riot and attack passers-by with impunity, but anyone sharing a social media post about this gets arrested.

As you can see, this is plainly a racist far-right conspiracy theory. Obviously. Diversity is our strength x30.

But this far-right racist conspiracy theorist at Spiked says that the British left was just justifying and even praising leftwing riots a couple of years ago.

Britain's political and media elites have rightly condemned the riots that have caused such destruction and distress across towns and cities in England and Northern Ireland over the past week. Prime minister Keir Starmer has said that this 'violent thuggery' has 'no place on our streets'. Liberal broadsheets have denounced the disorder as 'an assault on the rule of law'. Pundits have fallen over themselves to express their disgust, especially with the riots' racist dimension.

These are strong words and welcome sentiments. But they're strong words and welcome sentiments that ring more than a little hollow. After all, many of those now outraged by the sight of violent crowds chucking bricks at cops, attacking public buildings and looting shops have spent much of the past couple of decades justifying and even extolling the virtues of rioting mobs.

Think back to the London riots in August 2011. On Saturday 6 August, a crowd gathered outside Tottenham police station, in protest over the fatal police shooting of Mark Duggan, a young black man. By the evening, what had begun as an angry demonstration against the police had morphed into a dark carnival of destruction. Homes were torched, local businesses looted and the police pelted with bricks and firebombs. Over the next few days, as the police retreated, the rioting spread through inner and outer London and into other towns and cities across England. Crowds of largely young people raided shops, set fire to cars and turned buildings into flaming tributes to nothing very much.

After five days of rioting, the tragic scale of the destruction soon became apparent. Over 200 emergency workers and members of the public were injured, five people lost their lives and dozens were left homeless. One fatality, a 68-year-old man, was attacked while attempting to put out a litter-bin fire in Ealing. The authorities put the financial cost of the riots at £500million.

Many in authority certainly condemned the riots. Then prime minister David Cameron branded it 'criminality, pure and simple'. Yet, at the same time, there was another rather more disturbing take emerging among Britain's liberal, leftish elites. They seemed determined to see something else, something almost positive, in the emptied- and burnt-out shops and homes. A message in the rubble. A progressive meaning to wanton destruction....

Sympathetic bordering on justification, this response marked a significant shift in the way in which large swathes of the liberal-left elites might once have responded to violent displays of anti-social behaviour....

This decadent elite posing is certainly not the primary cause of the horrific rioting of the past week. But it has slowly but surely sent an undeniable message -- that laying waste to your own neighbourhood, setting fire to your own town centre, shitting on your own doorstep, is sometimes okay.

It's all very well seeing politicians and pundits now busily condemning the sickening scenes of the past week. But until they reckon with their own role in approving and even celebrating other equally sickening scenes of street violence in recent years, very few will take them seriously.

I denounce this white supremacist conspiracy theorizing. Someone please call a cop. I have hate speech to report.

The "Adults Are Back in Charge" at the White House, as your Marxist Media has told you many times. To prove that the adults are back in charge, the Harris-Biden administration is considering gutting a key national security program to free up the money for DEI hires and "environmental justice."

The Biden-Harris administration is quietly floating a funding cut for a national security initiative that protects America's underwater infrastructure. At the same time, it's asking Congress for millions of dollars for equity and "environmental justice" initiatives, the Washington Free Beacon has learned.
FreeBeacon

The administration recently informed Congress that it wants to strip $10 million in annual funding for the Maritime Administration's (MARAD) Cable Security Fleet (CSF), which protects the underwater infrastructure powering America's connection to the internet. Hostile nations like Russia and China have repeatedly attempted to sabotage these networks, plunging the American government and military into darkness.

A sizable portion of this funding is being diverted into equity programs as part of the Biden-Harris administration's push to promote progressive cultural priorities, according to Sen. Ted Cruz (R., Texas). This includes more than $1 million to hire 11 full-time staffers dedicated to "diversity and equity priorities" at the Transportation Department. An additional $6 million is allocated to programs that will "address environmental issues and 'mitigat[e] the impact of climate change.'" Another $10 million is slated for the U.S. Marine Highway Program to support "environmental justice," Cruz disclosed.

"The Biden administration's decision to defund undersea cable security while increasing spending on Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) undermines the strategic defense posture of the United States against our adversaries, like Russia and China, in favor of radically liberal and unpopular social policies," Cruz wrote in an investigatory letter sent Thursday to the Department of Transportation and obtained by the Free Beacon.

You're not going to believe this, but the billion dollars of our money that Harris/Biden spent on "solar energy panels" has resulted in virtually no solar energy panels.

The Biden-Harris administration has, for years, vowed to deploy thousands of solar panels to stabilize Puerto Rico's power grid amid regular blackouts, government mismanagement, and ever-increasing residential electricity rates. But, years after making that promise, a $1 billion program central to that effort yielded only a tiny handful of solar panels, the Washington Free Beacon has learned.

"We're talking about energy and solar. That's where the power is, right there," Vice President Kamala Harris said during a speech in Puerto Rico earlier this year.

During her remarks, Harris touted the so-called Puerto Rico Energy Resilience Fund, a $1 billion fund managed by the Department of Energy and designed by Democrats in 2022 to quickly address Puerto Rico's electrical grid vulnerabilities via the installation of tens of thousands of rooftop solar and battery storage systems across the island. That fund has taken a central role in the administration's plans to, as President Biden said in October 2022, "transform the entire" Puerto Rican grid.

While the Department of Energy declined to tell the Free Beacon how many solar panels have been installed using program funds, Sunnova Energy--one of two U.S. solar firms awarded funding to oversee implementation of the program--acknowledged that just "a small, initial batch" of installations have been completed across the entire island so far. The other firm, Generac Holdings, declined to comment.

I'm getting strong Solyndra vibes. The Democrat Party are like a conquering savage army, subjugating the people of the United States and stealing their wealth.

Judge rules that lawsuit against Harvard, alleging they permitted antisemitic attacks on campus, may go forward.

Harvard University must face a lawsuit by Jewish students who accused the Ivy League school of letting its campus become a bastion of rampant antisemitism, a federal judge ruled on Tuesday.

U.S. District Judge Richard Stearns in Boston found plausible accusations that Harvard was deliberately indifferent toward Jewish and Israeli students who said they feared for their safety after facing severe and pervasive harassment.

The judge also said he was "dubious" that Harvard could claim that some of the pro-Palestinian or anti-Jewish activities was protected by the U.S. Constitution's First Amendment.

"To conclude that the (complaint) has not plausibly alleged deliberate indifference would reward Harvard for virtuous public declarations that for the most part, according to the (complaint), proved hollow," Stearns wrote.

"The facts as pled show that Harvard failed its Jewish students," the judge added. He did not rule on the merits.

Students sought an injunction to stop Harvard's alleged violations of Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which bars federal funds recipients from allowing discrimination based on race, religion and national origin.

Harvard and its lawyers did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

Harvard filed a motion to dismiss. This 12 (1)(b) motion claims that even if everything the plaintiffs allege were true, it would not give rise to any recognizable legal claim. The judge ruled that the facts alleged, if true, would indeed constitute a valid legal claim.

So this is not any kind of ruling that the lawsuit is meritorious, just that it could be meritorious, if the evidence supports the facts alleged. (Which, let's face it, it probably will.)

I think we may have discovered KAREN ZERO, the original vector of AWFLism.

Toby Rogers
@uTobian

A bat flies into a lady's house in North Carolina (@BelleBoggs). After a short time the bat flies away.

Crazy lady and her husband then:

* Consult the CDC website

* Call their health care after-hours line

* Call the county animal control center that sends an officer out in 10 minutes to inspect the house (officer finds nothing and writes a report to the county public health department)

* GO TO THE EMERGENCY ROOM 😳

* GET TWO RABIES SHOTS, ONE IN EACH ARM 😳😳

* Pay "$600 E.R. copays with heftier hospital bills to come" 😳😳😳

* ALL BECAUSE OF A BAT THAT DID NOT TOUCH THEM AND FLEW AWAY. 🤯

Crazy lady then:

* Writes an Op Ed for the @nytimes on how Donald Trump would destroy the administrative state (that makes her beloved hypochondria possible).

* Concludes the Op Ed by saying that she's supporting Kamala Harris because "I live in the United States of America -- land of bats, land of doctors, land of public health -- and that's worth fighting for." 😆

* The geniuses at the @nytimes then publish her piece in the Sunday Opinion Section read by millions. 🤡

My reflections on this piece:

* Vaccines in general and Covid in particular broke the brains of progressives.

* These people are now completely insane.

* You do not need a rabies shot if you happen to see a bat.

* Hypochondria is a serious mental illness; @BelleBoggs needs psychological counseling not rabies shots.

* Articles like this convince of the urgent need to abolish the administrative state.

* The grifters in public health need to stop taking advantage of crazy Democrats who are not thinking straight.

Taylor Lorenz commented: "Oooh, Besties!"

The UK is now a Muslim tyranny: A 56-year-old woman has been arrested for posting "inaccurate information" about the identity of the Southport Child Butcher. She may have said he was a migrant, as many people guessed when the courts and media hid his identity for a week.

Peace activist calls for people to "cut all the throats" of anti-immigration Englishmen. He was not arrested, of course.

Posted by: Disinformation Expert Ace at 06:30 PM | Comments (174) | Trackbacks (Suck)

James Varney: The Left Allows Pedophiles Into Public Schools.
Then the Left Profits from Lawsuits the Victims Lodge Against the Public Schools.

A few weeks back, James Varney wrote about the huge numbers of child abuse sex crimes committed by the nation's teachers, far more than was ever committed by Catholic priests.

But of course the leftwing propaganda media covers up the crimes of the Democrat client group of teachers.

James Varney now follows up: You the taxpayer will be paying the huge claims filed by the victims of sexual assault, which of course the teachers unions cause by fighting to keep child abusers on public school payrolls.

And the kicker: Leftwing lawyers then profit from the human tragedy that leftwing teachers union officials and leftwing Democrat school administrators permitted in the first place.

The teenage female athletes at California's Pomona High School said they felt special when a handful of coaches there took them under their wing, spending more time with them than others, providing extra encouragement, sharing personal stories and, sometimes, seemingly harmless flirtatious talk.

One track team member was amazed at a Nevada meet when she saw the coaches drinking, smoking marijuana, and sharing the party scene with teammates. But that attention turned to tragedy at a subsequent meet in Las Vegas when a coach brought the 16-year-old to his hotel room, plied her with alcohol, and, she says, raped her.

She mentioned the assault to administrators at the time and the principal assured her the matter would be handled. Instead, the coach kept his job and she endured so much ridicule she wound up leaving California.

Decades after the 1997 incident, her tragedy turned to triumph when a Los Angeles jury awarded her $35 million for pain and suffering in a civil trial this January -- made possible when the California legislature in 2020 opened a three-year window in which adults could bring litigation for sexual abuse they suffered as children.

And that's not the only penalty the Pomona Unified School District taxpayers and insurers face from those reckless 1990s: Seven other former students have alleged abuse by the coaches, leading to three other lawsuits that have been settled privately and a fifth that remains active.

The long timeline from the incidents to settlement or trial, and the thumping amounts the Pomona Unified School District was hit with, reflect a new willingness to acknowledge and punish sexual predators. In the wake of the #MeToo movement and infamous cases such as those involving Catholic priests, Hollywood, and top-tier sports, momentum is building for what might comprise the biggest group of victims in sexual misconduct scandals: K-12 students victimized by teachers and other school employees.

A review of insurance industry reports, legal blogs and media accounts by RealClearInvestigations turned up $1.2 billion in settlements for school districts in the last decade. And there are clear indications that the pace and amount of legal liability has been rising, along with the impact that has for taxpayers and schools.

...

As states grapple with limitations on litigation against government entities, and in some cases open new windows for plaintiffs to sue, more victims are coming forward and school districts and insurers are scrambling to find the money juries and judges are awarding. Just how much all this may cost is unclear, because only cases that go to trial are a matter of public record, and usually it is only the big settlements or awards like Pomona Unified School District's that draw attention. Scores of other lawsuits are being settled for smaller amounts or are kept private through agreement between the parties.

"I think we've only seen the tip of the iceberg," Oregon attorney Peter Janci told RealClear-Investigations. "There has been a lot of abuse that happened in schools, and there are more coming forward every day as public education and the sentiment to support victims has grown."

Varney notes that the Boy Scouts of America entered bankruptcy due to settlements involving child predation, and of course the Catholic church has paid out whopping settlements.

But what will be the final bill for allowing pedophiles to operate in the nations thousands and thousands of public schools?

The exposure for the nation's schools may be much greater, though the extent is unclear. News reports offer a steady of stream of articles about teachers arrested for molesting students -- though those typically involve young, attractive female instructors and not men, who are more often the perpetrators. As RCI has previously reported, the Biden administration reversed Trump-era requirements that that Department of Education collect data on incidents of sexual misconduct. In the face of fierce criticism, the department backtracked and says that at present, it "has no data."

One of the few academic studies on the subject -- a 2004 report Hofstra University researchers prepared for the DOE -- estimated that one in 10 K-12 students suffer some form of verbal or physical sexual misconduct from school employees. The vast majority of incidents never result in an arrest or trial.

...

The cases also reveal a pattern in which school officials either ignored or downplayed warning signs that teachers, coaches, bus drivers or volunteers were engaged in problematic situations with students. The record is also dotted with predators who claimed victims at more than one school, having dodged flares at one place only to work again at another, a phenomenon advocacy groups call "passing the trash." These patterns emerged in 78% of United Educators' 2021 cases, although it fell to 42% in 2023.

Last year, the Sacramento Unified School District was hit with a $52 million settlement stemming from the abuse of at least eight elementary school students that led to a former aide being sentenced in 2016 to 150 years to life in prison. In that case, court papers said, administrators blew off myriad complaints from parents alleging the aide offered the students "secret candy" and "prizes," and some of those who ignored complaints were in turn promoted by the district.

"That is what complicity of silence has rendered in our nation's schools," said Terri Miller, president of the advocacy group SESAME (Stop Educator Sexual Abuse Misconduct & Exploitation).

"We hear too often how our school systems are struggling for money to afford paying teachers well, repair/build schools, provide supplies to classrooms, etc.," Miller told RCI in an email. "If only they would address this appalling problem they have chosen to ignore or hide, they would spare child suffering and decrease the astronomical dollars spent on lawsuits and legal fees."

But that would be bad for business, wouldn't it?

Posted by: Disinformation Expert Ace at 05:30 PM | Comments (154) | Trackbacks (Suck)

GAINZZZ and BRAINZZZ

Nina Teicholz, author of The Big Fat Surprise, publicizes a study. The experiment wanted to determine which of three diets -- low-carb (keto), low-fat, or vegan -- would produce the least weight gain on an overfeeding diet, with one single male subject stuffing his face with 5,800 calories per day. (The average caloric intake for men is something like 2,800 to 3,500 or something.)

To underline: This is a study with just one participant, undergoing three different regimes.

Nina Teicholz, PhD
@bigfatsurprise

Is weight all about calories-in vs. calories-out?

-->An overeating case study: A man ate 5800 calories/day for 3 weeks on 3 different diets.

Resulting weight gain:

Low-carb: 1.3 kg
Low-fat: 7.1 kg
V. low-fat vegan 4.7 kg

Obviously, not all calories produced the same results.

Subject felt best, had most energy on low-carb. Experienced no hunger on low-carb or vegan diets. Was hungry on the low-fat diet (!). Asthma, brain fog, sleep problems returned on low-fat and vegan diets. Excessive bathroom use was "unsettling" on vegan diet.

More info: Exercise was the same. 3-mo. washout period in between each diet to return to baseline

At pub time (2021), this was the only overfeeding experiment comparing low-carb to high-carb diets....

The study is here.

Leftwing freaks are proud of their culture and how they've changed society to valorize their degeneracy.

Here's are the victims of their culture war offensives: Almost one-in-three adolescents are now seeing shrinks for mental health issues.

In findings that suggest more young Americans struggling with mental health issues are getting the help they need, a new poll shows that nearly a third of American adolescents and teens received some sort of mental health treatment in 2023.

That translates to over 8 million young people between the ages of 12 and 17 getting counseling, medication or another treatment, the survey from the U.S. Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA) found.

"We're pleased to see that more people received mental health treatment in 2023 than the previous year," SAMHSA Adminstrator Miriam Delphin-Rittmon said in an agency news release announcing the survey.

You're pleased by this?

You're not even going to try to hide it, huh?

Money in your pocket! Nevermind how it gets there.

Among adolescents, the biggest increase from 2022 was in the number of those getting mental health medications: Nearly 14% of those age 12 to 17 received such a prescription in 2023, up from 12.8% the year before.

SAMHSA officials said they saw the increase shows that mental health treatment is finally being destigmatized.

It's not depression or alcohol or drug abuse that's driving these increases in childhood mental illness -- those stats are more or less flat.

So what is it?

Speaking of BRAINZZZ: There's new hope for treating Alzheimer's.

Scientists have identified a potential new target for treating Alzheimer's disease that works by restoring the brain's own "self-cleanup" process.

The target is already used in preexisting Parkinson's drugs and demonstrated partial reversal of cognitive deficits in aged study mice.

...

There is no known cure for Alzheimer's, although scientists believe that it is caused by the abnormal buildup of proteins in and around the brain cells. One of the major components of these abnormal aggregates is a protein called amyloid beta.

Amyloid beta is produced when proteins in the brain misfold and clump together. These clumps initiate a variety of damaging chemical reactions around our brain cells that damage and eventually destroy them.

Normally, our brain's cellular cleanup crew, which includes an enzyme called neprilysin, clears away any excess proteins and cellular debris.

"Neprilysin has been identified as the most potent amyloid beta degrading enzyme in the brain," Naoto Watamura, a research fellow at the UK Dementia Research Institute at University College London and the RIKEN Brain Sciences Center in Japan, told Newsweek.

However, preliminary evidence has shown that, as we age, levels of neprilysin in the brain tend to decline. Studies have also shown that genetically engineered mice that do not produce this enzyme develop very high levels of toxic amyloid beta protein clumps.

But while these findings suggest that neprilysin is a key player in the onset of neurodegenerative disease, methods to target and upregulate its activity have remained elusive--until now.

In a new study published in the journal Science Signaling, Watamura and colleagues from the RIKEN Brain Sciences Center screened a range of different candidate compounds and found one molecule that was able to upregulate the activity of this essential enzyme: dopamine.

"I was [surprised] because dopamine, which is likely to be the central role of Parkinson's disease, could have the potential to treat the aspect of Alzheimer's disease pathology," Watamura said.

Their findings may also offer insights into the established associations between dementia and mental health disorders related to low levels of dopamine.

Further research is needed to confirm these findings in humans, but the researchers are hopeful that their results may offer new targets for the treatment of Alzheimer's disease.

There's another new drug -- that just got blocked by the FDA for use in the US, but which is approved in 34 countries -- which supposedly is very helpful for sufferers of Parkinson's.

A little scienZZZ news for ya: A 500 million year old fossil of a larva has been discovered, with an intact brain.

Regime media immediately pronounced the 500 million year old fossil "sharp as a tack, probing, and in-command."

Posted by: Disinformation Expert Ace at 04:20 PM | Comments (275) | Trackbacks (Suck)

Kamala Harris Investigated and Prosecuted Pro-Life Activist for Taking Videos of Abortion Providers Bragging About the Tissues and Dismembered Arms They Sold to Medical Labs.
Now Those Videos Are Out.

The childless "Momala" -- or at least, none of her children made it to term -- violated the First Amendment and ruthlessly hounded this man because she wanted to keep her fellow abortionists happy.

A pro-life activist investigated for criminal activity by then-California Attorney General Kamala Harris in 2015 released undercover footage Tuesday showing Planned Parenthood executives apparently discussing the sale of body parts from late-term fetuses, some of which had been delivered alive and mostly intact.

David Daleiden of the Center for Medical Progress (CMP), who posed with a colleague as laboratory wholesalers at the National Abortion Federation's commercial trade show in 2015, videotaped two conversations with Dr. Ann Schutt-Ainé, the chief medical officer of Planned Parenthood Gulf Coast, and Tram Nguyen, RN, the branch's vice president of abortion access.

While the CMP has always contended that Daleiden's videos revealed illegalities, Planned Parenthood said at the time the initial videos were released that their staffers were discussing legal, not-for-profit donation of fetal tissue to research firms.

But Daleiden claims these newly released videos show even more demonstratively that Planned Parenthood's talking points at the time were false -- and that staff was engaged in wrongdoing.

"Schutt-Ainé and Nguyen described dismembering the fetuses after delivery to get around possible violations of the federal partial-birth abortion law," Daleiden, who calls himself a citizen journalist, told The Post.

If you don't remember the case, Daleiden took undercover sting videos of abortionists bragging about selling off body parts of aborted babies.

Kamala Harris sought an injunction against publishing those videos, and threatened Daleiden with prison for having Committed Journalism.

Video footage captured in 2015 by an anti-abortion activist that was suppressed by then-California Attorney General Kamala Harris was released Thursday, revealing discussions among Planned Parenthood executives about the handling of body parts of fetuses aborted in the late second trimester, which activists have alleged amount to an admission of wrongdoing.

The video was recorded by David Daleiden of the Center for Medical Progress, who, with a colleague in 2015, went undercover to the National Abortion Federation's commercial trade show.

Since July 2015, the videos have been suppressed following a court injunction that was lifted in May following their incorporation into the federal congressional record during a hearing on abortion hosted by Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA).

As Daleiden faces criminal charges for recording the videos surreptitiously, Harris's role as attorney general of California at the onset of the case is likely to draw more attention as she campaigns for the presidency.

Here's what this evil bitch was covering up the past nine years:

One of the videos shows both Schutt-Ainé and Nguyen describing how they take measures to avoid prosecution under the federal partial-birth abortion ban by dismembering the fetus while it is partially outside the womb to preserve the internal organs of the fetus for harvesting.

"If I'm doing a procedure, and I'm seeing that I'm in fear that it's about to come to the umbilicus [navel], I might ask for a second set of forceps to hold the body at the cervix and pull off a leg, or two, so it's not PBA [that is, so it doesn't come under the laws forbidding the sale of parts of bodies from partial-birth abortions -- ace]," Schutt-Ainé said in the video.

In a different video, Nguyen describes for Daleiden one scenario in which a minor patient's discomfort required the physician "to hurry up" and compared it to "other days [when] it's more intact, where it's, like, maybe only, like, an arm that's disarticulated."

Posted by: Disinformation Expert Ace at 03:20 PM | Comments (323) | Trackbacks (Suck)

"Whole of Society:" The Bland Euphemism the Obama Left Deployed as a Cover to Bring Soviet-Style Thought Control to a Formerly Free America

Earlier I wrote about the DHS making the decision to brand every public Trump supporter a high-level "Quad-S" terrorist threat and using the power of government to surveil and harass them.

This is part of the "Whole of Society" means of "Combating Violent Extremism" (CVE) that Obama implemented, and is now SOP throughout the Regime-controlled government.

A couple of weeks ago, Jacob Siegel wrote a great piece for Tablet that is now getting quoted more and more.

It discusses the euphemism "Whole of Society" -- a term used to mask what is really being talked about, which is a Government-Corporate-Academic oligarchy united to force an alien "elite" culture upon a noncompliant public.

To make sense of today's form of American politics, it is necessary to understand a key term. It is not found in standard U.S. civics textbooks, but it is central to the new playbook of power: "whole of society."

The term was popularized roughly a decade ago by the Obama administration, which liked that its bland, technocratic appearance could be used as cover to erect a mechanism for the government to control public life that can, at best, be called "Soviet-style." Here's the simplest definition: "Individuals, civil society and companies shape interactions in society, and their actions can harm or foster integrity in their communities. A whole-of-society approach asserts that as these actors interact with public officials and play a critical role in setting the public agenda and influencing public decisions, they also have a responsibility to promote public integrity."

In other words, the government enacts policies and then "enlists" corporations, NGOs and even individual citizens to enforce them--creating a 360-degree police force made up of the companies you do business with, the civic organizations that you think make up your communal safety net, even your neighbors. What this looks like in practice is a small group of powerful people using public-private partnerships to silence the Constitution, censor ideas they don't like, deny their opponents access to banking, credit, the internet, and other public accommodations in a process of continuous surveillance, constantly threatened cancellation, and social control.

And there's an additional catch. "The government"--meaning the elected officials visible to the American public who appear to enact the policies that are carried out across the whole of society--is not the ultimate boss. Joe Biden may be the president but, as is now clear, that doesn't mean he's in charge of the party.

As a modern political trope, whole of society dates to the Obama administration's attempt to pivot in the "war on terror" to what it called CVE--countering violent extremism. The idea was that by identifying at-risk individuals and then engaging them, American officials could "get left of the boom" and intervene before extremism led to violence.

Obama took the security apparatus that George Bush had created (with conservative support) and simply redirected it to surveil, harass, stigmatize, and prosecute normal law-abiding American citizens.

In concept, the strategy called for empowering "community-led interventions" as a method of conflict resolution. In practice, the White House paired its progressive efforts at community activism with an aggressive expansion of counterterrorist operations and drone strikes.

But the true lasting legacy of the CVE model was that it justified mass surveillance of the internet and social media platforms as a means to detect and de-radicalize potential extremists. Inherent in the very concept of the "violent extremist," was a weaponized vagueness.

That's a good term -- "weaponized vagueness."

Are they attempting to squelch violent extremists? Well, they're deliberately vague on that point, because they want to justify this program by talking about violence, but what they really want to do with the power is harass non-violent non-extremists -- normies who merely oppose socialism and Obama's brand of third-world triumphalism.

A decade after 9/11, as Americans wearied of the war on terror, it became passé and politically suspicious to talk about jihadism or Islamic terrorism. Instead, the Obama national security establishment insisted that extremist violence was not the result of particular ideologies and therefore more prevalent in certain cultures than in others, but rather its own free-floating ideological contagion. Given these criticisms Obama could have tried to end the war on terror, but he chose not to. Instead, Obama's nascent party state turned counterterrorism into a whole-of-society progressive cause by redirecting its instruments--most notably mass surveillance--against American citizens and the domestic extremists supposedly lurking in their midst.

...

The whole-of-society trope can be traced from its initial popularization in the context of CVE in 2014-15 to its use as a censorship coordinating mechanism after the rise of Donald Trump initiated a panic over Russian disinformation, then as a call for increased social media clampdowns during COVID, to the present--where it functions as a generic slogan and coordinating mechanism of a party state, one originally built by Obama, and which now operates through the vehicle of the Democratic Party over which he presides.

What the various iterations of this whole-of-society approach have in common is their disregard for democratic process and the right to free association, their embrace of social media surveillance, and their repeated failure to deliver results...

Indeed, whole of society is a totalizing form of politics. As the name implies, it discards the traditional separation of powers and demands political participation from corporations, civic groups, and other nonstate actors. Mass surveillance is the backbone of the approach, but it also consolidates a new class of functionaries who all directly or indirectly work for the party's interests. This is exactly how the party carried out its mass censorship during COVID and the 2020 election: by embedding government officials and party-aligned "experts" from the for-hire world of nonprofit activism, inside the social media platforms. The result, as I chronicled in an investigative essay last year, was the largest campaign of domestic mass surveillance and censorship in American history--often censoring true and time-sensitive information.

Read the whole thing, if the following rings true to you:

To avoid the appearance of totalitarian overreach in such efforts, the party requires an endless supply of causes--emergencies that party officers, with funding from the state, use as pretexts to demand ideological alignment across public and private sector institutions. These causes come in roughly two forms: the urgent existential crisis (examples include COVID and the much-hyped threat of Russian disinformation); and victim groups supposedly in need of the party's protection.

Yup!

Siegel goes on to say that this "totalizing" form of politics is responsible for the quick and easy coup against Joe Biden and the rapid elevation of Kamala Harris -- after all, if we're all united in a Whole of Society war against dangerous "extremists," we cannot dilly-dally with tedious democratic functions. We must act swiftly and boldly to Save Democracy, and anyone standing in the way of our fight to Save Democracy -- including the current president (not to mention the last one) -- will just have to be shoved forcefully aside.

Posted by: Disinformation Expert Ace at 02:10 PM | Comments (353) | Trackbacks (Suck)

America's Groomer Dad and Supposed "Moderate" Mandated Explicit Racial Discrimination in Hiring

Hello everybody. Welcome to Friday! The most wonderful day of the week. Somehow work is just easier on Friday.

David French is stroking himself over the erotic humiliation of having to support this guy.

Before he was tapped to be Vice President Kamala Harris's running mate, Minnesota governor Tim Walz (D.) signed into law a bill that established racial quotas throughout the state's health department, from a requirement that two members of a pregnancy task force be "Black or African American" to rules governing the composition of a "health equity" council.

The legislation, which Walz signed last May, created race-based membership requirements for five separate committees-- the Community Solutions Advisory Council, the Health Equity Advisory and Leadership Council, the Equitable Health Care Task Force, the Task Force on Pregnancy Health and Substance Use Disorders, and the African American Health State Advisory Council--while setting up additional race-conscious programs. Legal experts who reviewed the quotas said they were patently unconstitutional and would be easy pickings for a plaintiff.

"Any time the government uses a racial classification without a compelling state interest, that is unconstitutional," said Adam Mortara, the lead trial lawyer for the plaintiffs in Students for Fair Admissions v. Harvard, the 2023 Supreme Court case that outlawed affirmative action in college admissions.

Some of the requirements Walz signed into law are highly granular and involve multiple racial groups. The council on pregnancy and substance abuse, for example, must include "two members who identify as Black or African American," "two members who identify as Native American," and two additional members who are "Tribal representatives appointed by the Minnesota Indian Affairs Council." Other councils have quotas for Hispanics, Asian Americans, "LGBTQIA+" people, and the disabled.

It is not clear whether white people who "identify as" minorities are eligible for the positions. Walz and the Harris campaign did not respond to requests for comment.

The quotas form a stark contrast with the image of an avuncular Midwestern moderate that Walz and his allies have sought to project since his rollout in Philadelphia on Tuesday evening. Former House speaker Nancy Pelosi (D., Calif.) described Walz as a "heartland-of-America Democrat" with politics "right down the middle." Others have noted that Walz, a former football coach who served in Congress from 2007 to 2019, had a voting record to the right of many House Democrats.

America's Groomer Dad showed all of his moderation when he hosted a Muslim terror-preacher who praised the terror-rapes of October 7 and also, in case you didn't quite get it, Adolf Hitler.

But don't worry about that last one -- venerating Hitler is okay if you're Muslim or brown-skinned.

emocratic vice presidential nominee Tim Walz, on at least five occasions as governor of Minnesota, hosted a Muslim cleric who celebrated Hamas's Oct. 7 attack last year on Israel and promoted a film popular among Neo-Nazis that glorifies Adolf Hitler, the Washington Examiner found.

The imam, Asad Zaman of the Muslim American Society of Minnesota, joined other Muslim leaders in May 2023 for a meeting about mosque security with Walz's gubernatorial office in Minnesota. Zaman also spoke at a May 2020 event to call for peaceful protests with the governor during the riots in Minnesota sparked after George Floyd's death. In April 2019, the cleric delivered an invocation before Walz's state address -- just months after Zaman called for an end to a government shutdown at a press conference with Walz in January 2019.

Zaman, moreover, attended a May 2019 event that Walz hosted for Ramadan, social media posts show.

Walz's ties to Zaman could serve as problematic baggage for the Minnesota governor as he campaigns with Vice President Kamala Harris, the Democratic presidential nominee. News of the ties also comes after a Washington Free Beacon report this week found Walz spoke at a 2019 event with an antisemitic scholar who has defended terrorism against Israel.

David Strom writes that America's Groomer Dad has been very, very solicitous of the radical Muslim community in his state, and is, for example, a huge fan of brother-marryer and green card fraudster Ilhan "Omar" Nur.

You may have heard that Walz redesigned Minnesota's flag -- to closely resemble Somalia's.

Make America Somalia Again!

Walz claimed in his Philadelphia "Hello Fellow Moderates" speech that his attitude on government was that it should follow the maxim "Mind Your Own Business."

Noted Meatball Ron DeSantis questions his devotion to limited government libertarianism.

Yesterday, Ron DeSantis spoke up about it, not coincidentally in the context of ex-pats. While bragging about Florida's status as the top in-migration state in the US, the governor talked about why Americans were so eager to leave places like California, Illinois, and especially Minnesota. DeSantis scoffed at Walz' claim to believe in minding one's own business, and says Minnesotans left because of Walz' "Draconian" pandemic policies. Pick this up at the 2-minute mark or so, with this being the kill shot:

DESANTIS: I'm being asked about this and I haven't really said as much, but they're asking me about this Walz from Minnesota. Here's the thing: As Florida governor, I learn a lot about other states, because when people leave those states, they tell me why they left those states. And I remember during COVID the absolute frustration that people had moving from Minnesota because of how they were being treated.

You know, this is a guy that's out there, he's got this line in the stump speech saying, "You know, our neighbors can do what they want, mind your own damn business!" Fine! Then why did you set up a snitch hotline for neighbors to report on their neighbors for violating your Draconian COVID restrictions? That's not 'minding your own damn business.' That's government overreach.

Video at the link.

I hate to express this far-right thuggery white supremacist conspiracy theory, but sometimes I think that Marxist Democrat Civilizational-Locusts aren't being straight with us about their aims and ambitions.

Posted by: Disinformation Expert Ace at 01:10 PM | Comments (384) | Trackbacks (Suck)