Last night both the Unwanted Blog *and* the APR Blog got borked. *Again.* This time, though, I had the backup blog running so I didn’t stress about it too much.
Gah.
And then it magically came back to functionality… but this sort of thing remains *damned* annoying.
From the BBC:
The argument is made that a 16-year-old falls asleep in class because his house is too small and is over-crowded, and that his family has been unable to find a bigger one. But… nowhere in the story does it say that the family is trying to *buy* a bigger house. All references are to trading houses, or asking to be *given* a house. A point is made that new houses are constantly being built, but the question is raised as to who is getting them. The question goes unanswered. Further, the family doesn’t immediately seem to actually be British, though the children were born there… born into a family that is in a small house with no apparent means of buying a larger one.
Left unsaid and unanswered: Britain is being flooded with foreign immigrants who seem to *immediately* get free houses, but who don’t actually seem to contribute to the economy, certainly not to the level of being able to afford said house. So Britain has a housing crisis… not just a lack of houses, but people seem to think they are *owed* a house, and one to their liking, simply because they showed up. These people then go on to create yet more kids who are effectively supported not by the family but by the tax payers.
I’m sure this seems like a good idea to *somebody.*
A magic trick performed on Russian TV some years ago went kinda wrong. I can’t help but compare this to a more recent bit of Russian adventurism, with Putin playing the role of the incompetent magician and the Russian people as the TV presenter who got enstabbenated for trusting him.
This estimate appears to come from the FSB. Normally you’d expect them to underestimate the losses in order to try to make things look not quite so bad. So… is this an underestimate? Is it reasonably accurate? Or is it in the FSB’s interests to try to make things look *worse?* If the latter… one might think they’re doing it to make Ukraine look like enough of a threat to retroactively justify the invasion. or maybe they’re doing it to make the invasion look like enough of an unmitigated disaster to help spur on some home-grown regime change. Shrug.
In any event: good job, Vlad.
The Danish study shows a link between PFAS chemicals, often used in plastic products including food packaging, and now found in *rain,* and drastically reduced sperm counts. This is a possible explanation for why the developed world’s sperm counts have crashed while the undeveloped world’s sperm counts remain fairly high.
It is unlikely that reduced sperm counts are the sole result of these chemicals, which mess with hormones. It would not surprise me that they also trash testosterone levels, another problem in considerable evidence these days. This would not be the first time that science has shown widespread problems due to chemicals in consumer products: tetra-ethyl lead in gasoline and lead in paint led to whole generations of kids being stupider and more violent than they should have been. And then there’s tobacco.
So what will be done about this? If the link can be firmly established, PFAS chemicals *should* be removed from the market. But I wonder about pushback: not so much from the chemical and plastics industries… but from the Alphabet People. If it is scientifically shown that the existence of everything from bog-standard homosexuals to low-testosterone “soyboys” to dangerhaired weirdos to a large fraction of those feeling the need to transition are all influenced to an important degree by the existence of PFAS… then deleting the chemicals might be seen as anti-Alphabet People. If nothing else, the following generations should presumably have fewer Alphabet People. I suspect this won’t go over all that well.
The alternative seems to be a population crash in the developed world, followed by a complete takeover by the undeveloped world. I suspect that this, too, might be something that some people want to have happen.
And do not drop your battlefield missiles off the back of a truck:
Heck, you drop ’em on the streets of Russia, you can’t sell ’em to the Ukrainians.
Those days are gone.
Gotta wonder why some people are like this.
Go die for Putin. Receive fish.
Bonus: According to the translation of the interviews below, conscripts are being given a “machine gun” (presumably an AK-47 or AK-74), “four rounds and a knife.” Way to build morale, Vlad.
Palpably mutinous moods among the Russian troops post Lyman. Auto translation via @vidtranslator pic.twitter.com/NQ3QW8dUUV
— Christo Grozev (@christogrozev) October 4, 2022
Gotta admire the hustle:
Discounted from $685 all the way down to $378! You’d be crazy *not* to buy one!!!
Honestly, I’m jealous. Why can’t *I* ever think of things like this to extract vast sums from people with more money than sense??? Granted, it looks like this thing is actual metal, and designed to be removable and only *look* like a zip tie. But a silver-painted plastic zip tie has got to be sellable for, what, at least a couple dozen bucks, right?
Shoot, I can’t imagine even getting 125 people together to watch that dull, dull “sport,” much less getting them excited about it.