Apr 092022
 

Interesting if true:

Russia may have lost one fifth of their combat power in Ukraine, say Western officials

Seems like guesswork, but given how badly things have gone for the Russians… it may be true. A month and a half after essentially invading Kansas and Russias army has lost around 20% of their capability? A few more months and they’ll be under 50%. At that point, the Chinese will be looking *real* *hard* at Siberia. Finland might decide to just walk in and take their territory back.

 Posted by at 5:45 pm
Apr 092022
 

Ben’s staff selects some of the craziest nutbars tiktok has to offer to make their boss react to. Someday, historians will look back on this time in amazement that society ever allowed people with this level of mental illness to have this outsized of an influence on culture, norms and laws.

 

By the way: if you are still concerned about the so-called “Don’t Say gay” bill, Ruined Leon is here to set you right. Unlike the people screaming the loudest about it, he actually goes to the bother of actually reading the thing: Spoiler warning: the crazies are lying. Shocker, I know.

And if you are confused or concerned that perhaps you too are a groomer, the Babylon Bee has kindly provided a simple test:

Are You A Groomer? 9 Things To Look For

1. Do you talk about sex with 5-year-olds behind their parents’ back?

2. Do you begin sentences with, “Don’t tell your parents, but…”

3. Do you encourage kids to cut off their sex organs?

4. Are you a Disney Executive?

Take a look and see how you stack up, and whether you should be removed from the proximity of children.

We don’t need stricter gun laws. We don’t need open borders. We do need a whole lot of mental asylums.

 Posted by at 3:30 pm
Apr 092022
 

Coming soonever from Fantastic Plastic: a 1/48 scale model of an early Grumman lunar lander concept. I’ve recently finished the CAD model for this, based on diagrams, art and display models. As modeled it has a basic interior; your average LEM model doesn’t have an interior, but at this early stage int he design the windows were HUGE, which made the interior kinda mandatory. The windows were gigantic because the crew were seated and thus recessed from the skin of the vehicle; by going to standing crew, they could put their faces right up next to the windows… allowing the windows to be far smaller.

 

 Posted by at 3:49 am
Apr 082022
 

It’s the 80’s all over again, just not quite in order. Right now we’ve got the 70’s as far as feckless and incompetent leadership, flailing their way through economic troubles including inflation, but 80’s music has had a resurgence. And now Ukrainians are remaking one of the best American movies of the 80’s:

How many Ukrainians armed with man-portable anti-tank rockets yell “Eat me!” when they pull the trigger? I can assure you that there has been a  *lot* of “avenge me!” bandied about over there.

 

Also: if you want one of the most laughable reviews of “Red Dawn,” one that could not be made today with anything remotely resembling a straight face… well, here ya go:

“Oh, boo hoo, the Soviets are portrayed as the villains.” Yeah. They’re portrayed doing almost *exactly* the sort of things that are happening RIGHT FRIGGEN’ NOW. “Those dastardly right wing film makers showed Russian troops killing kids at a school!” yeah. Who could have imagined THAT ever happening.

 Posted by at 9:29 pm
Apr 082022
 

Gallup polling from February indicates that Americans are quickly heading towards becoming a non-reproducing people:

LGBT Identification in U.S. Ticks Up to 7.1%

7.1% might not sound like a lot, but that’s of the entire population; it’s *far* higher the younger you get, and it’s trending upwards very quickly.

Gen Z’ers have gone from 10% LGBT to 20% in only four years. No reason to assume that that will stop; they might get to 30% by the time they’re mature. But the *next*generation will seemingly start off from there or higher. It’s not unreasonable to assume that Gen Z+1 will be 50% or more LGBT by the time they mature, while the relatively few members of Gen Z+2 might be 75% LGBT.

The trends are there. The obvious question is *why.* “Because humans are naturally that way” really doesn’t seem to comport with any examination of humanity throughout history. Additionally, if the rise in LGBT is due to the increasingly accepting culture, then why aren’t the Gen Xers and Baby Boomers jumping on board? Is there something in the environment? Something in the food, in the drugs, in the drinking water, seeping out of the plastic bottles? The question arises again: if it was found that some chemical produced in the last few decades has caused the rise in LGBT, what would happen if there was a serious effort to *ban* that chemical? Who would protest, and would they win?

There is another possibility. Yes, American culture is much more accepting of LGBT than it was a few decades ago. But we’ve gone beyond “acceptance” and leaped into “advocacy.” Take a look at Libs of TikTok: it is *filled* with public school teachers proudly announcing how they are grooming children as young as kindergarteners to decide that they are gay or trans. Kids are *dumb* and impressionable. If we had armies of teachers trying to convince six year olds that they were in fact unicorns, you bet your ass we’d have lots of kids convinced that they were unicorns. And as those kids grew older, if society persisted in supporting them in their belief that they were unicorns, and that it was cool and preferable to be unicorns, and that anyone who didn’t support their unicornness was evil and stupid, it’s safe to assume that unicornness would increase.

As the native American population fades away, it will simply be replaced by people whose cultures don’t engage in this sort of thing. A hundred years from now, American might be evenly split between the Hispanic Catholics and the Muslims, with anyone else being a statistical rounding error (maybe some Mormons in the Free State of Deseret; I would have assumed some Amish, but they’ll doubtless be wiped out by then). This assumes the US lasts that long.

There is another possible approach: mockery using the Critical Race Theorists words and logic against the groomers. Honestly it’s unlikely to work… but at least we can have a good laugh as we watch western society recede in the rear view mirror.

‘The issue is SYSTEMIC grooming’: Critical Grooming Theory thread mocking principles of CRT is the best damn thing you’ll read today

 Posted by at 7:24 pm
Apr 082022
 

It is common wisdom that if a Federal prosecutor files charges against you, you immediately start trying to get a plea deal because, guilty or not, the Feds don’t lose trials. Wellllllll….

Jury finds 2 men not guilty in Whitmer kidnap case; unable to reach verdicts on 2 others

In short: it sure seems like this “plot to kidnap Governor Whitmer,” conveniently unveiled  a month or so before the 2020 election and used to loudly promote the idea that Trump inspired dangerous whackaloons, was largely if not wholly a product of the FBI. Whoopsie.

And then:

A Man Claimed Police Let Him Into The Capitol On Jan. 6. A Judge Found Him Not Guilty Of All Charges.

Not much of an insurrection if the government actually lets you in to wander around for a bit.

And then:

Judge restores Jan. 6 defendant’s gun rights over DOJ objection

Jenny Cudd was not charged with doing any violence, nor even a felony, yet the Feds tried to delete her civil rights. How many of the 2020 BLM/Antifa rioters have lost their voting franchise?

 Posted by at 5:03 pm
Apr 082022
 

Marx wrote something that was profound, and reads like a description of the modern twitter mob. Just… not *that* Marx, Karl, but his father, Heinrich. From a letter from father to son, 1837, when the future father of the communist monster and it’s megadeaths from genocide and democide was still a teenager:

Frankly speaking, my dear Karl, I do not like this modern word, which all weaklings use to cloak their feelings when they quarrel with the world because they do not possess, without labour or trouble, well-furnished palaces with vast sums of money and elegant carriages. This embitterment disgusts me and you are the last person from whom I would expect it. What grounds can you have for it? Has not everything smiled on you ever since your cradle? Has not nature endowed you with magnificent talents? Have not your parents lavished affection on you? Have you ever up to now been unable to satisfy your reasonable wishes? And have you not carried away in the most incomprehensible fashion the heart of a girl whom thousands envy you? Yet the first untoward event, the first disappointed wish, evokes embitterment! Is that strength? Is that a manly character?

Another letter, same year:

On several occasions we were without a letter for months, and the last time was when you knew Eduard was ill, mother suffering and I myself not well, and moreover cholera was raging in Berlin; and as if that did not even call for an apology, your next letter contained not a single word about it, but merely some badly written lines and an extract from the diary entitled The Visit, which I would quite frankly prefer to throw out rather than accept, a crazy botch-work which merely testifies how you squander your talents and spend your nights giving birth to monsters; that you follow in the footsteps of the new immoralists who twist their words until they themselves do not hear them; who christen a flood of words a product of genius because it is devoid of ideas or contains only distorted ideas.

Yes, your letter did contain something — complaints that Jenny does not write, despite the fact that at bottom you were convinced that you were favoured on all sides — at least there was no reason for despair and embitterment — but that was not enough, your dear ego yearned for the pleasure of reading what you knew already (which, of course, in the present case is quite fair), and Herr Son could say to his parents, that was almost all that suffering, whom he had oppressed by a whom he knew to be senseless silence.

As if we were men of wealth, my Herr Son disposed in one year of almost 700 talers contrary to all agreement, contrary to all usage, whereas the richest spend less than 500. And why? I do him the justice of saying that he is no rake, no squanderer. But how can a man who every week or two discovers a new system and has to tear up old works laboriously arrived at, how can he, I ask, worry about trifles? How can he submit to the pettiness of order? Everyone dips a hand in his pocket, and everyone cheats him, so long as he doesn’t disturb him in his studies, and a new money order is soon written again, of course. Narrow-minded persons like G. R. and Evers may be worried about that, but they are common fellows. True, in their simplicity these men try to digest the lectures, even if only the words, and to procure themselves patrons and friends here and there, for the examinations are presided over by men, by professors, pedants and sometimes vindictive villains, who like to put to shame anyone who is independent; yet the greatness of man consists precisely in creating and destroying!!!

True, these poor young fellows sleep quite well, except when they sometimes devote half a night or a whole night to pleasure, whereas my hard-working talented Karl spends wretched nights awake, weakens his mind and body by serious study, denies himself all pleasure, in order in fact to pursue lofty abstract studies, but what he builds today he destroys tomorrow, and in the end he has destroyed his own work and not assimilated the work of others. In the end the body is ailing and the mind confused, whereas the ordinary little people continue to creep forward undisturbed and sometimes reach the goal better and at least more comfortably than those who despise the joys of youth and shatter their health to capture the shadow of erudition, which they would probably have achieved better in an hour’s social intercourse with competent people, and with social enjoyment into the bargain!!!

 

Seems like Karl would have fit in quite well with his modern followers who demand much, provide little, complain often. He blew through his families money (money he himself did not earn) at a very high rate; he produced nothing, but destroyed much; he complained all the time; he did not have any use for his family save as an ATM. Like many modern college lefties, he came from privilege, did not have the first clue how things were actually done, he valued nonsensical  dreaming over objective reality and he helped bring untold misery. He was very much the prototype for the modern SJW.

 Posted by at 4:46 pm
Apr 082022
 

Wait, the Russians really did dig trenches near Chernobyl?

 

 Posted by at 12:26 pm
Apr 072022
 

Huh:

Fossil of dinosaur killed in asteroid strike found, scientists claim

It’s remarkable not only for the cause of death of the animal, but the preservation of the remains of one leg:

 

This was found at the Tanis site in North Dakota, previously mentioned on this blog. Earlier reports had shown fish that had been killed by or during the impact event, specifically a wave tossing them onto shore while filling their gills full of little glass tectites, I shudder to imagine what that leg fossil would go for if it ever went up for auction. I hope the dig site has good security.

 Posted by at 6:32 pm