Quote of the day—Dr. Jennifer Walker

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The fact that we’re seeing an emergence of modern rates of rise at all of these individual study sites as well by the mid 20th century just further demonstrates the really significant influence of global sea-level rise especially in the last century. By delving into individual sites the better understanding we have of regional and local processes impacting sea-level rise will continue to improve our understanding for future impacts.

Dr. Jennifer Walker
Rutgers University professor in the Department of Earth and Planetary Sciences
February 25, 2022
Burning coal has been driving sea level rise since the 19th century: study
[There are other things of interest in the article:

Utilizing a global database of geological sea level records from the past 2,000 years, the international team of researchers modeled global and site-specific sea level rise. They determined that in the United States, modern sea level rise can be discerned earliest in the Mid-Atlantic region somewhat later in the 19th century. By doing so, they hope to facilitate a better understanding of local processes driving variations in sea level changes.

This is not the first time I have seen stuff like this that I find bizarre. They appear to believe the ocean levels can change locally. Am I’m missing something? Or are they really that stupid?

How can you have local changes in the ocean level that do not become global within a day or less? There is a bulge of water than travels entirely around the globe in one day. It is due to gravity from the moon and sun. It is causes what are called tides, remember? Any local change in ocean level will spread out evenly around the entire earth, right? Why do these “scientists” claim there are local changes?—Joe]

Quote of the day—Alan Gottlieb

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The gun prohibition lobby would have America become vulnerable to such aggression as we are now seeing on television screens from coast to coast. This isn’t some action movie Americans are watching, this is real life, and it vividly illustrates why so many of us fight day and night to protect and defend our Second Amendment rights.

Our thoughts and prayers are with the good citizens of Ukraine. We can only hope that gun prohibitionists, or at least their supporters in the establishment media, learn something from this tragedy. To live in peace, one must always be prepared to defend it.

Alan Gottlieb
CCRKBA Chairman
February 24, 2022
CCRKBA: ‘UKRAINE CRISIS UNDERSCORES IMPORTANCE OF SECOND AMENDMENT’
[I do not expect, and I doubt Gottlieb does either, gun prohibitionists will “learn something from this tragedy” that will cause them to reduce their efforts to disarm private citizens. I expect many of them would celebrate the destruction of the USA and imagine they can, and should, accelerate that destruction by eliminating or neutering the 2nd Amendment.

We live in interesting times. Prepare appropriately.—Joe]

Quote of the day—March for our lives @GregWooll5

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By the way banning AR15s is not anti 2A.

March for our lives @GregWooll5
Tweeted on February 21, 2022
[Lot’s of good responses. My favorites:

Don’t ever let anyone get away with telling you that no one wants to take your guns.—Joe]

Quote of the day—Chris Cillizza

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What looked like a major flub during the 2012 campaign — and was used as a political cudgel by Obama — now looks very, very different. It should serve as a reminder that history is not written in the moment — and that what something looks like in that moment is not a guarantee of what it will always look like.

Chris Cillizza
February 22, 2022
It’s time to admit it: Mitt Romney was right about Russia
[See also what David Rutz has to say about this.

How gracious to admit his political bedmates were wrong. Isn’t he a nice guy? I wonder how they got it wrong to begin with?

One might be tempted to claim, “Never attribute to malic what can be adequately explained by ignorance and/or stupidity.”

When the hypothesis of ignorance and/or stupidity is put to the test you have consider that the political left is so much more friendly, and almost reasonable, with their political opponents after those opponents are no longer a political threat  When they are a political threat they are called “Hitler”, “fascist”, “racist”, “sexist”, etc. It happened with McCain, it happened but both Bush’s, it’s a consistent pattern. It’s to the point that they come across as schizophrenic.

But, again, the hypothesis of mental illness of a wide swath of the general population needs to be tested. In my estimation the simpler, and therefore more likely, answer is the behavior is a calculated and deliberately deceptive action.—Joe]

Sadly, I think she is right

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Tamara graces us with her wisdom yet again with The Paradox of Site Moderation.

Quote of the day—Voting Rights is Job #1 @KeepingSunny

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There are no good guns. And normal people don’t want their kids around any kind of gun. None.

Voting Rights is Job #1 @KeepingSunny
Tweeted on February 20, 2022
[This is what they think of us and our culture.

Prepare appropriately.—Joe]

Quote of the day—Gerard @Acamus27

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How the world sees you

image

Gerard @Acamus27
Tweeted on February 5, 2022
[It’s not only another Markley’s Law Monday, it is another science denier!

Prejudice is such an ugly thing.

Via a tweet from In Chains @InChainsInJail.—Joe]

Quote of the day—Colion Noir @MrColionNoir

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My goal was always to make 2A mainstream. Some want to keep the 2A community small. I want it to be so big that there is no more 2A community, it’s just engrained in the culture. I want gun commercials during the Super Bowl. I want big time actors sponsored by gun companies.

Colion Noir @MrColionNoir
Tweeted on February 11, 2022
[+1.

This is compatible with my goal (from May 30, 2019):

A gun is like a book. Possession, use, and purchase is a specific enumerated right. You should be able to be purchase them anyway, anytime, and anywhere.

That is my goal. Get used to it.

We both have more work to do.—Joe]

Quote of the day—Rebecca Leber

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Climate advocates point to the polling, the greenwashing, and the policy implications as pressing reasons it’s important that everyone, especially the media, drop the natural gas label.

For Alan Levinovitz, the name natural gas is simply “too dangerous to have around.” Stopping calling it natural gas is the necessary first step for the world to move away from gas as a climate solution.

Rebecca Leber
February 10, 2022
The end of natural gas has to start with its name
[I find it very telling they claim certain words and phrases are “too dangerous to have around”. Isn’t that almost straight out of George Orwell’s “Nineteen Eighty Four”?

The other thing about the article I find very telling is they write about how natural gas/methane is such a potent greenhouse gas then jump into how “natural gas” name has to be removed from our language. They don’t address the combustion products of natural gas versus the alternatives. It’s as if “natural gas is bad because it is methane” without addressing that natural gas isn’t deliberately released into the air. It is a product sold to customers who consume it. If they want express concerns about combustion products (or byproducts of using natural gas in things like plastics) I would consider that mostly fair. But that is not what they do.

They want to repress speech and are deliberately deceptive. That is all I need to know about them to be opposed to their agenda.—Joe]

Quote of the day—Isobel Asher Hamilton

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The chip Neuralink is developing is about the size of a coin, and would be embedded in a person’s skull. From the chip, an array of tiny wires, each roughly 20 times thinner than a human hair, fan out into the patient’s brain.

The wires are equipped with 1,024 electrodes which are able to monitor brain activity  and, theoretically, electrically stimulate the brain. This data is transmitted wirelessly via the chip to computers, where it can be studied by researchers.

The second is a robot that could automatically implant the chip.

The robot would work by using a stiff needle to punch the flexible wires emanating from a Neuralink chip into a person’s brain, a bit like a sewing machine.

Isobel Asher Hamilton
February 17, 2022
Elon Musk’s Neuralink wants to embed microchips in people’s skulls and get robots to perform brain surgery
[This sounds like such a great idea it should be mandatory… for politicians. The data should be posted on the Internet in real time.

I’ll leave it as an exercise for the reader on the feedback to be applied when the dislikes exceed the likes by a factor of two to one.

On a more serious note, I expect there will be people eager to do this. It will depend upon what sort of “apps” are available. Being able to give yourself almost instant orgasm will probably be a best seller with some people. Direct Internet access will be sufficient for others. And the math coprocessor will be the “killer app” for many of the nerds. But I don’t expect the concept will get full market penetration until virtual reality is nearly indistinguishable from the real world.

Just as with recreational drugs Darwin will provide the negative feedback and limit the adoption of this technology.—Joe]

Reloading dies?

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If I could afford it, it would be cool to reload for this caliber. It would give Boomershoot a whole new meaning:

IMG_6881

Of course I would need a new press and reloading dies. Does anyone know where I could get a press and dies which could handle 16” projectiles?* Oh, I also need a new gun and new range.

* Yes, I know, these projectiles didn’t use a shell casing. I was just making a joke.

Quote of the day—Igor Volsky

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The significant increase in gun violence over the last couple of years is simply too hard to ignore and, I do believe the President when he says and when he said that this issue is a priority for him,

Igor Volsky
Founder of Guns Down America
February 14, 2022
‘We’re not asking for magical things’: Anti-gun violence groups launch campaign to pressure Biden four years after Parkland
[Completely ignoring that over 92% of violent crime in the US does not involve a gun. Completely ignoring the “defund the police” component to the increase in violent crime. Completely ignoring the lack of prosecution of violent criminals which are caught. Completely ignoring the early release of violent criminals from prison using the excuse they were in danger of catching COVID-19 while in prison. Completely ignoring gun ownership is a specific enumerated right.

It is not about crime. It is about taking Guns away from ordinary people.

Just as interesting is that there is such a new anti-gun organization. This organization was founded in late 2016. Apparently the half dozen or so other organizations, many of which have been around for decades, weren’t effective enough for Volsky.

What he doesn’t seem to understand is that his message of “building a future with fewer guns” has already been tried by many of the existing organizations. And if they ever get any traction with the politicians gun sales skyrocket. It is an “adaptive response” as explained by Chet just the other day.

And don’t let anyone get away with telling you, “No one wants to take your guns.”—Joe]

Quote of the day—Chet

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Antifragile is another name for adaptive response, and it is one reason why models fail to be reliable very far into the future. The other reason is that many processes have probabilistic distribution that are not finite which Talib describes as fat tailed. Fat tailed processes have distributions which have no mean, no variance, or higher moments. Yes, you can compute these values, but they are not meaningful, and the resulting models are GIGO.

Failure to recognize adaptive response and fat tailed processes are major reasons why so much stupidity is going on in our world.

Chet
February 12, 2022
Comment to Quote of the day—Forrest Cooper
[This quote probably isn’t fully understood by more than 10%, at best, of the general population. But it really resonates with me and I wanted to give it more visibility so others who understand it can bask in the awesomeness.—Joe]

Quote of the day—StumpSmasher @SmasherStump

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It’s hard to beat a sales pitch of “we’ll reduce your sentences to nothing, defund the police so they don’t stop you, disarm your victims so they can’t resist, and throw in a pile of free stuff at the expense of workers”.

The DNC’s platform is tailor-made for the criminal vote.

StumpSmasher @SmasherStump
Tweeted on February 5, 2022
[Also, as was the case in the early days of the USSR, criminals are the natural allies of the communists and are treated as such by the politicians.—Joe]

Quote of the day—beth @bourgeoisalien

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I’m 100% convinced that the reason why right-wing chuds have to constantly talk about gun ownership and violence is because they have micro dicks.

beth @bourgeoisalien
Tweeted on January 17, 2022
[It’s not only another Markley’s Law Monday it’s another science denier!

I’m 100% convinced she hears “right-wing chuds” talking in her delusions.

Via a tweet from In Chains @InChainsInJail.—Joe]

Quote of the day—Victor Davis Hanson

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This governmental freefall has been overseen by a tragically bewildered, petulant, and incompetent president. In his confusion, an increasingly unpopular Biden seems to believe that his divisive chaos is working, belittling his political opponents as racist Confederate rebels.

As we head into the 2022 midterm elections, who will stop our descent into collective poverty, division, and self-inflicted madness?

Victor Davis Hanson
January 19, 2022
Is America Heading for a Systems Collapse
[I’m nearly certain that is the wrong question to ask. It is my understanding that in chaotic times people give their support to “strong” (authoritarian) people who claim they can fix the broken system. Mussolini and Hitler come to mind…

Hence, I think the better questions are:

  • “How can we prevent the wrong person from coming to power?”
  • “How can we dramatically reduced government power and let the free market fix the mess we are in?”
  • “How can we survive the coming collapse?”
  • “Where is my underground bunker?”

Prepare appropriately.—Joe]

Quote of the day—Forrest Cooper

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In his book, Antifragile Nicholas Nassim Taleb describes his concept as something which gains from disorder or resistance. Having no word to accurately describe something that is the opposite of fragile, he argues that the term robust does not go far enough, and is neutral at best. Antifragility is a trait, whether it be in markets, military strategies, or bone mass, that grows off of the volatility of their environments.

…

The phenomenon that is American Gun Culture has responded to censorship in an antifragile way. This can be seen in the sudden spike in firearms purchasing whenever politicians push for banning certain firearms, as well as by continuing to grow despite political and cultural opposition. While social media platforms normalize censoring firearms-related content, the culture revolving around firearms shows that it doesn’t need their approval to continue thriving.

Forrest Cooper
February 7, 2022
Censorship and Antifragility: Aero Precision
[Antifragile: Things That Gain from Disorder is a good book. It is a novel, (but obvious in hindsight) way of looking at things. As an engineer it helped me think about the design of reliable systems. It can help the gun rights community think about better responses to attempts at infringements too.

Gab is a good example. They were deplatformed on multiple axis simultaneously and came back stronger than before.

One might also say Boomershoot was an antifragile response to a law introduced by Diane Feinstein. The word did not exist at the time, but it certainly fits the facts.—Joe]

Quote of the day—Emily McCormick

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Consumer prices soared by the most in four decades in January, with inflation across the economy showing few signs of peaking even after months of increases.

The Consumer Price Index’s 7.5% annual surge at the start of 2022 was the biggest leap since 1982 and topped already elevated expectations for a 7.3% rise, based on Bloomberg consensus data. On a month-over-month basis, the CPI unexpectedly posted a 0.6% increase for a back-to-back month, whereas economists had been looking for a deceleration. Core inflation, which strips out volatile food and energy prices, also exceeded estimates, showing a 6.0% year-over-year jump in January.

The report served as one of the clearest affirmations that inflation — described as recently as November by the Federal Reserve as “transitory” — has become a persistent feature of the economic recovery.

Emily McCormick
February 10, 2022
What economists are saying about soaring inflation
[We live in interesting times.

Prepare appropriately.—Joe]

Quote of the day—Natasha Abel

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Based on the percent of firearms licenses, about 1 to 5 percent of adult residents had a firearms license in Massachusetts counties. But Iwama found no consistent effect of the new legislation on reducing four types of violent crime (murder or nonnegligent manslaughter, aggravated assault, robbery, rape). Her study did find that a one-percent increase in denied firearm licenses and denied firearm licenses following statutory disqualifications increased robberies 7.3 and 8.9 percent, respectively.

While the percentage of denied firearms licenses and firearms license applications had little to no effect on violent crimes, Iwama suggests state lawmakers revisit their legislation to ensure that it is being implemented as intended and address challenges identified. In particular, are these findings the result of a longer-than-expected lag in enforcement following passage of the legislation? Are they due to individuals obtaining firearms in nearby states with looser gun laws? Or is it possible that the 2014 law is being enforced differentially by county?

Natasha Abel
October 22, 2021
Study: Massachusetts Gun-Control Legislation Has Had No Effect on Violent Crime
[Or is it possible that what I and others have been saying, for almost 20 years, gun control has not and will not make the general public safer?

Study after study agrees with me but researcher Janice Iwama confirms the findings of dozens of other researchers using data from all over the country (for example: a 2018 study on background checks and my thoughts on background checks in 2013) and concludes it must be an implementation problem specific to Massachusetts. She doesn’t understand (or believe) that it was never the intention of the law to increase public safety.—Joe]

Quote of the day—Vox Day@voxday

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You can cling to all the Big Tech platforms as long as you like. It’s foolish, because they WILL deplatform you. And you can jump to all the “new” gatekeeping platforms run by the same people who run the Big Tech platforms all you like, but you’re not going to find what you’re looking for there either.

Consider this: there is a reason the media, the ADL, and all the other organizations that hate you have been deplatforming and discrediting people like me, Torba, Milo, Owen, Stefan, and Razor for the last 7 years.

And maybe it’s not because we are pure and unmitigated evil haters who hate. Maybe it’s because we actually stand for the Good, the Beautiful, and the True.

Vox Day@voxday
Gabbed on February 4, 2022
[Read that carefully. He didn’t say they were the Good, the Beautiful, and the True. He said maybe they actually stood for that.

I think that is the more likely hypothesis than they are all “pure and unmitigated evil haters who hate”.

There may be some other hypothesis that fits the available evidence better than either but doesn’t matter much. What matters is those Big Tech companies deplatforming people are clearly evil haters who hate.—Joe]