Home » Open thread 7/31/21

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Open thread 7/31/21 — 40 Comments

  1. What Garfield said: “Cats are poetry in motion; dogs are gibberish in neutral”.

  2. But note the proportional size of the dogs’ bodies and paws vs. the cats’ bodies and paws. The spacing of the obstacles wasn’t changed to accommodate that, so the smaller the participant, the easier it would be to negotiate the maze. A mouse, e.g., would have no problem at all with that spacing in a maze, but for me, with my size 12 wide shoes, it would be difficult even on tip-toe.

    That thought gives one paws! (sorry, just had to do it)

  3. om: “There will always be an England in the US Navy.” E. King

    Stirring story. And brings to top-of-mind the sickness of those who insist on destroying our history and heritage.

  4. Apropos of dog discrimination: In addition to cats’ relatively small size, they have another advantage over dogs in negotiating an obstacle course. They can move precisely because they register directly when they walk; that is, they place each hind paw (almost) directly in the print of the corresponding fore paw, minimizing noise and visible tracks. Illustration of a cat’s directly registering gait here:
    https://pictures-of-cats.org/direct-register-cat-gait.html

  5. China reportedly is arming up:

    Should Stratcom worry about China’s ‘Bouncy Castles of Death’?
    https://omaha.com/news/local/should-stratcom-worry-about-chinas-bouncy-castles-of-death/article_66409aa4-e8cb-11eb-a70e-3b90df8b75a7.html#tracking-source=home-top-story

    For months, U.S. Strategic Command chief Adm. Charles Richard has been sounding the alarm about the growing nuclear threat from China.

    Now we know why.

    In the past month, civilian analysts studying satellite images have found two large fields of apparent nuclear missile silos — at least 230 of them — under construction in remote north-central China.

    The number of new silos under construction is more than the total number of silo-based ICBMs fielded by Russia, and equal to more than half of the U.S. arsenal, said Hans Kristensen, director of the Nuclear Information Project at the Federation of American Scientists, the organization that discovered one of the silo fields a week ago.

    “Any way you cut it, this is the most significant change in the Chinese nuclear posture, ever,” he said. …

  6. The dogs did much better than I expected!

    Cats don’t obey the laws of physics. News at 10.

  7. @HumphreyP:

    ICBMs are handy to have…but putting in more silos is probably just their equivalent of the RAND Institute of yore coming up with some modeling says they better plant some more and get them noticed by Federation of American Traitors in White Coats. I’d worry more about Chinese conventional weapons expansion and innovation. Any Tier 1 fool can produce nukes like sausages. Only 1 Tier 1 nation can manufacture conventional military hardware at scale and on time… and would you like steamed rice or noodles with that?

  8. Our cats when alive walked the length of the bay window not touching all the objects there, this didn’t surprise me, the dogs were too funny

  9. I’m sure many here would be aware that the ADL is teaming up with PayPal to dox and otherwise make life miserable for ‘White Supremacists’ — That means pretty much all of you present here… no matter what your 23andMe says.

    Some random idea I read on Gab:

    ————–
    the ADL will only ever back off their Anti-White Campaign of Terror if it starts turning American public opinion against Israel

    so you should always tie the ADL and Israel together, like:

    “As a conservative, why should we support Israel abroad when we’re being attacked by the ADL at home? Why do these rich and powerful Jews attack White America when they should be grateful for all we’ve done for Israel. It’s not fair.”
    ————–

    Not quite what Thaler and Sunstein dreamed up, but still… bit of a rhetorical nudge FTW. For all the geniuses who will want to argue about the logic or fairness of this or that here… Logic doesn’t work in politics. You have to go for the amygdala. And better hope that the earlier and less sophisticated guys get results and clear the air, discharge the static buildup to ground, whatever. (precisely why Censorship and the ADL itself are Bad Ideas) You do not want to be around when a master of these dark arts evolves or is born ready-formed into a charged atmosphere.

  10. @om:

    Well of course they hacked it.

    Your Globalist Masters hollowed out Microsoft and now it’s full of Dot Indians.

    Best be hacking right back at them stat. Turnabout is Fair.

  11. @ Zaphod – “the ADL will only ever back off their Anti-White Campaign of Terror if it starts turning American public opinion against Israel”

    I don’t agree with that course of action, first because the rhetorical example demonizes Jews as a group, rather than the actual perps of the conservative-punishing doxxing, but also because I don’t think the ADL still has any concern about causing harm to Israel.

    https://www.jns.org/opinion/whos-really-for-replacement-theory-white-supremacists-or-liberals/
    “Another problem is that the ADL’s credibility has been shot as it has shifted from being a nonpartisan anti-Semitism monitoring organization to a Democratic auxiliary group since Greenblatt, a former Clinton and Obama White House staffer, took over.”

  12. “I don’t think the ADL still has any concern about causing harm to Israel.”
    That’s my impression too. Without saying it in so many words, lefty American Jews I know want Jews out of Israel. Alive preferably. Resettled somewhere.
    I only have anecdotal numbers though. So maybe that’s wrong.

    Side note: why are virtually all “American” tech companies now run by Indian CEOs and staffed by large numbers of lower paid (frequently resentful) H1B Indian workers?

  13. @AesopFan:

    Plenty of Anti-Zionist Leftist Jews around and I won’t attempt to deny that… but I do find myself wondering just how Anti-Zionist they would be if Israel really were on the ropes? Which it ain’t. Not by a long shot. Predominant military power in its neighbourhood by far in the Current Year… and has been for some time.

    But the rhetorical point being made and which ought to be made to American Normie Gentile audience is that they have done a lot to help establish and maintain Israel and that a large chunk of the American Jewish Left does not thank them for it and in fact actively despises them. This is not about being Fair or Unfair to Jews. It’s about awakening Gentile Normie. Make no mistake, the ADL and a bunch of other progressive organisations with undeniably heavy Jewish Leftist over-representation have a bead on Normie and his Grill.

    My contention is that about right now would be a good time to be drawing some stark lines between ADL / SPLC type American Jews and Mom and Apple Pie types. Sides will need to be chosen. Done right, the troublemakers get hived off with the rest of Progressive Whitey. History suggests that being lumped all together is Bad for the Jews ™ . I am unconvinced that Normie can be bamboozled by Ben Schapiros and other astroturf items for much longer.

  14. @JimNorCal:

    Amazing. I just wrote a thing on Indians and Caste System and nepotism and how it pertains to Big Tech. Posted OK and then came back a few mins ago and gone.

    Well there you go… WordPress Censorship Gnomes now officially puts Indians ahead of Jews. And let me just say that I for one velcome our new malodorous owerlords!

    Any more of this cogdis and I’ll suffer the fate of Inspector Javert!

  15. @om

    I bought a Lenovo ThinkPad in July 2020, the company that used to be IBM (which I think is 11 percent owned by the Chinese Academy of Sciences, ie, the government).

    It was made in China.

    Ultimately, I experienced problems with it, though not definitive, consistent with the Solar Winds hack.

    I can’t get into all the details, and I liked the computer, except that over time it typically wouldn’t boot unless it was connected to the internet. (Sound suspicious?) The modem is built into the motherboard, how it is designed, so it wasn’t a cheap fix for Lenovo, if that was the issue. Alternatively, it could have been a software issue, which was on me. I repeatedly wiped the hard drive and reinstalled everything, which worked for awhile but the problem always reappeared even with a lot “babying” by me.

    When Windows did a major upgrade in Dec. 2020, everything went haywire, worse than it ever was. This was either a few days before or after the Solar Winds hack was revealed. Solar Winds affected not only the government but big corporations.

    To Lenovo’s credit, their customer service was good, through IBM in Atlanta. I didn’t use them at first as much as I should have, jaded by experience, like everyone anymore, of automated menus and infinite phone loops. Even then this was a difficult fix, knowing what the problem was, and them not knowing for sure if I knew what I was doing, for example, if it didn’t all tie back to the software (therefore not covered by the warranty).

    Eventually, this went up the chain and they had a manager call me back. (I didn’t want a refurbished computer as a fix, as I liked it otherwise, and I paid for a new computer.) When the manager called, he had me do a specific diagnostic test. Aha. He had me send it in again and said they would replace the hard drive, and if that didn’t work, they would also replace the motherboard. When they sent it back after only replacing the hard drive, everything worked. I haven’t had the problem once since — consistent with my experience with all other PCs I’ve ever owned.

    Ultimately, the Windows version burned into and stored permanently as an image file on the hard drive at the factory was corrupted, I believe. Every time I tried to fix the problem by wiping the hard drive clean and reinstalling Windows (from the image file burned into the hard drive), I was reinstalling a corrupted version. I don’t believe this was a Lenovo issue, but believe instead that it was a Microsoft issue, which it could have been IMO via Solar Winds.

  16. Re “Kamala Harris”, the article you link to is an in-depth indictment (well-deserved) not only of her but also of Soviet Socialist State of California, the “Biden” presidency and the entire Democratic Party (all equally deserving of censure and ridicule…and PROSECUTION).

    The Democratic Party is the cabal of “the CON” (as well as “the STEAL”); and the country and many of its Blue states and cities are being run by a cabal of out-and-out criminals…(but then this is nothing new).

    The question is, at what point the eyes of “The People” will be opened—that this is already happening in California is demonstrated by the ever growing numbers of fleeing residents—and/or how long, in spite of everything, the uber-corrupt media and infotech will be able to hold back the information dikes from springing a huge and unpluggable leak.

    Does one dare to hope?

  17. @HumphreyP:

    I reinstalled Windows on a Lenovo T480s last year. IIRC I went to Microsoft’s website and did whatever I needed to do to download and burn a bootable install USB stick for Windows 10.

    Then did a standard Windows installation and Windows was smart enough to recognise the laptop model and downloaded and installed all the drivers directly from Lenovo. Everything worked fine — just took forever with the updates as is always the case with Windows.

    Can’t recall whether or not I needed to go to Lenovo’s site after this to download Lenovo Vantage (worth having for firmware updates, etc.) or whether Windows installed it automatically.

    It’s natural to want to avoid driver hell by restoring from manufacturer backup partition… but turns out that it’s fairly painless to do it the way I’ve just outlined, too. Much simpler than would have been 15+ years back when would have run a big risk of ending up with missing drivers and a painful headache.

    Lenovo seems pretty good with supporting their enterprise grade laptops. I’m sure that customer support for individuals must suck — but anything deployed in the hundreds of thousands by corporate IT departments will have most of the bugs ironed out pretty fast and any issues and fixes should be searchable online.

    Security-wise don’t trust them one bit. But that goes for everyone. I’m firmly of the opinion that anyone living in the Five Eyes who is not an AntiFa member has more to fear (‘innocent’ or not) from pervasive surveillance by their own governments and big tech than from Inscrutable Panda Men hiding in bowls of rice in Far Cathay.

    If you really want to feel paranoid, google Intel Management Engine — they can get at your stuff *over the net* at the hardware level — i.e. you could have a bare machine with no OS booted sitting there powered up with network cable plugged in and they’d still be able to traipse all over it and read any partitions on any attached devices — i.e. there’s a whole hidden very capable mini OS in the actual processor chip. That’s your tax dollars at work.

  18. Nothing about my issue was “standard.”

    It was like that out of the box or not long after before the problem manifested itself, nothing to do with what I did. If I were online all the time I would never have even noticed it.

    I saw some very negative reviews of the Idea Pad, but liked that particular ThinkPad model. It was what needed and thought I might avoid issues with the better computer, and that it was worth risking. Again, I’ve had no issues at all once the hard drive was replaced.

  19. Think what you will of it (and my thoughts are most definitely mixed), the CCP is determined that it and not tech oligarchs will rule China:

    https://www.abc.net.au/news/2021-08-02/chinas-war-on-everything-turns-towards-its-own-tycoons-verrender/100341464

    Of course that’s not quite the spin the GloboHomo Cathedral Poz Emitting Australian Broadcasting Corporation (Similar to, but as bad in every imaginable way as the BBC) puts on it. I’m linking the article for the data points it contains, not the interpretation.

    Make no mistake, the big brains who sit near the Centre in China have and are studying the West… and through fewer ideological blinkers than the West is studying itself *or* China or anywhere. You know, those Goddamn Commie Chinks have probably even stolen the OODA Loop paper.. How about that?

    They’ve seen what Big Tech becomes if let run amok in a ‘free’ economy where they can buy politicians, achieve regulatory capture, *and* do their own private espionage on politicians.

  20. … (continues) … and their own private espionage and data aggregation on the General Public. There’s a sudden top-down big personal data privacy push happening in China right now. The government wants to make sure that it and only it has a monopoly on data aggregation and knowing everything about everyone.

    Now would you rather be tyrannised by one mostly predictable bureaucratic government or simultaneously by 10+ of them in various states of warfare with each other and with rampant ever-leftward virtue-spiraling workforces?

    I suppose correct answer is C: None of the above. I don’t think C is encoded much in the East Asian genome. Whether or not Westerners are capable of regaining and then *holding* romantic ideal of personal freedom with Techno Pandora’s Box opened is another issue.

  21. And a bit more context:

    https://www.scmp.com/comment/opinion/article/3143249/trojan-horse-threat-behind-chinas-tutoring-and-tech-crackdown-amid

    IMHO they’re 40% worried about GloboHomo Baizuo Poz (what Pavlov’s Whitey Dogs would call Muh Freedom and Muh Public Square Franklin Mint Limited Edition Miniatures) gaining a foothold in China and 60% worried about Big Tech gaining too much power + trying to tamp down on unbridled social competition free-for-all social atomization and destabilization.

  22. “Another problem is that the ADL’s credibility has been shot as it has shifted from being a nonpartisan anti-Semitism monitoring organization to a Democratic auxiliary group since Greenblatt, a former Clinton and Obama White House staffer, took over.”

    It’s credibility was shot when Abraham Foxman replaced Nathan Perlmutter a generation ago, and put the agency to work on his personal hobby horses (one of which was a hatred of the Catholic Church).

  23. @ArtDeco:

    Its credibility is one thing. It’s informal Power as part of the Modbuggian ‘Cathedral’ is Something Else. Having the ADL as the arbiter of who is and is not a Right Wing Extremist is not something that can be wished away by arguing that they have over-stepped their remit or even by referring (as I am tempted to) to the Leo Frank Scandal and the ADL’s genesis. They’re part of a clear and present danger which goes beyond reasoned analysis or the cheap shots I so love.

    They’ll have to be stopped the hard way.

  24. More Clown World Nonsense from Australia:

    https://www.news.com.au/world/coronavirus/australia/venues-will-soon-be-able-to-ask-patrons-for-proof-of-coronavirus-vaccinations/news-story/2b8aa6a0476f029192b8e3c0e4ad8196

    Can a business owner refuse to serve Blacks and Trannies or ask patrons if they are Jewish or Homosexual?

    I know what they say about a Foolish Consistency… but isn’t it funny how GloboHomo Leviathan hates Freedom of Association until and unless it can be used as a kind of passive-aggressive backhander?

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