Links For Today

California is not the only crazy State: Cuomo orders utility to pump imaginary natural gas

On purely principled grounds, I support this. But this is the same crowd that believes in forced vaccination. This was a common theme at Thursday night’s CNN town hall focused on gay and transgender issues, sponsored by the Human Rights Campaign. Host Anderson Cooper, for example, called laws criminalizing HIV nondisclosure “antiquated” and based on “old science.” Presidential contender Pete Buttigieg agreed, saying, “It’s not fair and it needs to change.” And both on the CNN stage and in her new LGBT issues platform, Sen. Elizabeth Warren has endorsed decriminalizing HIV transmission as well.Sen. Cory Booker has also signed on to this radicalism, explicitly agreeing that laws requiring disclosure of HIV status to sexual partners are “archaic” and have “no scientific basis,” calling for their complete repeal.

On a different, but related note: Rates of sexually transmitted diseases (STDs) continue to rise, with combined cases of syphilis, gonorrhea, and chlamydia hitting a record high in 2018.

Video at the link: Brilliant Midnight Fireball Lights Up Sky Over Northeast China

Nobody is ready for third world service: Massive California power outage triggers chaos in science labs

The important thing is to keep panicking: Some corals ‘killed’ by climate change are now returning to life

FYI: Tens of thousands of troops were deployed on rescue missions across Japan on Sunday after a powerful typhoon caused widespread flooding and landslides, leaving at least 26 people dead and 15 missing.

Mostly in the News…..

Turkey has limitations. Linking to it mostly because it is from one of the more astute bloggers around: Turkey’s border offensive against the Kurds, far from being a blitzkrieg, is limited by the resources available to Ankara’s forces. According to DW, its goal is to bring a 15,360- square kilometer swath under its control. “Turkey wants to create a 32-kilometer-deep, 480-kilometer-long corridor (20 miles deep, 300 miles long) inside Syria along the border to protect its security… it plans to resettle nearly 1 million of its 3.6 million Syrian refugees who hail from other parts of Syria inside the ‘safe zone.'” But it must do so by installment and on a shoestring.

A Russian sponsored look at Trump’s decision to get out of the way of the Turks.

A collection of links on power black outs in California and the problems they represent: Unsustainable California: No Easy Remedy for PG&E Blackouts, Fire Risks

Controlling the price has never before in the history of the world increased supply but it might be different this time: California governor signs statewide rent-control law

For what it is worth, here is an overview of the polls: Do Americans Support Impeaching Trump?

Sad World Links

I had never heard of this either but I can’t say I am suprised. Eric A. Fong’s manuscript had been conditionally accepted. The editor said Fong needed to ensure it conformed with the journal’s style and to shorten it to meet the word limit. That was easy enough. But the third condition gave Fong pause.He’d cited only one source from the journal he’d submitted the article to. The editor wrote in an email that that was “unacceptable,” and told him to “please add at least five more.”Adding citations to articles in the same journal, as the editor had requested, would inflate the journal’s impact factor, which often dictates a journal’s importance. It’s a phenomenon some scholars call “coercive citation,” but Fong, then an assistant professor of management at the University of Alabama at Huntsville, had never heard that term.

Just in case it is of interest: In the wake of Blizzard’s shameful cowardice, designer, fellow gamer, and former Blizzard team lead Mark Kern is taking a stand

A reminder of data that is not talked about: More than 100 more people were killed with hammers and clubs in 2018 than were killed by rifles. There were 443 people killed with hammers, clubs, or other “blunt objects”.

Something you already know: The FBI’s use of the database – which, again, is specifically defined in law as only being allowed to be used for foreign intelligence matters – was completely routine. And a result, agents started using it all the time for anything connected to their work, and sometimes their personal lives.

Not in the News…..

The wages of being PC is that nobody can figure out what to do about a situation like this: Mickaël Harpon, who stabbed three police officers and a woman civil servant to death before he was killed at Paris police headquarters on October 3rd, was a radical Islamist with a top secret security clearance and access to all computers in the police prefecture’s directorate of intelligence, known as the DRPP.

Just a reminder of how little they know: According to the authority, the importance of the finding is that it will change everything scholars know about the urbanization process in the Land of Israel.

People who talk the most about pollution being a serious problem are the least likely to know where most of it comes from. This study surprises only the blind. Researchers from Canada and South Africa studied waste washed up on the beaches of Inaccessible Island, an island in the heart of the southern Atlantic Ocean, on a series of trips that began in 1984. Nearly three-quarters of the trash they sifted through originated in Asia, produced by China. The research challenges long assumptions that plastic debris at sea primarily originates on land.

This is what hysteria gets you: President Trump is gaining among independent voters in head-to-head matchups with the Democratic presidential front-runners, according to a new IBD-TIPP poll.

They wanted a power company that was more careful about fires. Not sure if they realized this would be the result: In the Bay Area, portions of Alameda, Contra Costa, Napa, San Mateo, Santa Clara, Solano and Sonoma counties could suffer power shutoffs.

It is the same logic that causes smaller companies to endlessly strive to be suppliers of Wall-Mart even though everyone knows how Wall-Mart treats their suppliers: There was this consistently weird disconnect in the comments from American business leaders, as they kept saying their Chinese competitors were overtly or secretly state-subsided, or would complain about corruption . . . but no one wanted to stop putting more resources there.

Today’s Links

Coming soon to a State near you: A “zombie” disease which makes deer become emaciated and more aggressive may sound like the opening to a horror film. But experts have warned the deadly disease has already affected 24 US states – and could spread to humans next. We all know what experts are worth. On the other paw, Lyme disease was a rare thing when I was young.

Sanctions having an effect on Venezuela: Sending oil to Cuba to free up storage space makes sense from an operational point of view, said Piñón, because it allows Venezuela to preserve its output capacity and keeps wells pumping.“Whenever you have to shut down an oil well you have problems, because it is extremely hard to get it going again, given that you will lose the original pressure of the reservoir,” Piñón said.

If you want to be informed, you should read the short essay “Population Immiseration in America” just so you know the ideas that are being talked about and it has data that is not commonly brought up. That said, I see a lot of issues with the ideas being presented. For example, Japan suffers from a lot of the same issues laid out in this essay without having the same amount of immigration that author calls out as being a major contributor. Another issues would be the fact that it fails to address the role the cult of higher education has on many of the issues being discussed. These and many other issues keep me from agreeing with the general thrust of the essay, but the essay is still generating more discussion then most of the fluff out there.

Short Version: Hand held missiles are getting better and better and that has strategic consequences when they are used intelligently. Long Version: A Hyper-Mobile Defense: Iran’s Novel Strategy to Sustain Proxy Conflicts in the Middle East

Coming soon to a country near you: According to the Register, a total of 2,500 Londoners have been arrested over the past five years for allegedly sending “offensive” messages via social media. In 2015, 857 people were detained, up 37 per cent increase since 2010.The Communications Act 2003 defines illegal communication as “using public electronic communications network in order to cause annoyance, inconvenience or needless anxiety”. Breaking the law carries a six-month prison term or fine of up to £5,000.The figures, obtained from the Metropolitan police via a Freedom of Information request, only apply to the London area. I got the link to the above from this rant.

Mostly Not In the News

The following article is a good test of whether you are following real news or fake news. If you already know what this article says, you are following real news. If it is news to you, you are following fake news. There is no impeachment inquiry. There are no subpoenas.

I have seen a lot of leftists Italians on-line say that this a article that does a good job of explaining what is going on politically in Italy. From what I can see, it gets the facts right but some of its claims are questionable (for example, the idea that the EU is responsible for Italian political instability is laughable as it would imply that Italy had stable governments before joining the EU). The revenge of the elites

This article is in the New York Times so everyone and their Grandma (especially their Grandma) will be sending them this article. This is your fair warning. Australia Just Had a Bad Flu Season. That May Be a Warning for the U.S. In 2017, a terrible flu season in Australia presaged an American outbreak in which 79,000 died.