Archive of entries posted on 29th January 2021

Friday Night Open Thread: Some Pretenders Are Eminently More Qualified Than Others

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To the tune of “Mystery Achievement” by The Pretenders:

Mystery-Achievement Joe:

Don’t breathe down my neck, ho!

All these E.O.’s paid to play

Signed them anyway;

I mean, what the heck?

All of your promises

They aren’t worth a dime, no,

You just want the country to experience

A Cuban slide, slide, slide, slide . . .

– – – – – – – – –

[Chorus:]

Every day

Increasing decline

Mystery achievement

Out of my mind
Out of our minds

Every day &

Every woman he feels

Mystery-Achievement’s

So unreal

– – – – – – – –

Prior achievements?

Need a Sandy Berger, yeah

I’ve flashed Secret Service chicks like everybody else

But they’re out of reach

I said, right out of reach!

I could’ve popped Corn Pop,

But The Man’s demands were unending

I’ve answered so many questions about ice cream, but you know me:

The press loves pretending…

[Chorus]

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Oh, That Babylon Bee! — What? This Isn’t?

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Report: Biden Administration to Vaccinate Terrorists First, Will Offer Coronavirus Vaccine to Gitmo Detainees
Breitbart | 28 Jan 2021 | Hannah Bleau

The Biden administration plans to offer coronavirus vaccines to detainees held at the U.S. military prison in Guantánamo Bay, the New York Times reported on Thursday evening.

According to the report, the Pentagon will offer the coronavirus vaccine, which remains in high demand, to the terror suspects “possibly starting next week, according to a prosecutor in the case against five prisoners accused of conspiring in the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001.”

According to the report, detainees could begin receiving the vaccine, which will be administered on a voluntary basis, as early as Monday.

And a Compelling Mystery

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The Dyatlov Pass incident. It’s liike the Bigfoot of Russia. A good account is given in Phys.org.

I was about to make some memorable wisecrack about the image; but then I kept reading:

On 27 January 1959, a 110-member group consisting mostly of students from the Ural Polytechnic Institute, led by 23-year-old Igor Dyatlov—all seasoned cross-country and downhill skiers—set off on a 14-day expedition to the Gora Otorten mountain, in the northern part of the Soviet Sverdlovsk Oblast. At that time of the year, a route of this kind was classified Category III—the riskiest category—with temperatures falling as low as -30 degrees C. On January 28, one member of the expedition, Yuri Yudin, decided to turn back. He never saw his classmates again.

The group’s belongings had been left behind. Further down the mountain, beneath an old Siberian cedar tree, they found two bodies clad only in socks and underwear.

To me, there’s an unintentionally amusing side-note in this article:

“The Dyatlov Pass mystery has become part of Russia’s national folklore. When I told my wife that I was going to work on it, she looked at me with deep respect.”

Yes, I’m sure that was the look…

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A Compelling .gif

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Source

Nonsense:

“There’s so much potential in this current data revolution, as we call it,” Leyk commented.

Dude, you’re the one who just called it that.

“The growth of so-called data journals . . .”

Dude, you’re the one who just called them that!

“is a good trend because it’s becoming more and more systematic to publish formal descriptions of the data,”

meaning?

“to learn where the data can be found,”

?

“and to inform the community what kind of publications are based on these data products.”

meaning?

So, I like this trend and we try and make use of it.”

What did I just read?

A Compelling Image

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Not as compelling as a Babesleaga image, perhaps.

I saw this at Phys.org, which worded the credit thus: “Credit: Image is provided by the Anthro Illustrated project (anthroillustrated.com).”

But what’s going on in the picture? It’s not anthro; it’s statistics.

The student has an extremely uncomfortable place to sit.

The desktop does not seem to extend past the desk on the closest corner, but it does at the other two corners.

The student’s feet seem large, but we’ll let that go.

The teacher has a device pointing at her — a light source, a projector, a camera, a microphone? Let’s let that go, too; it doesn’t seem to bother her.

She also has a weird plant sculpture. Does everyone have these? Are we supposed to recognize it? Feel empathy with her? Feel sympathy? Why is this in the picture?

One-on-one classes? What kind of school is this?

What is this teacher’s obsession with horizontal stripes?

Where is the light on the floor coming from?

Is this Starfleet Academy?

The Stupid, it burns!

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So the clown show continues.

Today’s installment brings us the concept that you are white when the left deems you to be white even if you aren’t white. And that goes doubly for hispanics who are technically white, except when the Left wants them to be brown but if they wrong think they go right back to being white again.

Confused?

Get used to it.

EGADS! NYU Prof Attributes Black Trump Support to ‘Multiracial Whiteness’

“What are we to make of [Afro-Cuban Proud Boys President Enrico] Tarrio — and, more broadly, of Latino voters inspired by Trump?” she asks. “And what are we to make of unmistakably White mob violence that also includes non-White participants? I call this phenomenon multiracial whiteness — the promise that they, too, can lay claim to the politics of aggression, exclusion and domination.”

Now who can argue with such genuine Liberal gibberish?

“Multiracial whiteness offers citizens of every background the freedom to call Muslims terrorists, demand that undocumented immigrants be rounded up and deported, deride BLM as a movement of thugs and criminals, and accuse Democrats of being blood-drinking pedophiles,” the NYU professor argued. “Here, the politics of exclusion, violence and demonization are available to all.”
I, for one, don’t think Democrats are blood drinking pedophiles. Well, not ALL of them.

By this standard, even Martin Luther King Jr.’s famous maxim in his “I Have a Dream” speech — asking to be judged by the content of one’s character rather than the color of one’s skin — constitutes some form of “multiracial whiteness.” Even George Orwell would not have predicted this horrifying doublespeak.
So, MLK is ours now? And you know Jackie Robinson was a Republican. Just sayin’…

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