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Wednesday, June 16, 2021

The Docent's Memo (6/16/2021)

 

VIDEO: "LOADOUT: Infantry Rifleman"--Rhode Island National Guard (4 min.)

Firearms/Shooting/Self-Defense:

  • "In Extremis Communication" (Part 1) (Part 2) (Part 3) -- Point Driven Training. The reality is that if we surprise a burglar or have to draw a firearm on a mugger, we generally won't need to discharge the weapon. However, we may very well need to communicate orders to the criminal, especially if we choose to hold them for police. This series of articles delves into the types of commands to use when dealing with a criminal being held at gunpoint as well as how we want them to respond.
    • Related: "The Command Presence: Projecting Confidence and Competence" by Shawn Vincent, CCW Safe.  The author observes that "[d]rawing a firearm during a life-threatening confrontation without the willingness or competency to use it is a recipe for disaster. Those who are unwilling or incompetent will likely be betrayed by their posture and body language, which may only embolden an attacker." He then proceeds to relate a couple examples where a criminal didn't believe the gun owner had the will to use the firearm. The short story is that the criminal needs to be able to ascertain from your demeanor that you are willing to use the weapon and that he/she is not going to be able to bluff or talk you out of using the weapon (e.g., slowly approaching after you told him/her to stop). He concludes:
The lesson for concealed carriers is that when you decide to arm yourself, you must be resolved that you’re willing to use deadly force to save the life of yourself or another. You should never display your firearm defensively unless you’re prepared to fire it. If you’ve never been in a life or death self-defense scenario before, you don’t know how you’re going to react, and that’s where the hands-on firing experience and scenario-based training that Tatiana Whitlock mentions becomes critical. If you fail to exude a command presence when you carry, you may actually invite an attack, and in a worst case scenario, lose control of your weapon and become the victim of your own firearm.
  • "How To Survive A Riot When All Hell Breaks Loose"--Skilled Survival (h/t Active Response Training). This 2016 article was motivated in part by the BLM riots of that period which are milquetoast compared to what we've seen this past year. Unfortunately, this coming summer promises even worse. One of the points the author raises is the need to stockpile food in the event that there are stay-at-home orders imposed by local government, or the rioting simply makes it too dangerous to leave you home. He also recommends getting a gasmask for each member of your family to protect against tear gas or, for that matter, smoke. Finally, he advises you to make sure that you are in good enough physical shape to deal with the situations (e.g., running away from a mob), and to increase your situational awareness (including learning the various low traffic roads, backways, and alleys that are in your area and might allow you to avoid a rampaging mob).
  • "Get to cover? A requiem for common sense." by Aaron Cowan, Monderno. A good primer on what constitutes cover and what is only concealment, noting that cover is often not ideal, and that some items that you might think are cover (such as the square pillars outside a store or office building), are actually just concealment, or mostly so. An excerpt:

It is not convenient or possible in some cases to demo real world cover in classes, so it’s understandable that blue barrels and plywood rule the cover instruction world--but those shapes have a dark side and that dark side is teaching instructors and students alike that cover must be huge, much larger than the shooter, to be of any use.  We accept body armor in 10x12 but turn our noses up at something that could be 6x22, 8x24, 10x30 worth of cover?  I’m up, he sees me, I’m down is a basic level of operation and presupposes that there's somewhere to go, or time to go there. I'm not in the business of planning how a student's fight will happen, or what will be available for them when it does. I'm also not in the business of ignoring instruction on a very common object just because not all of the cover it can provide is conveniently sized to one school of thought's arbitrary dimensions.  I am in the business of teaching a student to identify the best cover for the moment, regardless of size, and considering it as an option.  I can roll a Crown Vic or a Camry onto a range; not so much the corner of a Wawas [ed: a convenience store chain] or the flower bed from in front of the local hospital.  I can go over the theory of cover, and demonstrate in person the cover provided by a car to people who want to know about fighting in and around cars and isn't that part of what training is supposed to be, realistic as possible?

    I’ve taken to using Holosun red dots [with the circle-dot reticle] on my shotguns. Holosun has proven itself to be competent and making red dots that are durable, easy to use, and feature-filled. One feature I love is the multi-reticle system. I used the 32 MOA circle with my shotguns because I can pattern my buckshot inside of that reticle.

    I know that with my chosen load of Federal Flitecontrol buckshot within 15 yards, not a single pellet will leave that circle. I know where every pellet will go, and I can guarantee with confidence that the pellets will hit where I need them to. This allows me to do things like take headshots with confidence.
  • "Tipped Bullets: What You Need to Know"--Pew Pew Tactical. The military often has the tips of bullets painted different colors so you can know at a glance what is the type of ammunition. Some you probably already know. The article notes the green tip (the 62 grain SS109/M855 with a penetrator, painted to distinguish it from the older 55 grain M193 ammo), the orange or red indicating a tracer, black indicating armor piercing, and blue for incendiary. Not mentioned, and which you might encounter with surplus .30-06 ammo or bullets, is silver which was used on armor-piercing incendiary. The author also gives some history on tracer rounds and the SS109.
  • "Gun Sales Decrease, Ammunition Reappearing In Stores"--American Rifleman. The article reports that the May 2021 NICS checks came in 300,000 lower than May 2020. Also, the more popular calibers are beginning to become more available than we've been seeing over the prior 6 months or more. My own observations match this, at least looking at on-line retailers, as well as ammo seems to be creeping down in price. For instance, 9 mm FMJ had peaked at $1 per round, but I've seen it dropping to 80 cents per round recently.
VIDEO: "Impactor Cycle | Advanced Catastrophism"--Suspicious Observers (5 min.)
Noting the correlation of impactors with the dates of the disaster cycle; and that massive electrical discharges created by the collapse of the magnetic field can create craters similar to an impact from a meteor.


VIDEO: "Cosmic Water Explosion | Advanced Catastrophism"--Suspicious Observers (5 min.)
Noting that cosmic discharges don't necessarily have to strike land.

Prepping/Survival:
  • Most of us understand that if the balloon goes up and we have a sudden collapse of authority, stores and other businesses will be looted. But that is not all--we should expect that military and police armories/depots will also be looted. In fact, we may very well want to be in on that. A few articles on when this has happened:
    In July 1991, the UN placed an arms embargo on former Yugoslavia to stop the carnage. All this did, however, was force embattled Croatia and Bosnia into the hands of a shadowy network of arms traders tied to organized crime. These networks were keen on bringing deadly arms shipments to the former Yugoslavia.

    In the space of a few months, the region was awash with illegally imported weapons as well as those from the YNA’s vast stockpiles. The weapons used in the wars were not handed over at the promise of peace. As a result, the estimated number of illegal arms across former Yugoslavia is alarming.

    The Interior Ministry of Serbia estimated that there are up to 900,000 small arms units in the country. In neighboring Bosnia, that number is around 750,000, according to SEESAC. Despite only having a population of 2 million, the young state of Kosovo has an estimated 450,000 small arms in circulation, according to the UN.
    Spread across the desert here off the Sirte-Waddan road sits one of the biggest threats to Western hopes for Libya: a massive, unguarded weapons depot that is being pillaged daily by anti-Gadhafi military units, hired work crews and any enterprising individual who has the right vehicle and chooses to make the trip.

    In one of dozens of warehouses the size of a single-family home, Soviet-era guided missiles remain wrapped inside crates stacked to the 15-foot ceiling. In another, dusted with sand, are dozens of sealed cases labeled "warhead." Artillery rounds designed to carry chemical weapons are stashed in the back of another. Rockets, antitank grenades and projectiles of all calibers are piled so high they defy counting.

    There are dozens of warehouses here, spreading for several miles across the desert 100 miles south of Sirte, in what Libya's interim rulers say is the largest known ammunition storage site in the country.

    Convoys of armed groups from all over Libya have made the trek here and piled looted weapons into trailer trucks, dump trucks, buses and even empty meat trucks.

    The site represents a major hazard for Libya's security and for hopes for reconstruction and democratization of the country in the post-Gadhafi era.
    A desperate Parliament turned to the army to quell mob violence that began over failed pyramid schemes in impoverished Albania, while mobs looted a government arsenal for weapons and ransacked their president’s summer villa.

And:

    On Sunday, a mob looted the presidential summer villa outside Vlora, walking away with furniture and household goods and trashing the inside.

    State television reported that crowds of people had left Vlora in the direction of Fieri, to the north, and that they had looted an arsenal along the way. Civilians distributed and carried weapons in some areas of southern Albania.

    In the southern city of Gjirocastra, gunmen fired at the police station, a local reporter said. In another southern city, Saranda, mobs set fire to a police station, a court and an office of the secret police over the weekend, freeing inmates from the local jail, state television reported.

    Inside Vlora University, about 40 students entered the 11th day of a hunger strike aimed at forcing Berisha’s ruling Democratic Party to relinquish power.

    But Prime Minister Aleksander Meksi told The Associated Press that a new government would not stop the country’s descent into chaos. He said Sunday he agreed to step down only because a government must resign ``when it’s not able to handle a situation.″

    Meksi said it would take at least a year to regain control over the country’s arsenal.

    ``It will be difficult to gather again tens of thousands of guns that the Defense Ministry left in the hands of criminals, rebels or desperate people,″ Meksi said.
Tree resin is the hydrocarbon secretion of many plants, generally of coniferous trees like cedars, Douglas-firs, cypresses, pines, hemlocks etc. tree resins from centuries are valued for their chemical worth, and also for valuable uses such as producing adhesives, varnishes, and even food glazing agents. They are also a very important source of raw material for the organic synthesis that normally is ingredients of famous incense and perfumes. ... People normally confuse themselves with tree resin and tree sap. Tree sap is the sugars in the phloem cells of the woody part of the tree. On the other hand, resin is the type of liquid used to clog the hole created. While sap is yellowish and gummy in liquid form, resin is generally transparent or reddish colored very hard glassy sticky liquid.
  • "Non-Prescription Drugs & Interactions"--Beans, Bullets, Bandages & You. The BBBY blog has a lot of articles on health and medicine. This one, as the title indicates, is to warn you of possible drug interactions. For example:
    To make good decisions, you’ve got to know about potential interactions. (By the way, I’m not going to advise you on your decisions, because I’m not a physician.) Interactions occur when you’re taking multiple medications and they don’t work and play well together…or they work and play together all too well. 

    An example of ‘don’t work and play well together’ would be St. John’s Wort and, well, a whole host of things from birth control to heart meds.  The wort interferes with a set of enzymes in the liver that’s supposed to remove the other drugs over time, so their doses get messed up. 

    An example of ‘work and play together too well’ would be taking acetaminophen and other over-the counter flu remedies such as Nyquil together.  The Nyquil and its clones also contain acetaminophen, so you’ve just overdosed.  This problem isn’t rare; acetaminophen overdose by accident this way kills people (or at least their livers) every year.

The article notes that pharmacists are good sources of information on drug interactions, and the article links to a podcast on the subject. I would also suggest the Physicians Desk Reference (PDR) which provides information on different drugs and possible side effects and harmful interactions. There is also a version of the PDR for laypersons that only covers over-the-counter (OTC) medications. That said, the article continues, drug interactions can be trickier if you are dealing with generic drugs (or, I would add, pharmaceuticals intended for animals) due to differing ingredients, adulteration or contamination, or with supplements which are not regulated and which dosage may vary from batch to batch or even capsule to capsule. 


VIDEO: "WORLD EXCLUSIVE: Footage proves bats were kept in Wuhan lab"--Sky News Australia (16 min.)

Covid News:
    The Spike Protein is a “uniquely dangerous” transmembrane fusion protein that is an integral part of the SARS-CoV-2 virus. “The S protein plays a crucial role in penetrating host cells and initiating infection.” It also damages the cells in the lining of the blood vessel walls which leads to blood clots, bleeding, massive inflammation and death.

    To say that the spike protein is merely “dangerous”, is a vast understatement. It is a potentially-lethal pathogen that has already killed tens of thousands of people.

    So, why did the vaccine manufacturers settle on the spike protein as an antigen that would induce an immune response in the body?

    That’s the million-dollar question, after all, for all practical purposes, the spike protein is a poison.

If you got the vaccine, your body is producing spike proteins.  

New York, New Jersey, and California, along with several others, went the 'hard lockdown' route, while others, notably Florida and Texas, eschewed mask mandates and forced isolation.  The results are in: lockdowns don't work if the desired result is the health of the populace; mask mandates seem to have no observable effect on infection rates; forced isolation is (as was predicted early-on) a recipe for economic catastrophe and very little in the way of 'preventing infection'.  The CDC is now admitting that the chance of acquiring Covid-19 from hard surfaces is approximately zero.  If only someone would have been aware of how useless most of these draconian non-solutions were earlier in the process!

The rest of the article is about how the left ignored all warning that the lockdowns and mask mandates were silly, that it was dangerous to house sick elderly people with healthy elderly people. The reason, the author presumes, has to do with power: 

The left is keen on 'common-sense gun laws', but they're not quite as keen on common-sense health policies, and now I think we can speculate as to 'why'.  Common-sense gun laws (which are thoroughly divorced from common-sense) give them more power.  Common-sense health policies take power away.  The common denominator is that whatever gives the left power is good, and whatever takes power away is bad.


VIDEO: "SOCIETAL COLLAPSE? History on the Future of American Society"--Forward Observer (6 min). Lack of solidarity/social cohesion leads to the breakdown of societies. Cultural uniformity is required for social cohesion. Luxury and ease leads elites to fight among themselves. 

The Coming Civil War: 

    What if the Maricopa County recount currently underway and nearing its conclusion shows that Donald Trump won the 2020 presidential election in Arizona?

    No doubt the left will immediately deny the veracity of those results, but millions of others are going to nod their heads at what they will accept as genuine proof of something they already seriously suspected.

    Other swing states will undoubtedly follow Arizona’s lead and demand recounts of their own, if they haven’t already launched them. What if they get similar results?

    This turn of events will be far more than that cliché a “game-changer.” It will be a “country-changer.”

    And all this may even have occurred without Dominion allowing others to have the password to their machines. What if they had?

    So, where will we be?

    Most of us may try to ignore it and go about our lives, but America is at the precipice.

    If you think things are bad at this moment in our history, if you think relations between the two halves of our country are strained now, just wait.

Simon notes that some see violence as inevitable, but he makes the argument that the conservatives, the Right, should resort to conducting our own "mostly peaceful" protests in the street. We can try, but the difference in how BLM and Antifa have been treated in comparison to how the January 6 protestors have and are being treated does not give me confidence that protests will be the answer--at least not without a lot of preparation including sweeps to get rid of surveillance cameras, equipment to jam cell phone transmissions and GPS, identifying where the Stingrays are set up and neutralizing them, and so on.

What will the military, the Supreme Court, and the people eventually do?  How will the military, the Supreme Court, and the masses react to the outcome?  How will the military move, how will the Supreme Court rule, and eventually do the masses rise up and take to the streets...if it becomes clear that the presidential election of 2020 was compromised, was stolen, or at the very least had way too many abnormalities and illegalities and thus the wrong person is possibly sitting in the White House?  What happens if it becomes clear that President Trump was re-elected and the Progressives actually stole the election?  What happens if we find out that the election was manipulated?  What happens if?

The author thinks that the military will side with Biden, and perhaps even arrest Trump. He is not sure what the Supreme Court would do since a couple of the "conservative" members are pretty squishy. 

    The collapse of the Soviet Union began nearly two decades of American unipolarity. During that time, U.S. leadership pursued a strategy of what international relations scholars call liberal hegemony. Steering the world’s sole superpower (thus “unipolarity”) American policymakers took the opportunity to build new international institutions and transform old ones in the name of liberalism and democracy.

    But by pursuing financialized global economic interdependence and interventionism on behalf of liberal democracy, the U.S. prioritized an idealized vision of world stability over the economic welfare of its own citizens, the lives of the citizens of countries it has chosen to invade, and, increasingly clear, the security of the very international order it claimed to protect. Liberal hegemony was unable even to maintain American primacy, assisting China in becoming a strategic rival and producing instability elsewhere. The unipolar moment appears to be passing. Though America remains the preponderant power globally, China’s rise and other factors seem to signal the return of a multipolar world, perhaps in the form of what theorist Aris Roussinos calls “civilization-states.” (Underline added).

However, this does not mean that China will become the dominate power either. The author notes several advantages maintained by the United States, while China will increasingly become hemmed in by its neighbors, including Japan and India. Rather, "the true danger to U.S. hegemony has been a Eurasian hegemon dominating the heartland of both continents." And by that, not just a European power (e.g., Germany or Russia), but traditional Eurasian powers such as Turkey or Persia. (As a side note, as I was discussing with one of my sons, it should be remembered that the Turkish peoples range from Turkey in the West to the Uighurs in the East, and all the -stans in-between). In any event, the uni-polar world is passing, a bi-polar world is unlikely, but a multi-polar world is the future.

    An American retreat from being the ‘indispensable’ power, and a corresponding embrace of a leadership role based upon a more collegial notion of shared authorities, would not mean the physical demise of the US – the nation would continue to exist as a sovereign entity. But it would mean an end to the psychological reality of America as we know it today – a quasi-imperial power whose relevance is founded on compelled global hegemony. This model is no longer viable. The fact that the Biden administration has chosen to define its administration through an ardent embrace of this failed system is proof positive that the survival of post-Cold War American is existentially connected to its ability to function as the world’s ‘indispensable nation’.

    American exceptionalism is a narcotic that fuels the country’s domestic politics more than global geo-political reality. The ‘rules-based international order’ that underpins this fantasy is unsustainable in the modern era and makes the collapse of the “exceptional” United States inevitable.

    Watching the Biden administration throw its weight behind a US-dominated ‘rules-based international order’ is like watching the Titanic set sail; it is big, bold, and beautiful, and its fate pre-ordained.

    In a Gynocentric global social order the sexual marketplace is by women, for women’s short term and long term mating strategies. Men are simply the replaceable accessories needed to optimize those strategies,…or to be used as convenient foils when the consequences of those strategies become unignorable. So, it’s hardly surprising then that we’re moving into the second generation of Lost Boys. Young men with no real purposeful direction in life, less creative drive and a generation-defining sense of existential ennui.

    And what would be their incentive to prompt them to creativity or purpose? Certainly not the long-term reward of an adoring woman or of sexual satisfaction born of her genuine desire. Those rewards are reserved for the High Value Men all women (young and old) believe are their due. ...

    Wokeism has become our most popular secular religion—at least for a moment dethroning climate change. It reduces all of the past and present into puerile binaries between “whites” and “non-whites.”

    Its aim is for the present generation to rewrite our history—whether by The 1619 Project and cancel culture or iconoclastic statue-toppling and Trotskyization of names and places. Wokeism becomes a child’s morality tale of noble non-white victims versus villainous white victimizers. Erasing the past and its language supposedly fuels a recalibration of the future, all in the here and now, a holy Year Zero

    In the process, wokeism has done a lot of damage to America, and will do even more if left unchecked. ...

    What needs to be kept in mind is that all of this is explainable by the r/K cycle, as set forth in The Evolutionary Psychology Behind Politics by Anonymous Conservative. For my LDS readers, you will notice that the r/K cycle mirrors the Pride Cycle that so crippled the Nephite civilization at times. In any event, r and K represent reproductive strategies, with r representing a fast turnover, low investment breading cycle, while K represents high investment child rearing. But with each of these strategies come other outlooks and behaviors. Anonymous Conservative, for instance, relates:

The five psychological traits inherent to the r-strategy are docility/conflict-avoidance, promiscuity/non-monogamy, single-mom'ing, early sexualization of young, and no loyalty to a competitive in-group. All help this glut-exploiting psychology to out-reproduce everyone else by avoiding danger, mating widely starting young, booting offspring early to mate again, and never risking for others.

Obviously, with the wide-spread availability of abortion and birth control pills, the r-select does not fear having to stop mating in order to birth and raise a child--nevertheless, the sexual drive, especially for novelty, is still very strong. And for the K-strategy:

The five traits of a K-strategist are competitiveness/ aggressiveness/protectiveness, competitive mate monopolization/ monogamy, high-investment two-parent rearing, only mating when mature, and high loyalty to one's competitive in-group. 

Anonymous Conservative uses wolves as examples of a K-select strategy and rabbits as examples of the r-select strategy. I think the latter was a mistake because we think of rabbits are rather benign, cute and cuddly. The better analogy would have been rats, which can be quite vicious at times. Thus, the Nazis of the 1930's and the Antifa/BLM of today.

    Wokeness is another manifestation of the r/K divide. Wokeness is associated with forcing support for LGBTQ+ lifestyles, including allow transvestites into the girl's locker rooms. The LGBTQ+ lifestyle is in most cases a highly developed form of promiscuity/non-monogamy and early sexualization of young. 

    Wokeness is also associated with its opposition to things that have been termed "whiteness" or "colonialism." For instance, you might remember the kerfuffle over an infographic from the Smithsonian's Black History Museum explaining "whiteness."  White dominant culture, or "whiteness", it explained included such things as rugged individualism, the traditional nuclear family, an emphasis on logical and rational thinking, a work ethic, Christianity or monotheism, planning for the future and delayed gratification, following time schedules and viewing time as a commodity, certain aesthetics favoring slim women and intelligent men, a justice system that protected property and considered intent important, valued competitiveness, and good speaking and writing skills. In other words, all things that reflect competitiveness, monogamy, and high-investment two-parent rearing. In other words, wokeness is a fight against the K-select (or, looking at the Pride cycle, those that follow God's commandments) and the Left won't be satisfied until conservatives are loaded on trains to the death camps. It is inherent in the Left's nature. 

    This also explains why the political divide is so wide. Liberals and conservatives literally view the world differently and think differently. The die-hard liberal literally cannot think like a conservative or understand conservatives. Thus, the constant Leftist degradation of conservatives as "deplorables" or similar. I don't believe that there is any peaceful way out of this as the only way to cure the r-select nature is for the liberal to go through extreme hard times; and that means that the easy life we enjoy right now will also have to go out the window for some period of time. And, in fact, I don't see the shift to K as coming about other than through the tribulations and judgments of the Last Days, including the Second Coming. 

      • This is the cost of talking to white people at all. The cost of your own life, as they suck you dry. There are no good apples out there. White people make my blood boil. (Time stamp: 6:45)
      • I had fantasies of unloading a revolver into the head of any white person that got in my way, burying their body, and wiping my bloody hands as I walked away relatively guiltless with a bounce in my step. Like I did the world a fucking favor.  (Time stamp: 7:17)
      • White people are out of their minds and they have been for a long time.  (Time stamp: 17:06)
      • We are now in a psychological predicament, because white people feel that we are bullying them when we bring up race. They feel that we should be thanking them for all that they have done for us. They are confused, and so are we. We keep forgetting that directly talking about race is a waste of our breath. We are asking a demented, violent predator who thinks that they are a saint or a superhero, to accept responsibility. It ain’t gonna happen. They have five holes in their brain. It’s like banging your head against a brick wall. It’s just like sort of not a good idea. (Time stamp 17:13)
      • We need to remember that directly talking about race to white people is useless, because they are at the wrong level of conversation. Addressing racism assumes that white people can see and process what we are talking about. They can’t. That’s why they sound demented. They don’t even know they have a mask on. White people think it’s their actual face. We need to get to know the mask. (Time stamp 17:54).
    • Related: "On Having Whiteness" by Donald Moss, Journal of the American Psychoanalytic Association. From the abstract:

Whiteness is a condition one first acquires and then one has—a malignant, parasitic-like condition to which “white” people have a particular susceptibility. The condition is foundational, generating characteristic ways of being in one’s body, in one’s mind, and in one’s world. Parasitic Whiteness renders its hosts’ appetites voracious, insatiable, and perverse. These deformed appetites particularly target nonwhite peoples. Once established, these appetites are nearly impossible to eliminate. Effective treatment consists of a combination of psychic and social-historical interventions. Such interventions can reasonably aim only to reshape Whiteness’s infiltrated appetites—to reduce their intensity, redistribute their aims, and occasionally turn those aims toward the work of reparation. When remembered and represented, the ravages wreaked by the chronic condition can function either as warning (“never again”) or as temptation (“great again”). Memorialization alone, therefore, is no guarantee against regression. There is not yet a permanent cure.

    Next week marks a year since the murder of George Floyd, and nearly a year since the Black Lives Matter protests compelled numerous institutions — including many in research — to acknowledge systemic racism. These events made universities, institutes, corporations, museums, societies, publishers and funders confront racial injustice in a way that had never happened before.

    As part of that response, Nature recognized systemic racism in science and our part in it, and committed to stand against it.

    We know that such statements must be followed by actions. At Nature, we have made it an editorial priority to expose and tackle racism in science by publishing more research, commentary and journalism about racism and racial injustice. Next year, we will produce a special issue, under the guidance of a group of external editors, that examines systemic racism in research. We will be launching a news internship for Black journalists later this year. We are taking further steps to diversify our authors, reviewers and contributors. And we know that too few of our editorial staff are people of colour, so we are working to change this.


VIDEO: "Go East Young White Man!"--Felix Rex (12 min.)
A trend in East Asian women preferring to get pregnant by white men, although not necessarily seeking marriage.

Miscellany:

  • Typically, when the Daily Mail has an article about a coffee table book, it is mostly a photo essay showing selections from the book with a few encouraging words about the subject or something about the author and how he was able to capture the different scenes. But that is not the case for The Ameriguns by Gabriele Galimberti. Yes, the article reproduces photographs of different Americans showing off gun collections with the firearms arranged in aesthetically pleasing patterns, but it is otherwise very negative toward firearms as you can guess from the title: "Point blank madness: There are now more guns than people in America and, as a new book illustrates, some firearms enthusiasts are proud to show off their arsenals..." The article notes the spread of "Constitutional carry" laws and that 2020 had a sharp uptick in violence (but somehow omitting Black Lives Matter's role), but condescendingly adds: "The British response is traditionally to sigh in weary bewilderment and just be glad that such a terrifying arms race doesn't exist in the UK. And yet there's reason to be alarmed." Why are they alarmed? Because, notwithstanding its status as an island and its vaunted gun control laws, more and more firearms are finding their way into Britain and so there is a risk that criminals will give up their knives and turn to guns. I can only say, as Britain becomes a multi-racial society like the more violent parts of the United States, "Welcome to the party!"
  • Racist! "Mia Farrow: ‘Humans Are a Species That Should Not Have Guns’"--Breitbart. "Actress and left-wing activist Mia Farrow tweeted responded to a revenge shooting in the Bronx by tweeting 'humans are a species that should not have guns.'" The shootings were between blacks and Hispanics.
  • Leftism in action: "Moment brazen robber fills a trash bag with goods swiped off a Walgreens shelf in shoplifters paradise of San Francisco before cycling out of the store - and NO ONE tries to stop him"--Daily Mail. No one stopped him because (a) what's the point if the crime won't be prosecuted, and (b) if they had tried, they would have been accused of racism and BLM activists probably would have fire-bombed the place.
  • Get woke, go broke: "Nickelodeon Ratings Crash Amid LGBTQ Push"--The Daily Wire. The article notes that Nickelodeon and Nick Jr. have been pushing LGBT themes for the past several years. And audiences have noticed. "Since July of 2017, Nickelodeon’s viewership has dropped from 1.3 million average viewers per week to a June of 2021 average of only 372,000. In only four years, Nickelodeon has dropped more than two thirds of its audience."
  • "Scientists discover potentially dangerous metals in brains of Alzheimer's patients"--Washington Examiner. "
    In an article in the journal Science Advances, researchers from Keele University and the University of Warwick in the United Kingdom found traces of the elemental forms of copper and iron in amyloid plaque, proteins that form in the brains of Alzheimer’s patients.

    Copper and iron are found naturally in the human body but are usually in an oxidized form. In an elemental form, the metals can produce unstable atoms, which are harmful to the brain.

    The study explores a training method developed in 2012 that uses deep learning techniques to train people with normal sight to see through camouflage. Individuals can be trained in this way in as little as two weeks, the researchers report, with just an hour a day spent analyzing scenes.

    That training enables people to recognize whether or not a given camouflage scene contains a target. Here, it was shown that those individuals could pick out the target too, even with just a 50-millisecond look in some cases. The participants were not told what to look for and were not shown the target object in isolation.

    In fact, the six trained volunteers tested in this study were as good at picking out the location of camouflaged targets – either a head or a 'digital embryo' graphic – as non-trained people would be at spotting non-camouflaged targets in a scene.

    "If it turns out there is something that doesn't belong there, you can tell," says neuroscientist Jay Hegdé from the University of Augusta.

    The trained volunteers also recognized when something was amiss or different in an image, even when there was no specific target in it. The researchers say this is linked to the way experienced radiologists can sometimes get a sense of a mammogram not being quite right, even before any obvious signs of cancer appear.

    While the camouflage training technique can work on anyone, the researchers say, some people take to it more readily than others. Why that is, however, is something that they're keen to pursue in future studies.

 You can read the study here, and the background paper on the training can be downloaded here (PDF).

    What we think we know about our brains is nothing compared to what we don't know. This fact is brought into focus by the medical mystery of a 44-year-old French father of two who found out one day that he had most of his brain missing. Instead his skull is mostly full of liquid, with almost no brain tissue left. He has a life-long condition known as hydrocephalus, commonly called “water on the brain" or “water head". It happens when too much cerebrospinal fluid puts pressure on the brain and the brain's cavities abnormally increase.

    As Axel Cleeremans, a cognitive psychologist at the Université Libre in Brussels, who has lectured about this case, told CBC:

    "He was living a normal life. He has a family. He works. His IQ was tested at the time of his complaint. This came out to be 84, which is slightly below the normal range … So, this person is not bright — but perfectly, socially apt".

    Axiom Space has signed a contract with SpaceX for three additional Crew Dragon missions, enough to meet its projections for private astronaut missions to the International Space Station through at least 2023.

    Axiom, which already has a deal with SpaceX for the Ax-1 mission to the ISS launching in early 2022, said June 2 the new contract covers the projected Ax-2, 3 and 4 missions to the station. All will use Crew Dragon spacecraft launched on Falcon 9 rockets.

    The companies did not disclose the terms of the agreement, including whether Axiom Space negotiated a lower price through a block buy. Axiom spokesman Beau Holder told SpaceNews that the biggest benefit of the agreement was ensuring access to the Crew Dragon for its future missions.

    “It secures a vehicle that is flight-proven and ready to support the crewed launch cadence Axiom is planning: approximately every six or seven months leading up to near the launch of the first Axiom module to ISS,” he said. “Expanding this partnership between two key industry leaders cements the commercialization of low Earth orbit.”

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        2 comments:

        1. John WilderJune 17, 2021 at 9:49 PM

          I played paintball in college, and we had camo. Dang hard to see each other. One guy stepped out of a tree and shot me right in the arm.

          Good times.

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          Replies
          1. DocentJune 18, 2021 at 10:52 AM

            My ability to see through camo is pretty bad. My wife will point out a deer or some other animal, which my kids will then spot, and most of the time I'll still be rubbernecking trying to see it. On the other hand, I can distinguish between different shades of blue-green better than can she.

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