Better luck next time.
:)
Picture Alliance/Getty Images
Winning again. Lego is having trouble going Green.
The only realization more painful than finding a Lego piece with your bare foot is that producing those blocks sustainably is hard.
The Danish toymaker informed the world yesterday that it’ll have to abandon its plan to manufacture its trademark bricks out of recycled plastic bottles, since it would increase Lego’s energy usage.
When Lego first announced the bottles-to-bricks idea two years ago, it estimated that material from a one-liter-sized bottle could produce approximately 10 bricks.
But the shift toward recycled materials would require major carbon-intensive changes to the company’s current brickmaking process, which uses oil-based plastic. And the sample blocks just weren’t very good.
Building (green) blocks
Lego has been trying to engineer bricks from various eco-friendly materials (including corn and wheat) with limited success. The pieces must be easy to click together and pull apart and durable enough to withstand play from generations of boisterous builders.
Don’t tell the sweet-toothed toddlers in your life, but Lego has pulled off using sugar cane to create bioplastics for softer elements like trees and bushes.
Never back down, never what? Lego said it won’t give up experimenting with different ingredients and that it still aims to make its bricks sustainably by 2032.
“Mr. Erwin was born in 1942 in Tyler, Texas, where the Black community lived on the north side of town, the whites lived on the south side and Black people did not cross Front Street after sundown.”
“And Black people did not cross Front Street after sundown”??? But whites felt free to stroll around the black part of town any time of day?
It’s the incessant myth of WHITE PEOPLE PREYING ON BLACKS!
In case you’re wondering, even in the 1940s, the black murder rate was many, many times higher than the white murder rate:
Time to focus on where Republicans are winning with the American Voters. I’ve made a decision that it’s time to ease up on the criminal activities of Joe and Hunter Biden. Don’t get me wrong. There’s crimes that have been committed, but we must look at the big picture.
Republicans are winning on the Border, The Economy, Education, COVID, and Green Energy. The Biden administration is screwing up in all of those areas. They want us to just focus on Hunter so their other misdeeds will go unnoticed.
So unless it’s earth shattering and a main News issue of the day, this writer will ease up on the Hunter and Joe Biden money laundering.
5 Major Problems with ProPublica’s Latest ‘Ethics’ Hit Piece on Justice Clarence Thomas.
By Ken Klukowski
Lawyer who served in the White House and Justice Department.
There are five major problems with the latest so-called “ethics” attack on Justice Clarence Thomas, which this time is a hit piece from the leftwing ProPublica, attempting to kick Thomas off an upcoming Supreme Court case.
ProPublica has the vapors over the fact that Thomas flew on a private jet to a conference in Palm Springs in 2018 hosted by the network of Charles and David Koch, suggesting several ethics violations. ProPublica is legally wrong on every claim.
Two problems are that Supreme Court justices can speak at nonpartisan gatherings so long as there are no presentations to or from parties to a case currently pending before the Court, and the justice does not engage in fundraising.
First, Thomas did not present at the conference on any issues pending before the court, and no parties or lawyers on cases that were scheduled at the court made any presentations to him.
Second, although fundraising certainly takes place at such gatherings, so long as the justice does not ask for money, the fact that private citizens do so is not an ethics concern for a justice in attendance.
On various occasions when liberal justices like Elena Kagan and Sonia Sotomayor have spoken at events, fundraising people huddle about how to promote the justice’s name to raise more money off the event. But Kagan and Sotomayor violate no ethics rules when this happens, because they are not the ones engaged in fundraising.
Third, it is utterly irrelevant that the Koch Network supports filing briefs in a case currently before the court that would change the scope of the federal government’s regulatory law. Justices frequently speak at events hosted by groups that take positions on pending matters, and the upcoming case is no different.
That case, Loper Bright, asks the court to overrule a 1984 case named Chevron, where the court held that courts should defer to agency bureaucrats about whether regulations are consistent with a law passed by Congress, if Congress’s law is either silent or ambiguous about the precise legal question at issue in the regulation.
Chevron should be overruled because it is egregiously wrong and has led to terrible results. It upends bedrock principles of the rule of law for judges who defer to the almost-all-powerful government about the government’s claims as to the government’s own power over citizens and companies. If anyone should get the benefit of the doubt, it should be the powerless ordinary citizen. But better yet, there should be no deference, and judges should just interpret the law and the regulations the same way they interpret any other law, regulation, or contract. (Full disclosure: I coauthored one of the many briefs in Loper Bright urging the Supreme Court to overrule Chevron.)
The left is panicking over Loper Bright. Chevron gives unelected bureaucrats enhanced power over the lives of private citizens on countless issues, from energy production, to transportation, to immigration, to transgenderism in schools, to firearms. It hobbles the ability of courts to require Congress to legislate clearly and for public policy to be made by officials accountable to the people. Overruling Chevron would restore transparency and good government, so the left is trying to disqualify conservative justices like Thomas from being able to vote on it.
Fourth, ProPublica’s authors are again ignoring judicial standards on personal hospitality. During the time in question (2018), if private individuals are a friend of a Supreme Court justice and offer the justice a seat on a private airplane, that form of personal hospitality is ethically allowed. Liberal justices like the late Ruth Bader Ginsburg and the retired Stephen Breyer frequently accepted such hospitality.
Fifth, even federal judges on lower courts that are already subject to the ethics code that Senate Democrats are trying to foist on the Supreme Court – a code that would be unconstitutional, because the Supreme Court is a coequal branch of government. In May 2005, Judge Ray Randolph – a highly respected judge on the powerful U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit – conferred with ethics counsel at the Judicial Conference regarding a similar trip.
The judicial ethics expert at the Judicial Conference responded that the trip did not even need to be disclosed. So even if the Supreme Court could be forced into a subordinate role to Congress, like the federal appeals courts are, such trips would still be permitted.
The left’s latest desperate attempt to smear Thomas – this one from ProPublica – appears to be yet another swing and miss. And the fact that it focused so heavily on gaslighting the American people about Loper Bright shows that it is just the latest attempt at reverse court-packing to disqualify conservative justices in a brazen attempt to manipulate the outcome of a Supreme Court case on government power.
A court found Dr. Jay Bhattacharya was among those indirectly censored by the Biden administration for his views on COVID-19.
CQ-Roll Call, Inc via Getty Imag
The Biden administration tried to censor this Stanford doctor, but he won in court.
By Rikki Schlott.
This is a continuation/follow up to an article from Phoenix.
A federal court of appeals ruled earlier this month that the White House, surgeon general, CDC and FBI “likely violated the First Amendment” by exerting a pressure campaign on social media companies to censor COVID-19 skeptics — including Stanford epidemiologist Dr. Jay Bhattacharya.
“I think this ruling is akin to the second Enlightenment,” Bhattacharya told The Post. “It’s a ruling that says there’s a democracy of ideas. The issue is not whether the ideas are wrong or right. The question is who gets to control what ideas are expressed in the public square?”
The court ordered that the Biden administration and other federal agencies “shall take no actions, formal or informal, directly or indirectly” to coerce social media companies “to remove, delete, suppress or reduce” free speech.
Bhattacharya, a professor of medicine, economics and health research policy at Stanford University, co-authored the Great Barrington Declaration in the fall of 2020 with professors from Harvard and Oxford.
The epidemiologists advocated for “focused protection” — safeguarding the most vulnerable Americans while cautiously allowing others to function as normally as possible — rather than broad pandemic lockdowns.
The Fifth Circuit court found that the Biden administration and other federal agencies pressured social media companies to censor dissenting views on COVID-19.Getty ImagesA court found Dr. Jay Bhattacharya was among those indirectly censored by the Biden administration for his views on COVID-19.CQ-Roll Call, Inc via Getty Imag
“We were just acting as scientists, but almost immediately we were censored,” said Bhattacharya, director of Stanford’s Center for Demography and Economics of Health and Aging. “Google de-boosted us. Our Facebook page was removed. It was just a crazy time.
“The kinds of things that the federal government was telling social media companies to censor included us — along with millions of other posts from countless other people who were criticizing government COVID policy,” he added.
A New Orleans-based three-judge panel found that the federal government “likely coerced or significantly encouraged social-media platforms to moderate content” by vaguely threatening adverse regulatory consequences if social media companies did not suppress certain viewpoints on the pandemic.
Dr. Bhattacharya (from right) co-authored the Great Barrington Declaration with Oxford researcher Sunreta Gupta and Harvard professor Martin Kulldorff.UnHerdBhattacharya is a professor of medicine, economics and health research policy at Stanford University, where he serves as director of the Center for Demography and Economics of Health and Aging.Getty Images
“The government had a vast censorship enterprise,” Bhattacharya said. “It was systematically used to threaten and coerce and jawbone and tell all these social media companies, ‘You better listen to us: Censor these people, censor these ideas, or else.’”
It was later revealed that then-NIH director Dr. Francis Collins called for a “swift and devastating takedown” of Bhattacharya and his co-authors — whom Collins dubbed “fringe epidemiologists” — in an email to Dr. Anthony Fauci.
Subsequent reporting from Elon Musk’s so-called Twitter Files — internal documents and communications released by Musk, after he bought the platform, to expose Twitter’s inner workings — revealed that Bhattachrya’s profile was being suppressed on the platform.
“It’s akin to the efforts by governments to suppress the printing press when it first was invented, when books represented an enormous threat to power,” Bhattacharya said, referring to efforts by King Henry VIII and the Catholic Church to curb use of the printing press in the 16th century.
“There’s an analogous fight that’s currently going on with social media, which makes it vastly easier for anybody to express their ideas, and very powerful people find that incredibly threatening.”
The September 8 ruling affirmed but narrowed a lower court order, issued on July 4 by US District Judge Terry Doughty, which found that the Biden administration and other federal agencies “engaged in a years-long pressure campaign [on social media outlets] designed to ensure that the censorship aligned with the government’s preferred viewpoints” and that “the platforms, in capitulation to state-sponsored pressure, changed their moderation policies.”
In an email to Dr. Anthony Fauci, Dr. Francis Collins (above) referred to Bhattacharya and his co-authors as “fringe epidemiologists.”AP
Bhattacharya says the first victory, although in a lower court, was the most exciting to him.
“I was just absolutely thrilled, especially to have it on July 4th,” he said. “I think that judge was sending a message by issuing this ruling on July 4th that we’re going to restore free speech in this country.”
Judge Terry A. Doughty declared the Biden administration’s actions “Orwellian” in a July 4th ruling.Youtube
But he believes it’s “unlikely” the Supreme Court will overturn the Fifth Circuit’s decision.
He feels his is a landmark case in curbing the influence the government has over social media — on matters that extend far beyond just COVID-19 and lockdowns.
By now, you have likely heard of the 12-year-old boy who was told that he may not display a Gadsden Flag in school because it has “origins with slavery.” Of course it absolutely does not have origins in slavery; it is a symbol and flag from the Revolutionary War era.
This level of ignorance—especially from an ‘educator’—ought to be embarrassing…but it should not be particularly surprising. There is a lot to know in this life, and no matter how much one learns, it’s just a few more drops in the ocean of things there are to learn. Add to that the fact that public-school teachers—in spite of the endless hagiolatry our society heaps upon them—are not generally an especially impressive lot. They are, in the aggregate, a little more educated and intelligent than the average, of course, but that is not saying all that much.
This woman had no knowledge of the Gadsden Flag. I’d bet money she’s never heard the name Christopher Gadsden. Chances are she is not particularly well-versed in American history, unless that is her speciality (and even then…). All she knows is that people she does not like—people whom she’s been told not to like—tend to fly and display this flag. Thus, it must have its origins in slavery. After all, everyone she does not like is afascist, a racist, a white supremacist, or literally Hitler.
Back in the late 90s, I had a somewhat similar experience…
One day, I was idly humming the Battle Hymn of the Republic when I was stopped and informed (just like that 12-year-old boy) that this song had its origins in “slavery.” This was a work environment and the person was a colleague, so I kept it cool and just pointed out—a little frustrated, of course—that the Battle Hymn of the Republic was written by an abolitionist and was popular in the Union.
Obviously the colleague knew enough to associate the song with the Civil War, but that was it. Her left-wing programming and intersectional status kicked in from there and filled in the blanks: Civil War…being hummed by a white guy…………slavery.
This wasn’t even particularly conscious. This was more a kind of programatic confabulation. Same thing with the teacher. She did not know where the flag comes from, but she’s a good Baizuo, so she filled in the blanks of her ignorance with a Baizuo’s kind of “knowledge.” My colleague did the same, but from the standpoint of an aggrieved victim.
This colleague was a very sweet person. I really liked her, and she liked me too. I have not seen her for more than 20 years, but I still think of her fondly. But what she did that day was uncool. If you’ve been paying attention at all, you know that truth has begun to mean less in such matters than the identity groups of the people involved. Truth is what The Party says it is. Truth is found in the personal narrative of the ‘victim.’ Grievance trumps reality, and people have lost their jobs for exactly this sort of thing. Under a different set of circumstances, getting caught in that web might’ve cost me my livelihood. All over a grievance that had been fabricated out of thin air.
An experiment conducted at Dartmouth (and repeated in similar studies elsewhere) demonstrated that for some people, feeling aggrieved comes all too easily. You can read for yourself and watch the video below, but the gist is simple:
Study participants had a disfiguring scar drawn on their faces and were told to go out into the world, interact with people, and then report on how those people treated them. Unbeknownst to the participants, however, the scar was removed prior to them going out into public. In spite of the fact that there was no disfigurement, the participants claimed that they experienced discrimination because of their appearance.
This was just one experiment. Imagine being told, day after day, year after year, decade after decade, that you are a victim solely because of your identity, that that will never change, and that even when people are not discriminating against you, they secretly are.
What the left has done to people is vicious. These are precious human beings who did not need or deserve to be psychologically programmed in this way.
Last week Noam Dworman of Comedy Cellar USA, on his Live at the Table podcast, interviewed Washington Post columnist Philip Bump. It was a debate, with Bump invited because he’s “most associated with pouring cold water on the Hunter Biden story,” as Noam put it.
The show went viral as Bump, semi-reprising the performance of Russiagate champion and Guardian reporter Luke Harding walking on an interview with Aaron Mate, left abruptly after conceding Hunter’s line, “unlike pop, I won’t make you give me half your salary” was evidence. To be fair the show had run long, but Bump insisted earlier that there was “no evidence” of wrongdoing on Joe Biden’s part, so it wasn’t a timely exit — not that I’m unfamiliar with interviews that go sideways.
I know Noam and my name got dragged into this somewhat absurdly (Bump said I had “an agenda,” as Noam brought up tapes between Petro Poroshenko and Joe Biden I’d referenced), but didn’t want to say anything. Then a subsequent show also went sideways, for much the same reason. More on that in a moment. Back to Bump v. Dworman:
Many exchanges in the podcast stand out, not in a good way. Bump repeatedly tells Noam his problem is that he’s not accepting his, Bump’s, versions of things. At about the 56-minute mark, Bump chides Noam for bringing up things that have been “debunked.” When Noam asks, “What’s been debunked?” Bump says, “I’ve written about this!” He adds, “It’s been debunked in the sense that I’ve already addressed this, and presented the counter-arguments to it.”
At about 1:05 in the video above, Noam brings up “the issue of the press. The press actually bothers me more than Joe Biden…” To which Bump interjects [emphasis mine]: “But you don’t listen to the press. I’m sitting here and telling you you’re wrong about these things and you don’t listen.” About five minutes later Noam again brings up media, and Bump says, “But again, you’re attacking the press, because you refuse to listen to what we’re saying.”
Nearly an hour into the show Bump began complaining he’d been set up, and I know what he was thinking, having of course also been in the position of being invited to an interview with someone who perhaps wants to make an ass of you. I actually don’t think that’s Noam’s game, but even if it were, the answer isn’t to keep repeating, “How can we talk when you keep insisting I get down from this high horse I’m on?”
Bump acts like he and his paper haven’t gotten all sorts of thingswrong in recent years, implicitly rejecting the notion that people like Noam have reason to question anything “already addressed” by papers like the Post. If you need an explanation for declining ratingsand circulation of mainstream press outlets, this vibe is it.
The other episode involved professor and frequent media commentator Dan Drezner, who laughs hysterically and at great length the instant it registers that Noam plans on countering a claim that Trump was a bad president. It’s at about the 52-minute mark:
Drezner is doing what Bump did, albeit with more humor: gagging in disbelief when a mainstream piety sent up the flagpole isn’t instantly saluted.
I think a lot of people in the world I once inhabited, in center-left media and academia, don’t realize they’ve slipped into a deeply unattractive habit of substituting checklists of unquestioned assumptions for thought. In the blue bubble Trump’s limitless evil is an idea with such awesome gravitational pull that it makes nuanced discussion about almost anything impossible. It’s why no one in media could suggest even the possibility he hadn’t colluded with Russia. He’s become an anti-God, of a faith that requires constant worship. When do we get to go back to being atheists?
Disqus has changed ownership, but it appears that the same low-level delicate snowflake employees are still there.
Test post on “new,improved” Disqus channel.
Well, at least I didn’t immediately get the red banner of death. (You’re banned here!)
But, within six minutes — during which time my comment was invisible to everyone but me — It was deleted without comment or explanation.
Within SIX MINUTES my post was gone.
Now, everyone who owns a website with a comment section and active moderation has seen this kind of post where the poster is trying to find out if they can post there, so “Off Topic” removal should not apply.
I AM A WEBSITE OWNER WHO CAN’T USE OFFICIAL DISQUS CHANNELS TO CONTACT THEM.
Why? Because said snowflakes banned me and others for guilt by association with a brilliant system programming whiz known as Dr. Thomas. He proved their claims of “It can’t be done!” were wrong several times. Notably: “You can’t pre-ban someone who’s never posted on your site/channel” and “You can’t find out how many downvotes a comment has — it’s private for a reason.” This latter one, after being shown it COULD be determined — along with who made them — Disqus finally gave access to that info. But the nematodes got their petty revenge by banning him and those associated with him from official channels, then went further and placed unjust universal bans on out accounts, forcing us to create new ones.
This was in keeping with Disqus’ TOS but as soon as the new accounts were noticed, the NEW accounts were banned from Disqus official channels.
The Disqus API has also been changed multiple times to break enhancements created by Dr. Thomas. so they wouldn’t work. This was usually done on weekends when nobody else was in the office.
We’ll have to see. At the moment, I’m not banned on the Breaking News channel — yet.
