The Crazy Years

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https://twitter.com/CollinRugg/status/1740831478869872975

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Californian, Democrat, idiot…but I repeat myself.

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My apologies – I have to ask the obvious question: Does California’s mandate to wear masks at medical facilities apply only to US citizens? Or does it also apply to the illegal immigrants pouring over California’s border with Mexico?

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That might be part B of your question. Part A is, ?IS anyone sane left running anything in California.

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The confrontation occurred about 11 p.m. Dec. 21 in the 200 block of Ellis Street at Mason Street.

Police said a man wearing a balaclava jumped over a counter, brandished a firearm and ran off with cash.

Officers saw a person who matched the suspect’s description running from the scene and arrested a man with a loaded firearm after a brief struggle.

During the arrest, an antagonistic crowd formed around the officers and suspect, police said. Officers were able to transport the man to a secure location for their own safety and the safety of the suspect.

Officers also detained a woman who spat on the officers during the incident, police said.

Meanwhile, from September 2023:

The San Francisco Police Department is visiting four Texas university campuses through September as part of new recruiting efforts to find candidates outside of California.

For the first time, police officer candidates will be tested outside of California, with a written test, a physical ability test and an oral interview.

A department spokesperson said the trips are meant to lower barriers to entry into the police department, speeding up the hiring process.

Why wouldn’t people want to be cops in the Shitty by the Bay?

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Here goes Nature again, just a week after their last foray into “degrowth”.

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The past year has given many of us reason to pause. We are losing in a race to prevent planetary tipping points — the climate is changing faster than expected, and humanity has already breached six of the nine sustainable planetary boundaries (for biodiversity loss; climate, freshwater and land-system change; biogeochemical flows; and novel entities). Summer Antarctic sea ice shrank to its lowest recorded extent in 2023 (see go.nature.com/4f86req), a year that is on track to be the warmest on record (see go.nature.com/4f9ykdj).

People around the world recognize that life is not getting any better. As wars rage, runaway inequality and political polarization are eroding societies’ sense of cohesion. Eight individuals owned more than the poorest 50% of the world’s population, according to an Oxfam report in 2017. Levels of anxiety, depression and burnout are rocketing. Full-time employees are unable to pay rent and must turn to extra part-time work to make ends meet, while employers cut staff and increase workloads.

The author, Robert Costanza, is a professot at the “Institute for Global Prosperity” at University College London and “a Full Member of the Club of Rome”, which doomster cabal was responsible for the 1972 laugh-riot The Limits to Growth.

Among the “"Beyond growth policies” advocated by professor Costanza are:

Biocapacity. Policies could include phasing out fossil fuels, limits to extraction of raw materials and measures for nature protection and restoration to ensure healthy and resilient soils, forests and marine and other ecosystems. Examples are a fossil-fuel non-proliferation treaty and a resource justice and resilience act, which would involve a binding target to reduce material footprints and real, area-based nature restoration.

Fairness. Fiscal instruments could be used to foster a more equal society by eradicating income and wealth extremes, as well as super-profits. These might include a carbon-wealth tax and setting of minimum and maximum incomes.

Well-being for all. An improved, ecologically sensitive welfare state would secure people’s access to essential infrastructures. This might be achieved through the provision of universal basic services (including the human rights to health, transport, care, housing, education and social protection), job guarantees and price controls for essential goods and services.

Active democracy. Citizen assemblies could be set up with mandates to formulate socially acceptable sufficiency strategies and strengthen policies. These would be based on ecological limits, fairness and well-being for all, and include a stronger role for trade unions. Examples include local-needs forums, climate conventions and participatory budgeting.

You see, plain old-fashioned democracy has this drawback: people are disinclined to vote for a future in which they shiver in the cold, eat “sustainable” food like insects, limit their travel to walking to the welfare office to collect their “minimum income”, and condemn their children and descendants to this bleak, static dystopia until an asteroid comes along to put an end to the misery. So, we must have “active democracy” instead, in which “Citizen assemblies… formulate socially acceptable sufficiency strategies and strengthen policies.” Why, perhaps we might call them “soviets”.

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Constructing a sustainable world where well-being is prioritized must be a key goal for 2024 and beyond. At the societal scale, people need a positive shared vision of goals that can achieve sustainable well-being. To motivate change, techniques might be borrowed from therapies for addictive behaviours, such as ‘motivational interviewing’, which engages people who have addictions in a positive discussion of their life goals.

Why, you see, economic growth is a mental health problem! Comrades, we must deploy therapies in order to build a a New Soviet Sustainable Man!

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Prosecutors told U.S. District Judge Lewis A. Kaplan in a letter that evidence at a second trial would duplicate evidence already shown to a jury. They also said it would ignore the “strong public interest in a prompt resolution” of the case, particularly because victims would not benefit from forfeiture or restitution orders if sentencing is delayed.

“[S]trong public interest…”

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From the linked article:

Last spring, prosecutors withdrew some charges they had brought against Bankman-Fried because the charges had not been approved as part of his extradition from the Bahamas in December 2022. They said the charges could be brought at a second trial to occur sometime in 2024.

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So he’s available to replace Sally Kornbluth as MIT President.

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“he”

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This topic is accurately named. These people are quite insane. Bonkers. Loonies. Nitwits. Nincompoops. Twits. Idiots. Stupids.

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No, you aren’t dreaming! Mickey Mouse (1928 version) and Mickey’s first synchronised sound cartoon, Steamboat Willie, enter the public domain on 2024-01-01. Celebrate by watching Steamboat Willie for free.

Here is a complete list of works which enter the public domain in 2024 under the laws of various countries. In addition to Mickey Mouse, these works include:

  • All music by Arnold Bax
  • The 1903 film Alice in Wonderland
  • Citizen Kane
  • All music by Sergei Prokofiev
  • All works by Joseph Stalin
  • All works by Dylan Thomas
  • All songs by Hank Williams

Specific works which enter the public domain in the U.S. in 2024 include:

  • The House at Pooh Corner and the character Tigger
  • Lady Chatterly’s Lover by D. H. Lawrence
  • Decline and Fall by Evelyn Waugh
  • The Mystery of the Blue Train by Agatha Christie
  • An American in Paris by George Gershwin
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I wonder what they think of Apollo astronauts having left “Apollo bags” of poop on the Moon?

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https://twitter.com/kevinnbass/status/1741387405091828203

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In California (of course): pronouns for fish.

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U.S.A. state education systems should be charged with fraud, and issued a cease and desist. (And families from the prior decade should sue them for damages).

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