Quotulatiousness

February 25, 2019

“Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez [is] doing for America what Jeremy Corbyn has done for Britain”

Filed under: Economics, Media, Politics, USA — Tags: , , , , , , — Nicholas @ 05:00

Alex Noble sings the praises of Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez as she does the heavy lifting to bring awareness of socialism to the American people:

Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez speaking at the Reardon Convention Center in Kansas City, on 20 July 2018.
Photo by Mark Dillman via Wikimedia Commons.

Good old Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez – she’s doing for America what Jeremy Corbyn has done for Britain. Much to the dismay of the secret socialists now entrenched in the Democrat Party, she is stripping away the protective layer of bullshit that socialism normally has to rely upon to keep people from understanding its inherent failings, and is thus laying it bare before the world.

Because she is too ignorant to understand them – she actually believes in socialism, and thinks that if only it is adequately explained to the rest of us, we will love it as she does.

She doesn’t know enough history to know that everyone over the age of forty has seen socialism tried a dozen times in their lifetimes. Her sales pitch is wasted on us – we’ve seen the results before.

So when she told Amazon that their particular brand of crony capitalism was not welcome in New York, she genuinely thought people would admire her.

Instead, even the crony capitalists on the Democrat side of the aisle (i.e those who understand how the game is really played) are very upset with her – she has driven away 25,000 jobs and all the votes economic benefits that would have flowed from them.

All because she thinks Amazon should pay more corporation tax.

Project Lightening Episode 04: Field Strip

Filed under: History, Military, Technology, Weapons, WW1 — Tags: , , — Nicholas @ 04:00

C&Rsenal
Published on 21 Feb 2019

Project Lightening is the first collaborative project between C&Rsenal and Forgotten Weapons. It features SEVEN World War One light machine guns put head to head to see which is the best!

We’re releasing two episodes a week but you can get them all at once over at C&Rsenal AND support both shows at the same time!

http://candrsenal.com/product/lightening

Episode 01: https://youtu.be/TVgkwQTo2n4
Episode 02: https://youtu.be/-hSZbo8Hvn4
Episode 03: https://youtu.be/A9ryJaj3mPw

Modern parenting – too many helicopters yield lots of snowflakes

Filed under: Britain, Health, Liberty, Media — Tags: , , , , , — Nicholas @ 03:00

It’s a commonplace assertion that children today have less unscheduled, unsupervised opportunities for play and exploration, and parents have been indoctrinated into the belief that the world has become a much more dangerous place and their kids need 24/7 protection from those myriad dangers. “Helicopter” parenting is a rational response to this indoctrination, but it comes with costs to the growth and maturity of the next generation. More than a decade ago, I posted this graphic showing how each generation has been more protective of their own children than their parents had been for them:

The problem has been getting worse over time, as Rob Creasy and Fiona Corby describe:

Children growing up in the UK are said to be some of the unhappiest in the industrialised world. The UK now has the highest rates of self harm in Europe. And the NSPCC’s ChildLine Annual Review lists it as one of the top reasons why children contact the charity.

Children’s mental health has becomes one of British society’s most pressing issues. A recent report from the Prince’s Trust highlights how increasing numbers of children and young people are unhappy with their lives, sometimes with tragic consequences.

This is a generation of young people that has been labelled as “snowflakes” – unable to handle stress and more prone to taking offence. They are also said to have less psychological resilience than previous generations. And are thought to be too emotionally vulnerable to cope with views that challenge their own.

[…]

Children’s lives are being stifled. No longer are children able to spend time with friends unsupervised, explore their community or hang around in groups without being viewed with suspicion. Very little unsupervised play and activity occurs for children in public spaces or even in homes – and a children’s spare time is often eaten up by homework or organised activity.

This is further impacted by the way children are taught in schools and how pressure to succeed has led to a taming of education. But if children are never challenged, if they don’t ever experience adversity, or face risks then it is not surprising they will lack resilience.

HMCS Bonaventure of the Royal Canadian Navy

Filed under: Britain, Cancon, History, Military — Tags: , , — Nicholas @ 02:00

Sneaky Loon
Published on 9 Apr 2017

The Bonaventure was purchased from the Royal Navy to replace HMCS Magnificent because the Bonaventure could operate fighter jets to conduct anti-submarine activities.

QotD: Defining mineral reserves

Filed under: Economics, Environment, Quotations, Science — Tags: , , — Nicholas @ 01:00

The European chemists organisation – EuChemS – has just added to the torrent of environmental drivel with their new periodic table. They’re trying to tell us which elements are going to run out when and thus tell us all that we’ve got to recycle. The entire process is bunkum because they’ve not understood the first thing about the supply of minerals. They simply do not know the meaning of mineral reserve that is.

Just for the edification of anyone who does drool when contemplating their own nasal effluvia – you know, a member of Greenpeace, that sort of person – a mineral reserve is something we’ve proven, yes proven, that we can extract from using today’s technology, at today’s prices, and make a profit. It costs a lot of money to prove these facts. Thus we only prove for what we’re likely to use in the next few decades. Mineral reserves are, to a reasonable level of accuracy, just the working stock of current mines.

There is no relationship, no relationship at all, between our mineral reserves and how much of that element or mineral is available to us to use. Really do grasp this point. It’s not that the amount is larger. It’s not that the multiple is high. It’s that there is no relationship at all. There are, for example, absolutely no mineral reserves of hafnium anywhere on the planet. Nothing, absolutely nada. At current rates of usage we might run out some few billion years after the Sun goes Red Giant. The European Chemical Society tries to tell us that there’s a serious risk of running short of Hafnium in the next 100 years. This is so gibberingly stupid that it would get a laugh from German geologists – I know because I told some this once and they giggled. Seriously, German – German – geologists, giggling.

Tim Worstall, “More Environmental Drivel With New Periodic Table – We’re Going To Run Out Of Helium”, Continental Telegraph, 2019-01-23.

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