Oh wow. Did you know about this? Anybody seen it? Nathan Fillion and Alan Tudyk have a new series that plays on their roles in the late, much-lamented, still grand-and-gloriously freedomista Firefly.
Speaking of rip-roaring, libertarianish fiction, Larry Correia’s latest Monster Hunter book is coming out Tuesday. An unusual amount of buzz around this one. Preorders now accepted on Amazon.
Twenty years ago, libertarians were “lunatics” for wanting to end the drug war. Now … mainstream. Twenty years ago, libertarians were “crazy and irresponsible” for wanting to end zoning laws. Now … the idea’s being discussed on Bloomberg.com.
Every four years, the Olympics cost cities, regions, and countries more than they earn. Every four years, a new athletic supercomplex begins to crumble into ruin. Every four years thousands, sometimes hundreds of thousands, of poor people and small businesses are brutally displaced for the sake of an international show. Why do so few commentarors realize and write about the obvious?
Suspicions confirmed: the U.S. has only one native wolf species. The other two “species” are just the result of coyotes and wolves doing some … er, heavy partying.
Elicitation. Kit Perez wrote an article about it last week. Every one of us should read it. If you haven’t, I’ll wait while you do.
….
I hadn’t heard the term, but anybody who’s been around the Outlaw scene knows the tactic. It’s a way of getting us to snitch on friends, give away secrets, or incriminate ourselves without us fully realizing what we’re doing.
And it works off our ordinary personality traits — anything from a desire to be polite and helpful to a desire to show how smart and “with it” we are. Which is what makes it so insidious.
Here we are, less than 250 years after one of human history’s most glorious moments, the supposed beneficiaries of that glory, watching our country crumble. Economic ruin and stagnation. A police state obsessed with surveillance and control. Even formerly all-holy free speech under relentless attack from glassy-eyed apparatchiks.
And even the most unaware among We the Ordinary are beginning to wonder, “How did we get here?”
J.K. Rowling tells of the founding of Ilvermorny, the North American wizarding school. There’s a video, too.
The Age of Disintegration. There’s a bit to disagree with. The author doesn’t get the difference between real free markets and crony capitalism within a statist system. But it’s as good an analysis of the Middle East mess — and its western roots — as any.
How law and lawyers killed Europe’s Jews and have done plenty of other murder and tyranny. Which is merely the brilliant lead-in to a condemnation of the current “due process is an inconvenient luxury” anti-gun nonsense.
Jeff Jacoby discovers the biggest armed mob in America. Good question, there toward the end. But we already know the answer. (H/T FH)
It’s no longer some vague right-wing conspiracy that’s responsible for the nation’s distrust of Hillary. Now it’s certain corners of the Internet. Hey. Proud to be one of the many.
But wait. If you shouldn’t pay attention to the Constitution any more (because it’s, you know, so un-modern and so full of DWMs who shouldn’t be telling us what to do), then that means we shouldn’t have a president. Or Congress. Or taxes. Because that’s the main sort of thing the Constitution spells out. So … maybe you’re onto something there, Posner, even though you clearly don’t know it.
Hahahahahaha! The co-founder and CEO of ReMax says it’s a darned pity cash-poor renters don’t know about all those juicy 3%-down loans that are still out there despite all those overly restrictive lenders.
Can pot help prevent Alzheimers? Frustratingly academic at the moment. (C’mon, people, how many grams, ingested how?) But more fascinating data.
Courtesy of Fred in comments. Too adorable not to bring forward: Dr. Seuss Taxidermy. (Not a single one of the critters resembling any from my always-most-favorite Seuss book, On Beyond Zebra!, though.
Don’t care about the Brexit that’s consuming the world’s media right now? Well, how ’bout a Texit — a Texas exit? (I’m amused at those “constitutional scholars” who say a U.S. state can’t secede from the union. The constitution neither said nor implied that; only overwhelming military force said that. Doesn’t take any scholar to see 600,000 dead people.)
Following up on Friday’s Irish rebellion references, here are 50 things you didn’t know about the 1916 Easter Rising. With photos.
The lefties claim demographics will be on their side in the future. But what if the whole “blue model” of urban living is doomed by telecommuters?
Wait. Brent Spiner and his Dr. Brackish Okun will be back in the remake of Independence Day? But didn’t we see him squished to death by an Evil Alien? No, it seems we saw no such thing.
Humans are funny. It seems people want their driverless cars programmed to kill others, but paradoxically, not kill themselves in exactly the same situations.
No-fly/no-buy equals no freedom, says Judge Napolitano.
Thomas Paine wrote those wordsafter the shooting had already begun at Lexington and Concord, after the signing of the Declaration of Independence, a fact that always surprises me. We tend to think that by that time, the game was on, lines were irrevocably crossed, and everybody who was going to take a side and get involved was already committed. But not quite so.
—–
We of course haven’t even had our Lexington moment yet and frankly I pray we never do. Even in the best cases (and the American Revolution was certainly one of those), shooting wars ultimately play into the hands of the most wily statists. Who shoots first, shoots straightest, has the biggest weaponry, or has “God on their side” doesn’t always determine how free people are once the smoke has cleared.
Sigh. It had to happen. One faction in the cannabis legalization movement sics the cops on another faction that it perceives as cutting into its profits. Piggery all around.
Well, yes, that’s almost exactly how it is being a writer. Except they forgot to add smoking three packs a day* and finding clever strategems (like counting the perforations on the acoustic tiles in the ceiling) to avoid actual, you know, work. (H/T jed in comments)
While this article leans anti-Peter Thiel and I’m way more inclined to think the world owes Thiel a debt for his creative thinking and his billionairish backing of it, it’s still a decent look at the man.
This is so cool! Completely fake, mind you. It’s a conceptual art project, not a real thing. But still … so weirdly, imaginatively, creepily cool: The Merrylin Cryptid Museum. (Best viewed by allowing all three scripts, if you happen to be browsing around with NoScript on.)
* No, the smoking and drinking are NOT ME. I have been known to count holes in ceiling tiles, but that was actually in the fifth grade, when I was trapped in class. These days I have more wide-ranging and interesting ways of work avoidance.
It was the premise of the Politico article that drew me in. It was the claim that politics of 2030 would be shaped by the ghastly presidential election of 2016. There would be big changes to come.
Given the tumult of the times, I don’t doubt that one bit. The contest between The Hillary and The Donald, and all the odd and shifting v*ter alignments and policy preferences around it, is bound to reverberate into the future. It’s something I’ve thought a lot about. I wondered if others were coming to similar conclusions. So I read.
Wow whotta way to go! And what a perfect song to be performing at the time. (H/T L.A.)
Twelve ways to increase your anonymity and security online. Very geeky and hardcore, but very good. (H/T Shel in comments) And for the non-geeks: is there a path forward for those who want online security but quail at the thought of TOR or an offshore VPN?
You ’60s and ’70s people — you Illuminatus! fans — want a blast from the past? This was obviously written a long time ago when Robert Anton Wilson was still alive, but the crazy life of Kerry Thornley is always worth a re-visit.
Is F*c*b**k controlling the news its users see? Are there reporters naive enough to be thinking otherwise? This becomes more and more of a problem as billions turn to a narrower range of online sources for everything. FB: the new MSM.
Ninth Circuit court — the previously infamous 9th Circuit — says there’s a Second Amendment right for gun stores, too. (Or rather, an individual right to be able to acquire guns.) And the WaPo, the always infamous WaPo, prints the recaps of both Eugene Volokh and David Kopel. Oh, the times they are a’ changin’ …
So. Do you think the whole Obama in the girls’ bathroom thing will hold up in the courts? And isn’t it downright embarrassing, as well as tyrannical, that a president is involving himself in this (you’ll pardon the expression) sh*t?
Gosh, it’s a good thing all the big issues like terrorism and border security have been solved. Otherwise, this would just be a wildly nutty act of mission creep by the DHS.
I saw a week or so ago that Wendy McElroy has published a new book. Rape Culture Hysteria.
I admit that, because I’m sick unto death of social-justice pecksniffs, ivory-tower radicals, elitists who sneer down their noses at the rest of us while unable to navigate the real world for themselves, and the thuggish Melissa Click types who now personify academia (academia being the major home of rape-culture hysteria), my first reaction was to tune the book out even though everything Wendy writes is always worthwhile. Then I noticed the much more hopeful subtitle: “Fixing the damage done to men and women.”
Yeah, that needs doing. And Wendy is just the person to analyze the problem and suggest sensibly individualist solutions. Turns out the scope of this new book is wider than the title implies.
.
.
