We Don't Want to Give Creativity to Robots

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EKO-LShEgcs&t=486s

he didn't expect us to FIND HIM out

It is harder to get away with crimes because there are cameras everywhere.

The Case For Derek Chauvin | Episode 2: The Incident

I am not 100% sure that Derek Chauvin is innocent, but the case against him seems very weak.  It seems like he was railroaded.

Scientists Misreport Climate Cause of LA Wildfires

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NZv5zBNIhvE

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vDsjeKo3u3o

High school runner hit in head with baton during race

This story has gone viral.  There is debate about whether it was intentional or not.  It doesn't affect my life, but it might be a reflection of society.

Michael Mann Lawsuit Against Mark Steyn

Michael Mann is a climate scientist and a prominent figure in climate activism. He created the controversial "Hockey Stick" graph, which has been widely criticized for its methodology and accuracy.

Journalist and public speaker Mark Steyn referred to Mann as "a fraud."  Mann, who has a history of suing critics, filed a lawsuit against Steyn.  After a decade of litigation, Mann won a million-dollar judgment.  However, an appeals court has largely overturned the ruling for misrepresentation by Mann and his lawyer.

https://www.youtube.com/live/2UcBaVeSMz8?t=986s

The next part of the video discusses the alleged fraud in government funding of climate activism.

https://www.youtube.com/live/2UcBaVeSMz8?t=1673s

How Political Movements Can Destabilize Social Order

Russians Woman speaks out against the war

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6tXKKE3DQww&t=1023s

Ben Shapiro Runs MASSIVE SCAM! This Is An All Time Low For Daily Wire & Team!

@john2001plus
6:06 This claim misrepresents what Ben Shapiro said. He stated that Trump could not pardon Derek Chauvin on state charges and that Chauvin would not be freed, but a pardon on federal charges might reduce his total time served. More importantly, as Shapiro pointed out, advocating for a pardon would be the right thing to do if Chauvin was wrongly convicted and unjustly imprisoned. 

I can't say with absolute certainty that Chauvin is innocent, but the case against him is highly questionable. I believe he was railroaded, and it's difficult to find a conservative who doesn't share that view. 

"It is better that ten guilty persons escape than that one innocent suffer." — William Blackstone 

It seems trivial to worry about being on a mailing list. I'm on plenty of them, and I can opt out at any time.

Disease Preparedness, and Supply Chains

Disease Preparedness, and Supply Chains:

This is an interesting discussion from five years ago just as COVID-19 was taking off in the United States.

The Stupidity Epidemic: Why Critical Thinking is Dying

This is well-stated and completely on point.

It appeals to my biases. 🙂

Stock Market PLUNGES…So What’s Next?!

This echoes my previous post.

Anti Trump Memes from Facebook

The anti-Trump memes are strong on Facebook.  It would be easy to dismiss this as deluded people but…

There is a real movement here.  Donald Trump has a slim majority that could be chipped away by people screaming loud enough. 

He has to deliver results. If the country goes into a recession, it could tip to the left, repudiating Libertarian ideas. They would claim that it obviously failed. 

Why Airports Hate this $12 Watch

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f_y90Gkyz4k&t=120s

Congresswoman REVEALS Why Democrats Are ANGRY At Elon Musk

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wch8FVLxgHU

Democrats Play the Race Card

This is a critical moment. By singing "We Shall Overcome" in the House of Representatives, the Democrats are attempting to frame Republicans as racists.  They have already claimed that telling Al Green to stop yelling during the State of the Union Address was an act of racism, equating it to telling Black Americans to sit at the back of the bus in Montgomery, Alabama, during the 1960s.  Now, they argue that the censure of Al Green is a form of racial oppression.

This was their plan all along.

Not only is this insulting to Republicans and their supporters, but it also does nothing to foster intelligent discourse.

I don't expect the Democrats to stop. This is their only strategy. They have no hope of winning unless they regain the minority vote. For the next four years, they will continue labeling Republicans as racists until they achieve victory.

The Second Deadlist Virus

Gene Hackman died of heart disease, about one week after wife died of hantavirus: investigators

https://www.foxnews.com/entertainment/gene-hackman-betsy-arakawa-deaths-investigators-provide-update

BREAKING: Supreme Court rules Trump must resume foreign aid

Sign My Petition To Pardon Derek Chauvin

The death of George Floyd had many contributing factors, including a possibly fatal level of drugs in his system, a COVID-19 infection, heart disease, and poor health from a life of drug abuse.

A conviction of unintentional manslaughter might make sense. The murder conviction is most definitely unjust.

The trial turned into a media circus along with mass protests threatening and committing violence.

Some would argue that the police should have cared for Goerge Floyd, but they called for an ambulance, which took too long to arrive.

There is no evidence that Derek Chauvin intended to hurt George Floyd. He was just trying to do his job. It is possible that he did his job badly and contributed to the death of George Floyd, but even that is not clear.

Barron "Octavian" Trump

https://www.youtube.com/live/AB7w7IBIXz8?t=12165s

Elon Musk is now EXPOSING George Soros

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ya5rsDK_r-A&t=105s

Should We Defund Academia?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=htb_n7ok9AU

We need to talk about the GERMAN ELECTION!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jLtdQbkxvks&t=836s

@john2001plus
12 minutes ago (edited)
13:57 This is factually incorrect. Hitler supported the German Revolution of 1918–1919. Later, when he attended a meeting of the German Workers' Party for the first time, the official topic was why free-market capitalism should be abandoned. Hitler was so impressed with the group that he left the army and eventually became its leader. The party was later renamed the National Socialist German Workers' Party. 

This group saw itself as a nationalist socialist alternative to international socialism, which had gained a foothold in Germany. Hitler was not opposed to socialism, but he was a nationalist who opposed foreign political influence. 

In the United States, the political left initially supported fascism and Mussolini until America entered the war. After World War II, they created the narrative that fascism was far-right and have promoted this lie ever since. However, the right generally opposes government control and authoritarianism. The motto of the Italian Fascists was, "Everything for the state, nothing outside the state." The Nazis held a similar stance, asserting that private companies must serve the goals of the state or be taken over by it.

The NSA’s Secret S** CHATS?!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8M9mBO3d0eo

Germany’s Election Results Explained

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-PrMHoku-G0&t=428s

The conservative Christian party came in first, while the socialist party took second place, alongside several other left-wing parties. The video predicts that the two leading parties will form a coalition government with only a slim majority.

The right-wing, anti-immigration party Alternative for Germany (AfD) doubled its results, but the video suggests that no other party wants to form a coalition with them, as they are considered too extreme.

This seems to reflect the global shift toward the right in politics. Given how traditionally left-wing Germany has been, this development is particularly interesting.

Trump found the Stacey Abrams SLUSH FUND!!!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bV4XTZUr32k&t=83s

China & India Drop BAD NEWS on Russia over Ukraine War

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_7CSmt-mdkY

Re: CO2 removal and farming

If I had a choice to spend money and resources to take CO2 out of the air, or not, I would prefer to leave the CO2 in the air.  It is a valuable resource.  It is plant food.  It is part of the food chain.  Nature has ways of taking CO2 out of the atmosphere.   

The CO2 level has been declining for a hundred million years, reaching dangerously low levels before we got involved.

There is a much bigger problem to worry about. We have been in the Pleistocene ice age for the last 2.6 million years. We should be in the cool-down portion of the Malankovich Cycles, which will lead to the next period of mass glaciation. It is thousands of years away, but it is a bigger issue than short-term warming that will last just a century or so.

I like a joke I heard:  How far are we from Nuclear Fusion?  About 93 million miles.  Maybe we are looking for it in the wrong place, and just need better ways to collect solar energy.

On Sun, Feb 23, 2025 at 1:05 PM Larry wrote:

This whole article was an Interesting read....

https://gizmodo.com/new-technique-turns-ordinary-rocks-into-carbon-capturing-machines-2000566723

I couldn't believe it when I saw this on the road!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Iu_gWqbeEm8

@TheologyUnleashed

21 hours ago
The truck in the image is transporting a massive wind turbine nacelle. The nacelle is the housing that contains essential components of a wind turbine, such as the generator, gearbox, and control systems. These nacelles are incredibly large and heavy, requiring specialized trucks for transport. The size of the nacelle in the image suggests it is part of a modern, large-scale wind turbine used in wind farms. The transport is likely part of the logistics involved in moving components to a wind farm installation site.

Wow: Sow the Wind, Reap the Whirlwind

The Greenhouse effect is bigger than you think - so don't worry about it too much

Konstantin Kisin's HILARIOUS and INSPIRATIONAL Speech at ARC

Trump Blames Ukraine

A Sleeping Giant Awakens

China does import commodities and natural resources, such as oil and iron ore, as well as advanced semiconductors that it hasn't figured out how to engineer. But China's dominance in manufacturing and exports cannot be overstated.

Take automobiles, the anchor of so many industrialized countries' manufacturing sectors for the past century. Around 20 years ago, China was a nonfactor in automaking. By 2018, it had the capacity to produce 40 million gasoline-powered cars per year, far more than the 25 million its economy needed. Since then, it has added, thanks in part to substantial government subsidies for the industry, the capacity to make 20 million electric vehicles annually, a number that may soon rise to 30 million. Annual global automotive demand is 90 million cars; China has the capacity to produce around two-thirds of that.

This pattern is replicated in sector after sector. China routinely produces more than half of the global supply of steel, more than half of the world's aluminum and more than half of the world's ships. In clean technology sectors such as solar cells and batteries, China can produce many multiples of current global demand, and there are fears that it could replicate these successes in memory and automotive chips. What's more, China has partly made up for the fall in domestic steel demand (caused by the housing implosion) by subsidizing the building and equipping of new factories that use domestic steel in churning out yet more manufactured exports for overseas markets.

All told, Chinese export volume is growing three times as fast as global trade. This means China's success is directly coming at the expense of manufacturers in other countries, which increasingly cannot compete and face pressure to abandon sectors that China targets. With China's real estate market still in the doldrums, the pattern shows no signs of changing. This points to a world economy in which China has no need for the industrial inputs of other countries while leaving those countries dependent on Chinese-made goods — and vulnerable to Beijing's political and economic pressure.

https://www.nytimes.com/2025/02/18/opinion/china-xi-jinping-trade-manufacturing-tariffs.html

Milton Friedman - The Robber Baron Myth

I found this text on Facebook that I wrote 9 years ago:

I've been asked to share my opinion on how the government should handle monopolies.

Before addressing the issue of monopolies, I want to discuss core beliefs. But before that, I have a question to ask.

By my calculation, government spending in 2015 was about 37.5% of GDP. In recent years, this figure has been closer to 40%. The real number is worse because all government spending is included in the GDP calculation. So my question is: At what point would government spending have to rise before those on the left would say, "Enough is enough"? Would it be at 50% of GDP? How about 60% or 70%? The same question applies to taxation—would a 90% tax rate be considered fair?

I could make a similar argument about immigration. I genuinely believe that hundreds of millions of people would come here if they could, so we must set some reasonable limit.

I ask these questions because there doesn't seem to be any clear limit on how much some people are willing to expand government spending or increase government control over our lives.

If we look at two extreme forms of government—on one end, countries where the government controls 100% of GDP, such as the former USSR or North Korea, and on the other, places that have temporarily had little to no government, resulting in chaos—we see that neither extreme works well. However, as we move away from these extremes, conditions improve. That improvement happens more quickly at the lower end of government spending than at the higher end. Studies suggest that GDP growth tends to peak when government spending is around 20–25% of GDP, though some argue that because we lack examples of governments spending less than 20%, lower spending might be even better.

For this reason, I believe that minimizing government leads to greater prosperity, less poverty, and even reduced wealth disparity.

The Libertarian principle states that everyone has the right to do as they please, so long as they do not infringe upon the rights of others. This includes the right to own property, engage in business, and make decisions without unnecessary government interference. If Walmart is one of the richest companies in the world, it is because people choose to shop and work there.

The issue of monopolies is so insignificant that I'm surprised it still comes up. I've debated this topic for decades. At one time, people claimed that Netscape had a monopoly on internet browsers, Microsoft had a monopoly on operating systems, and Lotus had a monopoly on spreadsheets. Yet, all of these have changed.

OPEC once appeared to have a monopoly on oil production, but that, too, has shifted.

Historically, monopolies have often been created by governments. Centuries ago, governments granted individuals exclusive rights to specific businesses and markets. More recently, government-created monopolies existed in industries such as telecommunications, and even today, many utility companies still operate as monopolies. Often, government regulations are used to prevent competition, with industries sometimes lobbying for these regulations to maintain their dominance.

In a free market, as a business begins to dominate a sector, it becomes more profitable, which naturally attracts competition. Even the mere threat of competition can keep businesses in check. For example, we've long known that artificial fuels can be produced for about $5.50 per gallon. OPEC has openly stated that they price oil at a level that keeps alternative fuels unprofitable.

There are many myths about monopolies in the late 19th century. In reality, this period saw some of the greatest economic growth in American history.

Is The Penny *Finally* Dead?

In my childhood, you could buy candy with one-cent coins, but by the early 1980s, you couldn't buy anything with them. Since everyone used cash in those days, I found the coin annoying.  I called the penny pocket-lint.  In 1982, I wanted the government to get rid of them.  Since then, the value of money has dropped by 2/3, making the one-cent coin even more worthless.

If we got rid of pennies, sales tax rates would have to be rounded to the nearest nickel.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n1KgxqEQn0A

Health Officials Say Over 50 People Have Died from the Flu

https://wibc.com/560334/health-officials-say-over-50-people-have-died-from-the-flu/

Wil Wheaton

I followed Wil Wheaton on Facebook until I couldn't take it anymore.

I am a Science Fiction fan. Which means that I am a Star Trek fan. Which means that I am a Star Trek The Next Generation fan. Which means that I am a Wesley Crusher fan. So I want to be a Wil Wheaton fan, but he makes it so hard. On Facebook, he espoused far-left nonsense while saying many mean things toward the political right.

He considers himself a victim of his estranged parents. He had bad depression until he got medicated. His mindset is one of championing perceived victimized groups. He sees everyone on the political right as hateful fascists while spewing hateful rhetoric himself. There is no nuance or middle ground in his thinking.



Wil Wheaton

nopSdroest4u 3m6hru9u020a3659a3m1c145ay6n3aJiflcat6u20i90153 ·


As an OG blogger who did everything in html, I resisted Facebook for years. I didn't like the idea of being inside someone else's garden, where I didn't own or control my writing, photos, and so on.

But I ended up here because it's where the people were, and I stayed here to the detriment of my own writing and my own website (that I worked so hard to build on my own in the Before Times).

Over the years, I've been put into Facebook jail for absolute bullshit, usually because of bad faith reports from dickheads, but also because a machine did a comically bad parsing of something I said. (Hey, die in a fire, machine!) As a consequence, I have ended up self-censoring, or even writing and creating to serve whatever the fucking algorithm wants, instead of what I want. It's always bothered me, but at like a 1 on a 10 point scale. I've lived with it, and I've accepted the compromise.

And it's been so frustrating to contort myself into all sorts of non-euclidean shapes, while literally every single time I report someone for hate speech, impersonation, scamming, a different kind of hate speech, terrorist threats, even more hate speech, the machine waits for weeks before it tells me that all of that hate speech was just peachy with Facebook and the gigantic piece of dogshit who owns it.

I've had one foot out the door on this website for a couple months, and now that Meta will allow and encourage hate speech against marginalized and vulnerable people (obviously so that right wing fuckfaces can do the thing, officially, that they've been doing all along) I am leaving for good.

There's no reason for me to be here. Whether it's because I'm boring or the algorithm is squashing me or some combination of both, engagement is way, way down over the last half of last year. And there is just way too much harassment, noise, bots, scammers, and overt fucking Nazism all over the place. If I'm going to reach a smaller audience, anyway, I'm going to reach it via my own blog where I actually care to keep that dogshit in the trash where it belongs.

I'll let my blog crosspost here for a couple of weeks, and then I'm just going to let this account go fallow.

I sincerely hope that, if you have enjoyed following me here, that you'll come over to my blog. There's a simple form there, so you can get my posts by email, probably more reliably than you ever saw things here.

I also have Bluesky, though I'm going to use it minimally -- the fire hose of social media is extremely bad for my (and your) mental health -- and even then, mostly to let folks know when something I made is out in the world.

The people who work for me are going to be unhappy about this. I have a major project coming out in March, and it's not the best idea to walk away from an account with a few hundred thousand followers ... but when I walked away from three million followers on Twitter when fuckface von nepobaby turned it into a fascist propaganda tool, absolutely nothing changed for me, from a business perspective.
Put another way, my experience over the last 25 years has shown me that there is a core of people out there, you are likely among them if you're still reading this (hi, Aunt Dorothy!), who care enough to go where I am. I'm counting on that pattern holding as I leave what has become yet another tool for fascists, authoritarians, bigots, Nazis, and other disgusting and deplorable people to use in their efforts to hurt people I love.

I'll keep my Instagram up a little longer, unless or until this Zuckerberg approved policy of hate and toxic masculinity (why is it always the weakest little men who are so toxic, he asked, rhetorically) metastasizes there, as well.

Please come with me, back to my blog, where it all began.

DOGE

https://www.youtube.com/live/RcbHMKErAEk?t=1147s

Biden EPA Hide $20 billion

Shockingly, roughly 20 billion of your tax dollars were parked at an outside financial institution by the Biden EPA," Zeldin said. "This scheme was the first of its kind in EPA history, and it was purposefully designed to obligate all of the money in a rush job with reduced oversight.

"The financial agent agreement with the bank needs to be instantly terminated, and the bank must immediately return all of the gold bars that the Biden administration tossed off the Titanic," he argued, referring to shocking post-election video which showed Biden administration EPA official telling an undercover Project Veritas reporter that the agency was "tossing gold bars off the Titanic" before President Trump assumed office. 

https://nypost.com/2025/02/12/us-news/lee-zeldin-demands-return-of-20b-parked-at-a-financial-institution-by-biden-epa-to-dole-out-to-climate-groups/

How a fraudster destroyed America!

There are two sides to everything. Right now, we have more government than we can afford, and the old way of doing things isn't working.

I don't believe it's the government's role to take our money and give it away to foreign countries, especially those that are hostile to us. Some aid may serve strategic or humanitarian goals.   Musk isn't trying to eliminate all foreign aid—he's targeting wasteful spending.

The video is hyperbolic. Instead of reacting to the rhetoric, we should evaluate Musk's proposals on their merits. This is hardly an attempt to destroy America, nor is it necessarily illegal, as these decisions fall under the executive branch's authority. For decades, the political left has expanded executive power, and now Trump is using those same tools to rein in spending. If there are legal challenges, the courts can weigh in.

Not a good trade

Fogel, an American history teacher who was deemed wrongfully detained by Russia, was arrested in August 2021 for possession of marijuana and was serving a 14-year prison sentence. He had been left out of previous prisoner swaps with Russia that were negotiated by the Biden administration.

Vinnik — the other person involved, according to two U.S. officials — was arrested in 2017 in Greece at the request of the U.S. on cryptocurrency fraud charges and was later extradited to the United States, where he pleaded guilty last year to conspiracy to commit money laundering.

Pilot and Air Traffic Controller Get Into Argument Over Approach

How Biden tarnished his own legacy

'"He'd like his legacy to be that he rescued us from Trump," says author and Democratic strategist Susan Estrich. "But sadly, for him, his legacy is Trump again. He is the bridge from Trump One to Trump Two."

It didn't have to be this way. Biden and his team were buffeted by events – some within his control and some outside it. Many of the most damaging developments were entirely predictable, however – and, in fact, predicted - yet the president and his administration appeared to be caught flat-footed.

For that, they paid a high price.

Biden's first misstep as president came half a world away, in the chaos that unfolded during the US withdrawal from Afghanistan in August 2021.

The exit had been negotiated during the final months of the Trump administration, but Biden backed it – despite warnings from some of his military advisors.

Those dire predictions proved prophetic, as Kabul descended into panic and unrest.

By the end of that month, Biden's Gallup approval rating had dipped below 50% for the first time – a mark it would never again reach.

On the domestic front, the situation for the president was equally inauspicious. By summer, US inflation had surpassed 5% for the first time in 30 years.

Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen said that she believed the spike was "transitory". Biden called it "temporary". Some outside the administration, most notably Obama's economy adviser Larry Summers, thought otherwise.

By the time inflation reached its peak a year later, at 9.1% in June 2022, Yellen and Biden had admitted they miscalculated.'

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c7vd5n3el6no

What Trump's Doing

@john2001plus
0 seconds ago
The political left established this system. They have been granting power to the executive branch for decades. Obama began governing by executive order after initially claiming he lacked the power to do so. When Trump reversed Obama's executive orders, the left labeled him a dictator.

We have far more government than we can sustain, and much of it is corrupt. Trump is utilizing the tools at his disposal to address this. He might be overstepping his authority, and the courts will sort it out.

Is Alan Miller Actually Jesus of Nazareth? | Dangers of Lazy Cult Leaders

10 DEADLIEST Decisions in Human History

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I5zh8wssRY8

Some things would have been inevitable.  Minus Columbus, Europe would have discovered the Americas eventually.  The Vikings had a colony in Newfoundland in 1021 AD. 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/L%27Anse_aux_Meadows

People can't be blamed for epidemics when the germ theory of disease was unknown.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JEYh5WACqEk

USA vs Mexico Egg Prices🍳💰

https://youtube.com/shorts/mAFEbtyrj-k?si=rTNf5Ox01-IHGtzD

Trump Declares Executive Order To End Use Of Paper Straws In Federal Agencies

https://www.forbes.com/sites/maryroeloffs/2025/02/07/trump-promises-executive-order-against-paper-straws-back-to-plastic/