Wednesday, April 2, 2025
Tuesday, April 1, 2025
John Boyega says Star Wars has the vibe of being "in the most whitest, elite space"
John Boyega was a fantastic actor in the movie "Attack The Block". His role in Star Wars was part serious but also part comic relief. He has been vocal multiple times about how his character was portrayed, but he agreed to play this character.
Monday, March 31, 2025
Saturday, March 29, 2025
John Lasseter: A Predator in Disguise
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lF25ZldvdL0
There is no doubt that John Lasseter was instrumental in Pixar's early success. Without his work on Toy Story, there wouldn't be a Pixar. He is prominently featured in the Disney+ documentary The Pixar Story.
Some of the accusations in the video are speculative, but there was sufficient evidence for John Lasseter to be fired from Disney and Pixar.
I was saddened to see this happen.
Friday, March 28, 2025
Hillary Clinton warns Trump ‘stupidity’ will leave US ‘feeble and friendless’
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/mar/28/hillary-clinton-trump-stupidity
People don't fully understand Trump. His modus operandi is to take bold actions and adjust course as needed.
Trump is also a troll. Reportedly, his book The Art of the Deal advocates making outrageous statements as a negotiation tactic. He may be a bully, but at this moment, he is the right person for the job.
People don't fully understand Trump. His modus operandi is to take bold actions and adjust course as needed.
Trump is also a troll. Reportedly, his book The Art of the Deal advocates making outrageous statements as a negotiation tactic. He may be a bully, but at this moment, he is the right person for the job.
Wednesday, March 26, 2025
What to Know about Proving Your Identity | SSA
Does everyone need to prove their identity with Social Security?
No. There is no need to contact Social Security to prove identity if not applying for cash benefits and if not changing direct deposit information. People will continue to receive their benefits and on schedule to the bank account information in Social Security's records without needing to prove identity.
A secure – and most convenient – way to prove identity is with Social Security's online services using a personal my Social Security account.
Individuals will need to provide in-person identification for certain internet, phone, and paper claims, including claims filed by third parties.
A secure – and most convenient – way to prove identity is with Social Security's online services using a personal my Social Security account.
Individuals will need to provide in-person identification for certain internet, phone, and paper claims, including claims filed by third parties.
Social Security requirements changing April 1
Starting April 1, all new Social Security applicants, as well as current beneficiaries wanting to make changes to their accounts, will be required to verify their identity either online with the "my Social Security" service or visit an office in person. In the past, changes could be handled over the telephone.
Tuesday, March 25, 2025
Sunday, March 23, 2025
How I Think About Climate Change
0 seconds ago
Neil,
It is possible that climate alarmists are correct and that human CO₂ emissions will lead to disastrous climate change unless we take drastic action. However, I have about a hundred reasons to believe they are not. We will find out in time because we are currently running the experiment. While some changes are occurring, they do not seem significant enough to warrant panic. I believe we have far more time to address this issue than alarmists suggest, as these changes are happening very slowly.
Looking at temperature data, it took approximately 140 years for the average atmospheric temperature to rise by just 1°C—starting from 1880, which was an exceptionally cold decade.
One major reason for resistance to drastic climate policies is that human civilization depends on cheap, reliable energy to thrive. The proposed solutions are often expensive, unreliable, and require draconian government controls. I do not want the government to control the entire energy sector unless there is an overwhelmingly strong existential reason to do so.
I have followed this issue for 37 years and have seen many dire predictions fail to materialize. Around 35 years ago, some claimed that we would face catastrophe within 25 years. Yet, our supposed doom always seems to be 25 years away—much like nuclear fusion. 🙂
As I mentioned earlier, the rate of change is slow, but another key factor is climate sensitivity to CO₂ doubling. Just 15 years ago, some climate scientists estimated climate sensitivity to be between 6 and 12°C. However, these predictions have gradually been revised downward. Around 2010, experts warned that we were on track for a 3°C increase by 2100 and that this would be dangerous, though a 2°C rise would be manageable. Less than a decade later, I saw similar claims, but the numbers had shifted: now a 2°C increase was the catastrophe, and 1.5°C was the new "manageable" threshold. The goalposts keep moving.
We have nearly doubled atmospheric CO₂ since pre-industrial levels—though not quite yet. However, we have not observed a 6–12°C increase. After analyzing temperature and CO₂ data from 1880, I did some calculations and estimated a climate sensitivity of around 2°C.
A 2015 graph comparing climate model predictions with actual temperature changes showed that nearly all models ran too hot. Only the Russian model was close to reality.
We now live in a political climate where truth is often defined by narrative rather than data. It is a post-truth society. There have been numerous reports of scientists struggling to secure funding or publication unless they align with the official narrative.
The IPCC is not an unbiased organization. They have refused to hire anyone who does not already subscribe to the belief in catastrophic man-made warming. This is not how science should be conducted—starting with a conclusion and working backward. Given that the IPCC is funded by governments, it should remain neutral and let data guide its conclusions. Instead, it behaves more like a political entity. The IPCC has also attempted to prevent skeptical papers from being published and has hired individuals affiliated with environmental lobbying groups—an obvious conflict of interest.
Some scientists have resigned from the IPCC, citing excessive bias. One former member stated that the real goal of the organization was to dismantle free-market capitalism.
Antonio Guterres, the socialist from Portugal who has led the UN since 2017, routinely makes exaggerated claims about climate change—such as his statement that oceans are "starting to boil."
Unfortunately, I do not trust the political system or academia to provide an honest assessment. I wish I could, but too many individuals and institutions appear to be pushing their agendas.
Best wishes,
John Coffey
Saturday, March 22, 2025
Friday, March 21, 2025
he didn't expect us to FIND HIM out
It is harder to get away with crimes because there are cameras everywhere.
Thursday, March 20, 2025
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.
Tuesday, March 18, 2025
Sunday, March 16, 2025
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.
Saturday, March 15, 2025
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
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
Friday, March 14, 2025
Thursday, March 13, 2025
Wednesday, March 12, 2025
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.
Tuesday, March 11, 2025
The Stupidity Epidemic: Why Critical Thinking is Dying
This is well-stated and completely on point.
It appeals to my biases. 🙂
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.
Monday, March 10, 2025
Sunday, March 9, 2025
Friday, March 7, 2025
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.
Wednesday, March 5, 2025
Sign My Petition To Pardon Derek Chauvin
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.
Sunday, March 2, 2025
Thursday, February 27, 2025
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.
@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.
Wednesday, February 26, 2025
Monday, February 24, 2025
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.
Sunday, February 23, 2025
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....
Saturday, February 22, 2025
I couldn't believe it when I saw this on the road!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Iu_gWqbeEm8
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.
@TheologyUnleashed
21 hours agoThe 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.
Friday, February 21, 2025
Thursday, February 20, 2025
Wednesday, February 19, 2025
Tuesday, February 18, 2025
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
Monday, February 17, 2025
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.
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