Willis’s disregard for the Speech or Debate Clause represents the least offensive part of the Fulton County prosecutor’s witch hunt. By targeting political opponents with a sham investigation that promises a fishing expedition inquiring into legal and legitimate Republican strategies, the Democrat district attorney runs headlong into the First Amendment. However, because pre-Trump our country has never seen such a blatant abuse of power and weaponizing of the grand jury system, precedent provides scant support to stop Willis and other Democrats. //

As I detailed earlier this month, “Willis told a Georgia federal court that ‘a central focus’ of her investigation into the 2020 election ‘is former President Donald Trump’s January 2, 2021, telephone call to Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger requesting that the Secretary “find 11,780 votes” in the former President’s favor.’” And “with that opening paragraph, the Fulton County Democrat revealed the hoax of an investigation she is running,” because “Trump did not request that Raffensperger ‘find 11,780 votes.’ Period. It never happened.”

Because Willis continues to push a grand jury investigation premised on a provable lie, the courts should force Willis to justify the grand jury proceedings in total. //

While the Speech or Debate Clause provides—or should provide—some protection against a prosecutor running rogue, the weaponizing of the grand jury by state-level Democrats presents no less of a breach of the Rubicon than the Trump Mar-a-Lago raid. But because our country has never seen this scenario before, it is unclear whether First Amendment jurisprudence will be up to the task of countering the continuing abuse justified by a desire to destroy political enemy No. 1.

I remember once standing in Sterling Memorial Library at Yale University (one of dozens on the university grounds) and thinking how no one could possibly read even a fraction of the books it housed, let alone know them well. I had a similar feeling reading through Crossways’ catalog (again, one of dozens of Christian publishers) and wondering who was possibly reading all these books and why they were being written. //

[The] point, ... is that drawing from our accumulating knowledge — trying to build up a comprehensive conception of the true — is like drinking from the proverbial firehose. We may swallow something, but we might not be better for it.

The solution does not seem to be adding one’s voice for the sake of having a voice. The volume is already loud and the frequencies crowded. Too many thoughts have been better stated and then forgotten, and I do not need to contribute to that forgetting. Instead, I could contribute to remembering.

One can at best hope to understand one’s own corner of accumulated knowledge, wisdom, and experience and to try to transmit it well — transmit it so that those who follow can build off your work and not have to redo or undo it.

The object oriented toaster

Once upon a time, in a kingdom not far from here, a king summoned two of his advisors for a test. He showed them both a shiny metal box with two slots in the top, a control knob, and a lever. "What do you think this is?"

One advisor, an Electrical Engineer, answered first. "It is a toaster," he said. The king asked, "How would you design an embedded computer for it?" The advisor: "Using a four-bit microcontroller, I would write a simple program that reads the darkness knob and quantifies its position to one of 16 shades of darkness, from snow white to coal black. The program would use that darkness level as the index to a 16-element table of initial timer values. Then it would turn on the heating elements and start the timer with the initial value selected from the table. At the end of the time delay, it would turn off the heat and pop up the toast. Come back next week, and I'll show you a working prototype."

The second advisor, a software developer, immediately recognized the danger of such short-sighted thinking. He said, "Toasters don't just turn bread into toast, they are also used to warm frozen waffles. What you see before you is really a breakfast food cooker. As the subjects of your kingdom become more sophisticated, they will demand more capabilities. They will need a breakfast food cooker that can also cook sausage, fry bacon, and make scrambled eggs. A toaster that only makes toast will soon be obsolete. If we don't look to the future, we will have to completely redesign the toaster in just a few years."

"With this in mind, we can formulate a more intelligent solution to the problem. First, create a class of breakfast foods. Specialize this class into subclasses: grains, pork, and poultry. The specialization process should be repeated with grains divided into toast, muffins, pancakes, and waffles; pork divided into sausage, links, and bacon; and poultry divided into scrambled eggs, hard- boiled eggs, poached eggs, fried eggs, and various omelette classes."

"The ham and cheese omelette class is worth special attention because it must inherit characteristics from the pork, dairy, and poultry classes. Thus, we see that the problem cannot be properly solved without multiple inheritance. At run time, the program must create the proper object and send a message to the object that says, 'Cook yourself.' The semantics of this message depend, of course, on the kind of object, so they have a different meaning to a piece of toast than to scrambled eggs."

"Reviewing the process so far, we see that the analysis phase has revealed that the primary requirement is to cook any kind of breakfast food. In the design phase, we have discovered some derived requirements. Specifically, we need an object-oriented language with multiple inheritance. Of course, users don't want the eggs to get cold while the bacon is frying, so concurrent processing is required, too."

"We must not forget the user interface. The lever that lowers the food lacks versatility, and the darkness knob is confusing. Users won't buy the product unless it has a user-friendly, graphical interface. When the breakfast cooker is plugged in, users should see a cowboy boot on the screen. Users click on it, and the message 'Booting UNIX v.8.3' appears on the screen. (UNIX 8.3 should be out by the time the product gets to the market.) Users can pull down a menu and click on the foods they want to cook."

"Having made the wise decision of specifying the software first in the design phase, all that remains is to pick an adequate hardware platform for the implementation phase. An Intel Pentium with 48MB of memory, a 1.2GB hard disk, and a SVGA monitor should be sufficient. If you select a multitasking, object oriented language that supports multiple inheritance and has a built-in GUI, writing the program will be a snap."

The king wisely had the software developer beheaded, and they all lived happily ever after.

Cory Doctorow's book, Radicalized, is up for a CBC award. To celebrate, here's an excerpt.
by Cory Doctorow - Jan 22, 2020 9:05am EST //

entropy_winsArs Scholae Palatinaeet Subscriptorreply3 years agoreportignore user
RickRoyLeonPrisZhoraRachael wrote:
I'm not Canadian and I knew what CBC was! :)

Somehow, the movie, Brazil, lends more hindsight in having a character that DeNiro played, showing up to perform an unauthorized repair on the furnace. Eluding the IoT Enforcement Squad...

+1 for the Gilliam movie reference.

We live in a world that has become the embodiment of the imagined absurdity of the past... //

MisterManoArs Praetorianreply3 years agoreportignore user
To think there are many, many powers pushing so we reach exactly that kind of dystopic IoT crapshow because biznizz and money. A great read that leaves me even more worried about the future. //

CuriouslySaneArs Praefectuset Subscriptorreply3 years agoReader Favreportignore user
AusPeter wrote:
I saw the headline and thought "Hmm .. yep jailbreaking IoT devices is a thing now". Then I realized that it was a fictional story.

Cory's writing has a distressing habit of not staying fictional. //

I can't think of anything else with the acronym "CBC".

complete blood count

(Does not apply to Canadians as their 'blood' is actually a mixture of maple syrup and double-double)

At a high level of abstraction, here's how any blockchain works: Someone on the network proposes a block containing a list of recent transactions. Then other network participants verify that the block follows the network's rules. If a sufficient number of other network participants accept the block, it becomes the "official" next block in the chain. As long as most network participants are honest, users can have confidence that transactions accepted by a majority of the network won't be removed or modified later.

The big challenge for any blockchain project is preventing a malicious party from creating many sock puppet accounts to "stuff the ballot box," outvote the honest participants and thereby tamper with past transactions. Bitcoin's pseudonymous founder Satoshi Nakamoto's big insight—the one that made bitcoin possible—was that this problem could be solved using the principle of "one hash, one vote." On the bitcoin network, whoever has the most computing power—specifically, the capacity to compute SHA-256 hashes—has the most influence over which blocks get added to the blockchain. As long as honest miners have more hash power than malicious miners, users can be confident in the integrity of the blockchain—and hence in the integrity of payments made using the bitcoin network. (Check out our in-depth bitcoin explainer for details on how this works.)

When Vitalik Buterin launched Ethereum in 2015, he used a variant of Nakamoto's scheme. By that point, bitcoin mining was already dominated by specialized silicon optimized for computing huge numbers of SHA-256 hashes, locking ordinary bitcoiners out of the mining game. So Buterin developed a new mining algorithm designed to be "memory-hard"—and therefore difficult to accelerate with custom hardware. As a result, Ethereum mining is still largely performed using off-the-shelf graphics cards, allowing ordinary Ethereum users to participate. //

Buterin has long recognized the environmental downsides of proof-of-work mining. Several years ago, he announced plans to transition Ethereum to proof-of-stake, which has been pioneered by several lesser-known cryptocurrencies.

While proof-of-work mining operates on the principle of "one hash, one vote," proof-of-stake is based on "one coin, one vote." Anyone who wants to participate in Ethereum's validation process must post ether as collateral, a process known as "staking." The more ether someone stakes, the more influence they have over which blocks get added to the Ethereum blockchain.

Every 12 seconds, a pseudorandom number generator selects a subset of stakers to form a committee to decide on the next block. One of them is designated to propose the next block, while the rest, called validators, verify that the new block follows all the rules of the Ethereum network. For example, if the block contains a payment transaction, the validators check that the source address has the required funds, that the transaction has the correct digital signatures, and so forth. If two-thirds of validators approve a block, it becomes part of the official blockchain.

Validators that faithfully follow these rules earn additional ether as a reward for their efforts, with the size of their reward proportional to the ether they've staked. On the other hand, if a validator tries to cheat—for example, by validating two different, incompatible blocks for the same blockchain "slot"—they will face financial penalties. If another validator posts evidence of such a cheating attempt, some of the cheater's collateral will be destroyed ("slashed," in Ethereum jargon), and the whistleblower will get a reward.

It's probably a little early to be warning of extinction, but in some new cars, buttons are becoming hard to find. Given that a screen has to go into the dashboard anyway (thanks to things like backup camera requirements) and the fact that people increasingly won't consider a car without Android Auto or Apple CarPlay, touchscreens make life easier for automakers in terms of design and assembly.

It's just that they don't make life easier for drivers. Instead, we're treated to bad interfaces that don't create muscle memory but instead distract us while we should be driving. And now, Swedish car publication Vi Bilägare has the data to prove it.

VB tested 11 new cars alongside a 2005 Volvo C70, timing how long it took to perform a list of tasks in each car. These included turning on the seat heater, increasing the cabin temperature, turning on the defroster, adjusting the radio, resetting the trip computer, turning off the screen, and dimming the instruments.

The old Volvo was the clear winner. "The four tasks is handled within ten seconds flat, during which the car is driven 306 meters at 110 km/h [1,004 feet at 68 mph]," VB found. Most of the other cars required twice as long, or more, to complete the same tasks.

Kevin Duperret 2 years ago
America is moving towards the metric system, one inch at a time //

redbat1010 2 years ago
will not do it. Read Measuring America and it will explain to why it will never fully switch to metric. State DOT's have tried. and it always ends up back with the Survey foot. //

TheNewGreenIsBlue 4 days ago
@Adam Smith THIS! Few people actually get this. Metric beats imperial when converting between units, but in MOST day to day life, you don't care... even in the SAME vector. Do I REALLY need to know how many feet it is between New York and Washington? So... does it REALLY matter that there are n feet / mile? In Canada, highway exits put signs out as 1200m and 400m. In the US, they do ¾ mile and ¼ mile... and there may be a case for keeping the units the same for faster processing.

They're both JUST as understandable. //

Adam Smith 4 days ago
The thing is you almost never do any arithmetic in aviation where the units would matter. Thus it does not matter what units you use. You just know that your flight level is X or Y units, no matter. Also the different units may be safer because they also imply what is being measured or indicated. And the change over to metric would surely cause a lot of accidents before it would be through. So safety first.

Citizens United filed two lawsuits this week against the Department of Interior and Department of State for failing to comply with Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) records requests regarding the White House’s attempt to federalize elections.

The nonprofit submitted FOIA requests in June, but both agencies failed to respond (federal law requires FOIA requests to be responded to within 20 working days). The requests sought email and text messages from both agencies that mentioned President Biden’s Promoting Access to Voting executive order and the Hatch Act, a law that prohibits executive branch employees from engaging in election activities. //

As previously reported by The Federalist, Biden’s executive order directs all 600 federal agencies to become voter registration agencies and organize voter outreach efforts. It allows such agencies — including ones that dole out federal benefits —to work with leftwing get-out-the-vote groups.

Despite insisting that national elections include mail-in voting, Starbucks is cracking down on its employees’ mail-in unionization efforts. //

The company’s latest hypocrisy is its request to the National Labor Relations Board for suspension of mail-in ballots for union votes. The coffee giant is concerned about the mishandling of ballots and potential collusion between NLRB and union organizers. In addition, it wants all elections to be held in person, with representatives from both the union and Starbucks corporate present, to ensure fairness in how votes are validated and tabulated.

These are all very reasonable expectations, and they’re very similar to positions conservative lawmakers hold on voter integrity in our political election process. They are also very similar to positions Starbucks publicly characterized as being an affront to the democratic process in an open letter last year, disparaging laws to protect voter integrity. //

The company’s concerns are, however, correct regarding union votes being corrupted. The accusations regarding collusion between the NLRB and the Starbucks Union are serious, and if the federally funded labor watchdog illegally provided union activists with vote tallies as the ballots came in, allowing union reps to target non-voting employees, it could cast doubt on the validity of many previously decided elections.

The accusations are based on the reports from a whistleblower within the NLRB itself, lending credence to the charges. In-person voting will cut down on the potential for fraud and this type of voter intimidation.

“Many people in their 20s and 30s see matrimony as something one does once life has reached stability,” the magazine noted. “But Bieber, who wed at 21, sees it as only the beginning: You don’t figure things out and get married but rather get married and figure things out.” //

But there’s another part of the point that Bieber at least appears to be espousing. It’s not just a lackadaisical “figuring it out as you go” approach that doesn’t take marriage seriously, but rather one of taking marriage so seriously that every other life circumstance to be figured out is secondary. //

In the Harper’s feature, Tashjian is right that many in Bieber’s (and my own) generation see marriage as an afterthought to “getting your life together,” the joining of two successful, finished, polished people who have already “found themselves” and therefore do not need each other but simply find the partnership pleasant, convenient — and often dispensable.

New photos from Hostomel Airport outside Kyiv confirm that the Antonov AN-225 ‘Mriya’ (Dream) has been destroyed, likely beyond repair. Here’s a look back at the life of the world’s largest cargo aircraft and single most popular aircraft to track on Flightradar24 ever.
In need of a giant—building the AN-225

The Antonov An-225 ‘Mriya’ was originally developed as a transport for the Buran space plane and the rocket boosters that would carry it to space. It was slated to replace the Myasischev VM-T Atlant as the Soviet Union’s heaviest lifter. Based on the smaller An-124, the An-225 shares a similar forward loading method of ‘kneeling’ to load cargo through its large open front when the nose is tilted skyward. The empennage was redesigned with twin vertical stabilizers to enable the carriage of large external loads, like the Buran, leaving the An-225 without a rear cargo door.

In a shocking report, the U.S. Census Bureau recently admitted that it overcounted the populations of eight states and undercounted the populations of six states in the 2020 census.

All but one of the states overcounted is a blue state, and all but one of the undercounted states is red.

Those costly errors will distort congressional representation and the Electoral College. It means that when the Census Bureau reapportioned the House of Representatives, Florida was cheated out of two additional seats it should have gotten; Texas missed out on another seat; Minnesota and Rhode Island each kept a representative they shouldn’t have; and Colorado was awarded a new member of the House it didn’t deserve.

These harmful errors also mean billions in federal funds will be misallocated. Funding for many federal programs is distributed to the states based on population. Overcounted states will now receive a larger share of federal funds than they are entitled to, at the expense of the undercounted states. //

The 2020 errors were discovered through the “2020 Post-Enumeration Survey.”

After each census, the bureau interviews a large number of households across the country and then compares the interview answers with the original census responses. The 2020 survey showed that the bureau overcounted the population in Delaware, Hawaii, Massachusetts, Minnesota, New York, Ohio, Rhode Island, and Utah. The largest mistake was in President Joe Biden’s home state of Delaware, which was overcounted by 5.45%.

The states whose populations were undercounted were Arkansas, Florida, Illinois, Mississippi, Tennessee, and Texas. The largest error in the undercount was in Arkansas, where the population count was off by 5.04%.

The original census reported that Florida needed only 171,500 more residents to gain another congressional seat. Yet the survey shows that Florida was undercounted by over three-quarters of a million people. The bureau also said that Texas needed only 189,000 more people to gain another congressional seat. The survey shows that Texas was undercounted by 560,319 residents.

Minnesota, according to the original census report, would have lost a congressional seat during reapportionment if it had 26 fewer residents; the survey shows the state was overcounted by 216,971 individuals. Similarly, Rhode Island would have lost a seat if the Census Bureau had counted 19,000 fewer residents. It turns out that the state was overcounted by more than 55,000 individuals.

A look at the FBI’s last six years shows a pattern of irredeemable corruption.

More than a dozen years ago, as Democrats began the process that led to Obamacare, Barack Obama noted that “the chronically ill and those toward the end of their lives are accounting for potentially 80 percent of the total health care bill out there.” He then called for doctors and ethicists to participate in “a very difficult democratic conversation that takes place” about all of this spending on vulnerable patients at the end of their lives.

Canada shows the end results of the type of “conversation” Obama sought. A recent lengthy Associated Press story demonstrates how Canada has normalized euthanasia and a culture of death, in some cases as a way for the health system to save on expensive medical care.

The country’s single-payer health system has destroyed the ethical boundaries that should require doctors to work their utmost to save patients’ lives, and instead now sees physicians broaching “death with dignity” as a way for the health care system to save a buck. The AP obtained a recording from one patient with a degenerative brain condition, who recorded hospital personnel talking to him about his care. The recording shows the hospital’s director of ethics telling the patient his care could cost “north of $1,500 per day.” When the patient asked about the plan for his long-term care, the physician-ethicist replied, “My piece of this was to talk to you, [to see] if you had an interest in assisted dying.”

For a supposed “ethicist” to mention the fees needed to care for a vulnerable patient—and then, when the patient said he felt pressured by the discussion, to go further by broaching the topic of euthanasia—violates every principle of ethics, in the medical profession and otherwise.

The AP investigation makes clear this story does not present an aberration.

As a former homeschooled student and now a homeschool dad, I know first-hand the importance of sound education and the delicate balance of approaching difficult topics with my children.

First things first, families need to be grounded in what the Declaration of Independence calls the Laws of Nature and of Nature’s God, meaning God’s law is true, supreme, and immutable. In today’s society, children are taught that it is acceptable, and often encouraged, to redefine nature’s law. //

The rising generation has access to more information than ever before, which is why it is crucial that you are laying foundational truths at an early age with your children. Don’t be afraid to have difficult conversations with your kids.

The recent overturning of Roe v. Wade is a perfect example of ensuring your children are rooted in the Laws of Nature and of Nature’s God. Our children need to know that the fetus is a stage in human development, much like we have identified being a toddler or a teenager as a stage in human development. The Law of Nature’s God states that every person may lawfully enjoy those rights which God has given. Key words being every person.

Life begins at conception, and the unborn are still lawfully entitled to the right to life. //

These truths ultimately overcome the false ideals the left is attempting to spread. The ultimate takeaway for your children is that just as physical laws are unchanging, so too are natural laws. Not preparing our children adequately can lead to significant problems for the next and rising generations.

Storage containers are being used to fill gaps along the border in Yuma, Arizona. Credit: Doug Ducey/Twitter //

That took……. 3 days: //

In the fiscal year 2022, the Yuma sector has seen 259,895 migrant encounters, according to Customs and Border Patrol data. This high figure is reflective of a broader trend across the Southwest, which has had 1.8 million encounters in total since September 2021, surpassing the previous fiscal year.

Regardless of the investigation’s status, however, Roberts’ failure to provide swift and deserved accountability to the individual responsible sets a dangerous precedent, one where overtly political figures operating at the high court can leak decisions ahead of their release without fear of repercussion. While the court’s current conservative majority stood firm in the face of vile threats coming from left-wing activists this time, there’s no guarantee that such a trend will hold regarding other high-profile cases in the future, or that future justices will possess similar fortitude.

If Roberts truly had any interest in preserving the image of the court as has been claimed, he should move to disclose any information about the status of the investigation and any of its conclusive findings. Anything short is simply playing politics and further contributing to Americans’ increasing distrust of their country’s institutions.

The more our elections rely on the Postal Service, the more interference we can expect. //

Starbucks recently asked the National Labor Relations Board to suspend all pending and ongoing votes to unionize at its U.S. stores due to concerns stemming from mail-in ballots. The franchise’s objections once again raise questions about the credibility of election systems that rely on mail-in ballots.

As with coffee companies, how much more with the American electoral process? With hundreds of millions of dollars of campaign material and increasing numbers of ballots in the mail, postal efficiency and honesty are becoming increasingly vital to free and fair elections. //

Two years ago, the USPS conducted an audit of election mail and found that some 68,000 pieces of election materials for the Baltimore mayor primary sat undelivered for five days before the June 2 election. This resulted in much of the campaign mail not being delivered until after most Marylanders had already cast their ballots by mail.

Incumbent Democratic Baltimore Mayor Bernard C. “Jack” Young placed fifth in the primary. Young was seen as moderate and pro-business. Young raised the most money, but he was beaten by a progressive candidate who enjoyed substantial union support, Brandon Scott. Of the late mail, Young speculated, “That might the reason why I didn’t get a lot of votes.” //

In May 2022, there was abundant evidence suggesting there was a concerted effort by postal workers to swing runoff elections in Texas. The Texas State House of Representatives District 73 is the 32nd most Republican district of the state’s 150. According to an analysis by “The Texan,” the district has a 71 percent Republican partisan lean — meaning that the real contest is in the Republican primary, as there is little chance of a competitive general election.

After a three-way primary, the runoff came down to Barron Casteel and Carrie Isaac. The Casteel campaign received financial support from the largest government workers union in the nation, the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees (AFSCME), fire and police unions, and the Association of Texas Professional Educators. Given the hard Republican tilt in this district, Casteel would be the best Republican the unions could hope for.

And, as happened in Baltimore in the 2020 primary, delayed campaign mail played a role in this election — though Isaac ended up prevailing by 271 votes out of the 22,207 cast and won by a margin of 1.2 percent.

Interestingly, Republican voters in Hays County reported late mail from the Isaac campaign. In Comal County, Casteel’s home turf, the mail arrived on time. Hays County is served by a sorting center in northeast Austin. Comal County is served out of San Antonio.

Isaac’s late pieces featured clear conservative messaging — an endorsement by Sen. Ted Cruz and calls to finish the border wall and to cut property taxes.

Campaign mail today is scanned and tracked. This allowed Isaac’s campaign consultant, Jordan Berry, to know with certainty that six mailers totaling 11,426 pieces targeted at high-propensity Republican households in Hays County were delivered after the election. The six mailers were each dropped on separate days and cost the campaign around $10,000.

As might be expected, the late mail had an effect on the election. Isaac, whose husband Jason represented Hays County for eight years, from 2011 to 2019, was expected to win Hays County as it was her home turf. Instead, she narrowly lost to Casteel by 308 votes. In Comal County, where Casteel served as mayor of New Braunfels, Isaac won by 579 votes.

If your Dutch is rusty, the internet says he wrote:

Horrible. Due to the drought in European rivers, Hunger Stones are surfacing. Macabre warnings from our 15th century ancestors about famine.

‘When you see me, cry’

At least Koens had the sense not to write, “Due to climate change…” Because unless his 15th-century ancestors had scuba gear and a weird sense of humor, those bodacious boulders were high and dry centuries before global cooling global warming man-made climate change was ever thought of.

A group of Czech researchers relied on Hunger Stones for some of the data that went into their 2013 report, Droughts in the Czech Lands, 1090–2012 AD. They described the stones and listed the previous drought years they commemorate:

Hydrological droughts may also be commemorated by what are known as “hunger stones”. One of these is to be found at the left bank of the River Elbe (Deˇcˇ ́ın-Podmokly), chiselled with the years of hardship and the initials of authors lost to history (Fig. 2). The basic inscriptions warn of the consequences of drought: Wenn du mich siehst, dann weine [“If you see me, weep.”]. It expressed that drought had brought a bad harvest, lack of food, high prices and hunger for poor people. Before 1900, the following droughts are commemorated on the stone: 1417, 1616, 1707, 1746, 1790, 1800, 1811, 1830, 1842, 1868, 1892, and 1893.

A tree-ring study printed in Science Advances, a journal published by the American Association for the Advancement of Science, confirmed that “megadroughts” used to be more common before the evil Industrial Revolution kicked off all of that cursed First World tech:

In addition, megadroughts reconstructed over north-central Europe in the 11th and mid-15th centuries reinforce other evidence from North America and Asia that droughts were more severe, extensive, and prolonged over Northern Hemisphere land areas before the 20th century, with an inadequate understanding of their causes.

Original Soundtrack from the movie "The Butterfly" composed by Nicolas Errèra