I’ll start.
Lots of space launches.
And?
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What good things have happened this year?December 25th, 2023 |
 32 comments to What good things have happened this year?Leave a Reply |
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Not just “Lots of space launches”, but specifically the launch of SpaceX Superheavy and Starship.
The April launch IFT1 was a bit of a shitshow, but by IFT2 in November the 2nd test flight was a fundamentally different experience, with close to zero significant ground damage and an “as good as can be expected” launch outcome.
Roll on IFT3, when we’ll make a first attempt at full orbit and some of the internal propellent transfer tests that are necessary pre-cursors to fuel depots in space.
Once we can do that, then LEO is half-way to anywhere.
Damn the strictures of the Rocket Equation!
Busses north from Texas.
The best, most brilliant move in the US in years! Alinsky would be . . . dismayed.
Another entry, more immediate and personal:
Just tapped the first bottle from the batch of mead from last December. Perfect! Light, dry, sparkling. Sonoran Mesquite honey from the Mexico-Arizona border. Desert champagne!
I managed to lose 40 pounds. Not too shabby for a middle aged man who is in the running for laziest in North America.
Yes. Whoever came up with that reverse scam on the “Sanctuary Cities” malarkey deserves a medal. It’s rapidly bringing places like New York and Chicago to their knees.
They’re trying a little reverse action by giving Invaders plane tickets to anywhere in the country, but I suspect they’re not having much takeup as New York and other Democrat infested cities are exactly where the invaders want to be. “Target rich environments where the victims are disarmed”.
The all-power red-green train in Germany is loosing wheels. Too late, as ever, but the coalition government is now a minority government.
Javier Milei
https://www.gbnews.com/politics/argentina-news-javier-milei-falklands-oil
Good summing up Natalie.
John Galt and bobby b – excellent points. And a good point from Spruance.
My favorite year in British history is 1660 the “Act of Oblivion” consigning decades of legislation to the void, the theatres reopen, celebrations allowed, and-so-on.
However, my favorite year in World History is quite recent – 1989.
The Berlin Wall falls and Marxism starts to collapse in Russia and the rest of Eastern Europe – and the mask falls off “reformed” Communist Party rule in China.
It was obvious after the massacres of 1989 that the Communist Party of the People’s Republic of China continued to be monsters. Anyone who remained “open” to a trading or other relationship with the PRC after 1989 was, and is, an obvious traitor.
What good things have happened this year? You could make a list of all the bad things have happened this year. For the worse it gets, the better it gets. And we are getting near the point where people have had enough. Thus Javier Milei is the result of the wreckage of the Argentine economy. If it hadn’t been total, he’d never have been elected. So let’s have more bad in the coming year. The worse it gets, the closer it comes to collapsing. You can’t have the creative of creative destruction without the destruction. Let’s welcome it with open arms
Yes the Texas buses were great but unless I’m mistaken the strangely sidelined Ron DeSantis got there first when flying migrants to Martha’s Vineyard in 2022.
The game-changing Bud Light boycott is also worthy of mention as is the near total collapse of Marvel films (in conjunction with the humiliation of their rotten tomatoes shills) along with pretty much anything to do with the loathsome Disney grooming corporation.
Sure, but that was just a one-off made for political point scoring, essentially a PR exercise.
With the effective open border policy, it’s a numbers game and moving those released at the border to Democratic cities, but particularly New York, Chicago and DC is having a massive effect. It’s the fact that every day new Invaders are turning up that they have to accommodate or repudiate their mistaken policies. It is the volume that breaks this, not one-off exercises.
Finland joined NATO.
Runcie: Argentina’s existing oil fields are on the order of 50 times bigger than the entire Falklands, using oil as a premise to invade is stretching credulity.
New Zealand has rejected Jacindaitis.
The evil ideas percolating in American universities may shock the good into remedial action?
Everyday technology! How we have come to take these works of incredible genius completely for granted. Your smartphone is an obvious example. My sports watch that uses GPS to track my runs and bike rides and counts my laps in the swimming pool and is small enough to fit on my wrist. My flat telly that can access all kinds of media at the push of a few buttons on my remote. My digital piano which can faithfully emulate the sound and feel of a piano that costs a hundred times more. My car that can deliver forty five MPG while being able to out perform a 1970s V8 muscle car. A car which is so cleverly designed that it can be either a luxury limousine or a removal van. This is the stuff that sustains my faith in humanity, the cleverest and most resourceful species on the planet.
This is also why I despise the greens, not just for their pessimism and negativity, but for their hypocrisy in using all the fruits of the civilisation that they profess to hate but I’m trying to be positive here so screw them.
@Sigis – Sweden moved closer today as well.
Sweden moves one step closer to NATO membership after Turkish parliamentary committee FINALLY gives approval after 19 months of delays [Link]
Elon and Javier. I’m nearing retirement but I’d go work for either of them for free.
+1. Or 2.
I do think you are mistaken, that Texas was there first; but it is very well possible that i am the one who is mistaken.
(I might have given the impression that i regard everybody who disagrees with me as insane; but that is wrong: I regard everybody as insane, including myself; and when somebody disagrees with me, i do not always regard that as a consequence of insanity.
Not always.)
A few more probably good things
(but i’ll wait and see):
* Mike Johnson became Speaker of the House.
* The presidents of MIT, UPenn, and Harvard disgraced themselves and their institutions.
(Perhaps a consequence of the new House leadership.)
Proof that, outside North America, elections are still taken seriously.
Several large sports bodies declared that trans-women may not play against actual women. In some cases reversing their previous rulings.
And it became abundantly clear that the majority of people agree with them.
I think Geert Wilders getting a big win is a positive (though I’m not sure I’m 100% on board with him) and I think in general there is a bit of a swing internationally away from the super crazy liberals. I also think it is good that there is more and more resistance to the crazy idea that every worker has to have his butt in a seat in a downtown office building 8 hours a day 5 days a week. Almost nobody expects that anymore.
The stock market and BTC are WAY up this year, and gas prices are down quite a bit this year. So those are good things even if they are built on a cloud of smoke.
Biden’s unpopularity is a good thing too, showing that people are a bit less bewitched by the politicians and press than I thought — though not by much.
Perhaps also the tearing off the mask of the left to manifest the shocking levels of hatred and antisemitism in their hearts. Hopefully we will never hear again about Jew Hating Right Wingers. Probably not, but at least when they say it hopefully they’ll realize the chutzpah.
One final thing, I do not understand why any American would be excited about Finland and Sweden joining NATO. I understand why Finland and Sweden (and I suppose smaller countries like the Baltics) would be. But to America it is just added additional responsibility without getting much in return. It is just more “entangling alliances”, more risk of an article 5. It just seems like more of America seems to be responsible for everything in the world. You really shouldn’t poke the bear unless you have a really good reason to do so. And one more time, Finland does not spend the expected 2.5% of their GDP on their military. Once again, America has to subsidize them with massive amounts of borrowing. Why can’t Finland borrow that money themselves?
Yes John – Governor DeSantis governed well, for example opposing the Trans Cult attack on children – which former Governor Haley has failed to do (perhaps the lady was too busy counting the money she has been given by military contractors – having been given lots of well paid non-jobs in one of the standard moves of the corrupt political system), “leave it to the parents” opens the door to vicious child abuse, including sexual mutilation, supported by “liberal” or “Progressive” parents.
The collapse of the Disney Corporation, which Bob Iger allowed to be taken over and dominated by people saturated with Frankfurt School Marxist “Woke” doctrines, is indeed a good thing – although, as the BBC gloatingly noted, the biggest selling film of 2023 was “Barbie” which hid its leftist messaging (and there was a lot of that) under a lot of pink plastic and pretty people.
On the other hand the conservative film “The Sound of Freedom” was the most successful independent film in history – and it attacked the child sexual abuse that Hollywood types (and the Washington D.C. crowd) endlessly engage in.
As for a “good year” – there will be no good years till when and if the world “governance” agenda de facto agreed at the Rio Conference of 1992 (which used “the environment” in the same way the “Barbie” movie used pink plastic and pretty people – as a cover for its real agenda).
As has been pointed out before – there is little point in voting for independence from the despicable European Union, which the British people did in 2016, if the establishment is committed to world governance – which they clearly are.
“International Law” used to mean certain “laws of war” – now “International Law” seeks to control all aspects of human life – and there will be no good years till “International Law” and international bodies such as the World Health Organization are totally REJECTED – this can not be fudged, these international Corporate State forces must be rejected.
As for the conflict with “Woke” Marxism – in the United Kingdom that war was lost when the “Equality Act” was passed in 2010 – with only six Members of Parliament voting against it.
It is amusing, in a grim way, to hear this or that politician saying they are against “Woke” Marxism – only to find out that they voted to support the Equality Act.
It is like hearing a politician saying they do not want the British people to be poor – only to find that they voted to support the Environment Act (“Net Zero”) which makes poverty mandatory.
Still this time next year we will either be seeing the left preparing to leave the American government (although, tragically, the British government), or we will be seeing Civil Conflict under way in the United States – between the opponents of world governance and the opponents of world governance.
It depends on whether or not the November 2024 Presidential Election is rigged – as the 2020 Presidential Election was.
If the Presidential Election is not rigged then, Civil Service Acts or not, the left will have to leave the American government on January 20th 2025. The “Deep State”, the security and intelligence agencies and the institutionally corrupt “Justice” Department (and so on) will be defeated.
If the Presidential Election of 2024 is rigged – then Civil Conflict is inevitable.
One thing – TRUUUUUMP!!!
I said, a long time ago, I’d rather have DeSantis (DISCLAIMER: I ain’t a U.S. citizen and I don’t live there, so I don’t vote ‘Murrican: but as with so many other countries in the world, U.S. politics is far more important to my country than our own), because DeSantis has governing experience and has made a lot of right-calls – but a second Trump Presidency would be GLORIOUS! He’s vindictive, and heads would roll – the Deep State in DC would be left nervously counting un-garlanded lampposts every time they drive to work. He’s also ‘WAAAY more law-n’-order and anti-immigration than the current crop o’ crooks; which I admit, doesn’t say all that much. And foreign troublemakers already know to play shy when he’s in the driver’s seat. And this year made clear, it’s a real possibility; a very nice side-effect is the growing GOP effort to impeach Sleepy Joe – and there’s no hurry in this; even if he’s been sent back to his basement already, the Dem’s have set the precedent. They were fine with impeaching Trump when he was no longer President, so the Repub’s can return the favour after Biden is out of office, thereby avoiding putting Roundheels McClownlaugh in the driver’s seat.
And I happily admit that the biggest benefit of another Trump Presidency would be very personal for me – I LOVE fireworks, and the endless panoply of exploding lefty / global-warmy / greeeen-weeeeeny / “we-need-more-war”ry heads all over the world for the next four years would be an unending delight!
If the Presidential Election of 2024 is rigged – then Civil Conflict is inevitable.
And if Trump wins, the left will sheepishly depart the stage, sad at the result, but knowing that in democracy you sometimes lose.
Not.
No, but as with 2016, the tears and tantrums are part of the entertainment, the childish behaviour that pours out from every orifice of the Democratic machine when they have the temerity to lose (by not cheating enough).
@John Galt
No, but as with 2016, the tears and tantrums are part of the entertainment, the childish behaviour that pours out from every orifice of the Democratic machine when they have the temerity to lose (by not cheating enough).
Honestly, 2016 there was a lot of bitching and complaining, so it wasn’t a big deal. This time round I predict riots in the street, much like the summer of 2020, and possibly worse. I wouldn’t be surprised if there was a Jan6 redux with much more extreme actions: some of these crazies seems totally unashamed of the ironic chutzpah that would demonstrate.
I hope I am wrong, but I don’t think I am.
FWIW though, I doubt very much that they won’t cheat enough. After all, in their mind what means are not justified by the ends of keeping Trump out of the Whitehouse?
Wanna know why I think Trump got the reaction he did?
I think his entire initial campaign in 2016 was a put-up job; Hillary wanted a “sure thing”, got him to run, got her media flying monkeys to puff him up at the beginning, thinking “There’s no way this jerk can win…”
Then, she found out that she was even less liked than Trump.
That’s what informed all the vitriolic hatred from the establishment: Their beloved candidate actually lost to Trump, who was supposed to be this big joke. That’s why they all went after him, as well as him being an outsider to DC and there was the fear he’d find things and not keep quiet. After all, how the f*ck do you bribe a billionaire president? With what?
So, the real deal is that in 2016? They had no idea he could actually win, so they didn’t pull out all the stops. This next year? I have no idea what’s going to happen, but the dial will be turned up past 10, to at least 12.
On the other hand…? There are all sorts of things that could happen between now and November. It isn’t outside the realm of possibility that Biden will have provoked a major war and/or economic collapse. If that’s the case, the entire election starts to look really, really flaky. No idea what the next year is going to look like, and I kinda don’t want to.
I still think that Donald Trump was an accidental president. He sure as hell didn’t prepare for actually taking over the administration, and he relied far too much on the establishment types to do what they said they would on the face of things. He was dangerously naive, and unless he starts getting his act in gear…? He’ll remain ineffective.
Barr and Sessions should have never been given Attorney Generalship. They need to find some mid-level guy out there in the hinterlands who isn’t compromised and a part of the system, someone who knows just enough to be effective in that job, and willing to break a bunch of rice bowls. Sort of like a Texas Ranger… FBI and CIA need to both be shut down, as well.
Gohn Galt wrote:
HOO-RA! </marine>
It’s always the same though, Democratic hooligans of BLM and Antifa rioting, looting and burning their own cities.
It ain’t even original. Look at footage from Birmingham, AL in 1963 and tell me that was any different, or the more widespread rioting, looting and arson in 1968.
This isn’t quite an accurate summation of Finland’s defense situation or its likely contribution to the NATO alliance. For one thing, the territorial advantage provided by having access to Finnish basing and borders on the Russian Federation are considerable; if Russia were to decide it needed to cause NATO problems, the fact that Finland is no longer neutral is going to give them massive flank security problems. Converting Finland into a NATO ally means that Putin has effectively reduced the forces he dares bring into play against any of the other NATO allies like Estonia or Lithuania… Let alone Poland. The idiots running Russia have just exponentially complicated their entire defense/offense situation past the point of rationality. Regardless of Finland’s contribution to the alliance, that’s a huge swing in NATO’s favor.
Then, too, there’s Finland’s not-inconsiderable military. Yes, they’re conscript, but the figures there for how many Finns are willing to die for their country are much higher than elsewhere: 83% of Finland’s military-age population is willing to serve. And, another factor: The Finnish military, unlike say… Belgiums? It ain’t no damn joke; those guys are very, very well-trained and highly motivated. I’d say that the Finnish conscripts are at least as proficient as a lot of other country’s “elite” formations. Watching a reserve unit headquarters react to a unit of US Marines showing up unexpectedly was a bit of a shock to all concerned… One, that the Marines had issues at all, and two, that the Finns put up a very solid defense. The Finnish military does very well whenever it does multinational peacekeeping or exercises, so it is unlikely that they are ever going to be a burden. If anything, you have to wonder what the hell they’re getting out of it all…
The other thing you need to bear in mind is that the defense budget numbers as a percentage of GDP do not always tell the tale. I have had a problem with that ever since discussing that very issue with a German, and he rightly pointed out that if you were to be honest, then the true defense figures for GDP percentage should also include the “opportunity cost” for putting all those young men in uniform and paying them crap wages for two years. In terms of lost GDP potential, that’s hardly inconsequential. There’s also the follow-on effect you have from that many young people delaying their education and careers, as well.
All told, while I’m not so sure about Sweden, I’m pretty sure Finland will be pulling its weight and then some within NATO. If nothing else, the influence of Finnish military culture will likely have some effect…
Regardless, I’m happier to have a Finn on my flank than just about anyone else. I’d put them in the same class as the Samoans, Nepalese Gurkhas, or Fijian troops, in terms of small-nation reliability. They’ve proven themselves again and again as solid soldiers, always demonstrating professionalism and discipline.
Kirk – yes that is what happened in 2016, the establishment left wanted Donald John Trump to be the candidate, they did everything they could to make him the candidate – and then, to their horror, he WON.
Governor DeSantis says that this is what the establishment left want now – they want DJT to be the candidate because they assume such an “extremist” will lose.
Two problems with that – first what is the point of a candidate, good Governor though he is, who will not even say the 2020 Presidential Election was rigged, if someone will not even admit there is a systematically corrupted “Deep State” then they are not likely to fight it.
Also – voting in the United States is voluntary, the left will vote because the college students (and so on) will vote in a herd like the sheep they are, but what makes ordinary people “on the right” vote?
They have to be inspired to vote – someone who will take deeply depressed people (a state of mind I know only too well) and reach them – make them think that resistance is NOT futile.
The left hate DJT – but they hate all the non left (and they hate each other as well – yes the left hates the left), they would happily skin him alive, but then they would also happily skin the Governor of Florida alive (after first making him “Trans” by ripping off his sexual organs) – so “the left hates Trump” is not a strong point, because the left hates everyone, including themselves. The point is – “who can inspire people, even close to despair, to come out to vote” – and the person who can do that is Donald John Trump.
If the election is not rigged DJT will win – and he will not be “Mr Nice Guy” this time, Civil Service Acts or not – the government will be cleared out.
And if the election is rigged then Civil Conflict is inevitable.
Finis.
Kirk, at 5:55am, thanks for the tutorial on Finnish military and the possible origins of being “dour”. Makes sense, the dour bit.
One quibble, re the “opportunity cost” your German friend mentioned. The two years in uniform are not wasted with respect to education, as I suspect you know better than most. The education the military provides to a (very!) young man or woman (yes, those are the two options!) is an education in life, in discipline. At least this is what I surmise, never having served myself.