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March 5th, 2020 | 8 comments - (Comments are closed)
 Some wonder if Philip Rutnam’s resignation has damaged Boris Johnson’s government. But a great swath of opinion outside the bubble takes this as a sign of something good happening & this chap’s squealing is music to their ears. They may be wrong to assume the swamp is being drained, but that is how this is playing to the normies. – Perry de Havilland February 29th, 2020 | 15 comments - (Comments are closed)
FYI, the death rate of COVID-19 among men is about 60% higher than among women. As there are no biological differences between men and women, I conclude this is entirely due to our inability in our society to teach men not to rape. – Samizdata Illuminatus February 23rd, 2020 | 10 comments - (Comments are closed)
At least a few federal agency buildings could be greatly improved by the complete omission of entrances. February 22nd, 2020 | 6 comments - (Comments are closed)
February 21st, 2020 | 7 comments - (Comments are closed)
I was in Ankara on December 23 last year, in the commercial centre of town in the middle of the day. I walked past a street with a number of cafe/restaurants. I realised I was hungry. I sat down at an outdoor table, looking away from the street. I ordered a sandwich. My sandwich came. It was mediocre, but satisfied the “I am hungry” problem. (This was slightly disappointing of me. Turkey is a country of terrific food, and one should plan one’s meals better than just going for the nearest food when one finds oneself hungry). I got out my phone and started reading a book on the Kindle app as I was having my lunch. After an indeterminate period of time, I realised I was hearing a high pitched scream behind me. It was probably a woman, but I couldn’t be sure about that. I turned around. There was an almost literal phalanx of riot police, separating the public from what was going on. There was a police van on the other side of the riot police. The person who was screaming was somewhat violently pushed into the van. The rear doors of the van were then closed fairly violently. The van drove off. The riot police then dispersed. They looked like this was heavily rehearsed, and this was something they did every day. There was no riot. There was no demonstration. I don’t know how this started, because I was looking in the opposite direction and I was distracted until I heard the screaming. This looked like a well planned operation to grab a particular person off the street. In broad daylight. In the middle of a busy city. So that people would notice. When I saw that this was happening, I noticed that other people in the cafe were taking pictures with their phones. So I briefly stood up and took a picture with my phone. The police were looking in other directions. One day I will get myself into trouble doing things like this, but in this case, well, I think the police wanted to be noticed. By locals, at least. Maybe not foreigners such as myself. A few days later, after visiting a few wonderful archaeological sites in parts of Turkey, I was on a bus travelling along the Turkish Black Sea coast from Trabzon to the Georgian city of Batumi. During this journey there were two stops at police checkpoints. At the first one, a police officer got on the bus and everyone was required to show ID. The Turkish people had bar codes on their ID cards scanned electronically by a reader being carried by the police officer. (I held out my passport – the policeman looked at it and nodded). At the second one our ID documents were taken off the bus and into the police checkpoint building, before being brought back on the bus. When you book a train ticket in Turkey and you are Turkish, you don’t even need a ticket. You simply give your ID card number when booking the train, and when you board they scan the ID card and associate it with the booking. Turkey tracks the internal movements of its citizens electronically. They do it like this if you catch a bus or train or plane. If you drive your own car, I suspect it is done with number plate recognition. Turkey is a wonderful country full of magnificent things. I visit often. It is also a police state, and a very nasty one. I enjoyed my trip to Turkey, but I felt some relief when I reached Georgia. A much freer country. February 16th, 2020 | 7 comments - (Comments are closed)
The wise & incorruptible state can be trusted to decide what people are allowed to watch, read & listen to, no way would they abuse such capabilities once they are in place #MakeOrwellFictionAgain – Perry de Havilland in response to this. February 13th, 2020 | 23 comments - (Comments are closed)
Math is “oppressive,” Enlightenment art is “oppressive”…the list goes on and on and on. My favorite little form of “woke” ignorance — combined with utter ignorance of Romance languages — is the term “Latinx.” I showed it around to some actual (aka non-“woke”) Latinos and Latinas at LA City Hall, and they were like, “Wut? How do you even say that?” Additionally, my personal experience with some of the woke, along with my observation, is that many are 20-something and have accomplished nothing yet, but, oh does it ever feel good to knock down the tall, accomplished poppies on “woke” grounds. February 11th, 2020 | 13 comments - (Comments are closed)
The Chinese regime has a deadly calculus put before it, weighing up between suppressing numbers to save face or stopping the epidemic and potentially more deaths. A public choice theory disaster played to the extremes. It would be nice to say, “well let’s wait and see how they manage it” as many reporters say. But if we still do not know the whole story about how the government managed SARS there’s no guarantee we will know how they managed this epidemic. Worse still, if another epidemic arrives down the line then we will not be anywhere closer to learning from past mistakes. It would be nice to counter the propaganda videos circulating with facts about how well the government is managing the crisis but sadly this is not possible. All this proves to demonstrate the risks of a state that plays by its own rules, and is unaccountable to the very people it is supposed to serve. February 10th, 2020 | 38 comments - (Comments are closed)
Isn’t it time to tell our elites: “Enough!” The battle for Brexit appears to have been won. The battle to save the internal combustion engine – and, more generally, to stop a regression to the eighteenth century – may be upon us. – Schrodinger’s Dog February 5th, 2020 | 27 comments - (Comments are closed)
If the non-internal combustion engine cars were to be wondrous by that point then there’d be no need to ban them. For everyone would be purchasing them as a matter of choice. The only reason to ban people from purchasing ICEs is because they would be chosen given how appalling the alternatives are all going to be. The ban is thus an admission – and insistence – from government that non-ICE cars are going to remain pretty terrible. But we’re going to be forced to have them, aren’t we the lucky ones? February 4th, 2020 | 28 comments - (Comments are closed)
Wearing face masks in public is presently illegal in Hong Kong and compulsory in Wuhan January 24th, 2020 | 9 comments - (Comments are closed)
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