English isn’t English. There’s British English, and American English (and probably Australian English as well). It doesn’t bother me that the only difference between humor and humour depends on whether you’re looking it up in the OED or Webster’s.
It’s illogical for them to call a car’s trunk a “boot”. Where did that insanity come from? It’s a trunk! A boot is footwear, a trunk is a box that stores stuff.
It’s illogical to use a three syllable word that has a one syllable synonym, as in the British lift, that we call an “elevator”. Lifting and elevating are the same thing! Calling a lift an “elevator” is stupid. You may say “but an American named Otis invented them.” No, he didn’t. Elevators date back to ancient Rome and are older than the English language.
But none of that bothers me.
What does bother me is an ignorant Britishism that we Americans have started to copy, speaking and writing as if a company or a team is plural, as in “Microsoft are”. That drives me crazy! Microsoft is ONE company. The British (and now we) say “the team are playing…” NO! It’s ONE team! How many individual football teams (we’re wrong calling American football “football”) are there in Great Britain? The team is and the teams are.
Yes, a team has several players, and a company may have hundreds of employees, but a car has thousands of parts. Why do you say “the car is” rather than “the car are?”
Because that would be stupidly illogical, that’s why. As stupid and illogical as saying “Microsoft are”.
I was going to make a submission about this earlier, but the add-on has already been wiped off of Mozilla and GitHub, seemingly "voluntarily" by its creator. So there may be more to the story.
Browser Extension Adds Sci-Hub Download Links to Publishers’ Websites
As scientists and academics of all kinds turn to Sci-Hub to freely access scientific papers, a new browser tool aims to make access even more straightforward. Currently available from the Mozilla addon store but also compatible with Chrome, 'Sci-Hub Injector' embeds Sci-Hub download links into popular publishers' websites.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29954046
Sci Hub Injector
SciHub Injector is currently offline.
I will keep the paragraph below.
Important legal notice
I don't recommend doing things that go against whatever laws that apply where you are. I condemn illegal activities. This is the user's reponsibility. SciHub is not affiliated in any way with this project.
Replicating this yourself should be relatively easy. Grabbing the DOI should be trivial, and then maybe you want to find the best places to slap a Sci-Hub button on each major publisher's website. Insert a link or button anywhere a valid DOI is found as a fallback. Inline SVG could be used to replicate the raven logo.
We Finally Have Our First GeForce GT 1010 GPU Benchmark
NVIDIA’s GeForce GT 1010 Is So Slow That Even Intel’s Iris Xe Integrated GPUs Can Outperform It
This would be weaker than the Vega 6 graphics in the Ryzen 3 5300G (the OEM-only Cezanne quad-core desktop APU).
Survey of 8,000 Prisoners’ Political Views Finds Surprising Results
by David M. Reutter
What a politician believes about the impact of restoring the vote to a convicted felon often depends on which side of the aisle they stand on. A common belief amongst politicians is that felons are liberals who would vote Democratic. A survey of 8,266 prisoners by Slate and The Marshall Project found that convicts’ political views cannot be so easily pigeonholed.
They reported that:
• A plurality of white respondents back President Trump, undercutting claims that people in prison would overwhelmingly vote for Democrats.
• Long stretches in prison appear to be more politicizing: The more time respondents spend in prison, the more motivated they are to vote and to discuss politics.
• Perspectives change inside prison. Republicans behind bars back policies like legalizing marijuana that are less popular with GOP voters on the outside; Democrats inside prison are less enthusiastic about assault weapons bans than Democrats at large.
• Political views diverged by race. Black respondents are the only group pointing to reducing racial bias in criminal justice as a top concern; almost every other group picked reducing the prison population as a key priority.
The survey was inserted into The Marshall Project’s print publication, News Inside. It is distributed to more than 500 prisons and jails in the United States. The respondents racially identified themselves as: White 41%, Black 20%, Latino 14%, Native American 17%, Asian or other races 19%, and 8% did not provide information. Because respondents could choose more than one race, the total percentage exceeds 100%. Among the respondents, 57% said they had never cast a vote.
Since the respondents were self-selecting, they are likely to be politically engaged and following the news. The survey takers, therefore, warned that the results have limitations. The responses were gleaned for “trends across race, gender, party affiliation, and other demographic categories to ensure our reported results were meaningful,” Slate wrote. “We also surfaced as many individual voices and opinions as possible.”
The survey was distributed in March 2020. Of White respondents, 36% identified as Republicans, 30% Independent, and 18% Democrats. Only 11% of Black respondents identified as Republicans, while 29% identified as Independent and 45% as Democrats.
Their candidate choice contrasted with conventional wisdom. “For people of color, no single candidate prevailed, but 20 percent of black respondents chose Biden as their top choice, with Sanders coming in at second with 16 percent,” Slate wrote. “Forty five percent of white respondents said they’d support Trump for president … About 30 percent of white respondents chose a Democratic candidate, while 25 percent said they would not vote or did not know which candidate to back.”
Prisoners have little faith in politicians, with 80% saying they don’t act in their interests. “I grew up being told in history class and school that politicians could be trusted to do what is best for the working class and poor, and overall for the country, only to get older and realize the corruption in both major political parties,” said Michigan prisoner Allen Martin, who is White.
Issues of race are huge for Blacks prisoners. “Two out of 3 black respondents said that their race informs their political beliefs, and black people, more than any other group say prison has increased their motivation to vote,” Slate reported. “By contrast, almost half of white respondents said race does not matter at all when it comes to politics.”
“Being a black man from the inner city, I see first-hand that the politics are not structured to help me,” said Kansas prisoner David Young. “When laws are passed to take funds away from education and put into prisons. When I can look at a flawed system that targets young black males instead of helping them.”
The survey also found that 75% of Republican prisoners supported a minimum wage hike and 76% supported marijuana legalization, which contrasts with the 43% and 55% support, respectively, for Republicans at large. Another contrast with their identified party is that 44% of Democratic prisoners supported tighter border security while only 30% opposed such tightening; 92% supported a minimum wage hike; and 84% supported marijuana legalization.
Prisoners of both parties have differing views on an assault weapons ban than their identified party. Support for such a ban is favored by 88% of at-large Democrats but Democratic prisoners support it by only 52%. The survey found only 30% of Republican prisoners support a ban, but Republicans on the outside overwhelmingly support one.
Many respondents said prison had changed their view of politics. Before prison, John Adkins, 43, said he never paid attention to politics, focusing instead on gang violence in southwest Detroit. In prison, he watched the news and grew tired of “the demonization of straight, white, Christian men on CNN and MSNBC and just about all mainstream media,” he wrote.
Adkins started watching conservative shows, and the host’s views against abortion and gay marriage won him over. “I am so tired of the double-standard of the left in the country,” he wrote. “Their rhetoric is what is divisive in this country, not Donald J. Trump’s!”
For Kansas, prisoner Christopher Shelton-Jenkins, 27, his cellmate, who he considered “very intelligent” and respected, “broke some things down to me . . . That’s when I realized I had wrong and ignorant impressions.”
“I remember he talked about the Democrat and Republican stances on the wall on the border - that Democrats wanted to be all open arms, which was nice, but the Republicans thought it was just not practical in terms of managing our economy and social systems,” wrote Shelton-Jenkins, whose mother is White and father is Black. He loosely associated with Democrats before prison, “only because my mom labeled all Republicans racists who want to keep the rich rich and the poor poor.”
Six years in prison changed that view. “A lot of incarcerated, poor, and black people identify as Democrat because we’re told that Republicans want to keep us poor and incarcerated,” wrote Shelton-Jenkins. “But now I believe the opposite: that Democrats want to keep us spoon-fed by the government and Republicans want to wean us off.”
Arkansas prisoner William Robinson, 39, a Black man, pointed to the contrasts with the punitive crime bill President Bill Clinton signed in 1994 with the Republican push for the First Step Act and Trump’s expansion of the Second Chance Pell Grant program, an Obama-era initiative. He also pointed to the commutation of Alice Johnson’s life sentence for a nonviolent drug crime.
“These things matter . . . Politicians talk about criminal justice reform. President Trump got it done,” Robinson wrote. “I really can’t tell you anything that the Democrats have done in recent years, as far as criminal justice reform is concerned, that has had an impact comparable to President Trump passing these new laws.”
Kansas prisoner Derek Bedford, 46, also had an epiphany on politics while doing time. “I was thinking that Obama was gonna do some positive things for the country, and he turned out to be a puppet for big business and for the rich,” he said. “I don’t see Donald Trump as being anyone’s puppet. From what I’ve been seeing and hearing, he’s given businesses some tax cuts for bringing back jobs, so that’s helping small people in this country.”
The survey makes clear that conventional wisdom needs to be readjusted when it comes to convicts and ex-cons’ political views. Thousands of prisoners said “incarceration has transformed their worldviews and political allegiances,” Slate reported. A follow-up will be conducted with the respondents as the 2020 political season heats up.
As with any survey - don't take it as gospel. It is particularly interesting to me that many blacks understand that Democrats want to keep them on the plantation. Obvious falsehood in the article is that Republicans overwhelmingly support an "assault weapon" ban.
Turn An Android Phone Into A Desktop PC! Motorola’s New Desktop Mode! Moto Edge X30 (10m28s video)
The Motorola Moto G100 shows why we might no longer need a PC soon (May 2021)
https://nexdock.com/compatible-smartphones/
Samsung, Motorola, Huawei, and Xiaomi all have their own desktop modes.
https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/fbi-confirms-there-was-no-insurrection-on-jan-6/ar-AANxOuQ
The Cambridge Dictionary defines “insurrection” as: “an organized attempt by a group of people to defeat their government and take control of their country, usually by violence”
By that definition, there was no “insurrection” at the United States Capitol on Jan. 6, according to the FBI. Reuters reports:
The FBI has found scant evidence that the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol was the result of an organized plot to overturn the presidential election result, according to four current and former law enforcement officials.
…
"Ninety to ninety-five percent of these are one-off cases," said a former senior law enforcement official with knowledge of the investigation. "Then you have five percent, maybe, of these militia groups that were more closely organized. But there was no grand scheme with Roger Stone and Alex Jones and all of these people to storm the Capitol and take hostages."
This report is a devastating blow to President Joe Biden and Democrats, who have attempted to make the existence of an “insurrection” on Jan. 6 a key issue in the 2022 midterm elections. Reuters does note that some “cells of protesters,” including members of the Oath Keepers and Proud Boys, did coordinate to “break into the Capitol,” but the FBI found “no evidence that the groups had serious plans about what to do if they made it inside.”
None of this excuses the violent riot that happened on Jan. 6. The FBI has arrested 570 rioters and each and every one of them should be prosecuted to the full extent of the law.
But that is what the event was: a riot, just like so many other riots. Trying to politicize it and turn it into something it wasn't won’t make the Capitol any safer.
https://www.cnsnews.com/blog/craig-bannister/even-if-it-crime-asst-ag-testifies-he-doesnt-know-anyone-jan-6-whos-been
https://youtu.be/-7PcwMk3cOg
‘Even if It Is a Crime’: Asst. AG Testifies He Doesn’t Know of Anyone from Jan. 6 Who’s Been Charged with ‘Insurrection’
Even though many Democrats insist that the January 6, 2021 riot at the U.S. Capitol was an “insurrection,” Assistant Attorney General Matthew Olsen testified Tuesday in a Senate hearing that he doesn’t know of anyone who has been charged with insurrection for participating in the riot.
While Olsen appeared uncertain whether or not “insurrection” is, technically, a crime, he did testify that he didn’t know of anyone charged with it.
“Has anyone been charged with the crime of insurrection following January 6?” Senator Mike Lee (R-UT) asked Olsen, to which the assistant attorney general replied he wasn’t aware of any such charge being made:
“I am not aware that anyone’s been charged with particular offense, even if it is an offense. I just am not aware of that. It would be inappropriate for me to speak about any particular investigation at this point.
“But, I am just not aware of anyone being charged with that.”
“I’m not either – I’ve just heard that word used several times today,” Sen. Lee said. “But, to my knowledge, nobody’s been charged with that. They’ve been charge with other things, not that one.”
Sen. Lee also tried, unsuccessfully, to get answers comparing the surveillance, arrests and prosecutions of the Capitol rioters to those of the summer 2020 riots that ravaged cities across the U.S. Sen. Lee said he had previously asked his questions in a letter, but the response he received – four and a half months later – “failed to answer a single question.”
Can anyone explain to me how you can have an insurrection, without any insurrectionists?
https://www.kusi.com/us-reinstates-remain-in-mexico-policy-at-select-borders/
Posted: January 8, 2022
Updated: 7:22 AM KUSI Newsroom
SAN DIEGO (KUSI) – Since Jan. 3, U.S. officials have reinstated the Migrant Protection Program, or the Remain in Mexico program.Thus far, U.S. officials have sent 213 people back to Ciudad Juarez, according to the San Diego Union-Tribune.
Under the program, which originally began during Trump’s presidency, migrants wait in Mexico for their court hearing instead of waiting in the U.S.
Some issues with the program include violence toward people enrolled within the program.
Enrollment in the Migrant Protection Program has begun in El Paso and San Diego with plans to expand further.
Immigration Attorney Esther Valdes Clayton joined KUSI’s Elizabeth Alvarez on “Good Morning San Diego” to discuss the new reinstated immigration policy.
There is no indication that Sleepy Joe approves of this. The rumor mill says it was instituted during his mid-day nap.
Over time, we’ve seen changes in focus by the hoplophobic elements of society. Originally, it was all about banning handguns or at least “Handgun Control Inc.” The “assault weapon”, that is, the AR ban of 1994-2004 followed, with no discernible effect on crime, homicide, etc. Movement mutation continued, with groups dropping wording advocating bans, moving to claims of fighting pure “violence” and promoting gun “safety”.
Now they want to address “root causes” of violence instead of just restricting legal gun ownership, though still advocating extending background checks while “not taking anyone’s guns”. Intervening within high-crime communities, and with those at high risk of committing and becoming victims of violence, is appropriate, though far more difficult than they may imagine.
Throughout, we’ve had no reason to believe that these anti-gun activists have had any real change of heart. Their “conversation” always comes around to the desirability of somehow limiting the rights of law-abiding American gun owners in some way, even if in “just” creating more hoops to jump through in order to purchase, keep or bear our arms.
However, there is a fundamental factor that will trump all their intentions, both open and disguised. That is us, the people (and voters) of democracies. As Andrew Breitbart famously said, “Politics follows culture” and culture is changing. Much of this is due to the past 2 years of violence approved and applauded by “progressive” politicians who thought this would garner minority votes. Their groupthink about ethnicity blinded them to the reality that people of all ethnicities, communities and societies want crime stopped lest it hit them.
People are simultaneously realizing that they can’t count on being protected and must plan to do that for themselves. Thus the huge rise in gun purchases by more diverse buyers than ever, including women, minorities (especially African-American women) and self-described liberals. It’s been speculated that this increase in valuing self-protection with firearms may transfer to an increase in valuing Second Amendment rights—and now, that’s no longer speculation.
The Trafalgar Group, a non-partisan polling operation, just released a poll in which over 84% of respondents believed that “strict gun laws” either make no difference in or worsen the current surge in retail thefts. Less than 16% believed such laws can make this better.
In November, Quinnipiac found that 48% of those surveyed opposed stricter gun laws versus 47% who support them—following a trend beginning in 2015, now over the tipping point to plurality opposition. Gallup’s polling in November correlates, with a new low of only 52% of Americans caring that “laws covering the sale of firearms” should be stricter (down from a high of 64% in 2019, falling through 57% in 2020).
Meanwhile, ABC/Ipsos found that 66% of Americans disapprove of how President Biden is addressing gun violence (which could imply wanting more or less strict laws). Republicans’ opposition to more gun laws has strengthened, Democrats’ preference for more strict gun laws is lessening, predictably. But the most important political demographic—independents—have shifted dramatically in favor of, shall we say, individual independence on this issue.
In the latest National Firearms Survey published in July 2021, nearly 1/3 of respondents acknowledged owning guns, more than half of those carry them and almost 1/3 of them reported having to use them defensively in one or more of the estimated nearly 1.7 million episodes of self-defense. In 82% of these DGUs, it wasn’t necessary to fire. Almost 80% of these incidents occurred in the defender’s home or on their property, with the rest mostly occurring in public or at work, still a very substantial number.
NSSF also found that 49% more Hispanic Americans (no, none use “Latinx”) purchased firearms in 2020 than in 2019. With 40% of all gun purchases during the past 2 years coming from new gun owners, it’s no surprise that Hispanics (as well as African-Americans) are increasingly voting more for individual rights than for government “protection”. In Berkeley, California, of all places, the Latino Rifle Association has grown by hundreds of members since 2020. Its “leftists . . . socialists, progressives” members realize that “The police and the government aren’t taking care of me, so I have to do things on my own.”
Funny thing, that’s what conservatives have recognized for generations. And a much bigger organization, the National African-American Gun Association, has added tens of thousands of new members since 2016, accelerating (along with many local gun clubs oriented toward minorities) during the past 2 years.
Even our less demonstrative Anglophone cousins, Canadians and Kiwis, aren’t cooperating any more with government orders to turn in their newly banned guns than Americans have. Neither are turning in their formerly legal, acceptable firearms—only 160 of an estimated 100,000 affected firearms have been surrendered in Canada in a year and a half. In New Zealand, the 2019 ban of most repeating arms “has had no impact on a rise in gun crime and violence”, except for a steadily increasing rate of the offense of still possessing such firearms.
This is precisely the cultural change that precedes and triggers political change. Most Americans already knew that protecting individual rights is the uncompromisable basis of the success of American society and polity. Many others know that now and more are learning. While Donald Trump improved the Republican share of the Black and Hispanic votes (especially among men), this wasn’t about him or the party. It is about the importance of each person’s rights as an American.
Most expect that the Supreme Court will affirm the Second Amendment with a ruling in Bruen voiding New York City’s may- (= non-) issue handgun carry permitting, along with the 8 other states that persist in that tyranny. The “progressive” left will keep caterwauling if they don’t get their way. But should the decision go otherwise, their wailing would be nothing compared to the anger of the majority who are now convinced that individual rights are more important than political correctness. And that would assuredly lead to even greater political change in favor of ensuring those rights.
To paraphrase St. George Tucker, “the true palladium of liberty” isn’t just “the right of self-defence.” The right to keep and bear arms for the purpose of self-defense and opposing tyranny is necessary to a free people in a free state. But it is a means to the goal, along with representative democracy lustily embraced, which is “to keep our republic” (h/t B. Franklin). The ultimate mark of liberty is individual autonomy, where the rights of the individual are placed above government’s privileges, which are only bestowed by us individuals.
https://drgo.us/the-times-may-be-a-changing/
Click the link - the article is filled with citations, and I'm not making them all live links here.
Yes, boys and girls, I'm still gloating over the most recent Supreme Court appointees. Now, I want to see a couple boatloads of 2nd Amendment cases being heard, before the criminal Marxists fulfill their promises to pack the court. Few gun control laws are justifiable, and fewer are constitutional. Before you start arguing otherwise, remember that gun control has always been racist, from the very earliest days of colonization.
Note: I wrote this song in 1985 when I was a young 33, before my hair was gray or my eyesight dimmed. I was younger than my children are now. The chords are, of course, A, G, and E. It has not been seen by anyone.
My car’s leaking oil,
The radiator’s starting to boil.
It’s a 1972.
Let me tell you, it ain’t new.
Chorus:
It’s got A G E.
It has a history.
Time won’t let you be,
It gives you A G E.
Once it was shiny and clean,
A factory fresh machine.
It was really keen,
But it has lost its sheen.
(Chorus)
My computer’s on the blink,
It got too old to think.
The weirdest thing you’ve ever seen,
Whoever heard of a senile machine?
(Chorus)
My guitar’s busted a string;
I guess it’s too old to sing.
My amp has blown a fuse,
I guess it has nothing to lose.
(Chorus)
The world is reputed
To be very polluted.
The land’s all been sold.
I guess it got old.
(Chorus)
It must be a disease that catches—
My records are covered with scratches.
I’m feeling a bit of a funk
Surrounded by all of this junk.
(Chorus)
I used to be young and bold
When this story hadn’t been told.
This song is covered with mold,
I guess it’s getting old.
I used to be full of fire,
A real live wire.
I would be a liar
If I said my hand don’t tire.
These wrinkles are getting to me.
My hair is as gray as can be.
My eyes are too dim to see
I got A G E!
I got A G E.
I have a history.
Time won’t let me be,
It gave me A G E.
From Gab email newsletter:
Twitter banned Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene this morning. Thankfully Congresswoman Greene was smarter than many of her colleagues because she got on Gab over a year ago and built up a tremendous following over hundreds of thousands of people. Her ban from Twitter should come as no surprise. Once Twitter crossed the rubicon and banned a sitting President there was nothing stopping them from banning each and every Republican from the platform without thinking twice.
While everyone is distracted by New Years celebrations Silicon Valley is working overtime on the behalf of the Regime to ramp up censorship ahead of the 2022 election cycle. The Regime puppets on both the left and the right know their power is in trouble. They will continue to silence any true America First candidates who seek to represent The People. It’s well beyond time to wake up and stop using these platforms before they force you to do so.
Many other members of Congress are joining Gab and building up followings within our community. You can click here to follow Congresswoman Lauren Boebert and here to follow Congressman Paul Gosar. There are dozens of candidates running for Congress in 2022 on Gab and getting their message out to The People, raising funds, and building community on Gab. We expect that by this time next year dozens of members of the new Congress will be on Gab speaking freely beyond the grasp of the Regime’s control over the flow of information.
In other news earlier this week Twitter also banned Doctor Robert Malone. You can find him on Gab here. After his Twitter ban he appeared on the Joe Rogan show and discussed something called mass formation psychosis to explain why millions of people are sheepishly going along with whatever the tyrants in the Regime say. Millions of people started searching this term on Google, at which point Google started altering and censoring search results for the term. Finally, the interview itself is being scrubbed from YouTube. You can find it here on Gab TV.
Gab’s importance is becoming more and more clear by the day. Gab serves as a home to political dissidents, silenced members of Congress, and medical doctors who are being shut up by the Regime. Gab is the de facto leader in the alternative technology industry for this reason. We do not bend to the will of Silicon Valley. We do not bend to the will of triggered political activists. We do not bend to the will of the mainstream press. We answer only to God.
We invite you to please tell a friend or family member about Gab this week. All of our growth over the past five years has been driven by word of mouth advertising. We depend on people like you to let others know that there is a place where they can speak freely on the internet. There is a way out of the Silicon Valley matrix. There is a platform led by American Christians who share your values.
Blog post here - https://news.gab.com/2022/01/02/big-tech-rings-in-the-new-year-with-censorship/
cool 13 minute video, mentioned in the blog, apparently sneaking past the Youtube censors https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=INHpQL9fgto