Someone suggested Donald Trump could identify as female and become the first woman president. This is of course absurd but under prevailing theories on what grounds could one actually object? What if Beto did it?
Open thread.
Merkel to protect its Irish frontier
Ireland is where Brussels now begins.
“The Irish border issue has become an almost intractable problem. The EU’s proposed “backstop” arrangement, contained in the Brexit deal rejected three times by the British Parliament, is aimed at preventing the need for infrastructure and visible checks on the frontier by keeping the U.K. in a customs union with the bloc until a replacement solution is found.
But Ireland, which insists there can be no return to a hard border — a symbol of decades of violence which ended with a peace accord in 1998 — has been reluctant to spell out what would happen if the Brexit deal fails. The EU will oblige Ireland to check the flow of goods across the frontier because of Ireland’s place in the bloc’s customs union and single market, but officials are working on ways to ensure this can happen as much as possible away from the border, people familiar with the matter said.”
Revolt of the miserable
The age of belief
A survey argues that atheism aka “no religion” is rising. That’s only because they didn’t offer categories of belief systems that are effectively religions. When these are accounted for the number of believers may have increased.
The behavioral clues are everywhere. Celibacy is on the rise. Not for traditionally Christian reasons, but for reasons of intersectionality. “The analysis found that since 2008, the % of men under 30 reporting no sex had nearly tripled to 28 %, compared with an 8 % increase reported by women in the same age bracket. It found that 18 % of women between the ages of 18 and 30 reported no sex in the past year.”
Cultlike behavior is everywhere, especially on campuses. Ritual diets, virtual signaling, zealotry, laws against blasphemy tricked out as measures against hate speech. There’s an obsession with ‘mindfulness’ and ‘centering’. Yet withal a kind of terrible anomie has descended over everything.
How many people, for example, belong to the church of climate change? We are not living in an irreligious age. On the contrary there have never been so many cults.
The post ISIS middle east
The Kurds are transitioning from conventional war to nternal security to keep ISIS down. Their biggest internal challenges are containing Turkey, Russia.
https://thedefensepost.com/2019/03/29/syria-sdf-kurds-face-bigger-battles-isis/amp/
The USN as Aquaman
Are biologicals the future of naval war? Questions as the USN learns to command the fishes
Trending
Were the Portland Hate crimes hoaxes? When there’s an advantage to being a victim, should we expect more of what is incentivized?
https://nypost.com/2019/03/30/inside-the-suspicious-rise-of-gay-hate-crimes-in-portland/amp/
What’s Russia doing in Venezuela
Do 100 Russian advisers signify a limited response?
Why do these coincidences happen?
The Twitter account for the anti-abortion movie Unplanned was briefly suspended on Saturday, but has been restored to Twitter.
After several users screenshotted notices of the suspension on the service and tagged Twitter and its co-founder and CEO Jack Dorsey, the account returned.
What climate scientists dont know
“As a decision-making aid in the construction of dykes and drainage channels the climate models are unsuitable. “Our computers do not even predict with certainty whether the glaciers in the Alps will increase or decrease,” explains Stevens.
The difficulties he and his fellow researchers face can be summed up in one word: clouds. The mountains of water vapor slowly moving across the sky are the bane of all climate researchers.”
And yet progressive politicians have already made the decision to start a trillion dollar Green New Deal.
The problem of failing states
Countries, unlike companies, are defined by the International system as “too big to fail”. What foreign assistance tries to accomplish would be called a bailout. Unfortunately some countries fail anyway.
Venezuela is a dramatic example. It failed largely because of mismanagement. No amount of foreign aid will fix it. Not even intervention may work. Nobody wants to see a country fail. But countries die, even Rome. And Venezuela ain’t no Rome.
Europe Wants Cars To Have Speed Limiters and More by 2022
Does the state spell technology ‘control ‘?
“It seems that politicians believe driver training or road maintenance won’t improve anytime soon, so instead they want to limit your car’s engine power to make sure you don’t break the speed limit while robots determine whether you’re fit to drive in the first place. At least that’s the proposed plan in Europe starting in May, 2022.
Backed by Members of the European Parliament, the European Transport and Safety Council says its new mandatory systems “will reduce collisions by 30 percent and save 25,000 lives within 15 years of being introduced.” And so just days after Volvo announced it will introduce driver-facing cameras and limit all its cars to 112 mph, the EU followed up with its own Intelligent Speed Assistance (ISA) system.”
Maduro ready to resist to the last other man
As economy suffers multiple organ failure. It turned out that Venezuela wasn’t rich enough to afford socialism.
The day the dinosaurs died
Revealed in detail by new techniques in the fossil record. One moment an entire era seemed unstoppable. The next it was gone.
It’s a sobering story. What Nature’s left hand is doing may be undone by its right. Yet the end of the dinosaurs meant the birth of the mammalian age — and us.
Referendum again UK told
If they want a Brexit delay. Meanwhile Bolton says US will give post Brexit UK priority access
What happened to collusion?
As US Russia tensions rise in Venezuela
London knife murder suspects escape through mosque
Helicopters circled the London Central Mosque on the edge of Regent’s Park after the street attack about half a mile away in St John’s Wood.