Glibertarians.com 2019 Archive

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  • IFLA: The “Maybe it’s a Puppy?” Edition of the Horoscope for the Week of June 16

     

    This week has an interesting couple of intersecting alignments:  We’ve got Jupiter (retrograde)-Luna-Terra-Sol indicating change/chaos/disruption at home” with Saturn(retrograde)-Terra-Mercury “News of a new beginning.”  So basically, home life made all higgledy-piggiedy as the result of a new addition to the family dynamic.  This can be an excellent status check, because if you have a birth, new pet, or your SO gets a new FWB, you can  rejoice in the fact that you are important enough for the stars to foretell the events that happen under your roof.  For other celestial advice, expect slander and scurrilous accusations (Mercury and Mars in Cancer) and well, let’s say careful phrasing and selective chronicling of events may prove useful to your love life (Venus and the Sun in Gemini).  The moon in Virgo also encourages subtlety, euphemism, and oblique suggestions.

    The cards this week has a certain indication of something going wrong in a very unfair way.  There is another pronounced but odd sign that… well, the best I can translate it is “violence at an orgy?”  It’s not  typical “you’re going to get rolled by a whore” notification, there’s a much more ritualistic aspect to the whole thing.  Is someone going to attend a Gnostic mass maybe?  An O.T.O. initiation?  And will they be too embarrassed to tell us about it?  There is an overarching aspect of formality and protocol to the week.

    Gemini:  10 of Swords – Pain, affliction, tears, sadness, desolation

    Cancer:  2 of Swords reversed – imposture, falsehood, duplicity, disloyalty, misplaced vengeance

    Leo:  10 of Wands reversed – Contrariness, intrigues, difficulties from excessive abundance

    Virgo:  The Hierophant – Alliance through marriage, servitude, mercy, goodness, inspiration

    Libra:  7 of Wands – Valor, success, discussion, trade war, spycraft

    Scorpio:  Justice reversed – Bigotry, bias, excessive severity, malicious compliance

    Sagittarius:  6 of Coins – Gifts, gratification, attention

    Capricorn:  The High Priestess reversed – Passion, moral or physical ardor, shallow knowledge, conceit

    Aquarius:  6 of Cups – The past, pleasant memories, ephemeral enjoyment

    Pisces:  Judgment reversed –  Weakness, simplicity, deliberation, pusillanimity, sentence

    Aries:  Queen of Wands – Friendly dark woman, honorable, well disposed towards a fat man.

    Taurus:  Knight of Coins reversed – Inertia, idleness, discouragement, carelessness

     

  • Sunday Morning Creaky Links

    A confession: we still haven’t actually unpacked from our move. The process is not simple since our new residence is smaller and more oddly shaped than our old one (much like me).  Much furniture and box moving back and forth for the latest iteration of room arrangement, in the manner of that old logic puzzle of the farmer, the fox, the goose, and the grain. I am feeling every day of my age at the moment. And Wonder Dog still looks at us like she’s been betrayed, despite having a new barking target, that giant roadrunner who lives in our yard. I’ve seen roadrunners before, but this one is massive, the Warty of the bird kingdom.

    Birthdays…. let’s just say that every libertarian should be celebrating today as a holiday. But still, there are others: a pretty cooley guy who merely invented bits and software as words when he was done revolutionizing mathematics; the guy who gave Sheldon Richman a reason for living; the biographer of Al Gore; and a fine mess.

    And now the news.

     

    I’m shocked, SHOCKED that our fine men in blue could possibly lie to cover up for their brutality. I mean, this is a Team Blue city.

     

    I have an alibi. Not sure about Heroic Mulatto.

     

    Taking a stab at social media. That’s gold, man!

     

    This put me in the mood for Del Taco. 

     

    So much missing from this story.

     

    “We have the best crashes. Only the best crashes! The classiest crashes!’

     

    Never change, NPR, never change.

     

    Someone badly, badly needs punching. And it’s going to happen if there’s any justice in this world.

     

     

    Although my Old Guy Music has a definite indy folk, classic prog rock, and bop jazz slant, I do get my funk fix now and then. And from one of my favorite funk bands, here is a perfect period piece.

     

  • Saturday night links of Saturday night

    This just never gets old.

     

    So, it’s Saturday. Definitely been a week. We went up to the cabin, so that I could finally mow the two foot tall lawn. Yeah, the lawn mower committed seppuku about 10% into the job. Now I have to buy another one and hall it up there. I’m on a four day mowing cycle at home, and I got all the shrubs pruned for summer. The garden is all in and cruising along nicely.

    As for the rock we call home? We could really benefit from Yellowstone going all Krakatoa right about now.

     

    Something, something, birthdays, something.

     

    Archbishop dons Holy Hard Hat of Notre Dame.

     

    Seriously, what could go wrong?

     

    Online hookups? Totes okay.

     

    Hong Kong leader brinks.

     

    I’m sure she’s just a lovely girl.

     

    Head on the desk, Darwin moment. Seriously, you can’t trust the minibar in your hotel, but “hey, can you do something about these love handles?”.

     

    A tune and off into the booze soaked evening.

  • This is Fake. All of it.

    Today’s focus of ire is this piece originally published in NY Times but thankfully republished on elsewhere (so no paywall.)  The author is arguing that we need fully automated…luxury communism?

    This is my review of Council Brewing Beattitude Guava  Tart Saison

    He starts in an odd place and seems to forget how economies of scale are a tenet of capitalism:

    It starts with a burger.

    In 2008 a Dutch professor named Mark Post presented the proof of concept for what he called “cultured meat.” Five years later, in a London TV studio, Mr. Post and his colleagues ate a burger they had grown from animal cells in a laboratory. Secretly funded by Sergey Brin, a co-founder of Google, the journey from petri dish to plate had cost $325,000 — making theirs the most expensive meal in history. Fortunately, the results were promising: Hanni Rützler, a nutrition scientist, concluded that the patty was “close to meat but not as juicy.” The next question was whether this breakthrough could be made cheaper. Much cheaper.

    The first “cultured beef” burgers are likely to enter the market next year, at approximately $50 each. But that won’t last long. Within a decade they will probably be more affordable than even the cheapest barbecue staples of today — all for a product that uses fewer resources, produces negligible greenhouse gases and, remarkably, requires no animals to die.

    It’s not just barbecues and burgers. Last year Just, a leader in cellular agriculture, cut a deal to start producing one of the world’s tastiest steaks, Wagyu. A company called Endless West, which also makes grapeless wine, has started to produce Glyph, the world’s first “molecular whiskey.” Luxury could be coming to all.

    The case of cultured food and drink, far from a curiosity, is a template for a better, freer and more affluent world, a world where we provide for the needs of everyone — in style.

    But how do we get there?

    Thus far, each example he gave was capitalism.  Somebody identified a need or a niche in the market that was currently missing:  meat products for people that for whatever reason cannot eat meat (personal ethics, religion, medical issues).  Whether or not other examples such as “molecular whiskey” may or may not have market demand, remains to be seen.  There is however, demand for lab grown meat, give the existence of Beyond Burgers, and the Impossible Burger, but both of these are plant based, therefore not really meat.  One thing to point out, these alternatives were also developed for the same reasons, a market niche was unfilled, so each company produced a product to fill it.  Beyond in particular uses pea protein but is put through a few processes that mimic the protein structures of meat.  It is an elegant solution really, because most meatless meats fail at tasting like meat.  More on this later.

    The problem of course, is even if they do manage to make something to replace meat, there is still going to be markets for actual meat.  Unless of course this guy somehow gets elected dictator and forces his worldview on everyone, which is thankfully unlikely.

    Later in the article he goes on to say that resource scarcity and how it will become a thing of the past once we are able to mine all the resources we would ever need from the heavens.  Of course, he goes on to describe his misunderstanding of thermodynamics:

    What’s more, renewable energy, which has been experiencing steep annual falls in cost for half a century, could meet global energy needs and make possible the vital shift away from fossil fuels. More speculatively, asteroid mining — whose technical barriers are presently being surmounted — could provide us with not only more energy than we can ever imagine but also more iron, gold, platinum and nickel. Resource scarcity would be a thing of the past.

    The consequences are far-reaching and potentially transformative. For the crises that confront our world today — technological unemployment, global poverty, societal aging, climate change, resource scarcity — we can already glimpse the remedy.

    But there’s a catch. It’s called capitalism. It has created the newly emerging abundance, but it is unable to share round the fruits of technological development. A system where things are produced only for profit, capitalism seeks to ration resources to ensure returns. Just like today’s, companies of the future will form monopolies and seek rents. The result will be imposed scarcity — where there’s not enough food, health care or energy to go around.

    Well, I guess that’s one point of view.  I kind of doubt we can run our spaceships on wind turbines, and last I checked rationing for healthcare occurs in socialized systems.  I would know, I used to work for one of them.  You know what, screw it.  I’m hungry and I am not paid enough to argue against crazy.  I’m getting a burger…

    I have tried Beyond products before, due to weird religious rules that I still follow and really don’t care what others here think of that regard.  I also considered investing when they went public but instead thought a robotics ETF was a better long term investment (thus far I am wrong…so very wrong).  I am unaware of anybody discussing this here, so I am going to find out if somebody else can make a better fake burger than I.  But where to find one?

     

    Upfront, I will say it doesn’t really look or smell any different.  The one time I tried it at home, it smelled awful out of the package, but that goes away immediately after cooking.  I am definitely not happy with how it was prepared, they seem to have burned one side of it, but its fast food.  They added mayo, which I am okay with.  Just a basic burger thus far.

    The fries suck.

    My overall opinion is it works well as a hamburger patty.  A feature of hamburgers are the toppings you put on it, as such it works in combination with everything on it.  Other Beyond products I find have the texture right, but don’t quite taste like chicken.  This made perfect sense to me, as it is processed legumes and not chicken.  About an hour or two later, I was hungry again.  The sausage is slightly better and all of these products are expensive; Carl’s Jr. charged $2 extra for it.  But then again, economies of scale will likely drop the price down in the next few years, and it will only come down to personal preference whether or not people will want to eat meat.  For now, I will take that over waxing poetic over a show better described as “communists in space” (TW TOS).

    This beer is terrible due to the use of guava.  Depending on the type of guava you have it can be sweet or sour. This is sour, much more than a garden variety saison. If you are into sour you will probably like this.  I however did not, but will give them points for trying.  Council Brewing Beattitude Guava  Tart Saison 2.0/5

     

  • Saturday Morning Old and Dried Out Links

    Happy Shabbos, you antisemitic goyim! One of my favorite quotes about Goldwater was, “I always knew the first Jewish president of the United States would be Episcopalian.” Ah well, it wasn’t to be. “Extremism in defense of liberty is no vice” was sadly considered nuts.

    Birthdays today are an excellent bunch, including my favorite classical composer; my favorite pianist (about whose death a movie ought to be made); the guy beneath SP’s favorite gravestone; a really fun to watch pitcher; a great scowl and mustache (which ought to be the name of a London pub; and a complete piece of shit who left behind some other turds.

    Well, with no further delay… links!

     

    Remember what they said about redheads in the hot/crazy matrix?

     

    Apartheid state!

     

    Say what you will, he has initiative.

     

    Indeed, there are some ideas so stupid that it takes a PhD to come up with them.

     

    Fuck you, Frankie, stick to religion, something you (presumably) know something about.

     

    “Wait, was this wrong?”

     

    TSA saves us from the looming danger of butter knives.

     

    We’re working on a fake hate incident against Glibertarians.com to get us some of that sweet, sweet free media exposure. Although calling this a “hate” incident is something of a stretch. It’s a fucking letter.

     

     

    And today’s Old Guy Music features one of the birthday boys and a long time personal favorite. Although most of his work was in small groups (Coltrane, Kirk, Mingus…), he shows here that he can big band with the best of them. And his composition and arranging skills live up to his playing. My brush-with-fame story: I once saw him at a small club in Baltimore where the turnout was… me and my date. That was it. Maybe the word didn’t get out? Dunno, but he played a whole show for us, played his ass off, and sat with us for drinks during the break between sets. I gushed, “I love your music, I have all your albums!” and he grinned and responded, “Oh, YOU’RE the guy!”

  • FRIDAY NIGHT ZARDOZ LINKS

    YOU EXIST TO SERVE THE VORTEX. THEREFOR, GROW WELL…AND LIVE.

     

    ZARDOZ SPEAKS TO YOU, HIS CHOSEN ONES. ZARDOZ IS PLEASED. ZARDOZ KNOWS IT HAS BEEN A TOUGH WEEK, YET THE CHOSEN ONES HAVE SNARKED WELL AT THE BRUTALS, WHO PLAGUE THE EARTH. TO REWARD YOUR EFFORTS, ZARDOZ GIVES YOU THE GIFT OF THE LINK. THE LINK IS GOOD! THE LINKS SHOOTS SNARK THAT CLEANSES THE FILTH OF BRUTAL THOUGHT. GO FORTH AND COMMENT!

    1. COWARDS! STAY, ENJOY THE BEACH, THE SUN, THE…UNANTICIPATED CLEANSING.
    2. IT WILL HAVE TO DO. ZARDOZ WOULD PREFER THE PARTIES BE CLEANSED, RATHER THAN JUST LOSE SUPPORT.
    3. MEWLING EURO-BRUTAL! THE BRUTAL EXTERMINATORS USE SUCH DEVICES NOT TO “TORTURE“, BUT TO CLEANSE.

    ZARDOZ HAS SPOKEN.

  • Friday Afternoon Links

    I’m still a little bilious from SF’s Subaru House of Horrors. Male self-neutering… Too far, bro.

    Lol. This guy isn’t Canada nice, eh? When the Rockets won their first title in ’95, my friends and I were waiting outside the Summit, and they opened the doors at the end of the game. I made it to the court in time to see the trophy handoff. Then sat in traffic for 2+ hours.

    America morphs into Australia.

    You have one shitty fecal transplant…

    Look at these heroes, going home safe.

    Because I hate you all, and this was on in a store.

  • Subaru Horror Theater, Vol. 6: Never Too Early

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dh7Yf0ld3eE

     

    “Rise,” she told the ocean.

    They had crisscrossed the continent in their battered Subaru while she was in the womb, dreaming. They had said the prayers to the gods of the forest and walked in the forgotten places of the desert where ancient cities of the dead clawed at the entombing earth and at the edge of the ocean where potential, dread potential, had filled her mother like a second and dark child.

    “Rise,” she told the ocean, her thin arms held out, her hands open and fingers beseeching.

    Promises had been made in oath, blood, semen, and sacrifice to connect the child to all the powers that waited for the spreading stain of humanity to recede. Conceived in filth, she had crouched in the womb for nearly two years before splitting her mother open, like a lightning-struck tree. It had rained for ten days after she spat herself into the world, the demons of wind and rain providing a baptism. Two hundred humans had died in the flooding, a gift to the child as she howled in tainted bowers while priests sewed her mother back together.

    “Rise!” she told the ocean, tears beginning, quivering on the lower lids, begging permission to fall.

    They watched the signs and portents as the child grew. They fed her nightshade and Jerusalem cherry. They fed her crab’s eye and wolfbane. They fed her ragwort and pennyroyal. All the poisons of the earth flowed into her and she grew strong. “I love you,” would whisper the mother as the child rubbed ongaonga in her young flesh and sighed with pleasure.

    “Rise!” she told the ocean as her parents, nude beside her, lashed by the growing wind, smiled down at her lisping blasphemy.

    When the stars came right, they visited again all the places they had been as she gestated, letting renewing vows with her own voice, gathering blessing and gifts, making sacrifices anew with her own hands and teeth. They drove from atrocity to atrocity until they reached the western ocean.

    “RISE!” she told the ocean, her voice cracking like a cloven stone.

    The trees of the forest screamed and the sands of the desert howled and the frozen wastes began to tremble and shake. The wetlands bubbled with insane laughter. It was beginning.

    Her father cut off his genitals and flung them into the sea. “The blood of the father,” he whispered as drew he bloodied hand down the right side of the child’s face. Her mother reached between her legs and smeared the blood found there down the left side of the girl’s face. “The blood of the mother,” she whispered as she sank to the sand, the languid menstrual flow becoming a spray that spilled her life out onto the hungry beach.

    “RISE!” she told the ocean, her eyes wide and white under the blood.

    And it did.

  • Friday Morning What Was I Thinking? Linking

    Another lovely day here in Satan’s idea of Paradise. But on the bright side, it’s Friday. And we’re not snowed in. And I’m not going to link any stories about a guy who had drugs fall out of his ass, then shot himself in the nuts. And no depressing Holocaust posts. See, you should be feeling better already!

    Birthdays today include a guy I keep forgetting about; someone who always gets me charged up; a racist, homophobic murdering piece of shit who is a Leftist icon; and a guy I would have loved to have had a few beers with.

     

    Here’s a petition from Change.org we can all get behind. And I’d suggest starting another one calling for the prosecutor (someone name Preet Bharara) to get stuffed into a woodchipper.

     

    “But we were just helping you by removing those mines! How can you be so suspicious?”

     

    Well, that settles it, then. Biden’s the guy.

     

    What do you get when you take a well-past-the-use-by-date director and hand him a series that ran out of steam about 30 years ago? This. God help us, this will be even worse than Jaws.

     

    “A new excuse to shred the First Amendment? OH JOY!”

     

    If this reporting were from a more credible source, it might be worth paying attention to.

     

    Computers are clearly not libertarian.

     

    Global Warming- more effective than clubbing.

     

    Cue World’s Smallest Violin.

     

    Old Guy Music features one of my favorite songs from one of my favorite albums. No Cream today, we’re dieting.

  • The Lost Company 2

    The Lost Company 2

    Captain Obvious

     

    “Sorry, Captain, but we are hopelessly lost.”

    “No, we aren’t, Sergeant. We’re in Europe.”

     

    I got the trees, can you tell? it was so much fun placing them and trying to randomize them, it just got nicer and nicer.

     

    But then I noticed the trees were a little too green, so I got some Hauser Dark Green and dry brushed the trees a bit.

     

    The Germans achieved a total surprise attack on the morning of 16 December 1944, due to a combination of Allied overconfidence, preoccupation with Allied offensive plans, and poor aerial reconnaissance. American forces bore the brunt of the attack and incurred their highest casualties of any operation during the war. The battle also severely depleted Germany’s armored forces, and they were largely unable to replace them.

     

    The U.S. forces however, got lost, ran out of gas, mostly due to Monty’s adventures in Belgium, and someone back home forgot that Europe has winters, and men get cold. 

     

    Here’s a short gallery.

     

    Until next time: Open thread!