Donkey was standing on the Twitter scales: Follower counts for Republican Reps surge suddenly

 Moments after Musk buys Twitter, follower counts for Democrats and Republicans diverge sharply.  Guess who gains.? The chart from the Washington Post shows the ten most tracked D and R reps on Twitter.   The expression, "putting a thumb on the scales" doesn't do justice to the old regime.  Looks like it was
standing an entire ass (or Donkey) on the scales.

Musk to Trump: You know you want to!

 

Twitter is only #17 most popular social media app: Wikipedia chart

 

Australian live births collapsing: Is this really true?

 

"Inflation is always and everywhere a monetary phenomenon." Canadian inflation comes from Ottawa.

 Inflation isn't a mystery.  Milton Friedman:

Inflation is always and everywhere a monetary phenomenon. It’s always and everywhere, a result of too much money, of a more rapid increase in the quantity of money than in output. Moreover, in the modern era, the important next step is to recognize that today, governments control the quantity of money. So that as a result, inflation in the United States is made in Washington and nowhere else.

If you listen to people in Washington talk, they will tell you that inflation is produced by greedy businessmen or it’s produced by grasping unions or it’s produced by spendthrift consumers, or maybe, it’s those terrible Arab Sheikhs who are producing it. Now, of course, businessmen are greedy. Who of us isn’t? Trade unions are grasping. Who of us isn’t? And there’s no doubt that the consumer is a spendthrift. At least every man knows that about his wife.

But none of them produce inflation for the very simple reason that neither the businessman, nor the trade union, nor the housewife has a printing press in their basement on which they can turn out those green pieces of paper we call money.

If your explanation for world affairs makes sense, your are at least in part wrong.

 Making sense of things is a favourite pass-time and it's doomed to be in error.
The "truth of the matter" when determined by one brilliant person, is still an authoritarian solution that leaves out what millions of others believe in some cases and think in other cases.  It's like a state controlled economy instead of a market with price signals that determine what happens next.

"Sense" is subsidiary to reality and I believe much of reality doesn't make sense in human terms and never will.  Where were you when the lights were out and you fell asleep and later when "you" dreamed?   What's the story about dark matter and energy - which has never been pinned down - being the major component of the gravitational universe.  And so on.

Greenpeace: Forget about recycling plastic.

A key quote from Greenpeace's new report, "Plastic Recycling is a Dead-End-Street"  linked from City Journal.   "An admirably succinct disagnosis" 

“Mechanical and chemical recycling of plastic waste has largely failed and will always fail because plastic waste is: (1) extremely difficult to collect, (2) virtually impossible to sort for recycling, (3) environmentally harmful to reprocess, (4) often made of and contaminated by toxic materials, and (5) not economical to recycle.”

City Journal adds: 

Greenpeace could have added a sixth reason: forcing people to sort and rinse their plastic garbage is a waste of everyone’s time. But then, making life more pleasant for humans has never been high on the green agenda.

Kerch Bridge knocked out, both rail and road, minutes ago on Putin's Birthday. War changer.

https://twitter.com/i/status/1578602329514774528

Nordstrom NOT sabotage. How crap Russian maintenance efforts to unplug methane hydrates in cold pipes will generate kinetic forces and explosive spark.

 Forget the conspiracy theories:  Russia, US, Ukraine.  They don't add up. (Update below) This report from Lawdog files, a guy with gas pipeline experience, ticks all the explanation boxes.  As he says, "When anuything involving energy-industry hydrocarbons explodes...well sabotage isn't the first thing that comes to mind.  And honestly, when it comes to a pipeline running natural gas under Russian (non)mantenance, an explosion means that it's Tuesday.  Or Friday.  Or another day of the week ending in "y".  

Until I read his article, I was clueless about the actual baked-in dangers of a natural gas pipeline which we knew was in need of servicing.  We just assumed the servicing was 100% head-fake by Russia to bug the West.

In summary:  The Nordstrom pipelines were idle and and methane hydrates could be triggered to form and some would form into plugs.  Only very slow decompression over weeks from both ends of the pipe would safely lower the pressure for maintenance.  Local efforts to heat and remelt the plug are catastrophically dangerous.  Lowering the pressure from one end of the pipe is has a small chance of working but is likely to cause the plug to break loose at about 200 kmph.  The "diesel effect" on impact at a curvature in the pipe will then generate a flash.  17 hours separated the explosions.  We know there have been maintenance issues and that Russia (think Chernobyl) has a poor track record here.  We know the lines were idle and cooling.   Nobody is claiming responsibility for one of the most expensive industrial wrecks ever.   You can watch his video clip to see how the diesel effect works, producing ignition under impact pressure.  h/t  Instapundit.

Click the link to Instapundit above, not the jpg below.

Also, October 1st an update from LawDog showing the ruptures happened at angles in the pipes.

November 18th the Swedish government says this was definitely sabotage.

The possibility of a screwup should however have been part of the conversation instead of a fixation on what bad actor to blame.    Stupidity and Random Shit  often is a better explanation than Conspiracy.

More deetail:

"During analyzes carried out, residues of explosives have been identified on several of the foreign objects seized," the report said.   Reported at Zero Hedge.

Deceit is the norm in make-believe movie industry

 Note the drip bag, upper right.

 https://dilbert.com/

A small minority throughout history

 

 

 

What's this? Covid jabs are stripping protections from cancer by suppressing our native immune system? Can this be even partly true? EthicalSceptic

The killer chart uses a baseline of average weekly deaths by cancer.  In the past, it's been occasionally a little below, occasionally a little above the baseline until late 2021 when deaths exploded
after the Covid mRNA injections began.

He notes that the CDC has recoded cause-of-death since June 2 2022.
CDC "disappeared" about half the SADS deaths into other categories but was less able to juggle the cancer deaths.

 

 

When truth has no champion, this isn't funny.  hat tip to @curtegerer, Instapundit comments.

Google doesn't just misdirect. Google completely hides most search results. Try it yourself in the next three minutes.

From "Bright Insight"s 14 minute Rumble Video.
Google and Bing searches routinely give result tallies in the millions
but when you seek them, they're not there.
A controversial topic search like "climate change" has over a billion results
but after a few dozen pages, you hit a blank.
Click on the "see more results" button and a few more pages appear.
Somewhere around page 45, you hit the second blank and there is no way forward.
Mostly mainstream media results populate the pages you found and the other billion
cannot be reached.

This didn't use to be the case.
I remember going into the hundreds some years ago out of curiosity.
A more independent engine like BRAVE doesn't post the number of results.
It's entirely reasonable to truncate the results for the average person
but wrong to hide postings and knowledge beyond that wall.