In The Shadow Of Mt Hollywood

I mentioned Fermi's Paradox the other day , the conflict between the lack of clear, obvious evidence for extraterrestrial life and various high estimates for its existence. I was watching a new TV series, Expedition Deep Ocean , which covers what seems to be in some measure a vanity project by hedge fund guy Victor Vescovo to dive to the deepest points of the world's oceans. (The internet gives him a net worth of $1-5 million, which is your normal bourgeois couple these days, but the show claims he funded a $50-million dive vehicle from his own resources. Guy seems just a little hinky to me, but let that go.) The big thing that struck me about the first two episodes of the show was images like the one above from the bottom of the deep-sea trenches from "landers" with cameras and bait that are sent to the bottom at the same time as the main sub. At depths of over 25,000 feet, in water with sub-freezing temperature and completely dark under extreme pressure, lit...

Among the first headlines of the new year is this one in the Washington Post : House Democrats begin preparing for the post-Pelosi era . The story says, After almost 19 years as House Democratic leader, Speaker Nancy Pelosi (Calif.) is expected to step down at the close of this Congress, ending a historic career. . . The key phrase is "expected to step down", which is new. As of just last December 15, the headline on CNN was Pelosi will stay around to lead House Democrats through the next election -- and perhaps beyond . Speaker Nancy Pelosi will stay until at least after the midterm elections, extending her nearly 20-year run as the House's top Democrat after she turns 82 and, perhaps, beyond. She is planning to file and run for reelection in her San Francisco district next year -- at least for now -- in keeping with her pattern of deciding about staying in Congress after the elections, when she likely will have won an 18th full term. And sources familiar wit...

Over the holiday weekend, the elites belatedly began to realize they're losing control. Almost as soon as Brandon Brown announced his sponsorship deal for the 2022 season in a December 30 Tweet, NASCAR walked it back : NASCAR is walking back its approval of driver Brandon Brown's sponsorship with LGBcoin after initially approving the deal, according to Brown's spokesperson. . . . Brown's spokesperson Maxwell Marcucci told FOX Business that NASCAR pulled back its approval of the sponsorship deal on Dec. 30, after the partnership with LGBcoin was announced. "After the announcement went live on Thursday morning, NASCAR acknowledged to us late that afternoon that we had received approval but that they now needed to discuss this at a higher level," Marcucci said. A NASCAR spokesperson told Motorsport.com that Brown's team "jumped the gun" by announcing the partnership on Dec. 30. Marcucci says that NASCAR's statement runs ...

Just days ago, my wife and I were feeling sorry for Brandon Brown, the NASCAR driver who, during an interview after a victory, inadvertently became the viral anti-Biden meme when the interviewer deliberately misinterpreted the crowd's "[redacted] Joe Biden" chant as "Let's go, Brandon!" It seemed as though his good fortune suddenly went bad on him, since without any action or expression on his part, his name suddenly became an in-your-face political statement, the sort of thing that conventional sponsors avoid like the plague unless it's Black Lives Matter. A week or so ago, articles were running on the difficulty the guy was having lining up sponsors, especially, as one writer puts it , “Let’s Go, Brandon” is a manifestation of the class warfare that increasingly characterizes American society. It’s the cry of the working class, bold and joyous, utterly uncontrollable. It has energy and cheer, while the pathetic moaning of the ruling caste’s spok...

According to The Daily Wire, On Tuesday night, President Biden and his wife Jill, both of whom are triple-vaccinated, took a walk on a deserted Rehoboth Beach with their German Shepherd puppy during their Delaware vacation, but despite the fact there was reportedly no one within 10 yards, still refused to take their masks off. Last July, Biden insisted, “Don’t have to mask if you come home to Delaware with me.” “The President, 79, even continued to wear his mask after the First Lady, 70, took hers off. It’s not clear who Biden believed he was protecting or who he felt he needed protection from as the only other people on the beach, the secret service, didn’t come within 10 yards,” The Daily Mail noted. A few days earlier, A pre-Christmas flight got dicey when a woman now dubbed ‘Airline Karen’ got into an altercation with another passenger. The ATL Uncensored Twitter account posted a nearly two-minute video of a woman standing with her mask down below her chin while on Flight ...

I've been saying for a couple of weeks that we're in the Morning After phase of a moral panic, and part of the hangover this time is a quiet constitutional crisis. Part of the issue now, though possibly not the underlying one, is that nobody in the line of succession, the president, the vice president, or the speaker, is up to the job, and I'm not sure if we have the luxury of three years, or even 11 months, for this to work itself out. People are starting to notice. [Historian] Jon Meacham scares his audience, Democrats, into thinking that if Trump runs and loses again, he will do as he did in 2020 and refuse to accept the loss. He will again claim the election was stolen from him. Meacham appeared on Fareed Zakaria’s Sunday show on CNN and when asked if such a scenario would present a constitutional crisis, Meacham responded by saying, “It’s an unfolding one.” According to the UK Daily Mail, Presidential historian and former Biden speechwriter Jon Meacham sai...

"A doctor explains how to tell the difference." This story is on today's CNN live COVID news feed. While Covid-19 cases are sharply rising across the US, the winter season is also a time for the common cold. Symptoms for the two can certainly look the same — sore throat, runny nose, cough and headache, among others. Dr. Abdul El-Sayed gives guidance to people trying to figure out if they have been infected and need to get tested or if they just have a cold. . . . "Even though with Omicron, it's less likely that you're going to lose your sense of smell or sense of taste, those are really specific for Covid-19," he said. Another common symptom with Omicron is a headache, El-Sayed added. I'm subscribed to Alex Berenson's substack, and his reaction this morning was Guys, I don’t know how to say this any more clearly: it is OVER. The Omicold (pronounced Immacold) variant is about to bring this clown show to its inevitable conclusion. . ...