At LAT, "How out-of-work strippers made their show virtual and are ‘taking the power back’."
When the pandemic hit, a group of dancers from the East Hollywood strip club Jumbo’s Clown Room realized no one was coming to save them.
— LAT Entertainment (@latimesent) October 5, 2020
So, they got creative💃💃💃: https://t.co/6wur5v85oW
Say a prayer for the president and his wife. Hope Hicks too.
It's been nonstop bombshell news for days now, some of it genuine news (and most of it propaganda from the leftist media complex --- here's looking at you New York Times).
Check Memeorandum for all the headlines.
And at LAT, "President Trump and first lady test positive for the coronavirus."
The media's descended into hysteria. On CNN a little while ago, Dana Bash, Kaitlan Collins, and Dr. Sanjay Gupta all looked like they'd just woken up or hadn't been to sleep. Brian Stelter declared an international emergency. Oh brother. It's four in the morning back east. What a nightmare. And to think, I watched baseball all day yesterday, then streamed "Big Brother" with my wife, and then the news hit. Unfortunately, there's just one MLB playoff game until Monday. The Cubs and Marlins are making up a rained out game later today, and after that I'll just stream some shows I guess.
This election's killing me lol.
At LAT, "‘It’s going to be like war.’ Voters eye 2020 election outcome with fear and loathing":
Many supporters of Biden and Trump fear violence is likely in November. Each side blames the other.
— Los Angeles Times (@latimes) September 27, 2020
https://t.co/EnJ7qBieKo
When Jim Jackson looks ahead to November, he cringes at what he sees: a defeated President Trump refusing to leave the White House and his supporters waging war to keep him there.
“The militias and the white supremacists ... they’re going to put out the call to arms,” said Jackson, 73, who lives in the conservative-leaning suburbs of Milwaukee and voted Republican for 52 years, but not for Trump. “That’s my worst nightmare.”
Jeanine Davis shares his concern, though for different reasons.Seated near the Huntington Beach Pier, wearing a red “Keep America Great” hat, the Trump supporter suggested Democrats will do whatever it takes to elect Joe Biden, and riot if they fail. “It’s going to be like war amongst citizens,” said Davis, an executive recruiter in her 50s.Candidates often say a presidential contest is the most important ever, telling voters to act as though their life depended on it and the country’s future was at stake. Dozens of conversations with voters across the nation — from the West Coast to the Upper Midwest to the East — suggest that, this time, many people really believe it.Punished by pandemic, buckled by economic hardship and riven by relentless partisanship, America is facing an election unlike any in modern times, a vote shadowed by menace and fringed with paranoia — much of it fed by the occupant of the Oval Office, who incessantly acts to undermine confidence in the result.“He’s essentially trying to pull off a coup,” said Frank Dudek, a 70-year-old retiree, after casting his ballot at an early vote center in Arlington, Va., just outside the nation’s capital.Some voters worry about frayed family ties. Others see the whole country unraveling. A significant number consider threats and violence a reasonable way to solve partisan differences.“You have all these things — the pandemic, the protests, the counterprotests, the Black vs. white, the right against the left,” said Allison Trammell, 60, an Atlanta social worker who supports Biden. “It’s almost like everything is coming up at the same time and there’s no equilibrium. There’s no middle ground.”What is more, many are acting on their fears, anticipating all manner of chaos, up to and including armed insurrection. They’re flooding gun stores and shooting ranges, stockpiling ammunition and provisioning for a postelection dystopia.Ashley Avis, a 36-year-old nurse, was recently out with her father and 2-year-old son in Pinellas Park, Fla., buying plywood to board up their windows in case of civil unrest. She also plans to secure an alternative water supply, lest the public works around Tampa Bay are taken out of commission.“We’re hoping for the best,” said the Trump supporter. “We’re preparing for the worst.”Across the country, in a working-class neighborhood on Las Vegas’ east side, Michael Martinez said he, too, planned to lay in extra food and water “just in case there’s a disruption in our food delivery systems and whatnot.”“I wouldn’t put it past some people” if Trump loses, said Martinez, 69, a retired union carpenter and Biden supporter. “That’s the way they’ll try to disrupt the economy, try to disrupt the way we live now.”Not everyone sees election day as the dawn of a coming apocalypse.Dave Gorrasi, who owns Blue Hook Aquatics just outside Cincinnati, says he believes the talk of widespread upheaval is a device both sides are using to gin up support.“I think there is going to be less trouble once the election’s done because then we can go back to normalcy,” said the 41-year-old political independent, who is still undecided...
Still more.
RHCP, from my errand-run early this morning, at 93.1 Jack FM Los Angeles.
"Can't Stop."
Suddenly Last Summer
The Motels
12:00pm
Runaway
Bon Jovi
11:56am
Down Under
Men At Work
11:46am
Thats All
Genesis
11:41am
The Distance
CAKE
11:38am
Sunday Bloody Sunday
U2
11:34am
Highway To Hell
AC/DC
11:30am
Time Of Your Life
Green Day
11:28am
Born To Run
Bruce Springsteen
11:22am
Just Another Day
Oingo Boingo
11:17am
Rock The Casbah
Clash
11:13am
Hey Jealousy
Gin Blossoms
11:10am
Hotel California
Eagles/Don Henley
11:03am
Bizarre Love Triangle
New Order
11:00am
Use Somebody
Kings Of Leon
10:56am
Rio
Duran Duran
10:45am
Centerfold
J. Geils Band
10:41am
Loser
BECK
10:38am
I Need To Know
Tom Petty And The Heartbreakers
10:35am
Enjoy The Silence
Depeche Mode
10:31am
Cant Stop
Red Hot Chili Peppers
10:26am
Talking In Your Sleep
Romantics
10:15am
No One Like You
Scorpions
10:12am
Today's big story.
The Kavanaugh hearings were a nightmare.
I dread the diabolical attacks Barrett's going to endure. But she'll be confirmed.
See Ed Morrissey's excellent post at Hot Air, "NYT: Maybe A Little Anti-Catholicism Is A Good Thing When It Comes To Barrett."
And at Twitchy, "IT BEGINS: Lib questions Amy Coney Barrett’s adoption of two kids from Haiti," and "Talking points have gone out — Another Democrat operative Goes after Amy Coney Barrett adoptions and then locks down after blowback."
More at Instapundit, "PRESENTED WITHOUT COMMENT."
At Drunken Stepfather, "ON/OFF FLASHERS FRIDAY OF THE DAY."
BONUS: "BARBARA PALVIN TOPLESS OF THE DAY."
Andrew Sullivan is so damn good. It's freaky, too, since he's such a weird guy.
But this is really good. I look forward to Fridays, when I can read his column. I think Matt Taibbi posts his big pieces on Friday as well, so I'm going to go troll over there for a while, to see what he's got going.
Here's Sully, "Is that what's really destroying the legitimacy of our democracy?":
Remind yourself that hefty chunks of our society still insist that Covid19 is a hoax, perpetrated for the sake of social control. Re-read Richard Hofstadter. Remember how vast numbers of white liberals drastically shifted their view of America — almost overnight — from a flawed but vibrant multiracial democracy to a version of apartheid South Africa because of a single video of a brutal arrest and murder. This week, I watched videos of people literally burning Harry Potter books, like latter-day Nazis, in the cause of transgender liberation. It’s safe to say, I think, that many of these people have lost their minds — just by staying online. And they not only think they’re perfectly sane; they think they’re heroes.RTWT.And online is increasingly where people live. My average screen time this past week was close to ten hours a day. Yes, a lot of that is work-related. But the idea that I have any real conscious life outside this virtual portal is delusional. And if you live in such a madhouse all the time, you will become mad. You don’t go down a rabbit-hole; your mind increasingly is the rabbit hole — rewired that way by algorithmic practice. And you cannot get out, unless you fight the algorithms to a draw, or manage to exert superhuman discipline and end social media use altogether.
But the thing about algorithms and artificial intelligence is that they don’t rest, they have no human flaws, they exploit every weakness we have, and have already taken over. This is not a future dystopia in which some kind of AI robot takes power and kills us all. It is a dystopia already here — burrowed into our minds, literally disabling the basic mental tools required for democracy to work at all.
If you watch video after video of excessive police force against suspects, for example, and your viewing habits are then reinforced by algorithms so you see no countervailing examples, your view about the prevalence of such excessive force will change, regardless of objective reality. A new study shows how this happens.
HARTS, W.Va.—Just before 9 a.m., Hollee Blair sat in her boyfriend’s Toyota Tacoma in the parking lot of Chapmanville Regional High School and waited for attendance to be taken.Still more.
With no broadband internet at home, Ms. Blair, a 17-year-old honors student who plans to study nursing after high school, used her boyfriend’s iPhone to connect to the school’s Wi-Fi for an hour-long orientation over Zoom.
“I’ll do whatever it takes to keep up,” said Ms. Blair, shielding her eyes so she could see the phone’s screen. “If it means doing this every day, I’ll do it. It’s worth it.”
Much of southern West Virginia had already been struggling with a drug epidemic and persistent poverty before the coronavirus pandemic took hold here. Now, as students return to school online, the region is coming up against another longstanding challenge: a lack of broadband internet access.
Nationwide, about 21 million people lack access to broadband, according to the Federal Communications Commission. When people with slow or unreliable internet connections are included, the number swells to 157 million, nearly half the U.S. population, according to a study by Microsoft Corp.
Providing service in sparsely populated areas is typically more costly and less profitable than in suburbs and cities. In Appalachia, the terrain has made it difficult to install and maintain the infrastructure necessary for broadband.
In West Virginia, between 30% and 50% of K-12 students don’t have internet access at home, according to the state Department of Education. By the start of school on Tuesday, the state had set up nearly 850 Wi-Fi hot spots at schools, libraries, National Guard armories and state parks for students.
So far, nine of West Virginia’s 55 counties, including Logan County, where Ms. Blair lives, are teaching all classes remotely after spikes in Covid-19 cases pushed them above a threshold for new daily cases set by the state.
But in the state’s other 46 counties, many students will still need to connect online as some districts choose a blended model that mixes in-person and remote classes. Counties may also be required to halt in-person classes if case levels rise too high.
Logan County has had 536 cases of Covid-19 and 36 related deaths.
This week, Gov. Jim Justice lifted a $50 million cap on how much the state can receive from a fund created by the FCC to bring high-speed broadband to rural areas. But it isn’t clear how much the state will ultimately receive and how long it will take providers to connect homes.
“You’ve just got to step up and meet this challenge,” the governor said.
Meanwhile, Sen. Joe Manchin of West Virginia, a Democrat, is seeking federal funding to set up broadband hot spots across the country to aid remote learning during the pandemic.
“This is a short-term fix to a long-term problem, but until we treat access to broadband like the need for electricity was treated in the 1930s, our students will fall behind,” he said.
In Logan County, which is blanketed by rugged mountains, nearly a quarter of residents live below the federal poverty line, according to census data. At Logan High School, the hallways and classrooms are empty, and teachers are troubleshooting tech problems as they begin broadcasting their classes to students from laptops.
Jennifer Stillwell, a history teacher, said some poorer students won’t have transportation to get to a hot spot. She is giving students the option to use a photo of themselves rather than live video, in case they don’t feel comfortable having their home appear on screen.
She was encouraged that after three days of classes, she had been unable to reach only five students who may lack internet out of 105 on her roster.
On Thursday, her AP history class got off to a smooth start, with 16 students logging in. “Let’s see if we can chat,” she said brightly, as she introduced herself from her neat classroom.
The Logan County school district is using a $375,000 grant from the state to get students connected. Patricia Lucas, the district’s superintendent, said as many 40% of K-12 students in the county might not have internet at home...
A fascinating piece, at Politico, "How Legal Weed Destroyed a Counterculture Icon."
SAN FRANCISCO — The cityscape resembles the surface of a distant planet, populated by a masked alien culture. The air, choked with blown ash, is difficult to breathe.Keep reading.
There is the Golden Gate Bridge, looming in the distance through a drift-smoke haze, and the Salesforce Tower, which against the blood-orange sky appears as a colossal spaceship in a doomsday film.
San Francisco, and much of California, has never been like this.
California has become a warming, burning, epidemic-challenged and expensive state, with many who live in sophisticated cities, idyllic oceanfront towns and windblown mountain communities thinking hard about the viability of a place they have called home forever. For the first time in a decade, more people left California last year for other states than arrived.
Monica Gupta Mehta and her husband, an entrepreneur, have been through tech busts and booms, earthquakes, wildfire seasons and power outages. But it was not until the skies darkened and cast an unsettling orange light on their Palo Alto home earlier this week that they ever considered moving their family of five somewhere else.
“For the first time in 20-something years, the thought crossed our minds: Do we really want to live here?” said Mehta, who is starting an education tech company.
It would be difficult to leave. They love the area’s abundant nature and are tied to Silicon Valley by work and a network of extended family members, who followed them west from Pittsburgh. But Mehta says it is something she would consider if her family is in regular danger.
“Yesterday felt so apocalyptic,” Mehta said. “People are really starting to reconsider whether California has enough to offer them.”
This is the latest iteration of the California Dream, a Gold Rush-era slogan meant to capture the hopeful migration of an old nation to a new, rich West. For generations, the tacit agreement for California residents resembled a kind of too-good-to-be-true deal. Live in the lovely if often drought-plagued Sierra, or beneath the beachfront Pacific Coast cliffs, and work in an economy constantly reinventing itself, from Hollywood to the farms of the San Joaquin to Silicon Valley.
But for many of the state’s 40 million residents, the California Dream has become the California Compromise, one increasingly challenging to justify, with a rapidly changing climate, a thumb-on-the-scales economy, high taxes and a pandemic that has led to more cases of the novel coronavirus than any other state.
During the course of his term, President Trump has singled out California, a state he lost by 30 percentage points, as an example of Democrat-caused urban unrest, irresponsible immigration policy and poor forest management, even though nearly 60 percent of the state’s forests are managed by the federal government. Several are burning today, with millions of acres already scorched.
Gov. Gavin Newsom (D) has responded specifically in some cases, but in others, he has invoked the California Dream, an aspirational noun attached to no other state. In his January 2019 inaugural address, Newsom warned that “there is nothing inevitable about” that dream.
“And now more than ever, it is up to us to defend it,” he said.
As the state’s climate has shifted to one of extremes, soaking wet seasons followed suddenly by sharp, dry heat and wind, no region has been safe from fire. This year — even before peak fire season has gotten underway — widespread fires have forced evacuations, from San Jose in Silicon Valley to the distant hamlet of Big Creek along the western slopes of the Sierra.
More than two dozen major fires are burning around the state and have consumed a record 3.1 million acres of land, more than 3,000 homes and at least 22 lives. Los Angeles has reported the worst air quality in three decades as a result of fires surrounding that city, already notorious for orange air and seasonal dry cough.
Wine Country has burned four straight years, with a number of vineyards lost. Homes have been destroyed far to the south in San Diego County, and more than 200 campers had to be airlifted to safety amid the Creek Fire, still burning hot and fast between Fresno and Mammoth Lakes...
My goodness!
Watch, at the New York Post, "Insane video shows moment big rig triggers massive deadly crash."
