12/27/2020

Thoughts On A Sunday

I don’t know about you, but I am still recovering from Christmas Day, between the travel and food. I did run some errands on Saturday morning and found I needed to take a brief nap once I was finished, something I’ve never needed to do before.

Not many people seemed to travel on Christmas Day, at least not from what traffic I saw on the highways on my way to and from the WP Sister’s. While traffic was heavier on my way home, it was still lighter than I expected.

It was a subdued Christmas celebration considering how many useless restrictions have been imposed upon the populace.

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Just when I thought 2020 couldn’t get any weirder comes this story about exploding packets of Chick-fil-A’s Polynesian sauce.

The popping Polynesian packet problem has been around for a while but came to renewed attention when additional eyewitness claims erupted on a Reddit thread.

I have to concede people have a real nonchalant attitude about it.

"They just explode."

Okay then!

"I guess that's just how it is," spoken like a 27-year veteran of the bomb squad after losing a partner.

Of course, even the greatest condiment catastrophe is only ever going to be so dire. It's less "losing a finger," than, "having to lick a finger."

The risks we must take in search of good fast food!

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If the social media giants in the US do not voluntarily stop censoring content their Progressive censors disagree with, is it likely the US government could step in to solve that problem by following the lead of Poland?

Poland is considering a new law that would create a court whose purpose would be to protect social media content from censorship. Such a court would prevent politically motivated censorship from being employed by social media companies like Facebook, Twitter, and others. In the US we have Section 230 that covers these social media companies.

In the US Section, 230 defines them as platforms, not publishers, but we know better. They use force to publish their opinions alongside or in place of yours. They may limit your access to the platform or restrict who sees your ideas based entirely on their ideological preference.

--snip--

If they just wanted to join the conversation, that’s one thing. Hey, you wrote this, I wrote this, let the community work it out amongst themselves. Equal distribution, and let’s have a discussion. But that is not what they do, as you well know. They not only promote their idea at the expense of yours, but they also punish you (Facebook Jail), lock you out, or delete your account.

Read. The. Whole. Thing.

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It seems that certain of The Powers That Be in California still believe wealth is a zero-sum game. What else could explain their apparent viewpoint that wealth is being ‘extracted’ from the Bay Area rather than being created through hard work? Could it be delusions about how economies work...or greed?

…[A] moral argument for tech’s responsibility to California, and specifically the Bay Area, has recently been produced. It goes something like this: young ambitious people moved to the state, and struck gold. But rather than “give back” to the land, they’re leaving with resources they “took” from the region…

I take extreme issue with the notion that industry leaders have taken something from the “community,” defined here as the “talent,” the “incubators,” and the “mentors.” This is precisely the opposite of reality. The men and women leaving are the talent, they have started the incubators, they have built the companies, they have funded the startup ecosystem, and they have mentored countless young people. This is the “network.” They are the network. Technology workers do not “extract” value from the region, they are what makes the region valuable.

The Left pushes the idea that wealth is a fixed sum and the only way one person or group of people can become wealthy is to extract it, i.e. steal it from someone else. Their solution: steal it back. Not that their solution includes returning the ‘stolen’ wealth to those from whom it had supposedly been stolen. Instead, it will be confiscated by The State to be used by The State for purposes chosen by The State.

Yeah, that always works out.

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And that is the somewhat abbreviated news from Lake Winnipesaukee on this Christmas Holiday, where the snow has been greatly diminished, the after-Christmas sales are in full force, and where 2020 is winding to a close.