“We do not believe any group of men adequate enough or wise enough to operate without scrutiny or without criticism. We know that the only way to avoid error is to detect it, that the only way to detect it is to be free to inquire. We know that in secrecy error undetected will flourish and subvert.” –J. Robert Oppenheimer
This Stormwatch Monday Open Thread remains open – VERY OPEN – a place for everybody to post whatever they feel they would like to tell the White Hats, and the rest of the MAGA/KAG/KMAG world (with KMAG being a bit of both).
The Yule log, Yule clog, or Christmas block is a specially selected log burnt on a hearth as a winter tradition in regions of Europe, and subsequently North America. The origin of the folk custom is unclear. Like other traditions associated with Yule (such as the Yule boar), the custom may ultimately derive from Proto-Indo-European religion as similar traditions have been recorded in Celtic, Germanic, Baltic and Slavic paganism, among others.
American folklorist Linda Watts provides the following overview of the custom:
The familiar custom of burning the Yule log dates back to earlier solstice celebrations and the tradition of bonfires. The Christmas practice calls for burning a portion of the log each evening until Twelfth Night (January 6). The log is subsequently placed beneath the bed for luck, and particularly for protection from the household threats of lightning and, with some irony, fire. Many have beliefs based on the yule log as it burns, and by counting the sparks and such, they seek to discern their fortunes for the new year and beyond.[1]
Watts notes that the Yule log is one of various “emblem[s] of divine light” that feature in winter holiday customs (other examples include the Yule fire and Yule candle).[1]
Need some Christmas music fast? Here is your one-stop shopping solution!
I don’t know – I need something more “Wheatie” – so check this out!
Have an EPIC Christmas, friends!
Need something more classic? An hour of Christmas piano!
OK – I don’t normally do “ads for musicals featured on MSN”, but this is kinda cool, in a Hollywood way.
Well, now let’s try some more modern stuff just for comparison. Check out some “dub-step” electronica for Christmas!
Let’s recover from that, with a smooth orchestral version of a classic – with some false advertising, as there’s no Bing in sight…..
Time to JUMP THE WOLF – with a bunch of great orchestral and “big choral” Christmas tunes – and a RIDICULOUSLY BIG WOLF!
Finally – what’s Christmas without some DS-approved Hollywood?
OK, we can’t finish with that. Merry Christmas — in Latin!
https://youtu.be/8p32JrUFH7M
Merry Christmas and Happy New Year to ALL of you – posters, lurkers, appreciated authors, former posters, beloved guests, wandering journalists, opposition researchers, DS spies, foreign and domestic intelligence, and future historical AIs. We appreciate your presence here on this glorious day, or any other! Come in peace, go in peace, and carry the Good News to the infinite corners of the Earth – and beyond!
You never know who you may befriend. It was delightful spending time with @AmericaShaman and hearing his story. He dresses a little funky and is godly, too. pic.twitter.com/IliGgU93kK
Demmunists gonna be Demmunists – thanks to the Demmunized media.
It’s shocking how well the media propaganda worked. Democrats went from 40% to 70% support for government censorship between 2018 and 2023.
The last five years will be remembered as one of the most successful disinformation and brainwashing efforts in modern history. pic.twitter.com/vbS4P1cWsg
What is it that feeds our battle, yet starves our victory?
January 6 Tapes?
I won’t beat this dead horse too much. We got some kind of weirdly redacted release of some number of tapes.
Paging Speaker Johnson…this is your conscience calling you out on broken promises.
News Flash
Today, it is still the case that Joe Biden didn’t Win.
I realize that to some readers, this might be a shock; surely at some point things must change and Biden will have actually won.
But the past cannot actually be changed.
It will always and forever be the case that Joe Biden didn’t win.
And if you, Leftist Lurker, want to dismiss it as dead white cis-male logic…well, you can call it what you want, but then please just go fuck off. No one here buys that bullshit–logic is logic and facts are facts regardless of skin color–and if you gave it a moment’s rational thought, you wouldn’t either. Of course your worthless education never included being able to actually reason–or detect problems with false reasoning–so I don’t imagine you’ll actually wake up as opposed to being woke.
As Ayn Rand would sometimes point out: Yes, you are free to evade reality. What you cannot do is evade the consequences of evading reality. Or to put it concretely: You can ignore the Mack truck bearing down on you as you play in the middle of the street, you won’t be able to ignore the consequences of ignoring the Mack truck.
And Ayn Rand also pointed out that existence (i.e., the sum total of everything that exists) precedes consciousness–our consciousnesses are a part of existence, not outside of it–therefore reality cannot be a “social construct” as so many of you fucked-up-in-the-head people seem to think.
So much for Leftist douchebag lurkers. For the rest of you, the regular readers and those lurkers who understand such things: I continue to carry the banner once also carried by Wheatie. His Fraudulency didn’t win.
Let’s Go, Brandon!!
Hey China!
Or rather, “Hey Chinese Communist Party and your entire array of servitors, ass-wipers, and fellators!”
You’re not even worth my time this week. When you decide to act like civilized people, maybe I’ll give you a lesson or two in how non-barbarians behave.
Hey BiteMe! (Or, Whoever Has Their Hand Rammed Up That Putrefying Meat Puppet’s Ass)
[Language warning]
You and yours have caused a lot of injury. Literal injury with your war on people who don’t want to take an untested vaccine. When people die in an emergency room because a hospital won’t admit them because they haven’t had their clot shot, that’s a crime.
I’m going to address here the insult on top of the injury, because I am among the insulted. I still have my health but apparently you want me to live under the 8th Street Bridge (which actually isn’t on 8th Street, but whatever, that’s what the I-25 overpass over Cimarron is called), so maybe if you have your way that won’t be true for long. Dreadful time of year to become homeless.
No, you’re just trying to make me unemployed, because I won’t take your fucking shots.
Well, that threat is NOT going to work. I. Won’t. Take. Your. Fucking. Shots.
And it looks like enough people agree, that you’re having to back down, you worthless asswipe.
You’re LOSING.
You LOSER.
You Chinese-bought ratfucking traitor.
I would love to see you die an agonizing, humiliating death. (This isn’t a threat, because I am not threatening to cause that death. I am just announcing my intention to party if it happens.) It would be just recompense for the way you’re killing America…and millions of Americans.
His Fraudulency
Joe Biteme, properly styled His Fraudulency, continues to infest the White House, we haven’t heard much from the person who should have been declared the victor, and hopium is still being dispensed even as our military appears to have joined the political establishment in knuckling under to the fraud.
One can hope that all is not as it seems.
I’d love to feast on that crow.
(I’d like to add, I find it entirely plausible, even likely, that His Fraudulency is also His Figureheadedness. (Apparently that wasn’t a word; it got a red underline. Well it is now.) Where I differ with the hopium addicts is on the subject of who is really in charge. It ain’t anyone we like.)
Justice Must Be Done.
The prior election must be acknowledged as fraudulent, and steps must be taken to prosecute the fraudsters and restore integrity to the system.
Nothing else matters at this point. Talking about trying again in 2024 is hopeless otherwise. Which is not to say one must never talk about this, but rather that one must account for this in ones planning; if fixing the fraud is not part of the plan, you have no plan.
Lawyer Appeasement Section
OK now for the fine print.
This is the WQTH Daily Thread. You know the drill. There’s no Poltical correctness, but civility is a requirement. There are Important Guidelines, here, with an addendum on 20191110.
We have a new board – called The U Tree – where people can take each other to the woodshed without fear of censorship or moderation.
And remember Wheatie’s Rules:
1. No food fights 2. No running with scissors. 3. If you bring snacks, bring enough for everyone. 4. Zeroth rule of gun safety: Don’t let the government get your guns. 5. Rule one of gun safety: The gun is always loaded. 5a. If you actually want the gun to be loaded, like because you’re checking out a bump in the night, then it’s empty. 6. Rule two of gun safety: Never point the gun at anything you’re not willing to destroy. 7. Rule three: Keep your finger off the trigger until ready to fire. 8. Rule the fourth: Be sure of your target and what is behind it.
Whoever ends up in the cell next to his, tell him I said “Hi.”
中国是个混蛋 !!! Zhōngguò shì gè hùndàn !!! China is asshoe !!!
China is in the White House
Since Wednesday, January 20 at Noon EST, the bought-and-paid for His Fraudulency Joseph Biden has been in the White House. It’s as good as having China in the Oval Office.
Joe Biden is Asshoe
China is in the White House, because Joe Biden is in the White House, and Joe Biden is identically equal to China. China is Asshoe. Therefore, Joe Biden is Asshoe.
But of course the much more important thing to realize:
Joe Biden Didn’t Win
乔*拜登没赢 !!! Qiáo Bài dēng méi yíng !!! Joe Biden didn’t win !!!
This Stormwatch Monday Open Thread remains open – VERY OPEN – a place for everybody to post whatever they feel they would like to tell the White Hats, and the rest of the MAGA/KAG/KMAG world (with KMAG being a bit of both).
Our various sister sites, listed in the Blogroll in the sidebar
Our beloved country is under Occupation by hostile forces.
Daily outrage and epic phuckery abound.
We can give in to despair…or we can be defiant and fight back in any way that we can.
Joe Biden didn’t win.
And we will keep saying Joe Biden didn’t win until we get His Fraudulency out of our White House.
Word of The Week:
G-quadruplex
and related terms such as
G4 knot and G-tetrad
nouns
In molecular biology, G-quadruplexsecondary structures (G4) are formed in nucleic acids by sequences that are rich in guanine.[2] They are helical in shape and contain guanine tetrads that can form from one,[3] two[4] or four strands.[5] The unimolecular forms often occur naturally near the ends of the chromosomes, better known as the telomeric regions, and in transcriptional regulatory regions of multiple genes, both in microbes[6][7] and across vertebrates [8][7] including oncogenes in humans.[9] Four guanine bases can associate through Hoogsteen hydrogen bonding to form a square planar structure called a guanine tetrad (G-tetrad or G-quartet), and two or more guanine tetrads (from G-tracts, continuous runs of guanine) can stack on top of each other to form a G-quadruplex.
The placement and bonding to form G-quadruplexes is not random and serve very unusual functional purposes. The quadruplex structure is further stabilized by the presence of a cation, especially potassium, which sits in a central channel between each pair of tetrads.[3] They can be formed of DNA, RNA, LNA, and PNA, and may be intramolecular, bimolecular, or tetramolecular.[10] Depending on the direction of the strands or parts of a strand that form the tetrads, structures may be described as parallel or antiparallel. G-quadruplex structures can be computationally predicted from DNA or RNA sequence motifs,[11][12] but their actual structures can be quite varied within and between the motifs, which can number over 100,000 per genome. Their activities in basic genetic processes are an active area of research in telomere, gene regulation, and functional genomics research.[13][14]
Those genetic bases (the little flat molecules with one or two rings and lots of “N” and “O” in them) can not only bond to each other in PAIRS between different bases – the base guanine (G) can bond to itself if it makes a circle big enough for FOUR of them instead of just a pair (see left picture above). Sometimes a metal ion in the center can help this happen.
This competing form of binding disrupts the nice, neat, normal “double helix” binding, but not permanently.
When G4 binding happens, there are many working ways that the little squares can form. These squares tend to STACK just like in normal DNA, and so sequences that are rich in guanine can build these stacks easily, if the guanines are in the right places. Alternatively, two or more strands of DNA or RNA can join in these knots, but at a minimum, a single strand can do it, as shown on the right of the graphic above, where the sequence knots up against itself.
Note that this is more like “knots in velcro”, and not like various circling knots we are familiar with.
Used in a sentence
“For over two decades, the prime objective of the chemical biology community studying G-quadruplexes (G4s) has been to use chemicals to interact with and stabilize G4s in cells to obtain mechanistic interpretations.”
The COVID vaccine mRNA is not natural – and not only in that normal bases are substituted with modified bases. It also has been “codon optimized”, meaning the very sequence of bases was changed from the viral sequence, by substituting base triplets with synonymous ones, that are known to process faster in humans. But the problem is that these changes are rich in guanine, making the knotting more likely. This not-fully-equivalent substitution has potential pharmacological consequences. In a sense, viral evolutionary intelligence was ignored (a beautiful point made by Kevin McKernan).
Music
Let’s start off with some LIVE DRINKABY
Sadly, DRINKABY line dancing hasn’t just infected the other side of the Pacific – it has become a destructive influence in Spongebob’s hometown of Bikini Bottom.
https://youtu.be/xGTdVy7t1K8
This led to me watching (please skip, unless you desire to prove the full effect that follows) a video compilation of the times the town of Bikini Bottom was destroyed in the cartoon “Spongebob Squarepants”.
When that destructive propaganda of mayhem was over (yes, even Spongebob is one of their tentacles), I needed the following.
This is only 18 minutes – and worth every one of them.
But here is the one you need right now!
You know, maybe we’ll just leave it right there and skip the usual worldly “stuff”!
Although I did promise PAVACA that I would explain something, so we’ll try that.
MOAR DNA and RNA STUFF
Check out this video, which shows TRANSCRIPTION – the normal, natural way that DNA is turned into RNA in living organisms on this planet.
NOW – the molecular biologist who found the DNA contamination problem in the mRNA vaccines – Kevin McKernan – reposted the latter video with a comment about something which is NOT in the video, but which would change it. Here is his comment.
Now add N1 methyl Pseudouridine and watch that yellow strand turn into quadruplex G knot. https://t.co/0S5raeEjpT
Kevin is not commenting about the transcription process shown here. He is NOT talking about the red DNA strand, either. He is commenting about the yellow strand of mRNA which is being produced.
“Now add N1 methyl Pseudouridine and watch that yellow strand turn into quadruplex G knot.”
He is saying that if you change the uridines in that molecule to N1-methyl-pseudouridine, as was done in the Pfizer vaccine, the yellow strand of mRNA will “kink up” with G-quadruplex knots.
He explains that further, when somebody wrongly claims the video is showing translation (creation of proteins) and not transcription (creation of mRNA). Observe.
Nope. Try modeling transcription with N1 methyl PseudoU. It radically alters the melting temperature of RNA and accelerates quadruplex G formation/R-Loops.
They also GC enriched the sequence via codon optimization.
Then try feeding that knot into a ribosome. Ribosomal pausing
So to sum up, he is saying that the “good” “yellow” mRNA produced in the video was corrupted by the modifications that were made to it by Pfizer.
He says the following things:
it’s transcription, not translation, that is being shown
the “pseudo-uridine” changes done to the viral mRNA sequence make the mod-RNA dissociate more easily
the same changes make the mod-RNA form G4-quadruplexes easier
Pfizer also changed the code to include more guanines (G), which means more quadruplexes
all the G4-based KNOTS that are present in the mod-RNA cause the subsequent TRANSLATION step (looks similar to the video, but it’s PROTEIN being formed) to suddenly PAUSE, just like a KNOT in a climbing rope will lock up against a device until it is untangled. This is the “ribosomal pausing” he’s talking about.
So how does the DeMarinis paper figure into this?
The DeMarinis paper showed that the Pfizer vaccine can be reverse-transcribed from mod-RNA back into DNA by human liver cells. Reverse transcription would look pretty much like the video of transcription, except that RNA would be read, and DNA would spit out.
Whether that DNA is incorporated into the genome or not is unknown, but it is a huge concern, because another group (Jaenisch paper) showed that the COVID virus SARS-CoV-2 can and does incorporate its spike into the genome of some patients, AND yet another group (Mehedi paper) showed that the viral spike shepherds its own mRNA into the nucleus of human cells, where reverse transcription could happen.
I wanted people to see a bigger point – that this repeated and coincidentally connected “bungling” by Pfizer and its allies, which weirdly matches WEF’s dream of “hacking humanity”, is worthy of a bit of suspicion.
When a trail of disconnected yet matching footprints goes in some direction, it’s rather logical that somebody was purposefully passing that way.
New pinned Tweet. This paper clarifies the purpose of the full spike protein mRNA vaccines, which create a hack and portal into the cell nucleus and thence into the human genome. Straight out of WEF and Harari's ravings, it's amazing that they did it. https://t.co/q2oocDyD4s
It sure looks to me like the various “negligent” yet clearly convenient aspects of this whole exercise, add up to an attempt to gain a population-wide hack into the human cell nucleus.
What is it that feeds our battle, yet starves our victory?
Speaker Johnson Pinging you on January 6 Tapes
Just a friendly reminder Speaker Johnson. You’re doing some good things–or at least trying in the case of the budget–but this is the most important thing out there still hanging. One initial block released with the promise of more…and?
We have American patriots being held without bail and without trial, and the tapes almost certainly contain exculpatory evidence. (And if they don’t, and we’re all just yelling in an echo chamber over here, we need to know that too. And there’s only one way to know.)
Either we have a weaponized, corrupt government or we have a lot of internet charlatans. Let’s expose whatever it is. (I’m betting it’s the corrupt weaponized government, but if I am wrong, I’d like to see proof.)
A Political Statement
One of my stock jokes is to say, as I head off to the bathroom or washroom or restroom, “I’m going to go make a political statement.”
It certainly seems like urinating is a good way to make a statement about the YSM, and defecating works for politicians. Or the other way around is good too, though “#1” just never seems emphatic enough.
Maybe “#1” is just being polite, and “#2” is telling the fixtures what you really think.
Anyhow, I pretty much do plan to be polite to RINOs that electioneer or fundraise. I’ll tell them, Sorry, but I need to GO Pee…
Language Warning
In the next piece I had to discuss a particular topic. Unfortunately, I couldn’t discuss it without naming it. Therefore I apologize in advance for having to do so, and apologize to anyone offended by the sight of the name.
RINO McDaniel
[Well, perfect timing for this one to pop up in the rotation again!]
RINO McDaniel continues to infest the GOP. But RINO McDaniel isn’t the problem.
Let me be crystal clear on this, RINO McDaniel is a lower-than-whale-shit, piss guzzling ratfucking shit eating traitorous rancid syphillitic cunt. Her worth as a human being is substantially less than zero, any oxygen sucked into her lungs is wasted, and it would be, no matter what job she had.
I fear I haven’t been clear enough, but that will have to suffice.
But she is not the problem…or rather, she would not be a problem were it not for others. She’d still be as I have described, but we wouldn’t know who she is and would not care, because she could do no damage. She’d just be anonymous human refuse.
No, the real problem is the fact that a majority of the 168 top GOP people voted for her. And now that has happened five times so they cannot claim they didn’t know what she was.
In spite of the fact that under her “leadership” the party has deliberately sabotaged the will of its base, has deliberately refused to challenge blatant election fraud, had gone out of its way to ensure certain candidates do not get nominated, has diverted donor money to namby-pamby candidates who have all the electoral appeal of a puddle of dog vomit…and in general has done nothing whatsoever to help fix the problems that plague America.
However that last is to be expected; I cannot expect anyone who IS the problem to help FIX the problem.
RINO McDaniel would be powerless without an entire party leadership of the same mind as her. They want this dismal performance; they want to ignore the party base.
If she were to drop dead this instant, it would solve nothing as someone just like her would be elected by those same pustulous people.
According to Charlie Kirk, about 55 people voted against her, 10-12 wanted something different but were too chickenshit to do the right thing, and roughly 100 people voted for her enthusiastically, and even had the unmitigated gall to complain to Kirk about US. Fuck ’em. Rusty 12 gauge bore brushes would be too good for these arrogant pricks and cunts.
Every single one of those hundred is just as bad as she is. In other words, they are all worse than I described at the beginning of this piece. And no doubt those people in turn have people who supported them to be state party chairs and whateveritis they call the other two people from each state and territory who were voting.
It’s time to face up to the fact that the Republican party is effectively owned by the shit-eating RINOs. We’ve got more work to do, a lot more work, to make the GOP an instrument for the restoration of the United States of America. And that’s in addition to cleaning up our elections.
There’s no point in cleaning up elections just to elect ratfucking RINOs.
OK, hopefully now you will have some inkling of my true attitude towards RINOs. Sorry that words were inadequate to give you the full picture.
The Real Fascist is His Fraudulency Joe Biden*
*Or whoever has his hand rammed up that meat puppet’s ass.
Brandon (which I will use as a term for whoever is the power behind the Porcelain Throne) has thrown down the gauntlet…but in a way where most of America will never see it. The networks didn’t carry his tirade. CNN air brushed it (or whatever you call editing the red background) for its five viewers (who aren’t trapped in airports).
Luckily for me I live in Colorado, and therefore, despite my best efforts, I probably didn’t vote for Donald Trump.
Of course, for this purpose who I actually did try to vote for will be essential, and they undoubtedly know.
The prior election must be acknowledged as fraudulent, and steps must be taken to prosecute the fraudsters and restore integrity to the system.
Nothing else matters at this point. Talking about trying again in 2022 or 2024 is hopeless otherwise. Which is not to say one must never talk about this, but rather that one must account for this in ones planning; if fixing the fraud is not part of the plan, you have no plan.
Small Government?
Many times conservatives (real and fake) speak of “small government” being the goal.
This sounds good, and mostly is good, but it misses the essential point. The important thing here isn’t the size, but rather the purpose, of government. We could have a cheap, small tyranny. After all our government spends most of its revenue on payments to individuals and foreign aid, neither of which is part of the tyrannical apparatus trying to keep us locked down and censored. What parts of the government would be necessary for a tyranny? It’d be a lot smaller than what we have now. We could shrink the government and nevertheless find it more tyrannical than it is today.
No, what we want is a limited government, limited not in size, but rather in scope. Limited, that is, in what it’s allowed to do. Under current circumstances, such a government would also be much smaller, but that’s a side effect. If we were in a World War II sort of war, an existential fight against nasty dictatorships on the brink of world conquest, that would be very expensive and would require a gargantuan government, but that would be what the government should be doing. That would be a large, but still limited government, since it’d be working to protect our rights.
World War II would have been the wrong time to squawk about “small government,” but it wasn’t (and never is) a bad time to demand limited government. Today would be a better time to ask for a small government–at least the job it should be doing is small today–but it misses the essential point; we want government to not do certain things. Many of those things we don’t want it doing are expensive but many of them are quite eminently doable by a smaller government than the one we have today. Small, but still exceeding proper limits.
So be careful what you ask for. You might get it and find you asked for the wrong thing.
Political Science In Summation
It’s really just a matter of people who can’t be happy unless they control others…versus those who want to be left alone. The oldest conflict within mankind. Government is necessary, but government attracts the assholes (a highly technical term for the control freaks).
A Few Things We Cannot Blame on His Fraudulency
I am pretty sure Joe Biden had nothing whatsoever to do with the 30 Years War that ran from 1618-1648 and probably killed about a third of the people then living in what is now Germany.
Nor did he cause the collapse of either Roman empire (Western, 476 CE, Eastern 1453 CE). Nor the ignominious failure of most of the Crusades. Nor the collapse of Bronze Age civilization around 1200 BCE (including the collapse of the Minoans and the blowup of Santorini).
However, my utter lack of ability to imagine how he could possibly be responsible for these things is not a valid argument against them, so I await correction if appropriate.
His Truth?
Again we saw an instance of “It might be true for Billy, but it’s not true for Bob” logic this week.
I hear this often, and it’s usually harmless. As when it’s describing differing circumstances, not different facts. “Housing is unaffordable” can be true for one person, but not for another who makes ten times as much.
But sometimes the speaker means it literally. Something like 2+2=4 is asserted to be true for Billy but not for Bob. (And when it’s literal, it’s usually Bob saying it.) And in that sense, it’s nonsense, dangerous nonsense. There is ONE reality, and it exists independent of our desires and our perceptions. It would go on existing if we weren’t here. We exist in it. It does not exist in our heads. It’s not a personal construct, and it isn’t a social construct. If there were no society, reality would continue to be what it is, it wouldn’t vanish…which it would have to do, if it were a social construct.
Now what can change from person to person is the perception of reality. We see that all the time. And people will, of course, act on those perceptions. They will vote for Trump (or try to) if their perception is close to mine, and vote against Trump (and certainly succeed at doing so) if their perception is distant from mine (and therefore, if I do say so, wrong). I have heard people say “perception is reality” and usually, that’s what they’re trying to say–your perception of reality is, as far as you know, an accurate representation of reality, or you’d change it.
But I really wish they’d say it differently. And sometimes, to get back to Billy and Bob, the person who says they have different truths is really saying they have different perceptions of reality–different worldviews. I can’t argue with the latter. But I sure wish they’d say it better. That way I’d know that someone who blabbers about two different truths is delusional and not worth my time, at least not until he passes kindergarten-level metaphysics on his umpteenth attempt.
Lawyer Appeasement Section
OK now for the fine print.
This is the WQTH Daily Thread. You know the drill. There’s no Poltical correctness, but civility is a requirement. There are Important Guidelines, here, with an addendum on 20191110.
We have a new board – called The U Tree – where people can take each other to the woodshed without fear of censorship or moderation.
And remember Wheatie’s Rules:
1. No food fights 2. No running with scissors. 3. If you bring snacks, bring enough for everyone. 4. Zeroth rule of gun safety: Don’t let the government get your guns. 5. Rule one of gun safety: The gun is always loaded. 5a. If you actually want the gun to be loaded, like because you’re checking out a bump in the night, then it’s empty. 6. Rule two of gun safety: Never point the gun at anything you’re not willing to destroy. 7. Rule three: Keep your finger off the trigger until ready to fire. 8. Rule the fourth: Be sure of your target and what is behind it.
Down, then up, and closing down again…but still a net increase for the week if you can stomach the roller coaster. On the other hand palladium is going like gangbusters! It went up 66 bucks on Friday alone.
One person here commented on the fact that it appears the gold price is being suppressed artificially, advocating for people to get into bitcoin.
I don’t see bitcoin as viable for the long term. There are two individuals who hold the lion’s share of the bitcoin, and I’d hate to see them decide to cash in and dump it. That ever present fear will probably dictate agaiinst it being a world standard (plus it’s way too volatile in any case). There’s even worse potential for manipulation here than there is with gold. At least in principle there are plenty of places to find more gold; it’s just not easy.
中国是个混蛋 !!! Zhōngguò shì gè hùndàn !!! China is asshoe !!!
China is in the White House
Since Wednesday, January 20 at Noon EST, the bought-and-paid for His Fraudulency Joseph Biden has been in the White House. It’s as good as having China in the Oval Office.
Joe Biden is Asshoe
China is in the White House, because Joe Biden is in the White House, and Joe Biden is identically equal to China. China is Asshoe. Therefore, Joe Biden is Asshoe.
But of course the much more important thing to realize:
Joe Biden Didn’t Win
乔*拜登没赢 !!! Qiáo Bài dēng méi yíng !!! Joe Biden didn’t win !!!
This Stormwatch Monday Open Thread remains open – VERY OPEN – a place for everybody to post whatever they feel they would like to tell the White Hats, and the rest of the MAGA/KAG/KMAG world (with KMAG being a bit of both).
Our various sister sites, listed in the Blogroll in the sidebar
Our beloved country is under Occupation by hostile forces.
Daily outrage and epic phuckery abound.
We can give in to despair…or we can be defiant and fight back in any way that we can.
Joe Biden didn’t win.
And we will keep saying Joe Biden didn’t win until we get His Fraudulency out of our White House.
Word of The Week:
frameshift
also known as
ribosomal frameshift
noun or verb
Ribosomal frameshifting, also known as translational frameshifting or translational recoding, is a biological phenomenon that occurs during translation that results in the production of multiple, unique proteins from a single mRNA.[1] The process can be programmed by the nucleotide sequence of the mRNA and is sometimes affected by the secondary, 3-dimensional mRNA structure.[2] It has been described mainly in viruses (especially retroviruses), retrotransposons and bacterial insertion elements, and also in some cellular genes.[3]
Imagine that you had a simple language where almost any possible combination of the letters actually meant something, and there’s almost no punctuation, so it’s really hard to see where sentences start and stop. But thankfully, all the words are the same length. You just read all the words as that length, and everything makes sense.
What frameshifting means, is you accidentally skip ahead or behind, and you’re off-track. Therefore, if you accidentally skip a letter or two, you can still keep reading words, and you’re reading a completely different story.
So you say “AHA – yes, there will be words, but it won’t make sense in combination. It will create right words that are nonsense in combination, like the text of really bad spam, so you’ll know that it’s not right.”
Exactly.
That’s what the body starts doing. Creating nonsense proteins. And just like spam, these spam proteins get sent around in your body anyway, firing up the immune system. Possibly firing up immunity against your own body, should important things in it look anything like the spam.
Used in a sentence
“If the frameshifting occurs anywhere near the end of the sequence (3’UTR) you will skip over the stop codons and read into human peptides. Spike-Human peptides present an autoimmunity risk.”
Music
Gotta have DRINKABY back in the mix!
OK – time for some LIVE Wheatie music.
Finishing this with a biggie – a fresh, recent performance by Patty Loveless, as she was inducted into the Country Music Hall of Fame.
Corrupt globalist science just got WAY out over its skis, trying to protect bad mRNA tech with Nobel Prizes.
And now the Oxford paper proving #SpamProteins shows us that the very tech being honored is fundamentally flawed, and is provably malfunctioning in the Pfizer vaccine. https://t.co/QdtSxHDYss
Here’s a biggie. Rich parent are storing eggs of transing daughters before they go on puberty blockers.
Well worth a listen, from 41 minutes on. Wealthy parents of young women who attempt to disown their sexed reality, are paying for their eggs to be harvested and preserved.
The gender industry is not about self expression, but about moving reproduction to the tech sector,… https://t.co/R0nqRh8R4I
Well worth a listen, from 41 minutes on. Wealthy parents of young women who attempt to disown their sexed reality, are paying for their eggs to be harvested and preserved. The gender industry is not about self expression, but about moving reproduction to the tech sector, toward a trans/post human paradigm. The celebration of dissociation from sexed reality has meaning. It is not just a derranged phenomenon.
What is it that feeds our battle, yet starves our victory?
Speaker Johnson: A Reminder.
January 6 tapes. A good start…but then nothing.
Were you just hoping we’d be distracted by the first set and not notice?
Are you THAT kind of “Republican”?
Are you Kevin McCarthy lite?
What are you waiting for?
I have a personal interest in this issue.
This Man is Pissed!
And if you aren’t…what the hell is wrong with you?
Is This Our Anthem?
Or at least our song to march to?
I’m sure most of you know I don’t believe in “devolution” or any variant of “we’re really still in charge” and certainly not the ones that come with “They’re waiting for everyone to wake up.”
No, I don’t think the good guys are in charge. But that makes it even more necessary that people wake up.
This might be the Uncle Tom’s Cabin of our age. (Or perhaps the recent trafficking movie was it. Or maybe both.)
Certainly there seem to be a huge number of people who are finally having the light bulb turning on when they hear this song.
Joining The Herd Of Lemmings
I’ve had cause to consider a few things. Maybe we’re going about it the wrong way, and we need to ditch Trump
Yeah, NO
Trump all the way! Why? Because being hated by the people who hate him is a sign of impeccable character, that’s why.
The haters can go fuck themselves with rusty twelve gauge bore brushes. I’d prefer ten gauge but that’s kind of scarce, so…I’m willing to compromise.
The RINO’s Dilemma
The RINOs who who have burrowed in and taken over most GOP organizations, from the state down to local organizations, have quite a dilemma on their hands, and most of them have their heads too far up their asses to realize it.
OK, I’m not talking about the liberal in a Republican area, who knows they’re in the wrong party, but is there because it’s the only game in their town; they hope to capture a nomination someday, at which point they’re guaranteed to be elected…otherwise, they never will be. These people are a hazard in any heavily conservative area.
No, I’m talking about the guys who are a little bit conservative and want to do some good by going into politics, and they’re in a closely matched area, closely enough that they can join the party they are most aligned with and still have a chance. They think the Democrats…particularly the ones who end up running for office…are nuts.
They don’t think much better of the Deplorable types, either. A bunch of bumpkins whose hearts are in the right place, mostly…OK a bit extreme. But they think Deplorables can’t understand that first you have to get elected, then work within the system to change things…a slow process. They genuinely want many of the things Deplorables want…just not as much. The government is spending too much. Or they need to spend money on highways instead of welfare for illegal immigrants. But they want to work within the system to get these things done.
Or maybe they think things are pretty close to ideal right now, and they want to nail it in place.
The problem is, that means they don’t stand for anything in particular. And it shows. They’re about as unappetizing to the electorate as a puddle of dog vomit. The folks in the middle, who they think they are appealing to because they themselves are not extreme, would honestly prefer a clear-spoken radical to someone who qualifies everything they say to the point where they sound like they don’t believe anything at all.
The problem these “Mild RINOs” have, is they just can’t see that. And the reason they just can’t see that, is their entire sense of self-worth is tied up in not seeing that. In their minds, they’ve worked tirelessly for their party, to keep those crazy Democrats out…only to have to constantly fight with a small number of crazy Republicans–who are only liabilities if they end up as candidates. They’ve fought the good fight, and if they can just find the right candidate, someone with some charisma, they might stop the crazies…without being too beholden to the OTHER crazies. In the meantime it’s not working. What’s a responsible guy in politics to do?
They simply cannot understand that the Republicans can’t succeed as the party of nothing in particular. Not really in the past, and certainly not today when people are starting to realize that no matter what they do in the voting booth, the country is still about to fly off a precipice. If they did see it, they’d suddenly have two choices: Go away and let the GOP succeed, or stay and fight. But “go away” isn’t really an option, because what’s the point of having a party now owned by the crazies, win?
Well, they have a dilemma…and WE, therefore have a problem. And we would have that problem even IF they realized that they had a problem…that they were the problem.
No one ever thinks they are the bad guy. Even Epstein probably thought he was the good guy. Right up to the moment where he didn’t kill himself.
So if you ever wonder why these unappetizing dufuses cling on even when their fingernails are being left behind…that’s why. They don’t understand no one wants them, and can’t imagine that no one should want them. And oftentimes their greatest pride is in all the hard work they’ve done for the party. They’re not going to give that up; it’d be psychological suicide.
If you’ve worked with these people, there’s a good chance you like them and consider some of them your friends. But even if so…we’re going to have to give them a good, hard shove. Because America is more important than those milquetoasts’ egos.
Justice Must Be Done
The prior election must be acknowledged as fraudulent, and steps must be taken to prosecute the fraudsters and restore integrity to the system.
Nothing else matters at this point. Talking about trying again in 2022 or 2024 is hopeless otherwise. Which is not to say one must never talk about this, but rather that one must account for this in ones planning; if fixing the fraud is not part of the plan, you have no plan.
Lawyer Appeasement Section
OK now for the fine print.
This is the WQTH Daily Thread. You know the drill. There’s no Poltical correctness, but civility is a requirement. There are Important Guidelines, here, with an addendum on 20191110.
We have a new board – called The U Tree – where people can take each other to the woodshed without fear of censorship or moderation.
And remember Wheatie’s Rules:
1. No food fights 2. No running with scissors. 3. If you bring snacks, bring enough for everyone. 4. Zeroth rule of gun safety: Don’t let the government get your guns. 5. Rule one of gun safety: The gun is always loaded. 5a. If you actually want the gun to be loaded, like because you’re checking out a bump in the night, then it’s empty. 6. Rule two of gun safety: Never point the gun at anything you’re not willing to destroy. 7. Rule three: Keep your finger off the trigger until ready to fire. 8. Rule the fourth: Be sure of your target and what is behind it.
Gold went on a really wild ride this week. It broke through $2100 in early trading Monday, before closing down that day. It seemed to be settling in at $2,025 or so but today it took almost a $24 hit. That’s not unusual for Fridays. If you have a big enough position that you don’t get eaten alive on the spread (which for us mortals is a lot more than the dollar an ounce that Kitco indicates), you could probably make money just by selling gold early each Friday and then buying it back late in the day. Sometimes you’d lose, but usually you’d win.
Palladium continues its long term drop; while rhodium seems to have found a new level…quite a bit lower than $30K. Silver took a large hit (almost 10 percent) this week.
Another Voice On Rocketry and Orbits
A while ago I did a series on orbital mechanics. I just discovered this channel on YouTube where the difference between “in space” and “in orbit” are explained; why “zero g” or “freefall” or “microgravity” is not the same as “no gravity” and so on. His visuals make a lot of things I tried to get at, very clear.
His channel has a lot of other material, too, largely on current technology in rocketry. (I know he reminded me of a few things I had forgotten over the last 30 years.) Highly recommended to anyone with an interest in the topic.
Fuck Joe B*d*n
Due to complaints about foul language, I’ve censored the most objectionable word in the title of this section.
B*d*n, you don’t even get ONE scoop of ice cream today.
(Please post this somewhere permanent, as it will continue to be true; the SOB will never deserve a scoop.)
Obligatory PSAs and Reminders
China is Lower than Whale Shit
Remember Hong Kong!!!
中国是个混蛋 !!! Zhōngguò shì gè hùndàn !!! China is asshoe !!!
China is in the White House
Since Wednesday, January 20 at Noon EST, the bought-and-paid for His Fraudulency Joseph Biden has been in the White House. It’s as good as having China in the Oval Office.
Joe Biden is Asshoe
China is in the White House, because Joe Biden is in the White House, and Joe Biden is identically equal to China. China is Asshoe. Therefore, Joe Biden is Asshoe.
But of course the much more important thing to realize:
Joe Biden Didn’t Win
乔*拜登没赢 !!! Qiáo Bài dēng méi yíng !!! Joe Biden didn’t win !!!
This is a Wolf Moon Emergency Wednesday Post. You ain’t gonna get the usual stuff.
This is a perfect opportunity for me to address this whole question of QAnon, Trump, “a pause” and the existence/nonexistence thereof, “The Plan”, etc.
Try to imagine a continuum of infinite dimensions (that would be reality per se) but let’s watch it progress in one particular dimension (“time”) with all possible states moving forward.
The socialists have a vision for how this should happen. The forces who backed Trump have a different vision. Blah blah blah. You all know all this stuff.
The Trump years (2016-2020) were obviously characterized by the leftists, globalists and their allies doing everything in their power to resist movement in a Trump direction (“America First”), but also by a lot of great things happening, and our learning the REALITY of how they actually worked.
There are other agendas layered into that whole conflict, which have goals in different dimensions, but you understand that.
To me, “the pause” is code for Trump accepting his bogus electoral loss and ending the brief advance in an America First direction. Whether it was a mutual decision with the deep pro-Trump forces in the military and civilian government or not, Trump clearly didn’t have the stomach for a civil war. At some point, a decision was made somewhere, not to push “a return of honest government” any harder than they did. It probably would have turned into something that only the evil would have benefited from, IMO.
Yet you will notice what 3-4 years has bought us – a new position – wiser, savvier (IMO), and with massive discreditation of the opposition. The enemy at the highest levels has had to openly call for assassination of Donald Trump, through the evil Kagan, husband of the evil Nuland, and clearly connected to the highly discredited CIA. They’re that beside themselves.
I am one who has no problem maintaining long-term realistic optimism against extreme short-term negative realism (I don’t use the term pessimism, because it tends to be unreasonable). Time is the gift from God that allows a gradient of wonder to be created. He sees it, and it is good – by definition. Accepting the GIFT of time is not a problem for me.
I have FAITH in our MOVEMENT toward increasing TRUTH and defined (though sometimes conflicting and ill-defined) GOOD. I hope that you do, as well.
I believe that Q provided helpful guideposts for us, from the viewpoint of a small group within the military which has an excellent understanding of the big picture. They are not so much in control, as in understanding of controlling things. They do have control of certain things I choose not to talk about, though the other side looks desperately for them, and that is why I choose not to talk about these things. But most of the things the Q folks seem to have, are understandings of what is inevitable, and what is not. Some of that is reflected in the Q posts.
Think of a big chess game, with two players following rules. Add many, many players, add even more rules, and add possibilities to cheat, but also add emergent realities that cannot be cheated.
THAT is the game in play. THAT is the level of “control” that people have. And for the very smart people behind Q, that level of “control” is more than enough to taunt the enemy, to encourage down-hearted people on our side, and to give oxygen to our movement.
Yes, there was a kind of pause – we all know it. The advance under Trump has been “paused” by conceding our righteous turn, to a horrible administration called “46”, which came between 45 and 47.
I am not afraid to have faith in what comes next. ALL of those infinite possibilities in those infinite dimensions, advancing in that one dimension called time, are fine with me – precisely because of my faith in God.
I hope that all of you find, strengthen, and renew that faith. God bless you all!
This Stormwatch Monday Open Thread remains open – VERY OPEN – a place for everybody to post whatever they feel they would like to tell the White Hats, and the rest of the MAGA/KAG/KMAG world (with KMAG being a bit of both).
Our various sister sites, listed in the Blogroll in the sidebar
Our beloved country is under Occupation by hostile forces.
Daily outrage and epic phuckery abound.
We can give in to despair…or we can be defiant and fight back in any way that we can.
Joe Biden didn’t win.
And we will keep saying Joe Biden didn’t win until we get His Fraudulency out of our White House.
Word of The Week:
adze
noun or verb
A cutting tool that has a curved blade set at a right angle to the handle and is used in shaping wood.
An edge tool used to cut and shape wood.
A digging tool used like both an ax and a hoe.
To use an adze in the above manners.
Longer description
An adze or adz is an ancient and versatile cutting tool similar to an axe but with the cutting edge perpendicular to the handle rather than parallel. Adzes have been used since the Stone Age. They are used for smoothing or carving wood in hand woodworking, and as a hoe for agriculture and horticulture.
Used in a sentence
When a HOE, rake, pick or ax isn’t quite right for a job, consider the trusty adze.
Used in another tool (a mattock with the adze side down)
Music
It’s good to have some music back!
Let’s start off with some classic modern country from Mr. Nicole Kidman…..
From there, just add more Hollywood Country – yes, very country establishment, but still quite listenable.
Let’s try some ancient Fleetwood Mac!
Can’t have a Monday Wolf post without at least one “fiddle chick” – here’s a new one!
Here’s a nice relaxing song – haven’t heard from these gals in a while.
OK, lets finish with BACKWARDS BLUEGRASS. Extra RARE!
And now THE STUFF!
And yes…..
So – Titan instead of Mars? Call me skeptical.
How about some weird American accents?
Want to understand that whole DNA in the vaccines thing?
Einstein slept nearly 10 hours a day. He valued the significance of quality sleep for maintaining his well-being. His sleep routine, though, was out of the ordinary. He regularly indulged in brief daytime naps, occasionally more than once a day. These quick naps, lasting just a… pic.twitter.com/ALt4h5Yk5Y
Einstein slept nearly 10 hours a day. He valued the significance of quality sleep for maintaining his well-being. His sleep routine, though, was out of the ordinary.
He regularly indulged in brief daytime naps, occasionally more than once a day. These quick naps, lasting just a few minutes, were thought by Einstein to revitalize his mental energy and creative thinking.
He felt that these short periods of rest gave him a renewed viewpoint to solve intricate scientific challenges.
Nice scientific opinion…..
Most people don’t spend a lot of time thinking about poetry, right? They have a life to live and they’re not really that concerned with Allen Ginsberg’s poems or anybody’s poems until their father dies. They go to a funeral, you lose a child, somebody breaks your heart. They… pic.twitter.com/K0N0KmOa2g
Most people don’t spend a lot of time thinking about poetry, right? They have a life to live and they’re not really that concerned with Allen Ginsberg’s poems or anybody’s poems until their father dies. They go to a funeral, you lose a child, somebody breaks your heart. They don’t love you anymore. And all of a sudden you’re desperate for making sense out of this life. And has anybody ever felt this bad before? How did they come out of this cloud? Or the inverse; something great. You meet somebody and your heart explodes. You love them so much you can’t even see straight. You know, you’re dizzy. Did anybody feel like this? What is happening to me? And that’s when art’s not a luxury. It’s actually sustenance. We need it.
What is it that feeds our battle, yet starves our victory?
January 6 Tapes Reminder
After the first release, we were supposed to get more, every week.
As far as I know it hasn’t happened.
Speaker Johnson, please follow through!
24/7, to piss on your grave. Then there will be a latrine erected there so people can make, shall we say, more substantial commentary.
A Caution
Just remember…we might replace the RINO candidates. (Or we might not. The record is mixed even though there is more MAGA than there used to be.) But that will make no difference in the long run if the party officials, basically the Rhonna McDaniels (or however that’s spelled–I suspect it’s RINO), don’t get replaced.
State party chairs, vice chairs, secretaries and so on, and the same at county levels, have huge influence on who ultimately gets nominated, and if these party wheelhorses are RINOs, they will work tirelessly to put their own pukey people on the ballot. In fact I’d not be surprised if some of our “MAGA” candidates are in fact, RINO plants, encouraged to run by the RINO party leadership when they realized that Lyn Cheney (and her ilk) were hopelessly compromised as effective candidates. The best way for them to deal with the opposition, of course, is to run it themselves.
Running good candidates is only HALF of the battle!
SPECIAL SECTION: Message For Our “Friends” In The Middle Kingdom
I normally save this for near the end, but…basically…up your shit-kicking barbarian asses. Yes, barbarian! It took a bunch of sailors in Western Asia to invent a real alphabet instead of badly drawn cartoons to write with. So much for your “civilization.”
Yeah, the WORLD noticed you had to borrow the Latin alphabet to make Pinyin. Like with every other idea you had to steal from us “Foreign Devils” since you rammed your heads up your asses five centuries ago, you sure managed to bastardize it badly in the process.
Have you stopped eating bats yet? Are you shit-kickers still sleeping with farm animals?
Or maybe even just had the slightest inkling of treating lives as something you don’t just casually dispose of?
中国是个混蛋 !!! Zhōngguò shì gè hùndàn !!! China is asshoe !!!
And here’s my response to barbarian “asshoes” like you:
OK, with that rant out of my system…
Biden Gives Us Too Much Credit
…we can move on to the next one.
Apparently Biden (or his puppeteer) has decided we’re to blame for all of the fail in the United States today.
Sorry to disappoint you Joe (or whoever), but you managed to do that all on your own; not only that, you wouldn’t let us NOT give you the chance because you insisted on cheating your way into power.
Yep, you-all are incompetent, and so proud of it you expect our applause for your sincerity. Fuck that!!
It wouldn’t be so bad, but you insist that everyone else have to share in your misery. Nope, can’t have anyone get out from under it. Somehow your grand vision only works if every single other person on earth is forced to go along. So much as ONE PERSON not going along is enough to make it all fail, apparently.
In engineering school we’re taught that a design that has seven to eight billion single points of failure…sucks.
Actually, we weren’t taught that. Because it would never have occurred to the professors to use such a ridiculous example.
Justice Must Be Done.
The prior election must be acknowledged as fraudulent, and steps must be taken to prosecute the fraudsters and restore integrity to the system.
Nothing else matters at this point. Talking about trying again in 2022 or 2024 is hopeless otherwise. Which is not to say one must never talk about this, but rather that one must account for this in ones planning; if fixing the fraud is not part of the plan, you have no plan.
Kamala Harris has a new nickname since she finally went west from DC to El Paso Texas: Westward Hoe.
Lawyer Appeasement Section
OK now for the fine print.
This is the WQTH Daily Thread. You know the drill. There’s no Poltical correctness, but civility is a requirement. There are Important Guidelines, here, with an addendum on 20191110.
We have a new board – called The U Tree – where people can take each other to the woodshed without fear of censorship or moderation.
And remember Wheatie’s Rules:
1. No food fights 2. No running with scissors. 3. If you bring snacks, bring enough for everyone. 4. Zeroth rule of gun safety: Don’t let the government get your guns. 5. Rule one of gun safety: The gun is always loaded. 5a. If you actually want the gun to be loaded, like because you’re checking out a bump in the night, then it’s empty. 6. Rule two of gun safety: Never point the gun at anything you’re not willing to destroy. 7. Rule three: Keep your finger off the trigger until ready to fire. 8. Rule the fourth: Be sure of your target and what is behind it.
(Hmm a few extras seem to have crept in.)
Spot Prices
All prices are Kitco Ask, 3PM MT Friday (at that time the markets close for the weekend). (Note: most media quotes are for the bid…the price paid by the market makers, not the ask, which is what they will sell at. I figure the ask is more relevant to people like us who wish we could afford to buy these things. In the case of gold the difference is usually about a dollar, for the PGMs the spread is much wider.)
This is a record high close for gold. It jumped up $35 on Friday. I do not know what the absolute high point was, earlier in the day, other than it was around $2,075. Many analysts expect a sustained push beyond $2,100. Meanwhile palladium’s slow decline continues. Silver is climbing (but nowhere near its 1980 high of roughly $50, even without adjusting for inflation). Platinum seems stable.
How We Know What Classical Latin Sounded Like
I stated earlier this week, as a side note to something else, that the Latin of Julius Caesar sounded a bit different from the Latin spoken by the Catholic Church (i.e., the one headquartered within Rome). We don’t know everything, exactly, but we do know a lot.
I got some pushback, and some arguments that demonstrated that some people simply don’t believe (or don’t understand the consequences of) the fact that languages change over time, especially when there are no audio recordings.
People are right to not simply take my word for it though, so I’ll bring some of the reasoning.
It at first seems a daunting task to reconstruct the sounds of a language when there were no audio recordings. (Well, I suppose if aliens have been watching us for millennia, there might be. Just the thought of that is enough to make historical linguists drool.)
Historical Linguistics (sometimes called diachronic linguistics) is the study of language change over time. (It is a science, albeit a rather “soft” one, so I expect and hope Wolf will be filing this in the sidebar.) This means it’s concerned with how one language changes over time, and the process by which one widespread language splits into multiple languages.
A good, down-home example of the former is the changes that English has gone through since the Germanic invasions and settlement of Britain in (roughly) 500 CE. And the change is considerable. Our founding fathers’ writing patterns seem quaint but we usually have no trouble understanding them (except for those times we only think we understand them…fortunately those don’t arise much in the documents). Shakespeare is notably harder to deal with. The King James Bible translation was made in Shakespeare’s day, and deliberately had some archaic language in it for gravitas, and it gets more difficult. Not only old words, but sometimes a word we use today meant something different back then and we get tripped up. The moral of that story: over generations words can shift meanings. But there’s more. In the couple of centuries before Shakespeare, and even during Shakespeare’s day, we underwent something called the “Great Vowel Shift” where the sounds of the vowels all changed, over the span of less than a century. I…formerly pronounced like the i in machine, but with a little more duration (making it “long”), became pronounced like aye. (And we still call it “long I” even though it’s not actually long in duration.) Meet, meat, and the middle e in serene changed from sounding like today’s e in bet, or an Italian e, to sounding like I used to sound. The a in mate used to be a long-in-duration ah, and sounds…well like it sounds today…a combination of former e and i called a diphthong. These are vowels that are pronounced in the front of the mouth with the tongue at different heights, and they all shifted up one place once “i” became “eye.” Curiously this happened mostly to our “long” vowels. Instead of just being the same as the short vowels, only pronounced for twice as long, they shifted.
Other similar changes upward happened with o and u (which are pronounced in the back of the mouth.
If you’ve ever taken Spanish, you’ve noticed that a, e, i, o, and u are pronounced quite differently than in English, and you may have thought it a bit weird. It turns out Spanish is much closer to the original pronunciations; we’re the weird ones. We used to have more Spanish-like pronunciations (though we sometimes lengthened a vowel). Then we spent 1400-1700 bodging all this, and making our own spelling hard for us and completely incomprehensible for others.
And the International Phonetic Alphabet actually goes with the older usages. I like machine. e like the Italian e (which we don’t have any more and fake with the day diphthong), a like in father (and never like in day), u as in fool, and o sort-of as in vote. (Another diphthong used to fake a pure sound we don’t have any more.) The e in bet is actually a different sound represented in the IPA with ε. (Linguists usually write actual sound values like this: /i/ to distinguish them from some language’s letter I which might mean something totally different.)
So…sounds can change with time, too.
And languages can split. Most famous here is Latin, splitting into Italian, Spanish, French, Portuguese, Romanian, and a whole host of other languages that don’t happen to share the names of countries. And within each of these, very distinctive dialects that are sometimes different enough that it’s debatable whether it’s the same language any more. It’s actually a gradient. The local language spoken in Marseille (as opposed to the Parisian French in the schools) isn’t terribly different from the tongue spoken in nearby parts of Italy…or the tongue spoken in northwestern Spain. They’re geographically close, but in all three places a faraway capital imposes a “standard” language, and those standard languages differ far more (especially French, which has undergone some serious pronunciation changes).
In this case every local group’s language has slowly shifted, in slightly different directions, until they’re quite separate, and it’s hard to understand other languages (the further away, the worse), if it can be done at all.
Some languages change more than others; historical linguists love finding a language that is “conservative” meaning it hasn’t changed too much. The Baltic languages (Latvian and Lithuanian) apparently haven’t changed much; neither has Icelandic (the other Scandinavian tongues have changed a lot more).
Okay…so there’s some examples.
Latin, of course, was originally spoken in Latium, the region around Rome in Italy.
Latium is now called “Lazio” which just goes to make the point about changes. This is one that in hindsight is no surprise. /t/ before /i/ tends to become /ts/ (spelled z in Italian). Why? Because people are lazy and start to slur their words, eventually the slur becomes normal. If the process were to continue, the /t/ might disappear entirely leaving just /si/. This has been seen under so many different occasions world wide that now if we have two related languages and one has /ti/ where the other has /tsi/ or even /si/ we know the second language is the one that changed.
Sometimes, though, you have just one language and since not all possible changes will actually happen (otherwise Latin would never have split up, just changed the same everywhere), it can be hard to figure out what the original sound was.
But with Latin we have multiple descendant languages. And we have something else; we have writings in other languages, trying to render Latin words.
For instance we have the Greek spellings of Latin words. And in this case, without fail, the Greeks rendered Latin “C” with Greek “Κ” (kappa). Kappa is never pronounced as anything other than /k/. Never /s/ and never /tʃ/ (our ch). Now one might say that the Greeks don’t have a /tʃ/ sound so they might have faked it with kappa, but that’s very doubtful. /tʃ/ is pronounced in the front of the mouth, /k/ in the back. The Greeks would have likely faked /tʃ/ with tau and sigma: τς or τσ, not with some sound from the back of the mouth. They don’t have a match for ʃ (sh) at all, but /s/ is pronounced in almost the same place.
Thus “vici” was pronounced with a hard /k/, as was Caesar, and Cicero. We also have Roman authors asking why on earth they don’t just get rid of the letter K since it’s pronounced just like C. (It’s a part of the Latin alphabet but rarely used; kalends is probably the most common Latin word I see with that K. Kyrie is borrowed from the Greek.)
OK, so now onto the other bone of contention, the V.
We again have Greeks rendering Roman words with the v in them, and again without failure, it’s never with the letter the Greeks use for v (more on that below). For example Valerius (a commonly used name) is rendered in Greek as Ουαλεριος (Oualerios). The Greeks didn’t (and still don’t) have /w/, but /Ου/ was pronounced /u/ and that’s very, very close, in a diphthong it is basically a /w/. We can tell when V changed from /w/ to /v/ though, because later Greek inscriptions rendered ‘Valerius’ as Βαλεριος, starting with the Greek letter beta.
Beta (Β, β) has been pronounced like /v/ not /b/, since about 200 BCE and is still /v/ today. (If Greeks want to spell the /b/ sound today, they use μπ.) /b/ and /v/, note, are both pronounced in the front of the mouth, one is a stop and the other is a fricative. If you pronounce the sounds and pay attention to what your mouth and lips are doing, you’ll see what I mean.
And this is why Cyrillic В is a /v/; Cyrillic was based on Greek in the 9th century, well after that shift happened. Cyrus and Methodius were aware of the old pronunciation, so /b/ is represented with a variant shape, Б, right before В in the Cyrillic alphabet.
Now as to the point of why Eccesiastical (Church) Latin sounds so much like Italian today (used as an argument for it not having changed at all), the reason it sounds so much like Italian, is because it is largely Italians who have been using it. The Church is based in Rome; they’re surrounded by Italians, most of the staff are Italians, and in fact even today 49 out of 241 cardinals are Italians. As Italian changed into its present form, the “frozen” Latin from the early centuries of the Church changed its pronunciation (the one thing not preserved in writing) to match. Grammar and vocubulary (as spelled) did not change, because it was preserved in writing.
Bonus video:
An American, fluent in Latin, using the classical pronunciation (wenee, weedi, weeky) in Rome. You can see it’s a bit of a struggle but they eventually get it.
And again at the Colosseum. I haven’t watched this one like I have the others, but if he’s really asking where the Flavian Amphitheater is, they’re entitled to ask him if he’s fricking blind. (The Flavian Amphitheater is what the Romans called the Colosseum.):
A more open experiment: I believe in this case he actually asked the Romans to try the experiment of speaking in Latin. Some things are easy, some things they couldn’t get:
And going to the Vatican. This time he used the Ecclesiastical pronunciation (vennee, veedee, veechee) which is how they’re used to it. Still, few people there claimed fluency:
OK with that out of the way it’s time to discuss asshoes.
Obligatory PSAs and Reminders
China is Lower than Whale Shit
Remember Hong Kong!!!
中国是个混蛋 !!! Zhōngguò shì gè hùndàn !!! China is asshoe !!!
China is in the White House
Since Wednesday, January 20 at Noon EST, the bought-and-paid for His Fraudulency Joseph Biden has been in the White House. It’s as good as having China in the Oval Office.
Joe Biden is Asshoe
China is in the White House, because Joe Biden is in the White House, and Joe Biden is identically equal to China. China is Asshoe. Therefore, Joe Biden is Asshoe.
But of course the much more important thing to realize:
Joe Biden Didn’t Win
乔*拜登没赢 !!! Qiáo Bài dēng méi yíng !!! Joe Biden didn’t win !!!
Well this is the week my old McCarthy vs. Dungsmear question would have repeated.
We know the answer. Dungsmear.
But now let’s talk about RINOs in general, and why they are the lowest form of life in politics.
Many patriots have been involved with politics, often at the grassroots, for decades. We’ve fought, and fought, and fought and won the occasional illusory small victory.
Yet we can’t seem to win the war, even when we have BIG electoral wins.
I am reminded of something. The original Star Trek had an episode titled Day of the Dove. It was one of the better episodes from the third season, but any fan of the original series will tell you that’s a very low bar. Still, it seems to get some respect; at a time when there were about 700 episodes of Star Trek in its various incarnations out there, it was voted 99th best out of the top 100.
In sum, the plot is that an alien entity has arranged for 39 Enterprise crew, and 39 Klingons, to fight each other endlessly with swords and other muscle-powered weapons. The entity lives off of hostile emotions, you see and it wants a captive food source. (The other 400 or so Enterprise crew are trapped below decks and unable to help.) Each side has its emotions played and amplified by the alien entity; one Enterprise junior officer has false memories implanted of a brother who was killed by Klingons. The brother didn’t even exist.
Even people killed in a sword fight miraculously heal so they can go do it again.
The second best line of the episode is when Kang, the Klingon captain, notes that though they have won quite a number of small victories including capturing Engineering, can’t seem to actually finally defeat the Enterprise crew. He growls, “What power is it that feeds our battle yet starves our victory?*”
Indeed. He may have been the bad guy, but his situation should sound familiar.
We are a majority in this country. We have a powerful political party in our corner. There is endless wrangling.
And yet,
What power is it that feeds our battle yet starves our victory?
In our case, that power is the RINOs in our midst. They specialize in caving when on the verge of victory. Think of Obamacare’s repeal failing…by one Republican vote. Think of the way we can never seem to get spending under control (and now our entire tax revenue goes to pay interest on the debt; anything the government actually does now is with borrowed money).
We have a party…that refuses to do what we want it to do, and that refusal is institutionalized. If you’ve been involved with GOP politics, but haven’t seen this, it’s because you refuse to see it. Or because you are part of the problem yourself. (If so, kindly gargle some red fuming nitric acid to clear the taste of shit out of your mouth, and let those not part of the problem alone so they can read this.)
We fight to elect people, who then take a dive when in office. But it’s not just the politicians in office, it’s the people behind the scenes, the leaders of the national, state and county branches of the party. Their job is to ensure that real patriots never get onto the general election ballot. They’re allowed a few failures…who can then become token conservatives who will somehow never manage to win (Jordan), or can be compromised outright (Loren Boebert).
That way it doesn’t actually matter who has a congressional majority. I remember my excitement when the GOP took the Senate in 1980. But all that did was empower a bunch of “moderate” puddles of dog vomit like…well for whatever reason forty years later the most memorable name is Pete Domenici. And a couple of dozen other “moderates” who simply had no interest in doing what grassroots people in their party–those same grassroots people who had worked so hard to elect them–wanted them to do.
Oh, they’ll put up a semblance of a fight…but never win. And they love it when we fight the Dems instead of fighting them. Just like that alien entity, whose motto surely was “Let’s you and him fight. It’ll be delicious!”
If you think about it, your entire political involvement has come to nothing because of these walking malignant tumors.
That should make you good and mad.
The twenty five who blocked Jordan, and the hundred people who took that opportunity to stab Jordan in the back in the secret ballot should make you good and mad.
I’ll close this with another example of RINO backstabbing, an infuriating one close to home.
In my county, the GOP chair is not a RINO. She got elected when the grassroots had had enough of the RINOs. Unfortunately the state organization is full of RINOs, and the ousted county RINOs have been trying to form a new “Republican Party” and get the state GOP to recognize them as the affiliate. I’m honestly amazed it hasn’t happened yet.
In other words those shitstains won’t just leave when they get booted out; they’ll try to destroy what they left behind. It’s an indication that they know we know how important that behind-the-scenes party power is.
So they must be destroyed. That’s the only way they’ll ever stop.
We cannot win until the leeches “on our side” get destroyed.
What power is it that feeds our battle yet starves our victory?*
We know it. What is going to be done about it?
*NOTE: The original line was actually “What power is it that supports our battle yet starves our victory.” I had mis-remembered it as feeds. When I checked it, it sure enough was “supports” and that’s what I originally quoted. On further reflection, though, I realized my memory was actually an improvement over the reality, because feeds is a perfect contrast with starves. I changed it partway through the day this originally posted, but now (since this is a re-run) it gets rendered this way from the start.
If one must do things wrong, one should do them wrong…right.
RINOs an Endangered Species? If Only!
According to Wikipoo, et. al., the Northern White Rhinoceros (Ceratotherium simum cottoni) is a critically endangered species. Apparently two females live on a wildlife preserve in Sudan, and no males are known to be alive. So basically, this species is dead as soon as the females die of old age. Presently they are watched over by armed guards 24/7.
Biologists have been trying to cross them with the other subspecies, Southern White Rhinoceroses (Rhinoceri?) without success; and some genetic analyses suggest that perhaps they aren’t two subspecies at all, but two distinct species, which would make the whole project a lot more difficult.
I should hope if the American RINO (Parasitus rectum pseudoconservativum) is ever this endangered, there will be heroic efforts not to save the species, but rather to push the remainder off a cliff. Onto punji sticks. With feces smeared on them. Failing that a good bath in red fuming nitric acid will do.
But I’m not done ranting about RINOs.
The RINOs (if they are capable of any introspection whatsoever) probably wonder why they constantly have to deal with “populist” eruptions like the Trump-led MAGA movement. That would be because the so-called populists stand for absolutely nothing except for going along to get along. That allows the Left to drive the culture and politics.
Given the results of our most recent elections, the Left will now push harder, and the RINOs will now turn even squishier than they were before.
I well remember 1989-1990 in my state when the RINO establishment started preaching the message that a conservative simply couldn’t win in Colorado. Never mind the fact that Reagan had won the state TWICE (in 1984 bringing in a veto-proof state house and senate with him) and GHWB had won after (falsely!) assuring everyone that a vote for him was a vote for Reagan’s third term.
This is how the RINOs function. They push, push, push the line that only a “moderate” can get elected. Stomp them when they pull that shit. Tell everyone in ear shot that that’s exactly what the Left wants you to think, and oh-by-the-way-Mister-RINO if you’re in this party selling the same message as the Left…well, whythefuckexactly are you in this party, you lying piece of rancid weasel shit?
In Defense of Ranked Choice Voting
One of the biggest obstacles to direly-needed change is RINOs, and one of the weapons in their arsenal is the “Wasted Vote” argument.
Periodically a third party has arisen, trying to hold RINOs to account by putting pressure on them from outside of the party, since doing so from the inside has historically done very little good. But, even if you find a third party candidate who perfectly reflects your views, you’re likely to vote for the RINO anyway. Why? Because if you don’t, the Democrat might win, and that would be even worse. So if you vote for that third party (that few will vote for), you’re throwing your vote away and increasing the likelihood of the Democrat winning. (It’s half as much a gain for the Democrat, as actually voting for the Democrat would be. Not as much, but half as much. Because although you denied the R your vote, you did not flip your vote to the Democrat.)
The Republican Party Establishment knows you don’t love them. But they know you hate the Democrats worse, and they use that to continue to herd you into supporting them. With gritted teeth you cast your vote, but your vote counts the same whether you cast it enthusiastically. And the other alternative, pissing on the voting apparatus to express your actual feelings, is probably a felony.
But what if you could vote for that third party without increasing the chances of the Dem walking away with the prize?
This is what ranked choice voting, or instant runoff voting, can do provided it is properly implemented. (And this includes the votes, and only genuine votes, being counted honestly, of course. However, I’m going to compare it to what we have today, and pretend that is honestly done too. RCV can’t work if it’s not honestly administered, just like our current system isn’t working because it isn’t honestly administered.)
The idea behind RCV is to vote by expressing your order of preference. You could vote for the Patriot Party, then for the RINO Party as your second choice (and ignore the Democrat, the Green, the Overt Socialist Schmuckmonkey Party, etc).
What does this do? It nullifies the wasted vote argument. Your vote will be counted for the Patriot party, first, then instead of it being “wasted” when the Patriot Party loses, it ends up going to the RINO. Actually, it’s just barely possible that the Patriot Party would actually beat the RINO, if people weren’t all individually afraid to vote for it.
It’s just like the famous “Prisoner’s Dilemma” where your fear of other peoples’ actions prevents you from doing the optimal thing–and vice-versa. As long as Job Lowe is afraid to vote Patriot because he’s afraid you’ll vote RINO, you’ll have to vote RINO because you fear that Job Lowe will, because he fears you will.
So on the whole I like RCV. It gives you a no-risk way to vote against the RINO scum, and in favor of someone who deserves your vote.
The problem is, as done here in the US, it comes packaged with a “jungle primary.” A bunch of candidates get to put their name out there, and the top four (or so) candidates get onto the “main” ballot. This gives party establishments their way around the threat of a good third party bumping them off. Because they know that few people bother with primaries, and third parties don’t have the resources to run in a primary…so they throw two or three establishment hacks into the primary and they will probably beat the third party. The result is the RINOs end up with two of the four slots in the general election, and the Dems get the other two. Now there’s suddenly no third party candidate on the ballot at all.
If we were to combine RCV with the present system where each party could nominate exactly one candidate to appear on the November ballot, or at the very least, ensure minor parties could get onto the ballot with at least one candidate regardless of the primary, we would be getting somewhere, but the establishment is smarter than we like to give them credit for. They will support the jungle primary + RCV “solution” rather than the more appropriate one-candidate-per-party + RCV solution.
It’s not RCV that is the problem, it’s the primary structure grafted onto it.
Justice
It says “Justice” on the picture.
And I’m sure someone will post the standard joke about what the fish thinks about the situation.
But what is it?
Here’s a take, from a different context: It’s about how you do justice, not the justice that must be done to our massively corrupt government and media. You must properly identify the nature of a person, before you can do him justice.
Ayn Rand, On Justice (speaking through her character John Galt, in Atlas Shrugged):
Justice is the recognition of the fact that you cannot fake the character of men as you cannot fake the character of nature, that you must judge all men as conscientiously as you judge inanimate objects, with the same respect for truth, with the same incorruptible vision, by as pure and as rational a process of identification—that every man must be judged for what he is and treated accordingly, that just as you do not pay a higher price for a rusty chunk of scrap than for a piece of shining metal, so you do not value a rotter above a hero—that your moral appraisal is the coin paying men for their virtues or vices, and this payment demands of you as scrupulous an honor as you bring to financial transactions—that to withhold your contempt from men’s vices is an act of moral counterfeiting, and to withhold your admiration from their virtues is an act of moral embezzlement—that to place any other concern higher than justice is to devaluate your moral currency and defraud the good in favor of the evil, since only the good can lose by a default of justice and only the evil can profit—and that the bottom of the pit at the end of that road, the act of moral bankruptcy, is to punish men for their virtues and reward them for their vices, that that is the collapse to full depravity, the Black Mass of the worship of death, the dedication of your consciousness to the destruction of existence.
Ayn Rand identified seven virtues, chief among them rationality. The other six, including justice, she considered subsidiary because they are essentially different aspects and applications of rationality.
I’m sure enough of this that I put my money where my mouth is.
The prior election must be acknowledged as fraudulent, and steps must be taken to prosecute the fraudsters and restore integrity to the system. (This doesn’t necessarily include deposing Joe and Hoe and putting Trump where he belongs, but it would certainly be a lot easier to fix our broken electoral system with the right people in charge.)
Nothing else matters at this point. Talking about trying again in 2024 or 2026 is pointless otherwise. Which is not to say one must never talk about this, but rather that one must account for this in ones planning; if fixing the fraud in the system is not part of the plan, you have no plan.
This will necessarily be piecemeal, state by state, which is why I am encouraged by those states working to change their laws to alleviate the fraud both via computer and via bogus voters. If enough states do that we might end up with a working majority in Congress and that would be something Trump never really had.
Lawyer Appeasement Section
OK now for the fine print.
This is the WQTH Daily Thread. You know the drill. There’s no Poltical correctness, but civility is a requirement. There are Important Guidelines, here, with an addendum on 20191110.
We have a new board – called The U Tree – where people can take each other to the woodshed without fear of censorship or moderation.
And remember Wheatie’s Rules:
1. No food fights 2. No running with scissors. 3. If you bring snacks, bring enough for everyone. 4. Zeroth rule of gun safety: Don’t let the government get your guns. 5. Rule one of gun safety: The gun is always loaded. 5a. If you actually want the gun to be loaded, like because you’re checking out a bump in the night, then it’s empty. 6. Rule two of gun safety: Never point the gun at anything you’re not willing to destroy. 7. Rule three: Keep your finger off the trigger until ready to fire. 8. Rule the fourth: Be sure of your target and what is behind it.
Markets appeared to have closed at 11:45 on Friday, rather than 3 PM mountain time.
Silver is doing very well right now for some reason, it has busted $24.
Some people who analyze this stuff online are puzzled at gold’s recent climb, so it’s possible it’s being pumped and dumped.
Star Trek Was Often Clueless
As gigantic a leap ahead as Star Trek might have represented for TV science fiction (I don’t think it was beaten for almost 30 years, and that was by Babylon 5) it still had its forehead-smacking moments when it comes to the science.
Yes science fiction is considered by many to be arbitrary flights of fancy, but the fact is, when it is written science fiction, there are conventions to be followed. It should at least display an understanding of natural laws. This is even honored in the breach. By which I mean that oftentimes, the premise of the story involves a new scientific discovery, so of course there will be violations of current scientific principles. But the point is that everyone understands it’s a new thing–and the “new” science has to be internally consistent.
By no means is all, or even a majority, of science fiction about space travel, but when it is (especially in the sub-genre called “space opera”), it almost certainly will assume that some sort of faster-than-light travel is possible. Either there will be some sort of propulsion system that does it, or there will be some sort of wormhole or jump point, where you instantaneously jump from one star’s planetary system to another. (The wormhole is infinite speed, effectively…travel time involves getting to (or from) the wormhole, from (or to) some nearby planet or other location the action is going to be.)
Star Trek went with the former. A lot of other Hollywood produced stuff went the other way, or with some combination. It saves them from some opportunities to really be stupid.
In general, Hollywood doesn’t follow the convention I mentioned above; it regularly has ridiculous science howlers in it. The scriptwriters came nowhere near a STEM education and are a) clueless and b) usually don’t give a rip.
In particular, every single Hollywood production I am aware of that uses propulsion systems for faster than light travel simply doesn’t do the math and has no conception of what they’re dealing with. They don’t understand how fast light goes, and they don’t understand how big things are.
And that includes Star Trek.
When I remembered that bit about “What is it that feeds our battle yet starves our victory” I blew the dust off my original Star Trek Blurays and watched that episode. Then I got sucked in; I’ve been lightly binge watching Star Trek (the Original Series, as it’s now referred to to disambiguate it from all of the spinoffs) since then. And it’s just appalling sometimes, on this score (but it must be said the main goal was to tell good stories, which it was much more successful at).OK so first things first. Let me explain the actual situation.
Let’s discuss interplanetary travel first.
The distance between the Earth and the Sun averages out to about 93 million miles or 150 million kilometers. For historical reasons I’m not getting into now (but did in other posts), this is called an astronomical unit (AU) and is the “yardstick” we use inside the solar system. We in fact used it for a yardstick long before we had any idea how much it was…because we knew the ratios of planetary distances long ago. We knew, for instance that Jupiter was 5.2 times the distance from the Sun as is Earth, long before we knew how much in absolute terms either of those distances was. Today. of course, we’ve measured an AU to within a few hundred meters, and as of 2012 it’s now defined to be exactly 149,597,870,700 meters. (If we end up refining the measurement, we’ll end up with an AU not quite equaling the distance between the Earth and the Sun, because we’ve nailed the number in place.)
The furthest planet out is Neptune; its orbit is almost exactly 30 AU in radius. There are a lot of smaller objects further out; the furthest one that’s reasonably well known to science popularizers is Sedna. It’s in a very elliptical orbit with an average radius of 484 AU, with a maximum distance of 892. (It’s much much closer right now). Another body, Leleakuhonua, is at 1085 AU average distance, max is 2106 AU. It too is near its closest approach of “only” 65 AU. Right now it’s roughly 80 AU away. (We would never be able to see either body if it were at its furthest distance. This tells us there are almost certainly many bodies way out there, at or near the farthest extents of their orbits, that we can’t see.)
When we do start traveling between the planets of our solar system in earnest, we’ll probably spend most of our time inside the orbit of Neptune, or perhaps a bit outside it where Pluto is, but places further out than where Sedna is today, will be lengthy undertakings–expeditions.
What sorts of speeds will be needed? We’ll certainly want to move faster than the planets themselves do! The Earth moves 6.28 AUs in one year (i.e, 1 AU times 2π or times τ if you like using τ instead of π), or roughly an AU every two months. It’s moving at 29,785 meters per second or 107,230 kilometers per hour. If that’s as fast as we travel, Neptune is roughly five years away, one way. (And Earth moves a lot faster than Neptune does.) If you are thinking 5 weeks to Neptune is what people would put up with (similar to oceangoing ships crossing oceans), you need to be able to move 52 times faster, or at over 5 million kilometers an hour.
That, as it happens, is about one half of one percent of the speed of light, which is roughly a billion kilometers an hour. This is way, way ahead of anything we can do now, but much slower than light speed. And though it would require engineering we haven’t even imagined yet, it doesn’t necessarily bust the laws of physics (unless you insist it be done with souped-up rockets…like in The Expanse). One could write good stories with speeds and timespans like this.
And Star Trek got this nearly right, at least once. The Enterprise has “impulse” drives that push it at slower than the speed of light, c, and there was an episode, Elaan of Troyius, where the Enterprise was traveling from one planet to another…in the same planetary system. The command was for “speed factor point zero three seven”, which probably meant 0.037c. This allowed for a leisurely (several days) trip between two planets. It’s probably still about ten times too fast, but…maybe the star was bright and the planets had to be farther apart than (say) Earth and Mars would be. However, in spite of this rare moment of near-lucidity, this episode is no paragon of doing simple arithmetic to sanity check things, as there is a rather big blunder in it elsewhere. I’ll get to that.
OK, now let’s consider interstellar distances and travel.
It’s bigger. A lot bigger. And we’re going to need a bigger yardstick. There are two yardstick between stars. The one astronomers use amongst themselves is the parsec. How big is that?
A parsec is the distance at which, something an AU across will appear to only be one arcsecond wide. (That’s not how it was originally derived, but it’s equivalent…and a lot easier to describe.)
Those of you that shoot (and I hope that’s all of you) likely know that by happy coincidence, two spots an inch apart on a target that is 100 yards away are just about 1 arc minute apart. Which is to say the angle between the line from the first spot to your eyeball, and the line from the other spot, to your eyeball, is 1/60th of a degree. Almost but not quite parallel. Since a quarter is very close to an inch across, one MOA is how big a quarter appears at 100 yards.
One second of arc is an angle 1/60th as big as that. So it’s 1/60th the width of a quarter at a hundred yards…or you can move the object further away instead of making it smaller: it’s also the width of a quarter at 6,000 yards, or 18,000 feet…or about 3 1/2 miles.
Now put an object 1 AU across (some stars are actually that big), far enough away that it’s one arc second across.
An AU is BIG, so this has to be far, far away. In fact, it’s 30,856,775,814,913,673 meters away (almost 31 quadrillion million meters). That’s not an exact figure, and there can’t be one, because computing it from an AU (which can be expressed exactly) involves π.
The other yardstick, the one astronomers use talking to non-astronomers, is the light year. This is the distance that light (traveling at about a billion kilometers an hour) travels in 365.25 days. This is: 9,460,730,472,580.8 meters. Nine and a half trillion kilometers. Or a bit under 6 trillion miles.
The nearest star to our Sun is Proxima Centauri. It’s 4.2 light years or 1.3 parsecs away. The sun itself would be impossible to see without binoculars at about 75 light years’ distance. Many of the bright stars in our night sky are intrinsically much brighter than the sun and are hundreds of light years away.
Four light years is often taken to be a good average distance between stars (though I suspect it’s high).
The entire galaxy is a disc a hundred thousand light years across. Even as we gallivant around from star to star…getting outside of the galaxy is a long trip, unless of course you go perpendicular to the disk. The center of the disc is about 26,000 light years away. This is plenty of room for Star Trek to write zillions of episodes, especially given that the galaxy is estimated to have anywhere between 100-400 billion or even more stars in it, and as near as we can tell, a large percentage of them have planets.
Now that I have given you both scales, let’s relate the interplanetary scale to the interstellar scale.
A light year is 63,241 AUs. A parsec is 206,265 AUs.
Those are commas not decimal points.
Proxima Centauri, the nearest interstellar destination, is about 268,000 AUs away. And we can’t even do one AU yet!
If a single AU is likened to a mile, Proxima Centauri is about as far away as the moon. We can walk a mile. To get a man to the moon we need the biggest rocket ever built.
For our previously-supposed society that can travel around the solar system in a few weeks, to make the transition and be able to travel to the nearest star, is like going from a man who can walk 30 miles…to the Apollo moon rocket, all at once. It’s by far the biggest “jump” in capability we will ever make; it will make crossing the oceans instead of hugging the coasts in sailing ships look like a tiny innovation. It’s basically impossible without huge advances in technology.
And, let me just remind of something. The furthest we have actually sent a manned mission is to the Moon. How far away is the Moon? Sit down and realize how puny we are: The Moon is 0.00257 AUs away. Roughly 1/400th of an AU. No, we haven’t begun manned interplanetary travel! We’ll need to go several AUs to get to Mars (the shortest route is under an AU but is much harder). Thousands of times further than we have yet gone.
OK with the stage set, let’s consider interstellar travel. If we want the ship to get there in less than years, we must have faster than light travel. Because light takes 4 years or so to get from one star to the next. For this the creators of Star Trek invented warp drive and wrote some word salad about how it works by warping space. (Interestingly, a serious physicist has postulated that if we could bend space a certain way, we could actually travel faster than light…and the press has called it a warp drive; you may have seen articles about it. He’s done the math to back it up, so it’s not word salad. All we need is a way to bend space.)
Warp drive speeds are given in Star Trek as “warp factors.” It’s never explained in the show, but in a book written by Gene Roddenberry, the creator of Star Trek, it’s stated that to figure out how fast a warp factor is, you cube it. So for Warp Factor 2, you’re traveling 2x2x2=8 times the speed of light. Which means getting to Proxima Centauri in just over six months. That’s too long, honestly. But you can go to Warp 6 and cruise forever without damaging the engines, and that’s 6x6x6=216 times the speed of light. And that puts Proxima Centauri 7 days away. It’s just barely possible that’s the sort of time Star Trek‘sEnterprise spends going from one star to another, but realistically, you’re not going to always be going from one star to its next door neighbor. The next crisis could be dozens or even hundreds of light years away.
In other words, even a few hundred times light speed is too slow for Star Trek to make sense.
Later on (and this is not official Star Trek as far as I know) it was posited that those warp factor multipliers apply in completely empty space, but interstellar space always has some dust and gas, plus the occasional actual star, and so warp factors get boosted…by over a thousand times, depending on how thick the interstellar medium is. (And even in a nebula, it’s actually a near perfect vacuum.) I’ll call this the “fudge factor.” And again, so far as I know it’s not “official” Star Trek.
The fudge factor does make things make more sense. Many episodes end with Kirk ordering the Enterprise on a course to the next episode (basically) at Warp 1 or 2. Unless you want the entire remaining five year mission to be taken up just getting to the next episode, you’ve got to move faster than 1x1x1=1 or 2x2x2=8 times the speed of light.
Sometimes the bridge crew actually says something is a parsec away (or so) and they can be there in minutes. Again, you need the fudge factor for this to make sense.
The problem comes in when Warp speed is mixed up with short distances.
That same Elaan of Troyius episode that I praised before, has another scene in it. A hostile ship is charging at the Enterprise at warp speed. I.e. as fast, or faster, than the speed of light. The problem came in when the bogie was 100,000 km away, and the bridge crew was counting down how far away it was.
At one times the speed of light, it would take 1/3 of a second for that ship to cover the distance. But it’s doing warp six. So the distance gets covered in 1/648th of a second instead. And that’s without the fudge factor, which makes it 1/1000th as long a time as that. The bridge crew would literally have no time at all to react.
Sigh.
But there is worse.
Another episode where the Enterprise is traveling within a planetary system is Paradise Syndrome. The Enterprise has to divert an asteroid heading for an inhabited, Earth-like planet. The asteroid is two months away. In our solar system it would be a “near-Earth object” traveling about the same speed as Earth…which as I mentioned is about 1 AU in two months. So the distance to cover is 1 AU or so. Since they are delayed on the planet (Kirk was missing, and of course they were searching for him), they have to get to the asteroid as fast as possible.
Spock orders warp nine. 9x9x9=512 times the speed of light (without fudge factor). How long will it take to cover that 1 AU distance?
Light takes 500 seconds to get from the Sun to the Earth…which is 1 AU. In other words, it should take less time for the Enterprise to travel that distance at warp nine, than it took for Spock to give the “Ahead warp factor nine” command. (That’s assuming, of course, the ship can accelerate from 0 to warp 9 in less than a second.)
Even if it’s two or three AUs away…it’s still going to take at most a handful of seconds to get there, even without the fudge factor. Since warp nine stresses the engines, it would probably have been okay to order warp six and take a few extra seconds. (Not that a mere one second of warp nine should cause problems!)
Instead this is shown as taking hours, if not days. And the engines are near the breaking point when they get to the asteroid. They end up frying the engines trying to divert the asteroid, and the Enterprise has to go back to the planet on impulse power, hours ahead of the asteroid…for two months…to try to find Kirk and rescue him before the asteroid destroys all life on the planet. (This too also ignorant, this time ignorant of orbital dynamics. The asteroid is in an orbit about the star, not under power. Therefore the Enterprise can be on the same trajectory without using power. If it is using any power at all, it should outrun the asteroid.)
Another episode that needs a callout is Space Seed. It wasn’t that famous an episode…until Star Trek II hit the movie theaters. Because Space Seed is the episode that introduced Khan Noonien Singh (played by Ricardo Montalban).
Khan’s backstory is that he and his band of merry supermen and superwomen escaped Earth in 1992 aboard a DY-100 ship…a ship far, far ahead of anything we can build today (anything interplanetary that can hold 3 people in it is…much less something with the big corridors we saw in Star Trek, holding dozens of people). The ship was meant for interplanetary travel but fortunately for the viewer (unfortunately for the Enterprise), they had suspended animation, and so the ship could travel for nearly 300 years…and somehow end up WAY out there among the stars for the Enterprise to find it.
Uh, but look at those numbers. Interstellar travel is tens of thousands times further than interplanetary travel.
We have sent objects out of the solar system, five of them. The furthest is Voyager 1, which after almost 50 years is a mere 152 AU away, and it will be tens of thousands of years before it gets as far away as Proxima Centauri (and it’s not headed in that direction).
There’s simply no way Khan’s ship could be at interstellar distances, much less far enough out that the Enterprise is only now stumbling across it, three centuries later.
Fortunately, I can usually ignore stuff like this for the sake of enjoying the story. But it would be nice if these TV shows would actually employ someone who can do arithmetic and use a calculator! Because that’s literally all it takes…that and knowing that distance equals speed multiplied by time.
I’m lucky that I can see all of this and still enjoy the show.
A couple of postscripts.
First, everything I’ve said applies to the original series. Star Trek the Next Generation (and Deep Space Nine and Voyager) are set a century after the original series, and the warp drive there is quite different…it’s probably the same as the “Transwarp” that was being tested in some of the movies made to go with the original series. Warp factors are much higher, and warp ten is infinite speed.
Also, here is a video about a scale model of our solar system in Melbourne, Australia. Distances and planetary sizes are to the same scale, 1:1,000,000,000 or 1 millimeter = 1,000 kilometers. The thumbnail shows the sun. Pluto is almost six kilometers away.
But there is a little surprise. Proxima Centauri is part of the model…quite close to the Sun in fact! What is it doing there? Didn’t I just get finished trying to convey how ridiculously far away it is compared to planets?
Well yes. But it just so happens that at the scale of the model, Proxima Centauri is 40,000 km away…and that’s one trip around the earth! So start at the sun, go past Mercury, Venus, etc…and Neptune, and yes they included Pluto for laughs. Then keep on going…all the way around the world and you’ll hit Proxima Centauri just before getting to the Sun again.
Obligatory PSAs and Reminders
China is Lower than Whale Shit
To conclude: My standard Public Service Announcement. We don’t want to forget this!!!
中国是个混蛋 !!! Zhōngguò shì gè hùndàn !!! China is asshoe !!!
China is in the White House
Since Wednesday, January 20 at Noon EST, the bought-and-paid for Joseph Biden has been in the White House. It’s as good as having China in the Oval Office.
Joe Biden is Asshoe
China is in the White House, because Joe Biden is in the White House, and Joe Biden is identically equal to China. China is Asshoe. Therefore, Joe Biden is Asshoe.
But of course the much more important thing to realize:
Joe Biden Didn’t Win
乔*拜登没赢 !!! Qiáo Bài dēng méi yíng !!! Joe Biden didn’t win !!!
