Please post your off-topic items here.
Link to previous OT thread here.
Please post your off-topic items here.
Link to previous OT thread here.
How To Prepare Your Pantry And Fridge For The Port Strike
Many of us are still reeling from the shortages and hoarding that took place during the 2020 COVID-19 pandemic…
Yeah, GFY with your hoarding bullshit, which I’m sure you applied to those of us who actually prepare for emergencies as a matter of course.
Maybe you ought to try doing a bit of “hoarding” yourself, you grasshopper moron. But don’t come for my hoard because I, like many others who prepare, are also prepared with effective means to make sure you don’t, because you can’t, steal my hoard for your own use.
Americans woke up on October 1 with news that a major strike among U.S. Dockworkers could lead to supply and goods shortages.
Odd they didn’t find out until 10/1, given that this possibility has been a feature of even the dimwitted national news for at least a couple of weeks. I completed topping up my own preps by the last week of September.
…seafood, bananas, and alcohol could be among the most in-demand foods and drinks since huge numbers of these items are imported from overseas. Even seafood from Canada (which could conceivably arrive via train) is in jeopardy of shortages since it often needs to be refrigerated and is regularly shipped by boat.
Of course, domestic seafood and American beer, wine, and liquor are all options for those who enjoy such things, but the majority of bananas are shipped in from elsewhere.
Apparently this imbecilic bint thinks that a supply shortage of bananas is the biggest threat right now. She’s obviously both too young, and too stupid, to know anything about a time in America when many foods were only seasonally available. We prepared for that in many ways – home canning of fruits and vegetables was a significant strategy. Or we just went without. Couldn’t get citrus juice for your breakfast? Tomato juice was an acceptable substitute. Or the frozen stuff. Or Tang. Remember Tang?
…that cherries, canned goods, hot peppers, grapes, avocados, and chocolate could also be difficult to find until the strike is resolved.
Again, nothing that sounds particularly threatening, except, maybe, canned goods. And that depends on what canned goods we’re talking about.
All the store brand stuff will probably take a hit, since most of that is imported from cheaper growing areas south of the border. I don’t use much of it. I did pick up a few cans of cocoa at Aldi’s last week, since I do use that, but I already am pretty well stocked on most everything else.
Remember, the key to riding out food shortages is calories, no more, no less. In extremity, you go for calories, not health. Starvation (not getting enough calories to maintain life) will kill you quicker than almost any “nutrient deficiency.” I don’t expect this “crisis” to involve anything like that, though.
As for this article? Pap for people with poop for brains. The author even consulted two “academic experts” to compile this compost heap.
Any individual man is disposable.
More broadly, any individual person is disposable. Even a George Washington or a Nikola Tesla could die in infancy and the species would muddle along. But as a group, men are more disposable than women.
Everyone knows this. All but the most broken societies are organized around it. “Women and children first” in a catastrophe, men are conscripted and sent off to die in wars, the jobs with the highest death rate are overwhelmingly filled by men.
It makes perfect sense, of course. The most primal instincts are to stay alive and to reproduce. A mammalian species which loses most of its females before they reproduce will probably go extinct. A mammalian species which loses most of its males before they reproduce might not even notice. See, for instance, the deer population in the United States. A sizable fraction of the bucks might be killed in any year, between hunters and other predators and car accidents and Winter, but the population comes right back up.
That’s for most species, either loners or those in which the males and females are equally able to obtain food.
Humans are different.
Humans obtain resources by specialization to a degree unknown in any other species. Humans choose to work in a specialized field according to their own opportunities and abilities and preferences.
And there’s the rub. Most of the jobs which keep modern society functioning are held by men: keeping the electricity and the water flowing, constructing buildings and roads, growing the crops. Any individual man might be replaceable but losing even 20% of men would cause systems to fail. The species might not be doomed but society as we know it would be.
Women are still essential, of course, because they are needed to produce the next generation. Any one woman can make only so many babies, so we need them all in order to keep the species going. Each individual woman is valuable and important regardless of her material or economic contribution.
… Or is she?
In modern, industrialized society, a large and increasing fraction of women have no children. The fraction of women who never have children went up from about 1/20 a couple of generations ago to 1/4 or even almost 1/3 today.
In almost all cases this is because they choose not to. In the past, most childless women were infertile or suffered repeated miscarriages. Today, fertility problems are much reduced and miscarriages, while individually tragic, are less common and are less likely to result in ongoing problems. That leaves choice. Some women never wanted children at all. Some put it off until they were emotionally or financially ready but by the time they’re ready they are unable to bear children. Some “can’t find the right man”. Some do indeed have fertility problems but they were caused by hormonal birth control or years-long use of IUDs or STDs left untreated too long.
We see the effects in birth rates and in demographic distributions. The United States, Canada, most of Europe, Japan, mainland China, and South Korea all have birthrates below replacement level. Their populations are either decreasing or are being sustained only by immigration. This has serious implications on societies and economies. Without a steadily-increasing population, most consumer economies will be shaken or or destroyed. Without a supply of younger workers, who will produce the goods and perform the services that an ever-aging population will need?
Demographic collapse signals societal collapse.
Demographic collapse is the result of women’s choices.
Demographic collapse can be halted only by women choosing to have more babies.
Women’s value as women was always based on their ability to have babies.
Women who choose not to have babies should lose that intrinsic value. No more “women and children first”. Now it’s “women /with/ children first”. No women-only college scholarships. No welfare for childless women. No hiring preferences for childless women. Draft childless women for war and send them to the front lines.
A woman who does not have children should be valued only for the value she brings. That is, what she does that others value enough to pay for. Just as men are.
Doctors (almost half female in the US) and nurses (overwhelmingly female in the US) are important but most people can go quite a while without needing to see them. Linesmen (overwhelmingly male) are unappreciated because if they do their job right no one notices (and because they don’t need college degrees) but if they disappeared, chunks of the nation would notice after every storm and the electrical grid would fall apart within a year or two. Garbage collectors (overwhelmingly male) are looked down on for their dirty, smelly job (and no college requirement) but if they all disappeared, people would for sure notice within a week. Sewer workers, doubly so. Modern city life would become impossible very shortly.
The loss of workers in jobs typically held by independent women would have, shall we say, somewhat less dire effects. If every social worker in the nation disappeared overnight, how long would it be before anyone noticed? If every HR department in every corporation was depopulated? If every not-for-profit little art gallery had to close?
If the ability to birth the next generation will not be used, if one is a net consumer of resources and wealth, who really is disposable?
We all watched in 2020 as politicians and pundits and pill-pushers said that anyone declining to get the Covid shots — “anti-vaxxers”, “refusers”, “covid deniers” — should be denied health care. Almost half of the US population nodded along with the stentorious proclamations that “actions have consequences” and “why should we help people who won’t take one simple action to keep themselves and everyone else safe?”
To people on the sane side of the spectrum, those demands sounded just a tiny bit tyrannical. The people making the demands sounded just a tiny bit unhinged. There was no science backing the “safe and effective” claim. There was no science behind the mask mandates or the six-foot distancing rules. There was almost no data backing the claim about the deadliness of SARS-CoV-2. And, of course, the people screaming the loudest about mandatory “vaccinations” were the same people who screamed about “My body, my choice!”
A few years on, it’s public knowledge that the disease was not as deadly as claimed. The mask mandates were useless. The distancing was useless. The shots failed not only the “effective” claim but the “safe” claim. Many people won’t admit these things, because that would mean admitting that they were wrong, but it’s widely understood.
The unhinged demands to identify “refusers” and to deny them healthcare are even more unhinged in light of the evidence. Not that the lunatics who made the demands will ever admit it. The best we’ll ever get is the tepid “Mistakes were made on all sides. Let’s just forget it and move on.” from late 2022.
How about, No. I remember your face, I remember your name, and I remember your words. I’m not going to forget it and I’m not going to “move on”
One good thing comes from the demands, though: There’s now precedent for demanding that people follow good health practices or be denied healthcare.
The obvious first target: Obesity. Over half of adults in America are overweight, and almost half of the children. Excess weight is linked to any number of health problems, including but not limited to diabetes, joint and back problems, liver problems, and mental disorders. Obesity is tied to an increase in almost all causes of death.
Between government-provided or -subsidized healthcare, the Obamacare mandates that individual health and lifestyle choices not be taken into account when setting private insurance premiums, and hospitals increasing bills to subsidize those who can’t or won’t pay their own bills, everyone pays for the increased healthcare costs of the overweight.
I demand that fatties be denied access to healthcare other than weight-loss clinics. Why should we help people who won’t take one simple action to keep themselves healthy?
The CIA comes up with some of the most laughable assassins…
Routh’s Rifle… Pul-lease – The Truth About Guns
Drilling down on this crap-fest of a rifle, I could understand a fiberglass stock over the original crummy wooden stocks made from suspect trees and lacquer which are too short for most grown ups. But when you get a closer look at this beauty the detail work really begins to shine!
An original SKS has an internal magazine that holds 10 rounds. This Florida seized gun has been modified with a magazine adapter, which can hold up to 30 rounds, a significant upgrade in number of bullets. Yet our bright boy, Monsieur Routh’s gun was found to contain…yes, you guessed it, 10 rounds and one in the chamber. Maybe he couldn’t afford to fill up the whole magazine! However, a single round in the picture reveals it to be a steel cased, lacquer covered FMJ, the cheapest round currently found in the imported ammo market, somewhere around ten dollars a box of 20! Again, shouldn’t any self respecting rifleman have saved up to get a full box?
This guy de-evolved this dependable Korean War era battle rifle into something way below Hi-Point pistol value price! (To be fair to Hi-Point, they do seem to shoot an awful lot of poor people.)
Next up is my favorite piece, the telescopic sight. It looks like it has been beaten and drugged repeatedly, and then…oh be still my basement gunsmithing heart…yes it is strapped on to the gun with “tactical black” electrician’s tape! Obviously he did not go with metal hose clamps or zip ties to secure it. You can understand how hard it would be to get it to look “just right” with those half-assed items and not nearly “tactical” enough like electrician’s tape.
He goes on. Boy, does he ever go on.
🚨🇮🇱🇱🇧ISRAEL UPDATES HEZBOLLAH COMMAND CHART
After confirming the death of Hezbollah’s leader, Nasrallah, they have released a new version of the organization chart showing all the top-tier commanders in the group have been killed
Source: Infinity News#Iran #حسننصرالله #Israel pic.twitter.com/iEtnUcFvX8— I’mrizwan (@Imrizwan009) September 28, 2024
For quite a while I’ve been hearing how Israel should stop inciting Hezbollah, lest the organization’s leadership decide to attack Israel with the full might of its massive missile arsenal.
I guess the best response to this argument might be, “What leadership?”
I’ve also heard much about how Israel must stop provoking Iran, lest that nation also loose an overwhelmingly destructive response against Israel.
That doesn’t seem to be happening either.
Having two or three hundred nuclear weapons stashed in your basement (and your submarines) seems to be something of a force multiplier. Who’d have thought it?
Exclusive | Chicago gangbangers face off against Venezuelans
“When the black gangs here get fed up with the illegalities and criminal activities of these migrants or non-citizens, the city of Chicago is going to go up in flames and there will be nothing the National Guard or the government can do about it when the bloodshed hits the streets. It’ll be blacks against migrants.”
I wonder if he’s aware of how that worked out for the Black Crips and Bloods in Los Angeles?
Latino Gang Leader Convicted in L.A. Ethnic Cleansing Campaign | Southern Poverty Law Center
Much of the racially inspired murder and mayhem was and is being directed from far away from the streets and hills of Los Angeles. As the Intelligence Report detailed in the Winter 2006 issue the powerful Mexican Mafia, a prison-based gang, had given the “green light” to the many Latino gangs it controls in Southern California to terrorize and murder black people as part of the effort to drive them out.
Today, the war is over, the ethnic cleansing complete, and neighborhoods like Watts and South Central now feature taco joints and bodegas instead of BBQ and soul food kitchens.
I suppose it’s wrong of me to find it hilarious that the first large scale victims of the Democrat-engineered Great Replacement turned out to be their staunchest political supporters over the years.
The should have listened to Cesar Chavez when he told them the illegal Mexicans (back then) who were flooding across the southern borders were pure poison, but…
They didn’t.
I wonder where the Chicago Black community will end up out-migrating to?
If they move fast, maybe they can take over the Muslim redoubts of Michigan.
3 Officers, Suspect Wounded During Intense Gunfight In Milwaukee [WATCH]
This is the second major mass shooting in Milwaukee this year, following a July 13 incident where four people were killed and nine others injured during a drive-by shooting at a birthday party.
Right. Somehow this gunfight, in which the perp was trying to commit suicide by cop, and resulted in four cops and the perp himself receiving minor, non-life-threatening injuries, has somehow become a “major mass shooting.”
The gaslights are burning bright in Milwaukee this year.
Tren de Aragua arrests are increasing as the government can no longer gaslight people into denying what they see with their own eyes. From Colorado Peak Politics:
Yes, I remember. Hell, I’m old enough to remember when MS-13, the mass-murder factory imported from El Salvador was some kind of victim of Donald Trump’s conspiracy-theory racism and bigotry.
Lind’s influence on Trump is profound, in ways both direct and indirect. Scaminaci cites a specific example: “Trump’s emphasis on the MS-13 gang is an echo of Lind’s 2004 article in which Lind asserted that any MS-13 gang member who killed a police officer was ‘an act of war,’ not simply a crime of murder. Lind had emphasized gangs and Mexican immigrants as agents of Fourth Generation Warfare in America. Thus it is not surprising that Trump has emphasized Mexican immigrants and MS-13 in his rhetoric to his largely white, conservative, Christian base.”
In fact, I’ve been hearing this sort of crap sizzling on the gas lights of National Socialist Democrats in America so long that I automatically assume that any charge of racist conspiracy theories is pretty much an absolute guarantee of the truth of the “conspiracy theory” in question.
Obama-appointed Judge: Short-barreled Rifles Not Protected by Second Amendment – The New American
Chan’s lawyers labored mightily in the losing cause, but Watson had them where he wanted them. He tossed aside as irrelevant any proof they provided about machine guns and short-barreled rifles:
The number of machineguns, in the abstract, does not establish such weapons are in common use by law-abiding citizens….
This amount [741,146 lawfully registered and possessed machine guns] remains too insignificant for machineguns to be considered in common use….
Also, the fact that the federal government, eagerly seconded by the states, for all intents and purposes bans the manufacture or importation of machine guns, and makes possessing them so difficult for the “common citizen” that such possession is also essentially banned, may have something to do with the paucity of them “in common use.”
See how that works?
I hate these miserable, tyrannous bastards.
Was the Assassination Attempt a Distraction to Cover Up Another Bombshell?
Nah, because nobody is frightened by “bombshells” like this piece of insider baseball “revelation.” The only people who would give a damn already assume that the lefty propagandists of the MSM who oversee these staged circuses will do any and everything they possibly can to make sure that Trump “loses” any debate with Kommie Kammie.
Here’s my hunch. They’re sending out these windup toys one after the other to normalize the notion of the inevitability that Trump will be assassinated before he can take office, so that normalcy-addled American retards can nod knowingly when the Blob finally rolls out one of their trained shooters who pops Trump from a thousand yards away with a single shot and then skedaddles while some set-up sucker is framed to take the blame.
“We knew it would happen,” they will sigh in unison. “It was inevitable. Trump was just too controversial. Actually, he invited it, you know.”
BTW, this nugget from Rucker’s big “expose.”
Keep in mind, this affidavit was written, notarized, and sent to Speaker of the House Mike Johnson BEFORE last week’s debate, so the fact that it jibes perfectly with what we actually saw should be huge news. Except, it isn’t. Nobody’s talking about it. It would be hard to have a bigger story than the campaign of a sitting Vice President and current presidential candidate breaking the law to rig a debate, but they managed to find a bigger story nonetheless.
Last I looked. Mike Johnson was a Republican. Are we to believe he knew about the rigging and didn’t tell Trump? Or that he did tell Trump, and Trump went ahead with the debate anyway, and never said a word about the rig?
What the hell are we to make of that, I ask you.
Donald Trump stated that there will not be a second debate between him and Humpy Harris. He should have a second one, but only under certain conditions. He needs to take the obvious flaws of the Tuesday debate … and turn them up to 11!
1. Trump will stand at a Presidential-appearing podium with an American flag behind him.
2. Humpy Harris will not attend and will instead be represented by a marionette with plainly visible strings.
3. The moderators will relentlessly grill and fact check Trump on everything he says, allowing him as much time as needed to flesh out his proposals, er, dig himself into a hole.
4. Whenever the Humpy Harris stand-in is asked to answer a question or to reply to Trump’s points, her hallmark jackass laugh will play.
5. The moderators will immediately clap and congratulate the marionette on its insight, knowledge, and compassion.
This idea came to me today after some idiot said something stupid. I’m posting it here because a handful of people with large megaphones read this site, or at least used to, and I’m hoping someone will pick it up and pass it along.
Not the Worst Idea – Vox Popoli
Australia will ban children from using social media with a minimum age limit as high as 16, the prime minister said Tuesday, vowing to get kids off their devices and ‘onto the footy fields’.
Social media can literally be as dangerous as driving for children, as they are far too immature to be dealing with some of the personal issues and challenges that social media can create for them. Also, it will be considerably harder for child predators to groom and lure children away from their homes if they have no electronic access to them.
You’d better hope the immortality treatment arrives fairly quickly, because these are the sixteen year olds who are going to be paying for, and making treatment decisions about, your care when you are too old to care for yourself.
I suspect you’re going to be lucky if you get bread and water in six bunk cells, with frequent “voluntary” euthanasia.
The woman has a valid Firearm Owner’s Identification Card, the station said.
One of the suspects, an unidentified male, was shot in the chest, WGN reported, adding that he was pronounced dead at Mt. Sinai Hospital.
Yes, that FOID card would be the most important things in a shithole state like Greater Chicago. Had she not possessed one, I suppose the state would have expected her to submit meekly to being raped and murdered, rather than defend herself with an “illegal” firearm.