Every time I hear her hit those high notes I just have to stop everything I’m doing and admire.

Also, I adored MTV unplugged. *sighs in Gen X* https://t.co/vN0hDJLIRe

— Emily Lakdawalla (@elakdawalla) July 24, 2021

Even though I don’t really like any of Mariah Carey’s songs, I watched this when it aired and was amazed by her vocal range and stage presence.

I miss Unplugged, too.

There’s a very simple reason Amazon is crushing its competition and that is: Amazon never makes you jump through hoops to give them money.

— Josh Centers (@jcenters) July 24, 2021

This is exactly right. For all the talk about Amazon’s monopoly (some of which is correct), usually shopping for something at Amazon is just a better experience.

As a recent personal example, I ordered a very expensive workstation from Dell with a corporate credit card. It was to be delivered to a corporate address that has received dozens of Dells in the past. The order was flagged as fraud for no known reason and I got a threatening email that unless I called within a short period of time to confirm, the order would be automatically cancelled.

I called and the Dell customer service person treated me like I was a criminal, and like it was absolutely insane that I was attempting to order, of all things, a computer from Dell. You’d think I was attempting to purchase the services of a hit man or something, the way I was treated.

Now, a few days later, I am still not sure if I’ve jumped through enough hoops to prove to Dell that yes, we’d like to give them $5,000 for a machine. I still have no order confirmation and I do not see the order on the site under the account. I expect the order has been stealth-cancelled but I am not able to get accurate information from anyone, especially those who can barely speak English who usually answer calls to Dell.

Why make it hard to give you money? Knowing what I know now, I’ll never attempt to order anything like this from Dell again. As long as it comes with a warranty, I will just get it from Amazon.

Looking at a dating profile where she mentions wanting to watch womxn-centric films and I can’t remember if womxn is the trans-inclusive version or the transphobic one

— Misha Gurevich. Angel Investor, Photographer. (@drethelin) July 25, 2021

The point of most of that sort of thing is to alter the language so frequently and so inscrutably that regular people can’t help but be tripped up constantly, and then the “gotcha” moment can occur where the unaware people are revealed to be secret hateful bigots.

It’s like a struggle session pre-packaged in grenade shibboleth form. It fits right in with the preferences and priorities of the blue state scoldy people.

Did Millennials Finally Kill Flirting?

Not yet, but they have tried and are still trying. Let’s hope they fail utterly and go down in defeat and humiliation, which should be the lot of all such exemplars of loserdom.

This is because we have expanded the definition of “harassment.” In the past, something was only harassment if a boundary had been clearly established or communicated, and then someone repeatedly transgressed it. Not any more. Now the mere expression of interest can be considered a potential violation.

But flirting is not completely dead! In the supermarket yesterday I was staring at all the peanut butters in confusion and annoyance, wondering why there must be 900 different types and brands, none of them that good. Just as I was about to make a decision, I got that prickly feeling of someone’s eyes on me. I turned my head slightly to the side and saw a younger woman, maybe 19-21, looking right at me — and not subtly, either. She gave me a very sweet smile and I smiled back at her and nodded a little, just to acknowledge her. I could’ve talked to her and when I was younger, I would have.

Who was the “predator” here? Ha, trick question that only liberals will fall for! No one. The answer is that no one was a predator. She saw someone she liked, was pretty bold, and I acknowledged her interest and gave her a subtle signal that I thought she was a cutie too (she was) but that I was not in the game that day. That interaction took all of three seconds, no harm done to anyone.

As a side note, since I got ridiculously fit the above happens to me about 1000x as much as it did before. It’s an absolutely shocking difference. I highly recommend it for all sorts of reasons (not just the above).

Feminism sought to shift the power dynamics between men and women, and shift them it did – right into total sterility. We’re now firmly held inside a bubble-wrap culture in which women view the mere expression of interest as a potential violation and men are too afraid to make a move for fear of being branded “creepy.”

That young woman was a Zoomer (Gen Z). I wonder if that gen will reject this view and resume some sort of non-algorithmic existence? I don’t have much hope, but I do want to believe it’s true.

That said, I think this article puts a little too much blame on women and feminism for the problem of any interest expressed in the real world being seen as predatory and creepy. Men share some of the blame, as there truly are many very scary creeps out there. Neoliberal capitalism also deserves some of the culpability for the algorithm eating everything. It prefers you constrained, contained, classified and commodified. And unfortunately, liberals are completely on board with all of this.

My thoughts on people who die of Covid after refusing vaccination:

Maybe I’ve simply missed it but it does feel like the pretty massive supply chain disruptions going on globally should be a bigger/more well reported story?

— Dengists for Brian Goodwin (@Madrigalism) July 22, 2021

Was talking about this with my partner the other day. There’s no reporting at all on this, nearly. Only on some fringe sites. And it should be a massive story since many items are just not available or are experiencing massive shortages. Why is there just no coverage at all?

Forget Mask Mandates. Vaccines Are the Only Answer for Fighting Covid-19.

Someone in a major publication saying something real instead of blue state scoldy people shit. Good to see.

We know what works in our battle against Covid: vaccines. We tried lockdowns, we tried mask mandates, but numbers only started to drop to endemic levels in some areas when vaccination became mainstream. Our society incentivized vaccination as a condition of a return to normalcy, and millions of Americans signed onto this social contract. We need increased vaccination rates in order to keep Covid at bay, and reneging on the agreement to return to normalcy with the ready availability and acceptance of vaccination would have the opposite effect.

This is exactly right. What’s the point of vaccination if nothing changes? It means millions and millions will not get a jab. Of course, the lockdown lifers would love this but as for the rest of us whose brains haven’t been eaten by worms this is a terrible outcome.

It's insane that just saying "I hope kids don't have to wear masks forever and would like to know what criteria people have for their ending" is in any way controversial, much less gets you "murderer"-type accusations.

— much ADU about nothing (@normalvariance) July 23, 2021

Blue state scoldy people are absolutely loving this. It’s their time to shine! They went from claiming those who said they missed human contact during lockdown were “killing grammas” to their present obsession, which is calling those who don’t want to torture kids forever “murderers.”

You can tell that what they claim to care about is not really what they are concerned with by the fact that they have no criteria at all for when the mitigation measures could end. Just as with the lockdown lifers, the kid torturers get absolutely infuriated when you ask them when there could be a time where any such measures might not be necessary any longer. This is how you know that they don’t care about children, they don’t care about the pandemic, and are totally unconcerned with making anything better. No, they just like being “right” and just enjoy castigating and admonishing others. That’s all it is.

Also, some people — and all too many liberals — just like hurting others. This is one way they can do that, so they will take it.

“Danger to the world”: 1,200+ scientists denounce Boris Johnson’s plan to end UK COVID restrictions.

The UK is doing exactly what it should be doing. It is immoral and unethical to keep people locked up inside for more than a month or so. And it’s also immoral and unethical to keep them from visiting loved ones and vice versa when vaccinations are widely available.

Some people want too live in hell, and even worse want to make others do so as well.

These scientists are the same “experts” who were full of absolute bullshit for the past year and a half. Now is no different.

Should People Who Took The Covid-19 Vaccine Start Wearing Masks Again?

No.

Next.