Symbols Of The Times

A few symbols of modern life I encountered yesterday.

The Gameshow

My exposure to cable news programming is mostly limited to what I occasionally glimpse at the gym, where they have TVs playing the major 3 networks. Yesterday, all were focused entirely on the beginning of impeachment hearings being held by House Democrats. The coverage itself is the actual end goal of the hearings; not impeachment. It's all about keeping the people distracted and fixated on Orange Man Bad.

From a distance, the whole spectacle resembles a game show. The contestants are on because they want prizes and the publicity of being seen on TV, but the overall point of the show is to entertain and distract. The whole thing, with the DOJ and Russiagate first and now the Democrats and Ukrainegate is just a mutli-series gameshow extravaganza called Who Wants To Get Trump?

The proceedings are a celebration of a large portion of the country - and nearly the entire ruling class - embracing a ludicrous and easily refuted lie. It is not just wrong but evil - and worthy of our full disdain. Still, as a pro-Trump partisan, I have to think that the impeachment hearings only improve his re-election prospects. He desires to remain in the limelight, and the Democrats are doing all his marketing legwork for him. They are not acting strategically; they are treading water. The moment they don't have an enemy to rally around, they start lashing out at each other. Nancy Pelosi kept impeachment at arms length until AOC started calling her a racist. We are certainly in the equivalent of the late-Roman stage of Bread & Circuses.

A Luxury Sail Yacht

Greta Thunberg has vowed not to fly in airplanes because of their carbon footprint. She was stranded on the wrong side of the ocean after a climate conference was moved to Spain after protests erupted in Chile. Now, she will be making a 3-week trans-Atlantic journey aboard a 48-foot sailing yacht.

The boat has a carbon-neutral footprint as it's powered by solar panels and hydro-generators. By comparison, a roundtrip flight from New York to Madrid generates about 848 kg of CO2 emissions, according to an estimate by the German nonprofit Atmosfair.

The boat does not actually have a carbon-neutral footprint. Much like the wind generator and the electric vehicle, the sailing yacht actually causes higher carbon emissions than the system it replaces. Inconvenient technical details aside, you have to stand in awe of what is perhaps the greatest example of limousine liberalism that we've ever seen. "You plebes are destroying the world by flying cramped in coach. You need to be more like us and sail the seas in a private yacht."

Incredible gall. If you hate climate hysteria, realize that Greta is probably doing more to hurt her cause than anything else. As it turns out, this isn't her first chartered yacht trip, as she originally sailed to the US by yacht in August on the Malizia II.

The boat served as a transport vessel for Swedish climate activist Greta Thunberg, who sailed across the North Atlantic Ocean from Plymouth to New York City in August 2019 without causing carbon dioxide emissions during the voyage. France 24 reported that several crew would fly to New York to take the yacht back to Europe. The trip was led by Boris Herrmann. Thunberg's crossing of the Atlantic started on 14 August 2019, and concluded on 28 August. The value of the boat has been estimated to be around £4 million.

This is hysterical. Even if the yacht was zero-emissions, or even lower-emissions, the trip to save Greta a trip across the puddle caused "several" additional flights to get crewmen to the boat. This follows the general pattern, that even if their claims were true, they'd still be failing horribly by their own standards. (As discussed in Hooks & Pivots, I suspect that is a feature, not a bug. The goal is for the lie to be clearly ridiculous. Why else would heavily converged Wikipedia include that aspect of the story?)

As is often the case, I actually support the lefty notion that we should restrict international travel to zero-carbon means. The world is getting too small, which is causing big problems. Europe is now being invaded by passenger plane. Young adults are obsessed with adding exotic travel photos to their Instagram feeds rather than starting families or really being of any use to anyone. I support Greta in her war against air travel, in her indirect coup against the Swedish state, and I recommend that we limit all international travel to hand-powered rickety row boats.

Gang Slang

Someone shared this video of a Chicago gang on a forum, indicating that he can't even tell what they're saying. As far as dialects go, I don't think it's particularly indecipherable - not much starker a contrast between American standard English and, say, the Irish or Australian versions of the language. Many commenters would say "they're so stupid they can't even speak English," but I'd be careful about making those assumptions. Gangs are true meritocracies, and the guys at the top have earned their spots one way or another.

Gangsta dialect has arisen not because they can't speak normal English, but because they don't want to. E Michael Jones has said in a number of interviews (such as this one) that whites should be careful about the growing white identitarianism because white is not a culture. He says that the primary shared aspect of a nation/culture is language, not ethnicity. "Do you speak white?" he quips.

Funny he should ask, because there are already groups in America who speak in ways to establish themselves as having a culture distinct from standard Anglo-American. It has largely been assumed that the information age will cause convergence to a common language or set of languages - which has been the trend - but it only applies so long as people want to share in the culture that speaks a particular language. Blacks actually do speak Black. Latinos are similar. It is assumed by many civic nationalists that the Latinos flooding our borders will eventually Americanize. They look at past immigrations like that of the Irish or Polish for comparison, but they are mistaken. The era of Anglo-American identity is gone, and the age of multiculturalism is here. The more Spanish speakers that arrive, the less likely they are to adopt English. In fact, I'd guess that instead of seeing Latino immigrants becoming increasingly Americanized, we're going to see the populations of Americanized (or partly Americanized) populations of Hispanics start to drift back towards their own ethnic cultures. When the bulk of the nonwhites are speaking their own languages and dialects of English to establish a nonwhite identity, then speaking standard American English will, in fact, amount to speaking white.

Hooks & Pivots

British state-sponsored media took a stab at solving the mystery of Sweden's recent explodey problem in their world-news article, Sweden's 100 explosions this year: What's going on?

Swedish police are dealing with unprecedented levels of attacks, targeting city centre locations too. The bomb squad was called to deal with 97 explosions in the first nine months of this year.

The small Scandinavian country, which took more "Syrian refugees" than any other (per capita) is now enduring attacks by small explosives at a rate of one every two or three days. Everyone knows why this is occurring, but it's interesting to see the ways in which they pretend that they don't. There are five subsections in the article, and each follows the same pattern. They each tease at the truth and then pivot towards the lie. Rather than attempting to inform - the goal of journalism - they are attempting to subvert the degree to which their readers are informed.

Who is to blame?

The hook:

This category of crime was not even logged prior to 2017. Then, in 2018, there were 162 explosions and in the past two months alone the bomb squad have been called to almost 30.

Hmm, so what could have happened around the middle of the decade to introduce a whole new category of crime into Swedish daily life? Oh dear, I feel myself about to have an unauthorized thought. Hopefully the BBC can set me straight.

The pivot:

The attacks are usually carried out by criminal gangs to scare rival groups or their close friends or family, she says. "This is a serious situation, but most people shouldn't be worried, because they are not going to be affected."

Whew! As it turns out, the almost-daily grenade attacks on the streets of Sweden are not actually a big deal, because it will mostly only affect bad guys anyway.

For criminologist Amir Rostami the only relevant comparison is Mexico, plagued by gang violence. "This is unique in countries that pretty much don't have a war or don't have a long history of terrorism," he says.

Amir Mohammadi Rostami just can't seem to put his finger on it either. Golly. He tells us it's very odd for a country not at war (i.e. one not being invaded by foreigners) or without a history of terrorism. His best comparison is to Mexico which, like Sweden, is inconveniently situated as a major route for trafficking drugs to its northern border.

Where are the explosions?

The hook:

Sodermalm is a former working-class area that has become increasingly gentrified. Vintage boutiques and vegan delicatessens break up grids of mustard- and terracotta-painted apartment blocks. The building targeted is opposite a park and close to a school.

The citizens are becoming concerned that the attacks are moving out of the slums and into the affluent white areas. Don't worry, the BBC is on the case!

The pivot:

No arrests have been made and police will not comment on potential motives. "If it was targeted then to be honest it makes us feel safer, because then the attack was not aimed to harm the public," says Ms Bradshaw, hoping it was not a random attack.

You see, the attacks are most likely targeted, thus you aren't likely to be personally affected - well unless maybe you happen to be in the vicinity of one of the targets of the highly rational criminal gangs. So you'll likely not be blown to smithereens by an IED on your doorstep, and will still be able to enjoy all the other perks that diversity brings to your community.

Who are Sweden's gangs?

How will the BBC take on this touchy subject?

The hook:

Swedish police do not record or release the ethnicity of suspects or convicted criminals, but intelligence chief Linda H Straaf says many do share a similar profile. "They have grown up in Sweden and they are from socio-economically weak groups, socio-economically weak areas, and many are perhaps second- or third-generation immigrants," she says.

Ideological debates about immigration have intensified since Sweden took in the highest number of asylum seekers per capita in the EU during the migrant crisis of 2015. 

Some are starting to wonder if the mass importation of immigrants starting in 2015 has anything to do with the fact that gangs are starting to blow the place up.

The pivot:

But Ms Straaf says it is "not correct" to suggest new arrivals are typically involved in gang networks. For many on the political right the explosions add fuel to their argument that Sweden has struggled to integrate migrants over the past two decades.

In European press, "the political right" is effectively a slur. No one wants to be associated with the right wing by acknowledging arguments that Sweden has struggled to integrate immigrants.

But Malin Bradshaw believes crime levels are more to do with income and social status.

This kind of coverage is the jackpot for an SJW, whose highest virtue is to spout praise for social justice values directly into the face of contradictory truths. In this case, she was able to attach an image of her face to such pious claims in a major global news publication.

Esteemed Swedish crime authority Amir Mohammadi Rostami gets the last word in this section.

Amir Rostami says ethnicity rarely plays a big role in gang membership in Sweden. "When I interview gang members... the gang is their new country. The gang is their new identity."

Ethnicity rarely plays a role, he says, yet I have to wonder what percentage of the gangs who are behind the epidemic explosives are ethnically Swedish. He can't say, since they have a policy of not releasing such statistics (for obvious reasons), but it can safely assumed to be 0%, with a margin of error of 0%. The Swedish police withhold the data about ethnicity and crime so that they can lie and say ethnicity "rarely" plays a role, when it is effectively the only role.

Interestingly enough, he validates the argument attributed in the same section to right wingers: that immigrants are failing to integrate into Swedish culture. They are not taking on a Swedish identity but the identities of local gangs of their own ethnicities. Rostami refutes the liberal claim that the immigrants are just as Swedish as anyone else. Very sloppy editing, BBC. I demand a correction.

Did Swedish media cover up?

I'm surprised they even take this on.

The hook:

Another important layer of this story is how it has been covered by Swedish media. After last month's trio of attacks in Stockholm, public broadcaster SVT was accused of a leftist cover-up for leaving the story out of a main evening news programme.

The pivot:

Christian Christensen, a journalism professor at Stockholm University, was himself surprised that some programmes paid little attention to the explosions, but feels there was extensive coverage in the big newspapers and on local news programmes.

"The problem is that Sweden is used symbolically as proof of problems with immigration, proof of problems with leftist policies - unfairly in many cases," he argues.

A recent study by polling company Kantar Sifo found that law and order was the most covered news topic on Swedish TV and radio and on social media. 

This is a double pivot occurring. First, Christian Christensen (who gets an award for having an awesome name) "feels" that the there was strong coverage, just not on some television shows. Thus, the widespread conviction that the media is concealing the reality of immigrant crime is just an artifact of the distribution of the heavy and thorough mainstream coverage. Second, the complaint that Sweden's situation has become a symbol for the problems of immigration is used as rationale to withhold data from the public. It's the old canard of "we must hide the truth lest the right-wingers exploit it for their advantage." That sentiment is all you really need to know in the political divide. Whichever side is making excuses for lying is probably not the side you want to be on.

What are authorities doing?

The hook:

Police say they are trying to track down the perpetrators, but only one in 10 of such crimes in 2018 has led to a conviction.

The pivot:

The home affairs minister has announced increased powers to search suspects' homes and greater efforts to break the culture of silence around gang crime. But in Sodermalm, resident Anders Herdenstam says there has to be a greater focus on integration. "I am not afraid for where I live. I am mo re concerned when it comes to developments in Sweden nationally."

They saved the most extreme pivot for last. In a few sentences, they've spun concern that the justice system fails in 90% of terror attacks into a concern that people are responding to the blight of domestic terrorism with opinions that are not permitted under the tenets of Social Justice.

The hook-and-pivot method of taking a common-sense truth and converting it into a sophisticated lie is used constantly throughout the short article. The intention of the author to promote a narrative is as transparent as is the intention of a car salesman. The intention is clear, but what of the motivation? A common explanation would be sheer stupidity. While journalists do have lower-than-average IQs, they aren't so stupid as to not understand why the millions of migrants aren't behaving like Swedes.

Another explanation is that they are serving to defend the current social order. Surely the establishment doesn't want to permit the people to realize that their social experiments are destroying the greatest, most humane civilization that ever existed. They are personally vested in the system and risk to lose the countless bureaucracies from which they practice their petty tyrannies, as well as the media bully pulpits from which they wag their fingers at heretics, sing praises of their own virtues, and incite the people with prophesies of impending doom.

That model is closer to the truth than stupidity alone. Still, something is missing. For one, the SJWs are consumed with destroying social order, and any alliances with established power structures only last as long as they are convenient. (For instance, in the short interim between Russian Collusion and Ukrainian Collusion operations, AOC called Pelosi a racist and nearly destroyed the Democrat party.) Further, if the motivation is to defend the current order, then they aren't actually doing a very good job of it.

1. They pivoted the blame for the incidents away from ethnic tensions caused by migration policies, and towards economic conditions. But that opens just as big a window for criticism of the social democracy as the one it closes. The whole point was supposed to be that these kinds of economic situations wouldn't happen.
2. They use a crime expert with an ethnic name to make the claim that ethnicity plays no role in gang activity, when it would be more compelling if it was coming from an actual Swede. (Go with Christian, not Mohammadi.)
3. They call claims of failed integration a right-wing theory, then include a contradicting quote from the criminologist who states that the immigrants are integrating into ethnic gangs rather than Swedish culture.
4. That they acknowledge any of this at all, rather than dismissing it as right-wing conspiracy theory or ignoring it entirely. There was no need to include the fact that only 10% of Swedish terror attacks lead to criminal convictions, but they did, before concluding that the bigger problem than ethnic terrorism is that somewhere some white person might be racist.

A more effective model is simply that they are lying for the sake of lying itself. Their primary master is not a neoliberal world order, but a False Accuser. If their lies end up hurting the liberal order, then such is the cost of business. Concocting a web of subtle lies that cleverly defend a preferred social order is not actually the goal. No, it is actually more desirable to tell a garish outlandish lie if possible. While plausibility is always sought to defend against exposure, the actual goal is absurdity.

This model encompasses the scope of the previous one, but also fills all four listed gaps.  The first shows that they are more interested in lying than in defending the liberal order. The second shows that what they really are after is a theatrical spectacle of ridiculing the truth. The third shows that they aren't really concerned if their lies contradict each other. In fact, all the better if they do. The fourth shows that they are willing to admit limited aspects of the truth so long as it serves as a backdrop to accentuate their eagerness to lie in stark contrast of the plainly visible truth. Think of Jim Carey in Liar Liar, unable to describe the blue pen as red. The goal of the liar is to do just that: to hold up a blue pen and call it red.

Contrabang! #28 Cosmic Tension

Astronomically Rare ‘Double Lens’ Yields Best Single System Measurement Of Cosmic Expansion (link)

The background is that, while mainstream scientists mostly agree that the universe is expanding, they get different numbers when they use different approaches. One approach yields an expansion number of 67; the other 74.

Here, Ethan reports on a new method for determining the expansion rate, which has to do with measurement of distant gravitationally lensed system. (I confess I don't understand the mechanics of this approach, but it doesn't matter.)

The resultant expansion rate matches the other distance ladder values: 74.2 km/s/Mpc, with a 3.9% uncertainty.

It would appear that the system under review agrees with one of the previous approaches. So it's right? Not sure. Previously, Ethan stated that the conflicting numbers were not necessarily contradictory, and likely hint at some as-yet undiscovered "new physics." He ends the piece ambiguously.

With novel methods continually increasing this cosmic tension, new physics, not an error, provides the likeliest resolution.

New evidence is adding to "cosmic tension" - his way of saying that it seems to refute the mainstream theories he so passionately advocates.

In that light, please review this recent article from Hawaii's Keck Observatory title A Crisis in Cosmology. There, astronomers investigated three different gravitationally lensed system to find the expansion rate, and came up with three different answers: 70, 77, and 83.

The team’s results add to growing evidence that there is a problem with the standard model of cosmology, which shows the universe was expanding very fast early in its history, then the expansion slowed down due to the gravitational pull of dark matter, and now the expansion is speeding up again due to dark energy, a mysterious force. 

Boy, that sure is some "cosmic tension." Some would even call it a crisis. Not just "contrarians" like yours truly, but the actual astronomers performing the observations. In that context, reread Ethan's short synopsis to fully appreciate the degree to which he is grasping at straws here. Also note that Starts With A Bang! can't be trusted for unbiased reporting of space news. If I hadn't happened to have seen that Keck story in another context, I never would have understood the reality of the recent developments.

This Is Why Einstein’s Greatest Blunder Really Was A Tremendous Mistake (link)

I'll spare you the full treatment and pull out the two paragraphs of significance.

Today, just like every day for more than 20 years, the scientific consensus has been that there really is an effect that behaves just like a cosmological constant in the Universe: the accelerated expansion of the Universe. Only, today, we don’t demand that it must be a cosmological constant; we treat it as just another generalized form of energy with its own unique properties that must be determined observationally: dark energy.

The accelerated expansion that we see today indicates that dark energy’s behavior is indistinguishable from a cosmological constant’s behavior, which is extremely interesting. It’s no stretch to say that understanding and explaining dark energy is one of the biggest challenges facing 21st century science.

So the "tremendous mistake" is that mathematically a term gets moved, but in practice there is no difference. It hardly seems like a tremendous mistake from this vantage point, but it means that Einstein's theory is subject to the same criticisms as we've applied to dark energy here before.

LIGO’s Lasers Can See Gravitational Waves, Even Though The Waves Stretch The Light Itself (link)

Here he addresses a paradox of LIGO that no one was proposing. Supposedly, people are confused by the concept. Ethan suspects that people believe that light gets stretched by gravitational waves, thus it could not be used to measure the tiny variations in linear distances proposed be caused by the gravitational waves.

Actually, the skepticism of LIGO has more to do with it's implementation. They're taking a weak signal, eliminating noise somehow, and then comparing to a large catalog of theoretical events that would cause gravitational waves. The problem is that, no matter the observations, they'd eventually find what they were looking for. It's basically a galactic Rorschach test.

Revenge of the Soy Boys

The identity of the CIA "whistleblower" has been established as Senior Analyst Eric Ciaramella, a fairly effeminate looking guy. Rush Limbaugh described him as looking like Pajama Boy, the much lambasted soy boy from an Obamacare promotion. So the Democrats have put all their impeachment eggs into one soy basket. Further, they've put Adam Schiff in charges of the House proceedings, a man who looks so soft that he's likely to melt. These two weaklings are the front line of the left's move to take down the most powerful leader in the world.

Head-count style democracy is supposed to function somewhat like virtual warfare. Rather than putting opposing armies in the field to see who gets power, you take a count to see who would have fielded the largest army, and assume they would have won. The legitimacy is that the apportionment of power basically reflects the natural order of things, without the overhead of devastating civil wars. Well, there's nothing natural about effeminate men leading a coup against a masculine leader who was not appointed by the bureaucracy, but by his willingness to fight nearly everybody.

The current order is evil, thus it promotes liars. Our political opponents have a strong advantage in that they wield institutional power over us, but increasingly those institutions are run by people who are good at little else but lying. Inevitably such a system must fail, and those liars will fare the worst as they are totally dependent on their bureaucracies and the established order, which is why they are so desperate to defend it from all perceived threats.

The Deadly Consequences of Logical Inversion

In the Western tradition, there are certain rules of logic that are universal. The reason I am able to write routine criticisms of fields like astrophysics and evolutionary biology - fields in which I have no credentials other than the rudimentary education that all engineering majors are exposed to - is that they contain similar patterns of logical errors. As long as you can gain enough understanding of the domain to understand the lingo and general premises, you can pick up on the major logical mistakes pretty quickly. In short, it is much easier to be a critic than a creator, thus it is easier to shoot holes in the existing theories than to create your own and validate them with evidence. That is a universally true in all domains. It is easier to destroy a building than to architect one. It is easier to write buggy software than foolproof software. It is easier to kill the patient than to save him. If an amateur is able to blast holes in the prevailing theories, then either (1) the amateur is mistaken, or (2) the professionals are not holding themselves to the proper level of logical rigor.

Fundamental to the order of logic is that an argument is a claim supported by evidence. It is not proper to say that an argument is a claim supported by the promise of evidence, or that an argument is any claim which has not been disproven, or that an argument is a claim where all competing claims have been disproven. In the civilized world, the burden of proof lies on the prosecution, and so is the same in science and virtually any other profession. If I theorize that unicorns exist, it is not your duty, as a skeptic, to prove me wrong. I must prove my own claim. Similarly, manufacturers do not list all the specifications that a product does not satisfy. It is a list of claims about the vehicle which can be verified through inspection and testing.

Failing to abide by such fundamental tenets of logic leads inevitably to disaster. In 1986, the highly touted Challenger launch ended in a tragedy that was viewed live by 17% of the country. It is well known that one of the booster engineers urgently presented data to his superiors showing the dangers of a launch in such cold temperatures. The story I was told as an engineering freshman (I was originally an Aerospace Engineering major) was that the error was an inability of the engineers to present their technical advise in a way that could be understood by the less technical launch managers. However, these paragraphs from the Wikipedia article explain the situation very well.

After his team agreed that a launch risked disaster, Thiokol immediately called NASA recommending a postponement until temperatures rose in the afternoon. NASA manager Jud Lovingood responded that Thiokol could not make the recommendation without providing a safe temperature. The company prepared for a teleconference two hours later during which it would have to justify a no-launch recommendation.

Clearly, the engineers were operating from a proper technical perspective. The behavior of the seal at the predicted launch temperature was, at best, undetermined, therefore they could not support the claim that the flight schedule was safe. The management tried to coerce them into a logical inversion and prove that conditions were not safe. They demanded a negative design spec for the space vehicle.

Thiokol management initially supported its engineers' recommendation to postpone the launch, but NASA staff opposed a delay. During the conference call, Hardy told Thiokol, "I am appalled. I am appalled by your recommendation." Mulloy said, "My God, Thiokol, when do you want me to launch—next April?" NASA believed that Thiokol's hastily prepared presentation's quality was too poor to support such a statement on flight safety.[14] One argument by NASA personnel contesting Thiokol's concerns was that if the primary O-ring failed, the secondary O-ring would still seal. This was unproven, and was in any case an argument that did not apply to a "Criticality 1" component. As astronaut Sally Ride stated when questioning NASA managers before the Rogers Commission, it is forbidden to rely on a backup for a "Criticality 1" component.

The motivation is clear. Career reputations are made by production numbers, not by playing it safe. The NASA managers were under great pressure to get the bird in the air. Even waiting until the afternoon is providing a window for additional failures to cause further delays. They emotionally sided with their career prospects rather than rationally siding with logical analysis. In effect, they chose the sins of pride & greed over the path of truth.

No one was ever charged with a crime for the inadvertent public execution broadcasted worldwide. It was dismissed as a communication error, and the incident is used today to educate engineering students on the importance of communicating effectively to management. That conclusion is false and practically amounts to a coverup of the real error. It is not overly harsh to expect the people entrusted with some of the most critical technical jobs in the country to be held accountable for the fundamental aspects of logical reasoning. In fact, it's not too much to expect that anyone holding a college degree, or working in a position that normally requires one, to understand them. The men who maliciously concocted a logical inversion to keep their careers progressing along should have been tried and convicted for manslaughter. The people who hired them should have been strongly reprimanded for hiring men who did not understand logical principles to positions of extreme technical importance. None of this should be remotely excusable in a first-class space-age nation. A country that cannot appoint rational people to those positions has no business in manned space flight, and that's exactly where we are now nine years after the termination of the shuttle program - hitching rides with the Russians.

Prediction: the USA is out of the manned-space business for good. We're now too woke even to build pedestrian bridges. Speaking of that, NTSB released its final report on the FIU feminist bridge disaster (pdf). In addition to highlighting the circus of errors that lead to the deaths of several commuters and workers, it includes the following suggestion to the engineering firm.

Train your staff on the proper use of P_c (the permanent net compressive force normal to the shear plane) when calculating nominal interface shear resistance.

It's a stiff retort, basically calling the outfit a bunch of amateurish clowns, but where are the criminal charges? It should not be legal to practice engineering without knowledge of the craft in an advanced nation. The report is all in the the spirit of suggestions for improvements moving forward. In woke America, education is the solution to all problems, and no one is ever held accountable for incompetency. Most of the recommendations were towards providing more oversight.

The OSHA report (pdf) was similarly scathing.

EOR should have known that the truss was a non-redundant structure and if one diagonal member failed, the entire bridge could collapse.

It reads like explaining the concepts of bridge-building to children. Just as the NASA launch managers falsely believed they could rely on a secondary O-ring, the empowered engineers thought they could fall back on design redundancy. The whole point of redundancy is that you design the primary system to work alone! None of us here (most likely) are experts of bridge building or space rocketry, but we can see clear as day the common logical failure that led to disaster in both domains. You don't have to be a rocket scientist to understand it.

Contrabang! #27 Dark Inflation, Dark Dust, and Dark Bigotry

Controversial ‘Dark Matter Free Galaxy’ Passes Its Most Difficult Test (link)

In theory, all galaxies should contain copious amounts of dark matter, with one exception.

In theory, there's no such thing as dark matter. It was never theoretically predicted. It has never been observed. The only "evidence" is that the laws of gravity developed for our solar system don't accurately describe the motions of galaxies. Thus, dark matter was concocted and applied in "copious amounts" wherever necessary to make the equations work. Ethan is correct that there is "one exception" to galaxies containing dark matter, which is the case where the gravitational models happen to work by sheer coincidence, in the way that -40° Celsius and -40° Fahrenheit happen to be the same temperature.

Detractors argued their absence proved dark matter’s non-existence.

I can't speak for all detractors, but we've certainly never made such an absurd, upside-down claim. "Dark matter is observed everywhere, therefore dark matter does not exist." Followed by: "A galaxy without dark matter has been found, therefore dark matter exists." Apparently, to definitively disprove the existence of dark matter, we'd have to create it in a lab or something.

What Came First: Inflation Or The Big Bang? (link)

Our entire cosmic history is theoretically well-understood, but only because we understand the theory of gravitation that underlies it, and because we know the Universe’s present expansion rate and energy composition.

Just because our cosmic history is theoretically well-understood doesn't mean that it is pragmatically well-understood. I could create a theory of the cosmos which explains every conceivable observation, but it would not bring much practical value. All of his claims here are false. We clearly don't understand the theory of gravitation, since we can't even predict the rotational dynamics of galaxies. Nor do we know the Universe's present expansion rate, because scientists who use different approaches get different numbers, which means the energy composition is also unknown. In just the first sentence of the article (actually it's an image caption), every single aspect is wrong. Note his insistence that our entire cosmic history is well-understand. Ethan frequently uses such universal qualifiers in his writing. From a scientific perspective, it is okay not to know everything. The whole point of science is that there are things we don't know, and if we did, there would be no need to hire researchers any more. A scientist needs great mysteries to solve, whereas a priestly caste must provide answers to all questions of the cosmic order.

13.8 billion years ago, all the matter and energy contained within our Universe was concentrated into a volume of space about the size of a soccer ball. Even with all that energy in such a small space, however, we didn’t collapse into a black hole.

Why? Why in this one special case did the matter not collapse into a black hole?

Instead, the Universe expanded at a rapid rate that balanced the energy density so precisely that, for all of our measured cosmic history, we’ve walked that fine line between expanding and recollapsing.

Astrophysicists are amazed that the expanding universe just so happens to maintain a perfect razor's edge balance. What are the odds?

The Big Bang wasn’t the beginning, after all. Instead, that honor goes to cosmic inflation, and everyone should understand why.When we look out at the Universe today, we see a number of observable facts that cry out for an explanation. They include:

• the fact that more distant galaxies appear to recede from us in direct proportion to their distance from us,
• the fact that galaxies, at greater distances, appear to be smaller, bluer, younger, and less evolved,
• the fact that the Universe, at greater distances, appears to be less clumpy and more uniform, with less clustering on large-scales,
• the fact that the percentage of heavy elements (atoms heavier than hydrogen and helium) asymptotes to 0% at the greatest distances,
• and the fact that we see a very cold but clearly identifiable background of blackbody radiation in all directions in space.

Remarkably, one framework is consistent with each and every one of these observations: the Big Bang.

We've shown before why the first item sits on shaky ground. The second is subject to some contradictory evidence. The third doesn't mean much either: they've contorted their models to try to accommodate the observations of the cosmic web, which weren't predicted by the Big Bang theory. Only the 4th and 5th items are compelling. I am not familiar enough with #4 to comment. #5 is compelling primarily because the prediction was made by a Big Bang theorist. In fact, it was that prediction/confirmation that compelled the scientific mainstream to go all-in on Big Bang.

He then provides a list of questions that were commonly asked about the Big Bang in the last century.

• Why was the Universe born perfectly spatially flat, with its total matter-and-energy density perfectly balancing the initial expansion rate?
• Why is the Universe the exact same temperature, to 99.997% accuracy, in all directions, even though the Universe hasn’t existed for enough time for different regions to thermalize and reach an equilibrium state?
• Why, if the Universe reached these ultra-high energies early on, are there no high-energy relics (like magnetic monopoles) predicted by generic extensions to the Standard Model of particle physics?
• And why, since the entropy of a system always increases, was the Universe born in such a low-entropy configuration relative to its configuration today?

Those sound like good questions, and only arise because of the Big Bang Theory. The answer given -as the title alludes - is that there was a period of cosmic inflation prior to the Big Bang. It all relies on the concept that spacetime is not an abstraction but a thing, and that it can conveniently expand as necessary to make annoying questions go away. Why did spacetime suddenly undergo such a dramatic Dark Inflation? It doesn't matter why; it makes the equations work and gives an excuse to brush off annoying contradictions.

Still, contradictions remain, one which ties in with last week's edition of Contrabang!, where we pointed out that Ethan's insistence on steady, universal law of physics was an unstated assumption. That may have seemed liked a nit being made by someone he would describe as a "contrarian." And yet, here he implies that the rules of physics are different today than during the Big Bang. For one, the entire mass of the cosmos did not collapse into a black hole when constricted to a tiny space, as we would expect today. Second, the inflation of spacetime said to have uniformly stretched out the contents of the universe, giving rise to the uniformities seen today. However, we are also told that the current expansion of the universe does not apply to "gravitationally bound" systems, like our solar system and galaxy. The early cosmos must have been gravitationally bound to itself, yet was still stretched by spacetime.

That's the problem with not tracking assumptions, is that at any time they adopt whatever assumptions are most convenient.

Can This Newfound Dark, Massive Galaxy Be Astronomy’s ‘Missing Link’ In The Universe? (link)

The problem is that astronomers see small elliptical galaxies which are highly red-shifted (thus assumed to be very distant and old) and then suddenly very massive, modern galaxies being abruptly about a billion years after Big Bang. It is assumed that the larger super galaxies are formed by the gravitational mergers of many small galaxies (but like the way mega corporations grow) but those intermediate galaxies are never detected.

For those elusive galaxies to not appear in the same surveys that find both of the other types of galaxies means there must be something that’s obscuring the light we’re expecting to arrive. [...] What might be a reasonable culprit is the gas and dust that belongs to the proto-galaxies which merge to form the late-type galaxies we eventually see.

You heard it here first...Dark Dust! Just like how dark matter occurs wherever necessary to make the equations work for galaxies, dark dust occurs wherever necessary to hide the observations that scientists should be making, but aren't.

In short, a large spiral galaxy, somewhat smaller than our Milky Way, with a large rate of star production has been found, and is largely obscured by dust. So Ethan is very excited that this is the "missing link" of galactic evolution. However, if the theory is correct than there must be a great many of these types hidden by shrouds of Dark Dust.

This Is Why The Speed Of Gravity Must Equal The Speed Of Light (link)

Here's an interesting one that takes on one of my big complaints with general relativity, which is that orbits should not be stable, even in two-body systems. Because of the time-delay of gravity, the Earth should be attracted to the position of the Sun 8 minutes previous. Because the solar system and galaxy are themselves moving through space at high velocity, the discrepancy would be very significant.

The answer given is that the length-dilation affects of motion in general relativity cancel out the problems caused by gravitational delay.

In order for this to work out, though, there has to be an additional effect to cancel out the problem of a non-zero tangential acceleration, which is induced by a finite speed of gravity. This phenomenon, known as gravitational aberration, is almost exactly cancelled by the fact that General Relativity also has velocity-dependent interactions.

I have trouble making conceptual sense of this, as most people do. For now, we'll have to trust that the math work as stated, but I plan to do a more technical deep-dive into the subject sometime during a slow fake news week.

While I'm somewhat skeptical of general relativity, I have no strong arguments against it either. There is supporting evidence, but scientists are over eager to confirm the theory and are not sufficiently skeptical themselves. Einstein himself believed that he generally on the right track but may not have gotten it right with relativity.

What’s remarkable, and by no means obvious, is that these two effects cancel almost exactly. The fact that the speed of gravity is finite is what induces this gravitational aberration, but the fact that General Relativity (unlike Newtonian gravity) has velocity-dependent interactions is what allowed Newtonian gravity to be such a good approximation. There’s only one speed that works to make this cancellation a good one: if the speed of gravity equals the speed of light.

This has become a familiar tune with Ethan's articles, with the endless coincidences of things just happening to work out nicely, with the universe walking a razor's edge between realms of chaos, in multiple domains. Here's another, that the speed of gravity and the speed of light just happen to equal. Why is that? There must be some aspect in which light and gravity are related, if they share the same speed. (That or general relativity is false.) They are theoretically quite different. Light is said to be a wave without a medium, while gravitational information is transmitted as waves propagating through the "fabric" of spacetime. There is no theoretical reason why the two should be the same, so clearly there is something big here. Either there's a light/gravity connection that hasn't been discovered (Einstein spent his later years in vain trying to find this "unified theory") or what is currently taken as proven science is not actually so.

Interestingly, the whole concept of general relativity comes out of one those physical coincidences that most people take for granted. Einstein noted that mass was responsible for both gravitational force and for inertia. He assumed that the two phenomena must be artifacts of the same underlying physics, and developed relativity as a way to make both forces the effect of movement through spacetime. However, general relativity is incomplete, because the resulting cosmological coincidence of the speeds of light equaling the speed of gravity has not been conceptually resolved.

However, Ethan has his own take on the matter.

The speed of gravity is exactly the speed of light, and physics wouldn’t have allowed it to be any other way.

That's actually a religious argument. "Physics" has no inherent plan, so it is equivalently stated that "God wouldn't have allowed it to be any other way." Which is fine philosophy, but not science. We should remember that the scientific revolution came out of a Christian society, where men believed that the universe was His creation, and they were teasing out the rationale of the design. They were not content with just the what and the why, but also the how.

6 Steps Everyone Can Take To Become An Ally In White, Male-Dominated Workplaces (link)

Every now and again Ethan makes sure that everyone knows he runs a political blog with a science theme. Now he mounts his podium to lecture us on the core tenet of Social Justice activism: that there is inherent but unspecific racism that keeps other from making the same great historical scientific achievements as white men. The Dark Bigotry can't be detected, but it must be because otherwise the equations of social equality don't work out. (See that pattern?)

The top comment indicates that people are really getting fed up with this constant finger-wagging at whites.

I almost stopped following you on this. Medium doesn’t have enough woke losers telling everyone else how to live their lives? I enjoyed your posts on science. I hope you stick with those.

What readers don't quite realize yet is that his posts on science are just as much a tool of social control as his his blatant shaming of white men for daring to be successful in technical fields.

Pete Buttigieg Has Surged

In Social Gospel Movement I predicted Buttigieg would win the nomination because liberals would find the open mockery to Christianity of a "gay Christian" president to be too irresistible to pass up. In Who's Surprised I stated that his preferred status means that he can (ironically) play the role of the straight man, and not have to engage in the same level of lefty virtue signaling and racial self-flagellation as the likes of Warren and O'Rourke.

The New York Times reports that "Pete Buttigieg has surged" in Iowa, now one point ahead of the one-time frontrunner Biden, one behind Bernie Sanders, and a few behind the new frontrunner Liz Warren. From the Conservative Treehouse article, Limo-Left Turn to Buttigieg to Save Them…

The clock is ticking faster now.  Beto crashed miserably; Kamala’s giggling high-school schtick is embarrassing herself and others; the DNC has run out of handlers for Biden’s frequent episodes; Bernie is still yelling at trees; and now Warren has outed her plan to tax everyone into oblivion to fund her $52 trillion, yes TRILLION, healthcare scheme. [...] Buttigieg is now their latest hope.

Biden is falling from presumptive-nominee status for three major reasons.

1. His gaffe-prone senility
2. The decision of House Democrats to push forward on impeachment(ish) proceedings opens Biden up to serious exposure regarding Ukraine, and shows that Democrats are more than willing to sacrifice him on the altar of Getting Trump.
3. Obama has still not endorsed his former VP.

O'Rourke fizzled out because his support was never authentic and he became the walking caricature of a libtarded dunce. (The libtarded part may or may not have been an act, but the dunce aspect seemed very credible.) As Sundance points out, Warren's recent healthcare plan proposal is likely to douse cold water on her campaign in places like Iowa and New Hampshire, and comes about because straight-married white Democrats have to go over-the-top to appease the SJW/AOC wings of the party (especially those who built their careers off abusing affirmative action policies.) The New York Times did not mention her healthcare plan, but did include a snippet on why Iowa voters like her.

Jonathan Morrison, 45, of Mason City, said he was drawn to Ms. Warren because of her grasp of economic issues and believed she would “hold her own” against the president.

Yikes. Not only has she been pushed into psychotic anti-Trump Twitter rants, she's now destroyed any notion of her "grasp of economic issues." The best she can hope for is that enough Democrat voters will remain misinformed for the next few months. (A reasonable gamble.)

Overall, I'm pleased with my prediction about Buttigieg, which was made when he was only polling at around three percent. He's now neck-and-neck with heavyweights Sanders and Biden. His weakness has always been electability, since Latinos and Blacks aren't going to turn out for a homosexual. But, Biden is the only candidate that really polls well with blacks. With him falling, Buttigieg's handicap will become less of an issue.

Predictions aside, I somewhat hope Warren wins the nomination. For one, at least she is a mother, and we should not fall into the European model of electing the childless to office. Considering that her primary opposition consists of a sell-out Bolshevik, a homosexual with no résumé, and a geriatric demon with baggage... well she's not the worst that the Democrats could offer. Second, her nomination will help us to educate whites that it is okay to take personal gain by abusing affirmative action - which is nothing more than state-sanctioned open racism against whites. Lie on your applications. Say you have high cheekbones. It will be okay.