Meta

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Meta (from the Greek meta- μετά- meaning "after" or "beyond") is a prefix used in English to indicate a concept which is an abstraction -- something used to as part of, or to complete something else. While many of my articles may reference or borrow a section from other articles, meta-articles are articles that contain MANY other articles inside them (or are almost entirely made from other articles).

This is a list of meta-articles:

Alternate Liberty - There's real liberty, and the left's version (Alternate Liberty) -- they have very little in common. Real liberty is about arguing with people who don't do what you want, but letting them do it anyways. Telling them not to say things, or arguing against it, but letting them do it anyways. It's about championing your causes, by trying to win in public opinion, not using the tyranny of the majority (50%+1 of votes) to force laws or authority to take away their right to do it. Remember, a law/regulation/tax is the point where a bully says, "do it, or I'll have this government goon take you property, liberty or life".
Amazon -
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I'm neither advocate nor foe of Amazon. They are a company, that's doing their best to adapt to changing market demands. Some things they do, like offering me better selection at lower prices, is great. Other things they do, like censorship or partisan politics, is annoying. A company isn't made up of any one act or person, but the aggregate of all of them. This article is a list of different Amazon related topics/articles that touch on the Amazon Gestalt. While I have individual opinions on individual acts, I'm perfectly fine leaving it to readers to make up their own minds on those micro-acts, or the macro-organization and personalities.
Anti-Science Party -
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Republicans are the anti-science party, unless we're talking about any of the following things the left believes that are anti-science: Beepocalypse, Biofuels, Black Conspiracy Theology, Carpool lanes, Corporate Personhood & Citizens United, Evolution and Creation, Gender Wage Gap, Gender is a choice, Global Cooling Scare, Green Energy, Keynes, Leftonomics, Life Begins at..., Light Rail, Nuclear Energy, Organic food fraud, Paranormal beliefs​, Peak Oil Theory, Plastic Bag Bans, Recycling, Science and Religion, Secondhand Drinking, Secondhand Smoke, Smoking, Smoking and Healthcare costs, Straw Bans, The Population Bomb, Unintended Consequences, War on Science, Wind Power, and so on. The right isn't immune to being anti-science, it's just that democrats/left/media pretends they are better, when the informed know that as a group, they definitely are worse. Of course I treat individuals as individuals and not a group, but any democrat/leftist individual that broad brushes conservatives for being anti-science is demonstrating hyper-selective blinders (hypocrisy).
Apple -
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A list of various articles and topics of discussion around Apple. Since they're a secretive company, I tend to avoid opining on a lot of things about them, out of respect for their desire and right to control their own messaging. So I tend to only focus on the trivial for a reason.
Award Shows - Award shows are the participation trophies for the left. It's where insecure people award themselves prizes for doing their jobs, and then have sanctimonious speeches where high school drop-outs and insular and spoiled rich divas try to tell the rest of us what we're doing wrong and how great they all are.
CNN -
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In 1980 Ted Turner started CNN, and put his left center spin on "the news". His later marriage to Hanoi Jane Fonda didn't help perceptions, nor did the newsrooms agenda convey a fully objective tone. He wanted to be the 24 hour version of the same left of center news outlets like CBS, ABC, NBC. So it was founded on his flavor of bias, and went downhill. It wouldn't be quite so bad, if they were just honest about it: but the faux air of objectivity, and denial of any bias, makes it worse.
Canada - Factoids about Canada. Note that I like Canada, and have a lot of Canadian friends. All good folks. That being said, the things that are likely to catch my interests, aren't going to be all the good things, but mostly quirks or less than good things. I mean if I REALLY liked Canada, I would have moved there, eh? But to me, it's like a colder version of Seattle, full of people that are nice enough, but don't understand why America became America -- despite the britons paying people to move to Canada.
Climate Consensus - Consensus/popularity is politics, Science is skepticism (and proof). A quick glance and the 97% Scientific Consensus for AGW (Anthropogenic Global Warming), proves that those who repeat it are either fools (unaware of where it came from) or liars (dishonest), there really isn't a lot of middle ground on this one. The actual consensus is surprisingly small, and the studies that say otherwise are embarrassingly bad, and the one thing that most Scientists have a stronger consensus on, is that IPCC and the media are misleading the public (and overhyping things).
Disney - I like Disney. I think they've done a lot of good stuff. But that doesn't mean they're beyond reproach and haven't done some crappy stuff too. These are just some articles on one or the other side of that issue.
Fake News -
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While the term goes back 100 years, the history is summed up well in a Sharyl Attkisson TedTalk on FakeNews. While our media has always had false narratives and bad stories that are Fake News (exampled include: Edward R. Murrow's "See it now" McCarthy'ing Joe McCarthy (1954), Richard Jewel story (1996), story about a plane crashing into Camp David after 9/11 (2001), Duke LeCross Rape Case (2014), Michael Brown and 'hands up, don't shoot' narrative (2014), and so on). We didn't use the term "Fake News", just liberal media bias or incompetence, but it's been around since the first liberal got sloppy or partisan at a newspaper, somewhere back in Roman times.

Then on September 13, 2016 Hillary Clinton supporters Google and Eric Schmidt, used a shell charity (a non-profit called "First Draft,") to start seeding the term to attack right wing websites ("to tackle malicious hoaxes and fake news reports"). Hillary Clinton and her surrogate David Brock of Media Matters admitted in a campaign letter that they pressured Facebook to join the effort. Google warned Conservative websites to remove stories that Google didn't like, or they'd take away their ad revenue. And Barack Obama and the liberal media followed along, regurgitating what they were told: none were going to let this opportunity (to curate what information we could see) go to waste, all in the name of protecting free speech. All coincidentally done at the same time, in what could only be a coordinated campaign attack.

Unfortunately for them, it backfired when people noticed that the mainstream liberal media made more errors and was less honest, and started throwing it back in their face. Fake News applied more to the News, Google, Facebook, Obama and other curators and finger pointers than their victims. Donald Trump used that to hijack the term and use it back against them. The left tried to change the narrative and pretend that Trump had created the term, and they wanted to stop using it and claimed it was a hateful term and an attack on free press to point out the Presses bias or errors. And that's where we are today.

Fake News Orgs - While our media has always had false narratives and bad stories that are Fake News (exampled include: Edward R. Murrow's "See it now" McCarthy'ing Joe McCarthy (1954), Richard Jewel story (1996), story about a plane crashing into Camp David after 9/11 (2001), Duke LeCross Rape Case (2014), Michael Brown and 'hands up, don't shoot' narrative (2014), and so on). But Clinton supporters (Googe/Eric Schmidt) re-popularized the term to try to attack conservatives, and it backlashed against the mainstream liberal media big time: since they made more errors and were less honest.
Gun Control doesn't stop mass murders - How do we know that Gun Control doesn't help mass murder? Because the biggest mass murders have been in places with strict gun control, far stricter than in the U.S. and would never work here. And in fact, virtually all of the mass shootings in the U.S. were either done by government forces, or in gun-free zones because shooters are smart enough to pick places where people can't shoot back.
Gun Controllers -
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This is a short list of some of the "smartest Gun-Controllers in the room". This isn't just "gotcha" type mistakes, this is about Gun Control advocates fundamental failure to understand the basics of what they're talking about. I'd be happy to find a gun-controller that could talk about the basic parts and operation without sounding like an idiot, but this article is about the examples of the 99% that are giving the rest a bad name. The things they said that make the informed gun-owners double-face-palm, and undermines the interests of any rational gun controllers. Some day I'll meet one of the latter.
Hillary Clinton - Here's a brief summary of Hillary's scandals (with links to more on each of them). This isn't meant as a balanced piece to show what good she's accomplished as a politicians or person (that would be a much shorter list), the intent is just to show the pattern of scandals that her detractors recognized and her proponents ignore. If you want the pro-Hillary spin just listen to her, the NYT, CNN or MSNBC, they carry her water for her.
Hollywood -
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H. J. Whitley had already started over 100 towns across the western United States, he was on his honeymoon in 1886 at the top of the hill looking out over the valley. Along came a Chinese man in a wagon carrying wood. The man got out of the wagon and bowed. The Chinese man was asked what he was doing and replied, "I holly-wood," meaning 'hauling wood.' H. J. Whitley decided to name his new town Hollywood: "Holly" would represent England and "wood" would represent his Scottish heritage.

H. J. Whitley's company (Los Angeles Pacific Boulevard and Development Company), bought the 480 acres E.C. Hurd ranch, and created the map of his plans. But it was Daeida Wilcox, a prominent investor and friend of Whitley's, who recommended the same name to her husband, who had purchased 120 acres on February 1, 1887, and they used that name and filed it with the Los Angeles County Recorder's office on a deed and parcel map of the property.

Hollywood was incorporated as a municipality on November 14, 1903, and then (January 30, 1904) banished liquor in the city, except when it was being sold for medicinal purposes, and later movie theaters. Then in 1910, the city voted to merge with Los Angeles in order to secure an adequate water supply and to gain access to the L.A. sewer system. Finally 1923, a large sign, reading HOLLYWOODLAND, was built in the Hollywood Hills to advertise a housing development -- and in 1949 the Hollywood Chamber of Commerce took over repair and rebuilding the sign: including removing the last 4 letters, to now refer to the district, rather than the housing development.

After problems in New Jersey because of Edison suing filmmakers, many of them fled west to Los Angeles area and started setting up production near Los Angeles for better weather, variety of terrain, and to evade New Jersey patent infringement. Hollywood became known as Tinseltown and the "dream factory" because of the glittering image of the movie industry.

This is the perfect summary, it was named after a racial slur, sold as being for something else. It was named by one person but another person registered it. The first thing they did was make it a dry city and ban the industry that made it famous -- which only happened there so they could rip off someone else's intellectual property. The sign they're most famous for was done by someone else, and they stole credit. And only a few years after being founded they had to give up control because they couldn't manage their own water or sewage. The more things change, the more they stay the same.

Iraq War -
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This covers many of the fallacies and bad arguments about the Iraq War. Disagreeing over the cost/benefits of a war is fine, ignoring truths because they get in the way of your agenda is not.


Leftonomics - There's real economics, and the left's version (Leftonomics) -- they have very little in common. Real economics is about observing what is, and learning from it. Leftonomics is about ignoring what is, and believing whatever cultural Marxism has taught you and that you wish was true. Usually some variant of America/Capitalism is bad, and government authoritarianism would be better.
Memes -
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I updated the Memes section. Life is short, why not mock it?
Memes : AnimalsArroganceBLMBrancoCOVIDClimateClocksEconEducationFeedbackFoodFunnyGunsInspirationalIsmsIssuesLawsLogicMediaMilitaryMineMoviesMovies2MusicOrganizationsPeoplePlacesPoliticsPranksRacyReligionSatireScienceSeasonalSportsStar WarsWoke
Minimum Wage - Minimum wage is the delusion that bureaucrats and politicos know more about what's fair than the laborer and the employer, and that there's a magic round number that fair for everyone, everywhere, at the same time. We know that it hurts employment, increases automation and offshoring, and hurts the people it's supposed to help. Either these consequences are unintentional, or the politicians want to make the problem worse while pretending to help, so they have something to campaign on.
Minimum Wage Laws -
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The minimum wage and living wage warriors seem reluctant to accept the economic realities: price and wage controls almost never work. There are extremely rare cases where they can work (or do minimal damage) in one small location for short amounts of time, but there's no magic wage that's right for everywhere and everywhen at once. Thus wage controls start out bad and get worse over time. While a few discredited studies (like Card & Krueger) show that raising minimum wage doesn't have large impacts, in a few situations, for short periods of time. But each study like that has dozens of rebuttals and refutations that show the flaws in their methodology, and counter studies that it does impact employment (and wages), in the wrong way. So if you see a Study or News that claims minimum wage doesn't hurt employment, you know it's Fake. A few socratic questions show the problems: (a) What's a fair wage for both NYC and B.F. Idaho? If $15/hr is good, why not $150/hr? If only 9% of minimum wage workers are below the poverty line (and 91% are not), wouldn't giving money directly to that 9% be better? If minimum wage is a starting salary, why should it have an ending value (be a livable wage)?
Real Hate - This is a list of "Real Hate"... the rash of violence (>50 attacks) against conservatives or MAGA supporters that happened after the election that you may not have read or seen much about. This isn't just inciting violence, but committing it in order to encourage more of it (or to stifle the opposition). The point being that if this is news to you, and some of these are more horrific and newsworthy than lesser things that you have heard about, then that's evidence of FakeNews. That your information is being censored (filtered) and you're not getting a balanced view of reality.
Trump's sexual assaults - List of women who claimed that Trump sexually assaulted them: E. Jean Carroll, Jessica Leeds, Kristin Anderson, Jill Harth, Cathy Heller, Temple Taggart McDowell, Karena Virginia, Melinda McGillivray, Rachel Crooks, Natasha Stoynoff, Jessica Drake, Ninni Laaksonen, Summer Zervos, Juliet Huddy, Alva Johnson, and Cassandra Searle. Most of them are not credible, and the media that reported them were reporting on FakeNews to try to swing an election (as proven how differently they write about Democrats sexual assault accusations, or how many stories they suppressed despite more evidence).
Unexplained Phenomena - People love to focus on how smart we are, and what we know. And that's fine and all. I love what we do know. But to keep one humble, it helps if you remember that there's stuff out there that we don't really know, some we understand what happens but not why it happens, and some stuff we may never really understand. A lot of this is just stuff we can't test, so can't understand. Some is stuff we can test, but still don't understand. The scientific method is great and all, but some things might be bigger than us. I'm OK with that. I'm just not OK with pretending we know things that we really don't.
Unintended Consequences -
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Every action causes a reaction. Some reactions are pleasant surprises, many are negatives, some are counter productive (perverse) and make the problem worse. Since consequences matter more than intentions, we have a social obligation to plan for them (and avoid them). The phrase "unintended consequences" is used as either a wry warning against the hubristic belief that humans can control the world around them, or more often against a really bad implementation of not-so-smart ideas or implementations. Those that deny unintended consequences are denying science (reality).
VoterID and Voter Fraud -
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The purpose of this aimless article isn’t to convince people of any particular solution, it is to meander through the facts, eviscerate the fallacies, and give everyone the data to come to their own conclusions about Voter fraud and VoterID. There are a lot of fallacies and noise about voter fraud and whether voterID (requiring ID at voting places would fix it). I’ll list just a few of the many examples of voter fraud, and reasons for concerns below -- yet, there's are a lot of DNC fronts (media outlets) that claim there’s virtually none. Why the discrepancy? Well the reason is that voter fraud overwhelmingly benefits the Democrats (DNC). If you were them, would you want it to stop? Denial ain't just a river in Egypt.