Reader Tips

Reader Tips 32 Comments

We’ve managed to go a full 24 hours without a music industry obituary, which always makes my job harder. So, this evening’s selection is from among the living: Keith Richards – Crosseyed Heart. Still the sexiest man in rock ‘n roll.
Your tips in the comments.

This Is Not Your Grandma’s Humane Society

Animal Rights Extremism 30 Comments

The RSPCA in action:

Miss Brown only discovered her animals had been taken away and moved to “new loving homes” when she was released from hospital two weeks later.
Her three pet sheep were also shot the day after she was taken into hospital, before the animals were said to have been fed to the hounds of a local hunt.

These are the activists devising marketing schemes for companies like Earls, and taking over veterinary associations with the goal of ending animal ownership rights through changes to Canadian law. The state has no business in the bedrooms of the nation – unless you have a basket of kittens sleeping in the closet.
Wake up, provincial governments. They’ve begun by branding routine animal husbandry practices as “cruel”, have the circuses, zoos and animal parks in the crosshairs, and are coming for agriculture, rodeo, and other animal sport. The time to curb the powers of these non-governmental agencies and activist veterinary boards is now.

Y2Kyoto: Our Fevered Planet

Climate Cult Y2Kyoto 21 Comments

Serve chilled;

Temperatures dipped below freezing in several of France’s prized central wine regions this week, striking both Burgundy and the Loire Valley. In the Côte d’Or, Chablis to the north and Côte Chalonnaise, frost arrived early on the morning of April 25 and again the next night and the morning of April 27, resulting in frost that damaged the newly formed buds. Farther west, central regions of the Loire Valley, including Chinon, Bourgueil and Vouvray, were similarly hit.
“We cannot estimate the damage at the moment,” said Alex Gambal, the Beaune-based négociant. “Everyone is calling everyone else and it will take a few days to see what results.”
]…]
Early reports from the Loire were not hopeful. “In the memory of vignerons, there are two major freezes: 1991 and 1994. This is on the level of 1994. It’s historic,” said Guillaume Lapaque, director of the federation of the Indre-Loire wines trade group and the Bourgueil wine syndicate. “It froze on three nights–April 18, April 25 and then April 27.”

Here, Tell These People Something They Don’t Know About Me

8 Mile Rule Political Animal 47 Comments

The post-mortems begin — for Cruz and “Big Data”.

I believe Trump ran a better campaign than Cruz for two reasons:
1) Republican voters not only wanted an outsider candidate for president, they wanted that candidate to campaign like an outsider
2) The conventional strategies and tactics on running in the presidential primary had become so stale that an outsider with disdain for professional politics found a new way to win using common sense
Trump’s simple, straightforward strategy of trying to win in every state, take as much free media as possible, have an inclusion attitude toward getting voters, and appear in front of as many people as possible proved to be sledgehammer against the old way. And unlike just about every other past self-funder, Trump did not let his campaign take him for a ride.
[…]
A final word about data-driven advertising: in the rush to be Internet savvy, I believe campaigns have overlooked how impractical it is to get a message across there. Because of the size constraint mobile is not conducive toward intrusive content like ads, and display advertising is incredibly ignorable and otherwise threatened by ad-blocking technology. While Twitter and other social media sites are effective for voter contact and media relations, the advertising on them is by definition a much weaker product than what you see on TV. Internet advertising is another space where campaigns seem to drift because it looks smart.

The size-constrained mobile is not conducive to content in general. Smartphones are wrecking the internet.

Wynneing!

Alternative Subsidy Climate Cult Green Police Wynneing 48 Comments

A chicken in every pot, a gun to every head;

Things just got a whole lot brighter in Canada for the dismal electric-car business. Word has leaked that the country’s largest province is preparing to help buy a plug-in vehicle or hybrid for millions of families across the province — or will at least force those families to buy one. The details of how Ontarians are getting all those green vehicles weren’t clear in the confidential draft version of the Wynne Liberals’ “Climate Change Action Plan” leaked to The Globe and Mail on Wednesday. But the goals are crystal clear: A promise to get 1.7 million low-emission cars on the roads in the next eight years, and pull seven million gas-powered cars off in the next 14.
That’s in addition to making sure 80 per cent of us ride transit or walk or bike to work, and ensuring the majority of the buildings in the province are “emissions-free” by 2050. And to engineer this great, gleaming, green society, the Liberals will create a brand new monopolistic government behemoth, a “new ultra-low-carbon utility” that will have a sweeping mandate to micro-engineer how you get to work, how you heat your home, and how the economy is powered.

Or, there are always elections.

It’s Probably Nothing

Ethical Energy 15 Comments

Rigzone;

Two of the three largest oil rig operators and frackers are considering pulling back from the North American market as losses mount.
Schlumberger Ltd. — after posting its first North American operating loss since at least the turn of the century, according to Barclays Plc — is evaluating whether it’s worth temporarily shuttering its business in the region. Baker Hughes Inc. said Wednesday it has decided to limit its exposure to unprofitable onshore fracking work in North America because of the “unsustainable pricing.”
It’s the first time in at least a decade that those companies and Halliburton Co., the big 3 in oil services, all lost money in the region during the first three months of the year, according to Bloomberg Intelligence.

It’s ok. Venezuela could never happen here.

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