Archive for September 2, 2023

Some Fast Thoughts Under the Fedora: Virtue Signaling on Fire, Dishonest folk acting dishonest, Disney Death Spiral, The Bottom Line and an odd development.

Posted: September 2, 2023 by datechguy in Uncategorized

Electric car sales might not have caught fire throughout the country but in Florida they’re catching fire for completely different reasons:

Owners were being warned to move their EVs at least fifty feet away from any structure. That’s how serious of a fireball can be created. Authorities said that the fires don’t happen immediately, but tend to break out several days or even up to two weeks later. Apparently, as the salt water dries up it can leave behind a trail of salt that can form a “bridge” between the terminals of the EV’s batteries. And if that causes the electricity to arc across, your battery is burning and you’re off to the races.

Well yeah, so your car can burn down and your house can be burned down but at least you can feel good about yourself when it happens.

I keep getting reminded of John Adams words concerning public business:

Public business must always be done by somebody. It will be done by somebody or other. If wise man decline, others will not; if honest man refuse it, others will not.

That came to mind when I saw this story:

City Health Department workers already making six-figure salaries allegedly ripped off thousands of dollars in gift cards purchased with taxpayer money and meant for HIV-prevention programs.

Three staffers from the agency’s Bureau of hepatitis, HIV, and sexually transmitted infections swiped a total of 131 gift cards worth $4,855, which they blew on pizza, iTunes, and Amazon purchases, according to Queens Criminal Co

That applies to all public business, not just elected office.

Ace reports on another bad sign for Disney:

I noted yesterday that the television app Samba reported that the new Force Is Female Star Wars failure Ahsoka had only garnered a Brian-Stelter-like 1.2 million views over its first few days of release, which is much worse than the previous Disney Star Wars disaster’s ratings. Obi-Wan garnered 2.4 million viewers in its debut, and was, as far as I hear, just a wretched piece of shit top to bottom and back to front.

I hear that Ahsoka is far less aggressively awful, and that’ a problem: You expect your terrible shows to get bad ratings. But if you put out a show that is good — well, let’s not get carried away; I hear Ahsoka is okay and at least has a bigger budget than these other cheapo-beepo Disney Star Wars shows — and that also gets terrible ratings, that means people aren’t deciding not to view based on the quality of a specific show.

Disney’s problem is a lot like Bud Light there are just too many other entertainment options for people to be forced to watch shows made by folks who hate them.

If you want to know why the Biden Admin’s diplomacy isn’t working you can’t do better than this line:

“But the truth is, when we’re engaged with the Chinese, we get an airport. And when we’re engaged with you guys, we get a lecture.”

The world isn’t full of liberal leftists no matter how much the right people want to pretend it is.

Finally something odd that I’ve noticed lately that doesn’t involve any links.

I’ve been driving for the past 40 years or so and I could count the number of times somebody passed me over a double yellow line on the fingers of one hand with digits to spare.

This week alone it has happened three times, this last month it has happened over a half a dozen, over the course of this year almost a full dozen and at least one of those times it was done in full view of a police car that didn’t bother to move.

I can’t account for this change except for the idea that people no longer worry about being pulled over because they know the police aren’t going to bother to take any risk that doesn’t have to be taken.

If you can think of a different reason feel free to let me know.

Lying about reproductive health

Posted: September 2, 2023 by navygrade36bureaucrat in catholic
Tags: , , , ,

As a man, my doctor never talks to me about women’s health. Maybe that’s because my doctors don’t ask me my preferred pronouns, maybe it’s because I just don’t bring it up, or maybe because we just don’t talk with married men about sex…who knows? I sure don’t.

Recently this changed a bit, because my wife asked me to accompany her on one of her doctor visits. Easy enough, I sat and mostly just listened. But while we were waiting, I noticed an interesting poster on the back of the patient room’s door.

Well, isn’t that interesting, I thought. Because my wife and I use the Marquette Method of Natural Family Planning, I already knew that the “Fertility Awareness” stats were bogus. A quick DuckDuckGo search will show the following:

So how do they get 88% effectiveness? Well, if you roll in a bunch of not-as-effective methods, such as temperature and calendar methods, it brings the numbers down. I confirmed this at Planned Parenthood’s website and at ContraceptionChoices.org. Interestingly, none of them referenced Creighton or Marquette. Why would that be? Wouldn’t you want to “Follow the science” and give women choices that don’t involve chemicals?

When you view the medical establishment as a bureaucracy interested in making money, this becomes a much more interesting chart. Everything in the “Works Best” and “Works Pretty Well” category requires a doctor and is covered by insurance. Why would a doctor want to prescribe the Creighton or Marquette methods when they won’t get any money or kick-back for doing so?

Conservative men, especially lawmakers, have dropped the ball here. We’ve created a medical system that promotes pumping women full of hormones and chemicals to stop pregnancy, then promotes the same system to pump them full of hormones and chemicals when they want to get pregnant, and we make insurance companies pay for it. We then have a just-as-effective option that doesn’t involve chemicals, and we allow the medical establishment that has zero interest in promoting it to demonize and dismiss NFP as something those crazy conservative kids do that doesn’t really work all that well.

For all the men reading this, your wife and daughters are reading that poster every time they go to the doctor. They are being manipulated on every visit to the doctor. I’m guessing you don’t talk to them about it because, well, you’re a guy and we’ve allowed society to say you don’t have a voice in this discussion, and that only a doctor with a self-interest in prescribing medication can talk to your daughter about this topic.

Thinking about it, maybe that’s why my doctor never talks to me about women’s health….

Sun Tzu talked about winning without fighting, and it looks like the medical establishment is doing just that. The poster says “Your body, your choice,” but all the “good” choices push money into the system, so do you really have choices?

Conservatives need to push for laws that require insurance companies to cover natural family planning costs, such as a fertility monitor and the cost of visits to an NFP practitioner. Sure, plenty of families can afford these costs, but not everyone can, and more importantly, it puts money into a far better solution. Planned Parenthood can muster a ton of money when doctors and your insurance company are feeding them insurance dollars, so imagine a world where NFP gets similar treatment. I like that world a lot more than our current world.

On top of that, every Catholic Church should have a rolodex of NFP practitioners. Priests should be taught about the different NFP methods and should refer their parishioners to them. They should have the occasional sermon on NFP, and it should be a topic in pre-marital counseling. You know how many priests I’ve heard talk intelligently about NFP?

Zero

…and that’s a problem. We need to stop being squeamish about this because when we don’t talk about it, someone else fills the void.

Stop pretending men don’t have a role in reproductive health, and stop letting the establishment lie to your face about NFP.

This post represents the views of the author and not those of the Department of Defense, Department of the Navy, or any other government agency. BTW, Tricare covers everything but NFP as well, how about we start by changing that first?

Pintastic T-5 Two Views of the Extra Ball Lounge Plus One of the great Secrets of Pintastic

Posted: September 2, 2023 by datechguy in fun, pinball, special events, Uncategorized
Tags: , , ,

Today we give you two videos from Pintastic NE, the first is a glimpse of the extra ball lounge from Pintastic 2021.

And if that video of me in full beard at Pintastic 2021 tempts you into visiting Pintastic 2023 (get advanced tickets here) let me share with you this video from Pintastic 2022 which reveals one of the great secrets of how to max out your pintastic experience.

As the video notes there is always at least one game in the extra ball lounge that is never empty. Last year it was Toy Story 3. No idea what this years choice will be.