Jeffery Small

Syllogism: * Freedom is the absence of force. * Force is the absence of freedom. ---------- Individualism is the philosophy that embodies the pursuit of freedom. Authoritarianism is the philosophy that embodies the naked use of force. Pragmatism is the philosophy that states that it is pursing "freedom" through the use of force. It is merely a lie used to attempt to conceal a preference for force over freedom. ---------- Endless hours of debating endless topics can all be reduced down to the simple formula stated above. Ultimately, you either come down on the side of freedom or force. The choice is an absolute: freedom prohibits the initiation of every form of force while any application of force immediately destroys freedom. There is no "pragmatic" middle-ground. Pick your side and then be honest about it -- both with yourself as well as with others. And for anyone who chooses freedom, let's please stop providing intellectual cover for others who advocate the use of force, regardless of the context. Call them out on their position, identifying the means they choose to employ and leave it at that. Debating the use of force under any circumstance only provides an unearned intellectual veneer for what is always plain old thuggery.

@SRCHicks I like it! :-)

@compliantvc Annnnd we like it!

The American mind cannot comprehend playing in the semi-finals 🇪🇺

@RockChartrand Capitalism and taxation are mutually exclusive. The Former prohibits the initiation of force, including theft; the latter is the embodiment of it. As soon as taxation is introduced, you may have something in the economic realm, but it is certainly not capitalism.

Capitalism comes closest to a golden age when it is actually practiced. Socialism has never had one. Its defenders must therefore borrow capitalism's successes, rename them, and then claim the prosperity came from the taxes rather than the wealth that had to be created first.

@KevinlyFather @nettermike @jhorns247 Congrats. You're complaining about a story intended to describe a manifest truth in an attempt to deflect from that truth.

@nettermike @jhorns247 Congrats! You're regurgitating the first urban myth I ever saw on Facebook. It's like seeing an old, terrible, lying friend. snopes.com/fact-check/soc…

A college economics professor stated that he had once failed an entire class. That class insisted that socialism is functional and that no one should be poor and no one rich, that everyone is equal... The teacher told them, "OK, we will do an experiment on socialism in this group. All grades will be averaged, and everyone will get the same grade, so no one will fail and no one will get a 10." After the first test, the grades were added up and divided by the number of students, and everyone got an 8. The students who studied intensively were upset, but those who studied less were overjoyed. As the second test approached, the students who had studied a little learned even less, and those who had studied more intensively told themselves that they also wanted a "handout", so they also studied less. The average of the second test was 6. When the third test was given, the average score was 4. To the great surprise of all the students, they all failed. The teacher told them that socialism will eventually fail because when half the population sees that they cannot work, because the other half will take care of them, and when the half that worked realizes that there is no point in working anymore, because others are the beneficiaries of their labor, then that is the end of any nation The story may be a fable not a fact but the moral is real Get it?

@Weeezin Agree. I didn't find anything redeeming in the trailer.

I find this trailer off-putting. The visuals are purposefully meant to be this way. But then the colors are soft and muted. Contradictory. Reminds me of Mickey 17 in tone. I hated that. Would be shocked if this was any good at all.

@_ClimateCraze These quotes are from my Climategate in Review website. It has a bunch of good information. Here's the link if you are unfamiliar with it. Regards. smallthoughts.com/climategate/

@cjsmall Good to know you know the climate crisis is fake news.

Just in case we forget the mission of the IPCC, here's a reminder.

@RogerSeheult It's not turtles, but sarcasm all the way down! :-)

@cjsmall I’m hoping that that wasn’t sarcasm, but I am not going to delude myself either. 🤣

With respect, popularity is a remarkably poor standard for determining public-health policy. Cigarettes were once overwhelmingly popular. Sugary drinks, ultraprocessed food, excessive screen time, and chronic sleep deprivation remain popular. Popularity tells us what people enjoy—not what is biologically healthy. The human circadian system does not take opinion polls. Permanent daylight saving time does not create one additional minute of daylight. It merely relabels the existing daylight—taking an hour from the morning and moving it to the evening clock. That may feel pleasant after work, but morning light is the strongest environmental signal for advancing and stabilizing our circadian clock, while evening light pushes that clock later. Permanent DST would therefore mean darker winter mornings, more children traveling to school before sunrise, and more adults awakening and commuting before receiving the most important circadian light signal of the day. The American data are quite revealing. A 2019 study in the Journal of Health Economics compared communities on opposite sides of U.S. time-zone borders. People living on the side with later sunsets averaged approximately 19 minutes less sleep per night, were more likely to report insufficient sleep, and had higher rates of obesity, diabetes, cardiovascular disease, and breast cancer. Because neighboring communities were compared across time-zone boundaries, this was substantially stronger evidence than simply comparing distant parts of the country. A separate U.S. analysis examined approximately four million cancer diagnoses in 607 counties across 11 states. After adjusting for latitude, poverty, smoking, and state, overall and several specific cancer rates generally increased from the eastern toward the western portions of time zones—the direction associated with later morning light and later sunsets. This was ecological evidence and cannot prove that clock time caused the cancers, but it is hardly reassuring. A 2023 national study also found significantly higher suicide rates in western portions of U.S. time zones than in corresponding eastern portions. Again, this does not prove individual causation, but it adds to the remarkably consistent pattern linking later clock-timed daylight with circadian disruption and adverse health outcomes. Most recently, Stanford researchers modeled light exposure and circadian burden county by county using American health data. Compared with continuing to change the clocks, permanent standard time was projected to result in approximately 2.6 million fewer Americans with obesity and 300,000 fewer people having experienced a stroke. Permanent DST was also better than changing the clocks twice yearly—but produced only about two-thirds of the modeled benefit of permanent standard time. In other words, even when the clock-changing problem is removed, standard time still performs better than daylight time for population health. The authors appropriately describe these as modeled estimates, not guaranteed outcomes, but the direction of the evidence is clear. Yes, we should stop changing the clocks twice a year. But eliminating the acute disruption by adopting permanent DST would simply institutionalize a chronic one-hour displacement from solar time. That is why the American Academy of Sleep Medicine, the American Medical Association, the Sleep Research Society, the National Sleep Foundation, and numerous circadian scientists support permanent standard time rather than permanent DST. I completely understand why people enjoy brighter summer evenings. I do too. But personal preference at 7:00 p.m. should not outweigh population health at 7:00 a.m. Schools, businesses, and communities are perfectly capable of adjusting their schedules seasonally when later activities are desirable. We should adjust our schedules to the sun—not permanently falsify the clock and expect human biology to follow along.

The only reason homeschooling is the only realistic alternative to public schools is that people have their financial resources drained through taxation whether they home school or not. The real solution is to eliminate taxation and get the government 100% out of education. In a free market a wide range of educational options would emerge tailored to the wants, needs, and costs of people. Then the choice would be to use one's earning to select the best educational option for one's children. Under this scenario, homeschooling would be one possibility, but likely not the best choice for most people.

@anenglishteachr I’d be happy if homeschooling was the default……rather than public school. ;-) (with that said, I wouldn’t have wanted to be homeschooled by mom…too much religion)

Homeschooling is not feasible for a lot of families and social media is often misleading

@PathToManliness As a young buck, all I can say is TL;DR :-(

I get why kids aren’t racing to get their driver’s licenses anymore. Cars are expensive. Insurance is absurd. Gas isn’t cheap. A trip through the Taco Bell drive-thru somehow requires a consultation with your financial advisor. But young bucks, listen to the millennial: You are massively overestimating how much money is required to have fun. We were broke too. We just had lower standards. Millennials would pile six people into a 1994 Toyota Previa with a check engine light that had achieved permanent residency. Someone knew a lake. Someone’s older brother knew how to acquire questionable booze. Someone had $11. Download every fast food app on your phone. Become a scholar of the value menu. Split gas. Buy a football. Find a swimming hole. Go fishing with equipment your dad hasn’t touched since 2004. Build a fire where you’re legally allowed to build a fire. Go to minor league baseball games. High school football games. Free concerts. County fairs. Hiking trails. Run a stupid 5K together. Get six friends and invent a competition so poorly organized someone nearly loses a shoe. Stop waiting for entertainment to be sold to you. That’s the trap. You think “going out” means spending $80 at a restaurant, buying $17 cocktails and paying $40 to park because that’s what adults on Instagram do. You’re 17. Your advantage is that nobody expects you to have any money. Get your license if you can. Get a shitty car. Find five good friends. Then go. The lake is still there. The woods are still there. The girls are still out there. Taco Bell still occasionally makes serious accounting errors on its app. Your youth is too valuable to spend complaining that fun got expensive. Become cheaper. Become more creative. Go make some stories. Just have one of you stay sober and drive the shitty van home.

@EricJorgenson It's almost enough to start thinking about placing some serious limitations of the powers of government and elected officials. Almost.

Rent Control means "young people pay old people's rent" San Francisco had rent control. I had many female friends lured into living with creepy old SF dudes who were paying 10% of market rate just because they'd been there for 40 years. It never went well. (To put it mildly, some were horrific) Of course, they are being forcibly subsidized by landlords and the new renters paying 10x the rent for the apartment next door. It is an INSANE SYSTEM, doomed to obvious failure. But it sure gets people elected.

@compliantvc I see no mention of the Kraken in the environmental report. Back to the drawing board mister!

I am working with the European Union on building an elevated train track over the Atlantic Ocean This solar-powered bullet train can reach New York in just 11 hours when departing from Paris No more polluting the skylines with airplanes The environmental review for this project will be concluded by 2038 and then we will start construction

@GovBobFerguson Honestly Bob, you are an authoritarian -- and a creepy one at that.

I just announced my next legislative proposal: Requiring all high school seniors complete the FAFSA or WASFA, or opt out, to graduate. Washington is among the most generous states for providing free money to attend college or job training. Let's help students access that money.

@BernieSanders What a joke you are!

1. Larry Ellison spent $45 million to elect Trump. 2. Trump's DOJ approved Ellison's takeover of CNN & CBS. In a democracy, the president does not control the media. State AGs must block the Ellison-led Paramount-Warner Bros. merger.

@RogerSeheult OK, I concede! I'm 100% on board with permanent standard time because I want to be healthy, wealthy, and wise.

@cjsmall Hysteria: the description that we give to data that doesn’t agree with our viewpoint

@PeterSchiff You can't have Falstaff and have him thin, Mr. Tucker. -- Bennington, Tucker: The Man And His Dream

Fed Chair Warsh pointed out that the Fed has 23,000 employees. What a waste of money and human labor. The mere fact that the Fed has so many employees is evidence enough to abolish the entire institution. When the Fed began operations on Nov. 2, 1914, it had just 40 employees.

@RogerSeheult The state stats are real. The rest was a joke. Don't you know sarcasm when you year it Charlie Brown? :-) Have a great day. P.S.: I find the hysteria over this issue, on both sides, delectable! :-)

@cjsmall Actually, I’m the least impacted as you can tell by looking at a map because I live in southeastern California, where we have the earliest sunrises to begin with. Sorry to hear about your schizophrenia where you’re hearing things that aren’t really said.

Tax hike? Count me in! This pour city is drowning and it's everyone duty to liquidate everything they own and turn over all of their assets to the wise leaders who know best how to solve problems and get things done! Don't worry, there will always be some of that new homeless housing and food lines provided -- and it usually doesn't get too cold in Seattle during the winters, so you'll be AOK. Act now! Please don't make them have to knock on the door with the literal guns drawn. Do it for the children, etc.

NEW THIS MORNING: A proposed tax hike to help fund bus and streetcar service in Seattle could be headed to voters. As our @JackieKentNews reports, the Seattle City Council is considering an updated transit measure that would appear on the Nov. ballot.

@iowahawkblog If that smug look on her face isn't posturing, then I don't know what would qualify!

@iowahawkblog I really don't care what they do, but damn it, if they eliminate the posturing then that show is dead to me!

As long as they don't portray Minnesota as looking like the San Gabriel foothills