Boy, did we get in trouble last week! I better not say anything controversial this time.
Nothing to see here
Everybody remembers where he was when Pearl Harbor was attacked. Everybody — with one tiny, insignificant exception — remembers where he was when president Kennedy was shot. Everybody remembers when science discovered that there is an infinite multiplexity of genders that can be changed at will. Now, friends, be sure to center yourselves and enter into your permanent memory banks your exact location when North Korea launched nuclear missiles at Hawaii.
Panicked Hawaiians ran for their lives and even lowered loved ones through manhole covers after receiving this alert at 8.07am local time: ‘BALLISTIC MISSILE THREAT INBOUND TO HAWAII. SEEK IMMEDIATE SHELTER. THIS IS NOT A DRILL’.
A similar message flashed up on local television networks and brought live sports games to a halt. Actor Jim Carrey, like many others, said he woke up thinking he had ‘ten minutes to live’.
That’s it. Now you North Koreans have gone too far. It was one thing to feed beloved U.N. nuclear inspector Hans Blix to sharks (n.b.: potty mouth), but now you think you can get away with despoiling our beloved national treasures? Our beaches, coconuts, racist tiki torches, and washed-up 90s physical comedians? You’re just lucky you didn’t do anything really bad, like saying that it’s not possible to have an intimate relationship with the concept of Tetris.
On the H-3, a major highway north of Honolulu, vehicles sat empty after drivers left them to run to a nearby tunnel after the alert showed up, the Honolulu Star-Advertiser reported.
Fearing a nuclear attack, terrified residents and tourists including basketball legend Magic Johnson flocked to shelters and into their garages.
No! Not Magic Johnson too! And what will become of the World Series Champion Los Angeles Dodgers now that you’ve nuked him? Did you even think about that, Kim Jong Un? Or were you too busy cackling evil lies about how lipstick and a dress don’t turn men into women?
The false alarm was caused by a Hawaii Emergency Management Agency employee who ‘pushed the wrong buttons’ during an internal drill timed to coincide with a shift handover at 8.07am.
Wait, false alarm? Hawaii isn’t really dead and killed and all? Wow. How does something like this happen?
Around 8:05 a.m., the Hawaii emergency employee initiated the internal test, according to a timeline released by the state. From a drop-down menu on a computer program, he saw two options: "Test missile alert" and "Missile alert." He was supposed to choose the former; as much of the world now knows, he chose the latter, an initiation of a real-life missile alert.
Your humble narrator is rarely at a loss for words. That’s true even if you don’t count swear words. But this time…
If I try to delete files from my computer, there are nagging confirmation boxes I have to deal with first. If I get out of the car and leave the headlights on, a warning bell goes off. For pity’s sake, if I’m playing Earthbound for too long, I’ll get a nagging phone call from Ness’s dad telling me to take a break. Announcing to the state of Hawaii that nuclear death is imminent? No confirmation required.
But don’t worry! No less an authority than legendary karate master Mr. Miyagi is onhand to reassure everybody that there’s no problem with the system whatsoever.
Miyagi, a retired Army major general, said the employee had been with the agency for ‘a while’ and that he would be ‘counseled and drilled so this never happens again’ – but stopped short of saying whether there would be disciplinary measures…
‘This guy feels bad, right. He’s not doing this on purpose — it was a mistake on his part and he feels terrible about it.’
Oh, well, as long as he feels bad. You are the very model of a modern major general, Miyagi-san. It’s especially rad the way you went on TV to show us how seriously you guys take security! Too bad about your password on a sticky note in plain sight while you were explaining it, but, hey.
But, really, I suppose it’s a mistake anybody could have made while "testing its emergency sirens on 11:45 a.m. of the first business day of every month."
… Wait, what? But it happened at 8:00 a.m. on the second Saturday, so…
For hate’s sake I spit my last breath at thee
At the risk of linking to Pitchfork Media, here’s a link to an article in Pitchfork in which I honestly can’t tell who’s the most pathetic character.
Talking with WFPK’s Kyle Meredith, Moby cited "active and former CIA agents" who were "truly concerned" about Trump’s collusion with Russia. "They were like, ‘This is the Manchurian Candidate, like [Putin] has a Russian agent as the President of the United States,’" he said. "So they passed on some information to me and they said, like, ‘Look, you have more of a social media following than any of us do, can you please post some of these things just in a way that … sort of put it out there.’"
You remember Moby. I mean, I don’t, but I imagine you probably do. So you tell me which one is more pathetic: the fact that poor, clueless Moby was so easily gulled, or the fact that the CIA had to drill all the way down to poor, clueless Moby before finding anybody who would take the bait.
He added, "It’s really disturbing and it’s going to get quite a lot darker. Like the depths of the Trump family in business and their involvement with organized crime, sponsored terrorism, Russian oligarchs, it’s really dark. I guess we should all, like, fasten our seat belts and hold on."
Nobody cares, Moby! Nobody cares. No one.
With my luck, Moby’s a friggin’ gender these days, and now that I’ve picked on him, I’m in even more trouble.
A fine day for science!
I’m always impressed at the zeal with which the modern left embraces its own hypocrisy. My personal favorite bit is the senseless yelps of "science denial" aimed at anyone who dast question the official dogma. Case in point:
I love the show How the Universe Works, but I’m lost on how the producers and the Science Channel can allow anti-education, science doubting, ultra-right wing conservative Mike Rowe to narrate the show.
If science has one essential characteristic, doubt would be that characteristic. This is, of course, the reason why the progressives are fundamentally incompatible with science; to them, science is awesome because it makes them lattes and gets positive press, and then they can fashion giant clubs out of it to beat their opponents with. The actual science parts of science, however, are completely at odds with everything they believe in.
Consider: science is not about "consensus" or "approval" or any other stupid thing. Science is about skepticism and doubt. Science is about one guy disagreeing with the establishment and then convincingly arguing that he’s correct, in the hopes that other people will agree with his findings and be persuaded. It is a decentralized, market-based phenomenon, and cannot in any way be smooshed into the sort of top-down, autocratic mold the progressives worship. Mike Rowe gets this.
Last year for instance, on an episode called "Galaxies," the original script – carefully vetted by the best minds in physics – claimed there were approximately one hundred billion galaxies in the known universe. A hundred billion! (Not a typo.) I couldn’t believe it when I read it. I mean, the Milky Way alone has something like 400 billion stars! Andromeda has a trillion! How many stars must there be in a universe, with a hundred billion galaxies? Mind-boggling, right?
Well, a few weeks later, the best minds in physics came together again, and determined that the total number of galaxies in the universe was NOT in fact, a hundred billion. They were off. Not by a few thousand, or a few million, or few billion, or even a few hundred billion. The were off by two trillion. That’s right… TWO TRILLION!! But here’s the point, Rebecca – when I narrate this program, it doesn’t matter if I’m correct or incorrect – I always sound the same. And guess what? So do the experts.
The entire argument in favor of science is based on the fact that "experts" can be wrong. They can always be wrong. A decentralized, market-oriented process in which doubt is not only permitted but positively essential is the only way to overcome experts who are in error. Without that, you end up with ridiculous pogroms in which "right-thinkers" enforce their own beliefs and prejudices — for example, the idea that gender is a "social construct" — on everybody else. Not that, I’m sure, that sounds familiar to anybody.
Last Week in Ironical
Presented without comment or trendy made-up genders:
