Category: You Can’t Make This Up

“Skynet smiles”

Scientists invented a melting liquid robot that can escape from a cage

This tiny robot can melt, escape from a prison by sliding through secure bars, and then reform into a solid and complete tasks.

The metal microbot, made out of liquid metal microparticles that can be steered and reshaped by external magnetic fields, has been widely compared to the character T-1000 in “The Terminator” movie franchise, a cyborg assassin played by Robert Patrick that could morph his way around solid objects before embarking on a murderous rampage.

But, in contrast with the film, the inventors of this robot believe their discovery can be used for good — particularly in clinical and mechanical settings — by reaching hard-to-reach spaces. “This material can achieve Terminator-2 like performance, including fast movement and heavy load bearing when it is in its solid state, and shape changing in its liquid state,” Chengfeng Pan, an engineer at the Chinese University of Hong Kong who co-authored the study, told The Washington Post, when asked about his discovery and the comparisons being made to the Terminator movies.

“Potentially, this material system can be used for applications in flexible electronics, health care, and robotics.”

By blasting the robot with magnetic fields at alternating currents, scientists increased its temperature to 95 Fahrenheit (35 Celsius) and caused it to morph from a solid into a liquid state in 1 minute 20 seconds. Once transformed into liquid metal, the figurine could be steered through the narrow gaps of its locked cage by more magnets — demonstrating its morphability.

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Yeah, this is the result of affirmative action; Promoting people merely by their status as a minority, rather than the content of their character
…and their IQ.
And what does this say about the quality of Gonzaga University School of Law? She’s got a JD. Juris Doctor, the degree usually required to practice law and still is a utter ignoramus about the content of the Constitution.
But demoncraps like stupid and ignorant judges, as they’re more likely to follow their proggie political indoctrination

John Kennedy Stumps Biden Judicial Nominee With Questions About the Constitution

Senator John Kennedy (R-LA) stumped a Biden judicial nominee by asking her what is said in certain parts of the U.S. Constitution since she is being considered for a federal position.

Each of the three questions Kennedy posed, Judge Charnelle Bjelkengren did not have an answer. She is being considered to be the United States District Judge For The Eastern District Of Washington. She has been serving as a judge of the Spokane County Superior Court since 2019.

Bjelkengren got her Juris Doctor from Gonzaga University School of Law.

“Judge, tell me what Article V of the Constitution does?” Kennedy asked.

“Article V is not coming to mind at the moment,” Bjelkengren replied after a long pause.

“How about Article II?” Kennedy followed up.

“Neither is Article II,” said Bjelkengren.

Bjelkengren said in her many years of experience in the judicial system in Washington state, she never had to deal with the legal concept of purposivism, which Kennedy said she will have to deal with it should she be confirmed to the federal position.

Article V outlines the process to add amendments to the the Constitution and Article II lays out the rules on who is eligible to be president of the United States. Students are typically taught about the makeup of the Constitution in grades 4 through 8.

Under demoncraps, people are smuggling food into the U.S.

As egg prices soar, border officials are seeing a spike in egg smuggling into U.S.

While egg prices continue to soar, U.S. customs officials are cracking down on egg smugglers bringing in eggs from Mexico.

But the bigger concern still centers around the reasons for the spike in egg prices. According to Reuters, U.S. regulators, farmers, and industry argue that top agriculture firms have the power to set prices and drive up what consumers pay for groceries, something that should be investigated.

Egg prices in the U.S. have surged to an average of $4.25 a dozen, up from roughly $1.79 a year ago, according to data from the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis. The cost of processed eggs — used in liquid or powdered form in manufactured products including salad dressing, cake mix, and chips — has also risen.

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Chicago suburb claims semi-autos are unprotected by the Second Amendment

While the legal challenges to the statewide ban on “assault weapons” and “large capacity” magazines is just getting started, there are some lawsuits taking on local bans that have been on the books for several years that are a little further along. One of them is called National Association of Gun Rights v. Highland Park, and last Friday the Chicago suburb issued its reply to NAGR’s request for an injunction blocking enforcement of the law.

The brief, authored with the help of attorneys from the gun control group Brady, can be seen as a preview of the arguments raised by the state of Illinois in its defense of the new gun ban, and one of the first things that stands out is that rather than try to find historical analogues for bans on “assault weapons”, Highland Park argues that the Second Amendment isn’t even implicated by the ban because semi-automatic firearms aren’t protected arms.

The Supreme Court has not specified how legislatures and courts are to determine whether a modern weapon is “in common use.” The Court said that handguns—America’s “most popular” firearm—are “in common use” today. But Plaintiffs do not suggest that the assault weapons at issue, primarily AR-15-style assault weapons, are as commonly used as handguns. Instead, they assert that these weapons must be considered in “common use” because “the number of AR-15 rifles and other modern sporting rifles in circulation in the United States exceeds twenty-four million.” That is not sufficient to carry their burden.

Plaintiffs’ statistic does not address the question that Heller and Bruen require Plaintiffs to answer. The number of weapons “in circulation” merely counts the number of such weapons produced or imported into the country, less exports. See Ex. 22, NSSF, “Commonly Owned: NSSF Announces Over 24 Million MSRs in Circulation” (July 20, 2022). This figure, which presumably includes weapons in the possession of law enforcement agencies and criminals, and those on store shelves or in warehouses, is almost certainly an over-estimation of the number of weapons lawfully possessed by civilians. The number also says nothing about the frequency with which these weapons are used for lawful purposes.

Even starting with this inflated number, this lone statistic does not carry Plaintiffs’ burden. Heller and Bruen command an approach rooted in “history.” The Court “relied on the historical understanding of the [Second] Amendment to demark the limits on the exercise of that right.” According to the historical approach, the general meaning of the Second Amendment is “fixed,” but also “applies to new circumstances.” In other words, courts must extract general principles or definitions from the historical understanding, and then apply them to modern weapons and circumstances. The “common use” rule emerges from that historical understanding. That is, the Supreme Court has declared that weapons “in common use” at the time of the Founding were protected by the Second Amendment. At a minimum, the Supreme Court’s historical approach indicates that a modern weapon can be considered “in common use” only if it is as commonly used as weapons that the Second Amendment protected at the time of the Founding.

This is a nutty argument, to put it mildly. Modern sporting rifles are the most commonly-sold style of rifle in the United States today, which by itself indicates that they’re in common use. But the Brady argument suffers from another, more fundamental flaw when it declares that modern firearms can only be considered in common use if they’re as commonly used as 2A-protected arms at the time of the Founding.

In Caetano, the Supreme Court ruled that a Massachusetts court decision upholding a ban on stun guns contradicted the precedent established in Heller that “the Second Amendment extends, prima facie, to all instruments that constitute bearable arms, even those that were not in existence at the time of the founding.” The state of Massachusetts’ argument that stun guns were “dangerous and unusual” because they weren’t around in 1791 didn’t hold up to judicial scrutiny in 2016, and I don’t think Brady’s argument is going to pass the smell test in 2023.

Pistols weren’t all that common at the time of the Founding; certainly far less so than smoothbore muskets or long rifles. And yet the Supreme Court has explicitly held that handguns are protected by the Second Amendment, which is a conundrum Highland Park simply can’t talk its way out of.

Instead, the attorneys next argue that the guns the town has banned are “dangerous and unusual”; another ham-handed attempt to strip modern sporting rifles of their 2A protections, claiming that “assault weapons were originally created as weapons of modern warfare during the Cold War, in the 1950s and 1960s,” while ignoring the fact that semi-automatic rifles have been available in the civilian market since the early 1960s.

Plaintiffs contend that there is a significant “practical difference” between military and civilian assault weapons—military weapons (like M-16s) can fire in either semi-automatic or full automatic mode, while civilian weapons (like AR-15s) can fire only in semi-automatic mode. Mot. 13. But this does not help Plaintiffs. The fact that fully automatic weapons are banned by federal law, as Plaintiffs point out, does not mean that weapons dissimilar to them in any respect may not be banned. The Supreme Court has also upheld a ban on short-barreled shotguns, which also cannot fire multiple rounds with a single pull of the trigger. The difference in trigger mechanism is immaterial compared to what does matter: whether semi-automatic weapons are unusually dangerous. The evidence is clear that they are. Indeed, semi-automatic weapons are, in fact, even more lethal than fully automatic weapons.

Note that Highland Park (and the Brady attorneys) didn’t claim that semi-automatic “assault weapons” are more lethal than fully automatic rifles. They applied that designation to all semi-autos, which would encompass the vast majority of handguns sold in the United States. You know, the handguns that the Supreme Court has already said are protected arms under the Second Amendment.

Now, maybe these attorneys are just absolute morons who’ve somehow never heard of the Heller decision, but I doubt that’s the case. Highland Park’s argument doesn’t make much sense in light of the Heller decision, but maybe that’s because the attorneys who wrote it aren’t interested in upholding or abiding by Heller, but getting rid of it instead.

Appears like someone decided to TCOB ‘Punisher Style’.

Los Angeles Hit-and-Run Driver Who Plowed Into Mom and Baby in Stolen Car is Murdered After Light Sentence

FIRST ON FOX: A Los Angeles 17-year-old who ran over a mother walking her baby in a stroller in 2021 and received just a few months of diversionary camp as punishment was gunned down in Palmdale, California, this week.

Kristopher Baca, whom Fox News Digital has previously not identified due to his youth, pleaded guilty to the hit-and-run last year.

The Los Angeles County Medical Examiner-Coroner’s office confirmed his death Friday but said the examination was still pending.

Surveillance video recorded the entire Aug. 6, 2021, hit-and-run incident in Venice, California. The woman injured blasted Los Angeles County District Attorney George Gascon during an early release hearing for the teen driver in June 2022.

Deputies found him dead with gunshot wounds in a Palmdale driveway on the 83600 block of 11th Street East on Wednesday evening, according to the sheriff’s office.

Sources close to the investigation said he had been at a fast food restaurant earlier trying to “get with a girl.”

As he walked home alone, a car pulled up next to him and an argument broke out. Someone in the vehicle opened fire, then sped off.

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If the devil himself can quote scripture, his minions can too.
And I know which god Clyburn worships….

Pro-Abort Leader Clyburn: ‘Matthew 25:45 Warns That We Will Be Judged by How We Treat the Least Among Us’

(CNSNews.com) – Rep. James Clyburn (D.-S.C.), the majority whip and third-ranking Democrat in the House, whose 2020 voting record received a 100-percent rating from NARAL Pro-Choice America, put out a statement last week quoting the Gospel of Matthew on how we should “treat the least among us.”

Clyburn serves as the chair of the Democratic Faith Working Group.

“I am pleased that Democratic Leader Hakeem Jeffries understands the significance of the Democratic Faith Working Group’s efforts to find common ground on the issues of faith and politics,” Clyburn said in his statement.

“I am honored to continue serving as Chair of the DFWG,” he said.

When the Supreme Court issued its ruling overturning Roe v. Wade last year, Clyburn sent out a tweet condemning the ruling.  “Outlawing abortion will increase the already heightened risk of death for the most vulnerable in our communities,” he said.

When he put out his statement about his chairing the Democratic Faith Working Group, Clyburn cited a passage from the Gospel of Matthew.

“Matthew 25:45 warns that we will be judged by how we treat the least among us,” said Clyburn. “I look forward to leading the House Democratic efforts to meet that expectation by using our faith-based perspectives to inform and guide our policies.”

Ukraine Reclassifies U.S. Tanks as “Recreational Vehicles” to Skirt Restrictions.

As the war in Ukraine rages on, the country has reached out to western governments—including the United States—for support. If you have been following news on the conflict, you know that those requests for materiél and money has led to intense debate. Many U.S. politicians want to help Ukraine, but are feeling iffy about sending them tanks and other stronger weapons systems out of fear of escalating what has become, essentially, a proxy war with Russia, a geopolitical foe.

Though American trucks seem to make it over to Ukraine with little issue, and America has been sending HIMARs missile systems to the Ukrainian army and is even helping train those troops, there remains plenty of military hardware that has yet to clear the comfort bar among U.S. policymakers. Tanks, for example, have remained off the table—for now—but are high on the Ukrainian Defense Ministry’s wish list. So, naturally, that Ministry took to Twitter to pose the question, what if a tank was no longer a “tank?” To illustrate the point the ministry produced a commercial that you’re going to want to watch—several times.

If you recall Chevrolet’s early ’90s “Heartbeat of America” ad campaign, which included several spots featuring trucks such as the Silverado being unnecessarily abused all to the tune of Like a Rock by Bob Seger and the Silver Bullet Band, what Ukraine is doing here might seem familiar. The Heartbeat of America slow motion shots of heavy payloads being needlessly dropped into truck beds as a voiceover stating that “when you’re the best you can take a few knocks.” It really is one of the best examples of a corporation trying its best to appeal to masculinity and patriotism in the cheesiest way possible.

Apparently the Ukraine Defense Ministry remembers those commercials, too, because it produced a parody of sorts that reimagines the M1A2 Abrams Tank as a “recreational utility vehicle.” The commercial touts the 1,500-hp tank as being “rugged,” “dependable,” and “powerful,” all adjectives we’re pretty sure Chevrolet used in at least a few of its own commercials.

What really gets us is how footage of the tank is cut together with all the best truck commercial tropes like horses running in slow motion, a boy scout running with an American flag flowing behind him, and then more horses. The spot ends stating “Because the best things made in America shouldn’t stay in America.”

No matter what your politics are, you’ve gotta admit this is pretty damn funny, though we should point out that, no, our Ultimate Car Rankings won’t be reclassifying M1 Abrams tanks as “full-size pickup trucks” anytime soon…

Paul Auster purveys the notion that the Black Panthers originated the idea of an individual right to bear arms.

This is from a Guardian interview with Paul Auster, the novelist, who has a new, nonfiction book called “Bloodbath Nation.”

In the book you say the second amendment, framing the individual’s right to bear arms, was largely ignored until just a few decades ago, when it began to be seen as a fundamental text about what it means to be an American. Why did this happen?

Because of the 1960s – the assassinations and the chaos. People were frightened. And also because of the Black Panthers, who were obviously not white conservatives, but they were the group who originally set forth the argument that gun ownership is a right and that it’s for self-defence. It is hugely ironic: the Panthers were wiped out but their ideas stuck and were adopted by the white right wing. Now, for many, the second amendment has an almost religious component to it. The right to own a gun is seen as a kind of holy grail.

Why shouldn’t individual rights have “an almost religious component”? That’s the way it looks in the Declaration of Independence.

The Guardian also has an excerpt from the book: “Paul Auster: ‘The gun that killed my grandfather was the same gun that ruined my father’s life'” (“In this extract from his new book, Bloodbath Nation, the novelist details the chilling murder his family hid for five decades – and why fixing the US’s deadly relationship with firearms will take gut-wrenching honesty”).

It’s interesting that Auster is writing about death by gunshot when it was so recently — just last year — that his 10-month-old granddaughter died from drugs and his 44-year-old son was arrested for that death and then died from a drug overdose.

And it’s interesting that he disparages the religion-like attitude toward rights, when “He has described right-wing Republicans as ‘jihadists.'” That blithe injection of religion appears in the above-linked Wikipedia bio. And it makes me wonder, given the quote at the top of this post, if he’d call the Black Panthers “jihadists.”

But he’s a novelist. I don’t expect a novelist to be consistent. I expect a novelist to write aesthetically appealing sentences and paragraphs that channel and manipulate emotion across an exciting narrative arc.

Biden Admin Considers Nationwide Ban on Racist Gas Stoves

The Biden administration is exploring the possibility of a nationwide ban on gas stoves because some studies say that emissions from these appliances are toxic, according to a new report.

About 40% of American households use gas stoves, despite the fact that the EPA and WHO say they emit dangerous levels of nitrogen dioxide, carbon monoxide, and fine particulate matter. These emissions are reportedly associated with a variety of adverse health outcomes, including sickness, cardiovascular issues, cancer, childhood asthma, and others.

“This is a hidden hazard,” Richard Trumka Jr., the commissioner of the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission, told Bloomberg News. “Any option is on the table. Products that can’t be made safe can be banned.”

Apparently, the problem is not just that the emissions from gas stoves are allegedly toxic. According to some Democrats, gas stoves are also racist.

Last month, Sen. Cory Booker (D-N.J.) and Rep. Don Beyer (D-Va.) wrote a letter to the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission, claiming that gas stove emissions are a “cumulative burden” on black, Latino, and low-income households, which, they claim, disproportionately experience air pollution.

“These emissions can create a cumulative burden to households that are already more likely to face higher exposure to both indoor and outdoor air pollution,” the letter reads. “Statistics show that Black, Latino, and low-income households are more likely to experience disproportionate air pollution, either from being more likely to be located near a waste incinerator or coal ash site, or living in smaller homes with poor ventilation, malfunctioning appliances, mold, dust mites, secondhand smoke, lead dust, pests, and other maintenance deficiencies.”

In the past, natural gas has been promoted as a cleaner energy source than alternative fuel sources. According to the U.S. Energy Information Administration, natural gas “has many qualities that make it an efficient, relatively clean burning, and economical energy source.” So, is this really about gas stoves being harmful, or is this just another scam to push electric, which is widely misconstrued to be environmentally friendly?

This winter, the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission will solicit public input on the dangers of gas stoves. The commission could potentially establish pollution guidelines for the stoves or even ban them from being imported and manufactured.

Others say the problem is not gas stoves.

“Ventilation is really where this discussion should be, rather than banning one particular type of technology,” says Jill Notini, a vice president with the Association of Home Appliance Manufacturers. “Banning one type of a cooking appliance is not going to address the concerns about overall indoor air quality… We may need some behavior change, we may need [people] to turn on their hoods when cooking.”