Month: July 2025

New York Times says that “slut” is not an English word

by philg

Happy International Whores’ Day, a month late, to those who celebrate. Vaguely related… let’s look at #Truth from the New York Times vs. what the stuffy academics at the Oxford English Dictionary have to say about the word “slut”:

From Orwell’s 1984:

“You haven’t a real appreciation of Newspeak, Winston,” he said almost sadly. “Even when you write it you’re still thinking in Oldspeak. I’ve read some of those pieces that you write in the Times occasionally. They’re good enough, but they’re translations. In your heart you’d prefer to stick to Oldspeak, with all its vagueness and its useless shades of meaning. You don’t grasp the beauty of the destruction of words. Do you know that Newspeak is the only language in the world whose vocabulary gets smaller every year?”

Winston did know that, of course. He smiled, sympathetically he hoped, not trusting himself to speak. Syme bit off another fragment of the dark-coloured bread, chewed it briefly, and went on:

“Don’t you see that the whole aim of Newspeak is to narrow the range of thought? In the end we shall make thoughtcrime literally impossible, because there will be no words in which to express it. Every concept that can ever be needed, will be expressed by exactly one word, with its meaning rigidly defined and all its subsidiary meanings rubbed out and forgotten. Already, in the Eleventh Edition, we’re not far from that point. But the process will still be continuing long after you and I are dead. Every year fewer and fewer words, and the range of consciousness always a little smaller. Even now, of course, there’s no reason or excuse for committing thoughtcrime. It’s merely a question of self-discipline, reality-control. But in the end there won’t be any need even for that. The Revolution will be complete when the language is perfect. Newspeak is INGSOC and INGSOC is Newspeak,” he added with a sort of mystical satisfaction. “Has it ever occurred to you, Winston, that by the year 2050, at the very latest, not a single human being will be alive who could understand such a conversation as we are having now?”

Circling back to International Whores’ Day, it seems that Sean “Diddy” Combs has been found guilty of “transporting people for prostitution”. This is exactly the activity to which Snoop Dogg, one of our official heroes, has freely admitted (example in which he describes a bus that went from state to state). If Combs is sentenced to prison while Snoop Dogg is the official ambassador for the LA Olympics how can we square that with any concept of justice?

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Will California’s high-speed rail line be vulnerable to drone-based jihad?

by philg

Assuming that they can get their hands on $100 billion (or maybe $200 billion, or maybe $300 billion) in federal tax dollars, Californians will eventually have a high-speed rail line (the groundbreaking ceremony was 10.5 years ago). In light of recent drone attacks within Russia and Iran, the question for today is whether the fancy new train will be a sitting duck for jihadis. From the Wall Street Journal:

From the BBC:

Maybe anti-drone defense systems could be built around U.S. airports and an airplane should be safe from low-tech attack at 30,000′, but how would a 500-mile rail line conceivably be secured? California has already experienced jihad from Syed Rizwan Farook, born to immigrants from Pakistan, and Tashfeen Malik, a legal immigrant from Pakistan (they killed 14 of their neighbors/coworkers with guns and had hoped to kill more, but their pipe bombs failed to explode). By the time the high-speed rail is finally ready presumably the knowledge of how to build suicide drones will be far more widespread. A drone can fly from a few miles away, park itself on the ground between the rails a few minutes before the train is due, and detonate when its camera sees the train rolling over it, thus derailing the train. All of this can be fully automated with no need for radio communication back to an operator. The tracks don’t move so the lat/long of the landing spot can be preprogrammed. Nothing drives over these tracks except high-speed trains and, therefore, the “detect a train” logic need not be sophisticated.

(Of course, I continue to be mystified as to how Californians can simultaneously say (a) they hate inequality, and (b) they want all of this federal money rather than seeing it spent in poorer-than-average states. Why don’t they want federal money spent in ways that reduce inequality?)

Maybe the answer will be a grid of sensor-equipped poles arranged along the entire route? They can use radar and optical cameras to look for aerial drones and also drones that crawl over the ground. But given that a drone can pop up from a shipping crate just a minute before a train is due and land 30 seconds before a train is due to pass, how can surveillance alone be effective? Californians didn’t object to a year or two of lockdown and school closure in exchange for a perceived higher level of security from Covid so maybe they would also accept a security corridor for a few miles on either side of the track in which humans are forbidden to enter. On the other hand, a clever jihadi could perhaps make a drone that looks like an animal of some kind.

Note that the same question can be asked about a lot of U.S. infrastructure. We have open borders by design, including to people who say that they hate the United States (an application for asylum is based on a fear of being harmed in some other country, not on any kind of affection for or loyalty to the U.S.). What stops a foreign power from sending a few hundred soldiers over as asylum-seekers and having them quietly build attack drones? The foreign power could guarantee that their asylum application will be accepted by publishing a list of the soldiers’ names and saying “All of the people on this list are sentenced to death due to their political opinions.” Anyone under a definitive sentence of death for a political point of view meets U.S. asylum criteria, right? “Membership in a particular social group” is also a slam-dunk and “LGBTI” is considered a “group” so the foreign power could make sure that its army gets into the U.S. by publishing a list of soldiers’ names and saying “All of the men on this list were discovered at a gay bathhouse and, therefore, are sentenced to death if apprehended.” From a USCIS training document:

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