Who By Fire? (1-13-25)

Posted on January 13, 2025 by Luke Ford

01:00 Judaism’s Haunting Prayer/Unetaneh Tokef, https://www.sefaria.org/sheets/255977?lang=bi
08:00 New York: Los Angeles shouldn’t rebuild the same way, https://nymag.com/intelligencer/article/los-angeles-shouldnt-rebuild-the-same-way-after-wildfires.html
11:00 Bloomberg: These Homes Withstood the LA Fires. Architects Explain Why
In Pacific Palisades and Malibu, some houses with fire-resistant designs remained standing amid neighborhoods of destruction. https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2025-01-13/los-angeles-wildfires-why-these-homes-didn-t-burn
16:00 WSJ: How the Left Turned California Into a Paradise Lost: Gavin Newsom promised to ‘Trump-proof’ the Golden State. If only he’d fireproofed it instead. https://www.wsj.com/opinion/how-the-left-turned-california-into-a-paradise-lost-government-policy-wildfires-48b88d6a
20:35 TRUTH about the CA Wildfires, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JCbkS_CRypA
26:00 MEgyn Kelly: CNN’s Fact Checker Incorrectly Checks Facts About LA Wildfires and Reservoir, with Stu Burguiere, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UDEbjZVQt3Y
30:00 Lucy joins the show to discuss dating
49:00 Megyn Kelly: Gavin Newsom Tries to Salvage Political Career on Podcast in Wake of Wildfires, with Stu Burguiere, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uc1EOTMvEvs
54:00 New Yorker: Does One Emotion Rule All Our Ethical Judgments?, When prehistoric predators abounded, the ability to perceive harm helped our ancestors survive. Some researchers wonder whether it fuels our greatest fights today. https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2025/01/20/outraged-kurt-gray-book-review
1:05:00 Kurt Gray on Harm-Based Morality, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9mbQ0ul9Jo4
1:14:30 Progressive failures, media failures, https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/progressive-failures-media-failures/id1081967784?i=1000683795175
1:33:00 Jonathan Haidt is wrong about morality | Prof Kurt Gray, https://www.aporiamagazine.com/p/jonathan-haidt-is-wrong-about-morality?utm_source=publication-search
1:38:00 Los Angeles Times owner Patrick Soon-Shiong on LA’s challenges
1:59:00 My high school friend Rob Stutzman talks to Mark Halperin, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sn2aohL7Jy8
2:12:00 Column: A Democratic and Republican battled for Congress. They became unlikely friends, https://lukeford.net/blog/?p=149613
2:23:45 Morton Halperin, Mark Halperin’s lobbyist father, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Morton_Halperin
2:29:00 L.A. Leaders Can’t Hide Behind the Media Anymore, https://www.city-journal.org/article/la-wildfires-california-leadership-karen-bass-gavin-newsom
2:53:30 The Tragedy of California’s Wildfires with William Deverell, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nHRqUCYbij0
3:18:00 Lockerbie: A Search for Truth, https://www.imdb.com/title/tt31029686/

Posted in America, California, Los Angeles | Comments Off on Who By Fire? (1-13-25)

Decoding LA’s Fires (1-12-25)

Posted on January 12, 2025 by Luke Ford

05:00 WSJ: Fighting Fires—and the Rumor Mill—as L.A. Burns
09:00 Politics Fueled LA’s Fires, https://lukeford.net/blog/?p=158555
10:00 California voters destroyed private home insurance, https://apple.news/AeXdYZP1qSfeNes1AGLzSAg
11:00 Fire experts describe how we can reduce these urban blazes, https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2025-01-11/fire-experts-asses-los-angeles-blazes-amid-changing-times
12:00 Disputes kill people, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tzHFz5Jj7a0
21:00 Your Home Can Survive a Wildfire, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vL_syp1ZScM
39:20 LA wildfires: fire disaster caused by ‘neglected’ landscape and flammable construction, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fHQ3P4C1MsI
1:03:40 Mark Zuckerberg’s path to masculinity
1:07:20 Meet the Palisades resident who defied evacuation orders and saved his home
1:08:00 White people in Canada are so racist
1:10:20 Los Angeles Fire Department’s LGBT Leadership Under Scrutiny After Wildfire Disaster, w/ Jesse Kelly, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1eVqgmmjKxg
1:48:30 What is the Message We Carry? | Rabbi Rami Shapiro, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3blU98MiwQk
1:54:00 The Breakthrough (2025), https://www.imdb.com/title/tt23221806/
2:17:10 Kip joins to discuss the creep of liberalism, the destruction of American cities
2:41:00 Predisposed: Liberals, Conservatives, and the Biology of Political Differences, https://lukeford.net/blog/?p=154845
3:32:00 Interaction ritual chains, https://lukeford.net/blog/?p=139572
3:33:00 “Eminent thinkers are energy stars.” https://lukeford.net/blog/?p=142879
3:40:00 “Pride is the social attunement emotion.” https://lukeford.net/blog/?p=142897
3:59:30 Jerky men and crazy women, https://fakenous.substack.com/p/jerky-men-and-crazy-women
4:29:20 Navigating dark times

Posted in America, California, Los Angeles | Comments Off on Decoding LA’s Fires (1-12-25)

Politics Fueled LA’s Fires

Posted on January 12, 2025 by Luke Ford

Perhaps we should let the free market for housing insurance rip rather than fires rip?

The Atlantic:

Take insurance—a trillion-dollar industry built to identify risks, particularly from disasters such as wildfires. Insurance companies communicate this risk to homeowners through higher premiums, providing them with useful information and incentives. People may think twice about moving to a fire-prone area if they see the danger reflected in a fee.

But in 1988, California voters passed Proposition 103, arbitrarily reducing rates by 20 percent and subjecting future rate increases to public oversight. Nobody likes high premiums, of course. But the politicization of risk has been a catastrophe. Artificially low premiums encouraged more Californians to live in the state’s most dangerous areas. And they reduced the incentive for homeowners to protect their houses, such as by installing fire-resistant roofs and siding materials…

Artificially low premiums have also spurred new housing production in fire-prone regions on the edges of cities like Los Angeles. From 1990 to 2020, California built nearly 1.5 million homes in the wildlife-urban interface, putting millions of residents in the path of wildfires. Policy didn’t just pull Californians into dangerous areas. It also pushed them out of safer ones. Over the past 70 years, zoning has made housing expensive and difficult to build in cities, which are generally more resilient to climate change than any other part of the state.

From the Los Angeles Times:

“In high-density development, scattered burning homes spread to their neighbors and so on. Ignitions downwind and across streets are typically from showers of burning embers from burning structures.”

This fundamental misunderstanding has likewise led to a misunderstanding of prevention. No longer is it a matter of preventing wildfires but instead preventing points of ignition within communities by employing “home-hardening” strategies — proper landscaping, fire-resistant siding — and enjoining neighbors in collective efforts such as brush clearing…

“cities began to harden themselves against these terrible conflagrations and were successful. Arguably the last major urban fire in the U.S. was San Francisco in the aftermath of the 1906 earthquake.”

Yet those defenses lapsed as the cities grew. Building codes failed to address the requirements of specific environments, and infrastructure was laid out without attending to potential hazard…

“We have fire departments that are continually telling us that they’re going to protect us,” he said, “when they can’t during the extreme wildfire conditions. It’s time to recognize the reality and start asking questions about how it is that we’re failing to prevent this disaster.”

Cohen calls it a sense of entitlement that we will be protected, a feeling that is reinforced by fire protection agencies, even when it’s unrealistic.

“We don’t necessarily need a trillion-dollar program and a fire czar to get control of the fire problem,” Pyne said. “What we need are a thousand things that tweak the environment in favorable ways such that we can prevent these eruptions.”

For example, municipal and fire prevention agencies must give property owners advance — and continual — warnings to clear dead vegetation and to wet dry brush within 10 feet of the house with periodic, prolonged sprinklings.

Posted in California, Capitalism | Comments Off on Politics Fueled LA’s Fires

LA Surrounded By A Ring Of Fire (1-10-25)

Posted on January 10, 2025 by Luke Ford

01:00 Variety: Netflix’s ‘American Primeval’ Is a Brutally Violent Western Led by a Compelling Taylor Kitsch, https://variety.com/2025/tv/reviews/american-primeval-review-netflix-taylor-kitsch-1236267125/
04:00 Hugh Hewitt: Anger, Blame, and Accountability, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oOh2Ug4KNFg
14:00 LAFD run by a lesbian mafia, https://lukeford.net/blog/?p=158539
25:08 Political earthquake will come in wake of LA wildfires: George Will, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7-ohYtQ4eYE
32:00 Trump Transition, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ExZeJqGl6uU
1:13:30 Commentary magazine podcast: Progressives and Fire, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IpLxRKp1Hq8
2:39:00 Elliott Blatt joins to discuss San Francisco’s third earthquake of the morning
2:56:40 Bobby Kennedy Jr and vaccines, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1CvHS6JVexg
2:58:30 Kip joins
3:22:00 The media and vaccines

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Live Coverage Of LA’s Fires (1-9-25)

Posted on January 9, 2025 by Luke Ford

01:00 The Truth About The Wildfires, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sHh-_3FshO4
06:00 LA Mayor Karen Bass out of town, https://www.nationalreview.com/the-morning-jolt/a-timeline-of-mayor-karen-basss-disqualifying-conduct-during-the-l-a-fire-disaster/
20:20 California Burning: The Fall of Pacific Gas and Electric–and What It Means for America’s Power Grid, https://www.amazon.com/California-Burning-Pacific-Electric-Americas/dp/059333065X
21:00 Katherine Blunt, author of California Burning, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xOyjOewSPqc
34:00 Dooovid joins, https://x.com/RebDoooovid
39:45 Ricardo joins
47:00 Elliott Blatt joins
1:35:00 Kip joins
1:37:00 Stefan Molyneux, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stefan_Molyneux
2:21:20 Michael Huemer | Progressive Myths, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GsKCyOEDWR0
2:42:00 Commentary magazine podcast on LA fires, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jBvPff07ENg
3:25:00 The song Bradman by Paul Kelly, https://genius.com/Paul-kelly-and-the-messengers-bradman-lyrics

I am sad that when I watch TV of LA’s fires, I think about the various romantic peaks I summited at this or that location when I should be waxing nostalgic about the mitvos I performed to sanctify the land, and the times I said a bracha in places that had never hosted a bracha. What about those blessed occasions when I mekaraved (spiritually transformed) those lost actresses? Oh, I remember studying Pirkei Avot there! I said Sh’ma there! I wrapped tefillin outside that building!

American Primeval on Netflix is fantastic. I can’t recall a TV show that better embodies my worldview. Please watch everything directed by Peter Berg. “No identity politics forced into this! It’s so relieving to see a new series that hasn’t been corrupted by DEI where casting choices are dictated by talent, the periods setting and location and just making the highest quality and most entertaining series possible. The series lets you know how absurdly dangerous travel was before this country was settled before the establishment of law and order and any type of infrastructure.”(Google review)

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The LAFD Is Run By A Lesbian Mafia

Posted on January 8, 2025 by Luke Ford

Posted in Los Angeles | Comments Off on The LAFD Is Run By A Lesbian Mafia

American Glasnost Enters California (1-8-25)

Posted on January 8, 2025 by Luke Ford

01:00 Power went out so I talked to people IRL
05:30 Matt Continetti on the California inferno and the rebuild of the rules regime at Meta, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_t42Qzg2QRI
08:00 Rick Caruso: There’s no water in the Palisades, https://www.foxla.com/video/1573156
39:40 Mark Halperin: Biden’s decline is one of the biggest scandals in media history, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xBulWDSCRi8
44:00 NR: Mayor Out of the Country as Los Angeles Burns, Residents Plead for Help, https://www.nationalreview.com/the-morning-jolt/mayor-out-of-the-country-as-los-angeles-burns-residents-plead-for-help/
57:00 JF GARIEPY ON THE RUN FOR MURDER!, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2y3jLpPpaPk
1:19:00 Mark Halperin: Trump Transition, Democrat Realignment, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wXXlZPaC3To
2:02:00 The Paranoid Style Of Adam Curtis, https://lukeford.net/blog/?p=139331
2:13:00 WSJ: It’s Called a Premortem—and It’s the Most Productive Thing You’ll Do All Year, https://www.wsj.com/arts-culture/books/new-years-resolutions-ron-shaich-cava-panera-c0fb7922
2:37:00 The next prime minister of Canada: How do you like them apples?, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V_1BJUi2Z04
2:39:40 ‘I’m not going to allow you to interrupt me’: Pierre Poilievre has terse exchange while taking questions, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IjDCf3Wv-_U
3:30:30 25 Ways To Improve Your Mental Health In 2025, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E8gkwkb-26M
4:10:00 My miserable Seventh-Day Adventist childhood, https://www.lukeford.net/luke_ford/bio/l1.html

Posted in America, California, Los Angeles | Comments Off on American Glasnost Enters California (1-8-25)

The Growing Skepticism About Official Stories (1-7-25)

Posted on January 7, 2025 by Luke Ford

01:00 NYT: Meta to End Fact-Checking Program in Shift Ahead of Trump Term, https://www.nytimes.com/2025/01/07/technology/meta-fact-checking-facebook.html
05:00 The resistance to Trump is dead, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hJZCQB-YMMw
22:20 Trudeau resigns, Meta Analysis, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=le5jLoNKDMQ
27:30 The Alarming Fox Sports Sex Scandal: Skip Bayless & Joy Taylor Lawsuit, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HYlbkpIk76Q
29:20 15 Shocking Details in Skip Bayless, Joy Taylor Sexual Harassment Lawsuit, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YFQ9w1vptwI
40: Jason Whitlock, This is why I didn’t want Joy Taylor on my show at Fox Sports. That big rack of hers and that peanut butter skin… I know what I’m capable of.
44:00 Jason Whitlock: Shannon Sharpe was known for hitting on the help at CBS Sports
56:00 Who turned David Samuels into a guru? https://www.tabletmag.com/feature/rapid-onset-political-enlightenment
58:00 The Paranoid Style Of Adam Curtis, https://lukeford.net/blog/?p=139331
59:00 The Beautiful Films & Empty Ideas Of Adam Curtis, https://lukeford.net/blog/?p=137312
1:06:30 Gurometer: Curtis Yarvin, https://decoding-the-gurus.captivate.fm/episode/gurometer-curtis-yarvin
1:15:00 The Psychology of Neo Nazis – (Chapter 4 – The Great Replacement), https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EkYUvWM3u3g
1:23:15 The Psychology of Neo Nazis – (Chapter 5 – Definitions & Fascism), https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lAr1OwUKy5s
1:27:00 Academic Agent is a low-brow neo-nazi

Posted in America | Comments Off on The Growing Skepticism About Official Stories (1-7-25)

Decoding The Trump Transition (1-6-25)

Posted on January 6, 2025 by Luke Ford

01:00 Allstate Sugar Bowl Chairman’s Address, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3KtcDtCm7fw
03:00 Mark Halperin on Trump Transition News, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tqeIZJvC1Jw
30:00 Who’s Richard Hanania? https://neokrat.blogspot.com/2025/01/whos-who-in-dissident-right-richard.html
38:20 Trump Coming In, Biden Going Out, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gWSDvrB_ACU
53:20 Billy Bush: The Infamous Trump Tape, Secrets of Corporate Media, & Megyn Kelly v. Harvey Weinstein, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l15VvBvNRbM
56:00 Kip joins to talk about illegal immigration
59:00 Why has America allowed in so much illegal immigration?
1:04:00 Do the French have the right stuff?
1:08:00 Boomer doomers
1:47:00 Patrice O’Neal Speaks The Truth About Hollywood, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=arTXw60SD8o
2:08:40 Gen z & politics, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o2k7VjBUAtA
2:30:00 The Crazy Nastyass Honey Badger, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4r7wHMg5Yjg

Posted in America | Comments Off on Decoding The Trump Transition (1-6-25)

WP: Inspired by ISIS: From a Taylor Swift plot in Vienna to carnage in New Orleans

Posted on January 3, 2025 by Luke Ford

The more freedom we have, the more painful our loser status becomes.

Washington Post:

By the time he came up with the idea of bombing a Taylor Swift concert, Beran Aliji’s young life had completely broken down. In July, amid a self-described mental crisis, the 19-year-old Austrian abruptly quit his job as a factory apprentice and isolated himself in his apartment, obsessing, as he later told police, about his own death.

With no money or prospects, and in lieu of close friendships, he began to immerse himself in a virtual world of violent videos and secret chatrooms devoted to the Islamic State…

Like the Austrian suspect, the man accused of ramming a vehicle through crowds of New Year’s revelers on Bourbon Street appears to have self-radicalized after a string of personal crises, including divorces, a job loss and financial insolvency…

“These are bitter, angry people,” said Bruce Riedel, a counterterrorism expert and 30-year veteran of the CIA. “Here’s a classic case of someone who converted to Islam, had two failed marriages, serious financial problems, and he finds now a cause to justify his life and his rage,” he said, referring to Jabbar, who, in a videotaped message, contemplated killing his family before opting to carry out an Islamic State-style terrorist attack….

Intelligence officials are expressing alarm over rising cases of self-radicalization among teenagers who, like Aliji, are avid consumers of Islamic State videos and sometimes see terrorists as heroes and role models…

Aliji took multiple selfies with his phone camera, posing with knives and a machete he purchased online. He later told police that he took the photos because he “wanted to be cool and brag about it.”

Posted in Terror | Comments Off on WP: Inspired by ISIS: From a Taylor Swift plot in Vienna to carnage in New Orleans