March 13, 2025

COVID FIVE YEARS AGO TODAY: There’s Plenty of Toilet Paper in the U.S. So Why Are People Hoarding It?

Australia has also suffered from panic buying of toilet paper despite plentiful domestic supply. A risk expert in the country explained it this way: “Stocking up on toilet paper is … a relatively cheap action, and people like to think that they are ‘doing something’ when they feel at risk.”

This is an example of “zero risk bias,” in which people prefer to try to eliminate one type of possibly superficial risk entirely rather than do something that would reduce their total risk by a greater amount.

* * * * * * * * *

Americans aren’t alone in panic buying to ensure they have plenty of squares to spare. Venezuelans hoarded the commodity in 2013 as a result of a drop in production, leading the government to seize a toilet paper factory in an effort to ensure more supply. It failed to do the trick.

Unexpectedly — but as America’s Newspaper of Record “reported” five years ago today: Bernie Sanders: ‘We Must Seize The Means Of Toilet Paper Production!’

Posted at 5:14 pm by Ed Driscoll 44

BARACK OBAMA HURT MOST: Iran Could Lose Iraq.

Iraq’s politicians also seem more eager than usual to appease the United States. Iraq’s government is led by Prime Minister Mohammed Shia al-Sudani and his Coordination Framework, a coalition closely allied with Iran. But Sudani’s team made three compromises with U.S. officials in late January: removing an arrest warrant on U.S. President Donald Trump for ordering the killing of terrorists in Baghdad during his last administration; agreeing to release the Princeton researcher Elizabeth Tsurkov, who has been held hostage by Kataib Hezbollah, an Iran-backed militia; and passing a vital budget amendment that has long been sought by Iraq’s Kurds, the segment of Iraqi society that has the closest ties to Trump. These compromises indicate that Iran’s allies in Iraq are feeling vulnerable.

Washington should take advantage of this moment to permanently reduce the level of Iranian control in Iraq. It should do so not through wide-scale military action but with tough diplomacy, the threat of sanctions, and intelligence operations. Such measures would deprive Iran of a vital source of funding and give the United States leverage in any negotiations with the regime’s leaders. Most important, it would lead to better governance for Iraqis, who have suffered for too long under Iran’s thumb.

Stay tuned — and keep an eye on Marco Rubio.

Posted at 3:51 pm by Stephen Green 73

SARAH HOYT’S SHOCKED FACE WAS LEAST SEEN SIPPING MIMOSAS AT BRUNCH: Gavin Newsom Is a Bust. “They claim that Newsom fundraised to help buy the bust of himself. Newsom, whose reputation as an F-5 level blowhard forced the dictionary to expand room for its definition of self-aggrandizement, was told by his political team that he should look embarrassed by this resurgent revelation while denying it at the same time.”

Much more at the link.

Posted at 2:18 pm by Stephen Green 60

STAY SAFE: Large study shows drinking alcohol is good for your cholesterol levels. “The cholesterol changes scaled with the changes in drinking. That is, for people who started drinking, the more they started drinking, the lower their LDL fell and higher their HDL rose. In the newly abstaining group, those who drank the most before quitting saw the biggest changes in their lipid levels.”

Posted at 2:00 pm by Glenn Reynolds 99

FAIL, BRITANNIA: In This English Village, Asylum Seekers May Soon Outnumber the Locals.

The British government is using the old air base at Wethersfield as a camp for asylum seekers. It’s unclear when they came to the UK, as the government does not release information on how long their processing takes. But we do know this: All are adult men. Many crossed the English Channel from France, arriving on small boats and claiming asylum when they hit the beach. They are from countries such as Afghanistan, Eritrea, Iran, Iraq, and Syria. They are allowed to come and go freely from the camp, to the village and beyond.

Currently, 580 of them live on the base. Their number is about to rise to 800. The government won’t say exactly when, but it had initially stated that a total of 1,700 migrants would eventually move here.

Before the migrants arrived, the village of Wethersfield reportedly had a population of 707.

Gad Saad calls it “suicidal empathy,” and maybe that’s how it started. But now it’s more like a culturally murderous vindictiveness on the part of Britain’s elites against the British people.

Posted at 1:47 pm by Stephen Green 120

THE UNFIT HOBBLING THE UNFIT: ‘No Daylight’: How an Insecure Old Man Sabotaged Kamala’s Presidential Campaign. “Kamala Harris had (roughly) 100 days to convince the American people that she deserved to be the next president. With President Biden’s “no daylight” demand, it was impossible for her to stake her own identity. Biden’s ego was such that he’d rather Harris spend 100 days defending the Biden record and lose than to denounce it and win.”

The question is why Harris didn’t refuse a politically suicidal demand from a senescent lame duck. Clearly, this is just one more way she was unfit for office.

Posted at 1:16 pm by Stephen Green 155

CRAZY BUT IT’S TRUE:

The population won’t decrease by 96% that quickly. But good luck having a functional society and economy in a country with about 90 working-age people supporting up to 200 retirees.

The good news, if you can call it that, is they’ll only have eight kids to support.

Posted at 12:45 pm by Stephen Green 164

FOR THOSE WHO MISS THE ‘80s, LASER ROT IS BACK, BABY! Hundreds of your Warner Bros DVDs probably don’t work anymore; UPDATED with response from WB.

It turns out that virtually every Warner Bros DVD disc manufactured between 2006 and 2008 has succumbed to the dreaded laser rot, where discs simply stop working due to a rotting of the layers. Once it happens, it can’t be undone. This was a frequent problem with laserdiscs back in the 80s and 90s, but it wasn’t a huge problem with DVDs. The issue comes down to the way the discs were authored. Many of the titles affected, which range from classics like The Wild Bunch and The Shawshank Redemption to TV collections like The Dukes of Hazzard, have been reissued on Blu-ray or digital HD. Some of the titles, such as many of the titles in the Looney Tunes Collections and many of the Golden Age of Hollywood movies, have not, making them, in a lot of cases, lost media.

So, what can be done about this? Nothing. As stated in this RetroBlasting video, we had ticking time bombs on our hands, and the only way around the problem was to rip our faves to something like PLEX, but it’s too late for the majority of discs. Warner Bros, of course, has yet to comment on this, so people like me have thousands of worthless discs cluttering our shelves. Here’s the most comprehensive list of titles available.

So far, Blu-ray Discs aren’t affected, although all HD-DVD discs put out by WB in this period are basically expensive coasters.

Note that “Warner Bros has reached out to us with a statement from their Home Video department offering to make good on the ruined DVDs – if possible.”

Posted at 12:30 pm by Ed Driscoll 119

SUGGEST? I’M GOING TO INSIST YOU CAN’T HATE THE PRESS ENOUGH:

Does the media still play that bullshit “layers of editors and fact-checkers” card, or are they finally openly admitting that they’re nothing but left-wing propagandists?

Posted at 12:27 pm by Stephen Green 28