GET WOKE, GO BROKE:

Here are a couple of facts for you: only 20% of Americans have Twitter accounts.

Of the 20% who do have Twitter accounts, I would bet half of those people don’t interact very often on social media. That means 10% of Americans, and that’s being very generous, are active on Twitter. Probably 3% of Americans are highly active there.

So when the media or companies reference social media or use it to gauge the decisions they are making, how representative is Twitter of real life?

I think it’s not very representative at all.

Yet the media is addicted to using social media as a basis for a huge amount of their stories.

I think companies are too easy to reach now and I think, if anything, they are too reactive to what social media says or does.

Back in the day congressional offices used to get deluged with constituent mail. Much of it was produced by opinion content factories. That is, they could manufacture a huge mass of mail to make it look like their position was more popular than it actually was.

I think many have realized how to do the same thing on social media now.

Twitter is a funhouse mirror.

Related: On Tuesday, the day after Nike’s made Colin Kaepernick the face of the company, Scott Ott wrote at his satiric Scrappleface blog, “Nike to ‘Sacrifice Everything’ for Black Community,” Linking to it, I asked, “now that Nike has aligned itself with the SJW mob, how long will it be before the scorpion stings the swoosh?”

That didn’t take long: “On Friday’s MSNBC Live, as host Ali Velshi brought aboard Black Lives Matter leader Deray McKesson to discuss the controversial Nike ad featuring Colin Kaepernick, the MSNBC host actually hit his liberal guest from the left as he wondered if Nike was really doing enough to promote Kaepernick’s political agenda.”

DISPATCHES FROM THE EDUCATION APOCALYPSE: Academic Activists Send a Published Paper Down the Memory Hole.

In the highly controversial area of human intelligence, the ‘Greater Male Variability Hypothesis’ (GMVH) asserts that there are more idiots and more geniuses among men than among women. Darwin’s research on evolution in the nineteenth century found that, although there are many exceptions for specific traits and species, there is generally more variability in males than in females of the same species throughout the animal kingdom.

Evidence for this hypothesis is fairly robust and has been reported in species ranging from adders and sockeye salmon to wasps and orangutans, as well as humans. Multiple studies have found that boys and men are over-represented at both the high and low ends of the distributions in categories ranging from birth weight and brain structures and 60-meter dash times to reading and mathematics test scores. There are significantly more men than women, for example, among Nobel laureates, music composers, and chess champions—and also among homeless people, suicide victims, and federal prison inmates.

Darwin had also raised the question of why males in many species might have evolved to be more variable than females, and when I learned that the answer to his question remained elusive, I set out to look for a scientific explanation. My aim was not to prove or disprove that the hypothesis applies to human intelligence or to any other specific traits or species, but simply to discover a logical reason that could help explain how gender differences in variability might naturally arise in the same species.

* * * * * * * *

Three days later, however, the paper had vanished. And a few days after that, a completely different paper by different authors appeared at exactly the same page of the same volume (NYJM Volume 23, p 1641+) where mine had once been.

Read the whole thing.

AND NO, THAT’S NOT JUST AN EXPRESSION: New Lexus Flagship is a Luxury Yacht.

NEWS YOU CAN USE: Now ‘Toxic Masculinity’ Is Bad for Your Sex Life — at Least According to Feminists.

As Glenn has noted, “After hearing nonstop from feminists about how fragile and impressionable women are, I’m beginning to think that patriarchy is a good idea.”

#HERTOO? Asia Argento Is Why I Don’t Believe All Victims.

HMM: No benefit to statin drugs for healthy seniors, study says.

There is no evidence to support the widespread use of cholesterol-lowering statin drugs to prevent heart disease and stroke in old and very old people, Spanish researchers say.

For the new study, the investigators analyzed data from nearly 47,000 people aged 75 and older with no history of heart disease.

Statins were not associated with a reduced risk of heart disease or death from any cause in healthy people over age 75, the study found.

But among people aged 75 to 84 with type 2 diabetes, statins were linked to a 24 percent lower risk of heart disease and a 16 percent lower risk of death from any cause. This protective effect declined after age 85 and was gone by age 90, the findings showed.

The study, led by Rafel Ramos, a researcher at the University of Girona in Spain, was published online Sept. 5 in the BMJ.

The results do not support the widespread use of statins in healthy old and very old people, the study authors said. But the findings do support statin treatment in those under 85 years of age with type 2 diabetes, they concluded.

Bad news for statin manufacturers.

T-BONE NODS: The Cory Booker you see has always been an imaginary creation.

IT’S SMALLER AND HOLDS FEWER ROUNDS: The Drawbacks of a Subcompact Single-Stack 9mm.

DISPATCHES FROM THE EDUCATION APOCALYPSE: It’s No Joke: Students Can Minor in Marijuana At Stockton University.

(Via Maggie’s Farm.)

THE NCAA IS A SHITTY CARTEL THAT SHOULD BE ABOLISHED: NCAA punishes several Kentucky athletes for pick-up soccer game with Foo Fighters.

KATHY GRIFFIN AT THE WHITE HOUSE: Trump’s the Type to Resign and Make Up a ‘Bullshit Excuse.’

YES: Should the U.S. Navy Buy Non-Nuclear Submarines? Nuclear boats have amazing capabilities, but they’re very expensive, and the non-nukes are actually quieter these days.

EVERGREEN HEADLINE: Obama Trashes Millions Of Americans As Paranoid, Divisive, Resentful.

And as always, the “satirical” Babylon Bee is right on the mark: “Man Who Intentionally Divided Nation For Eight Years Calls For Unity.”

THE POWER LINE WEEK IN PICTURES: ANONYMOUS EDITION.

GET WOKE, GO BROKE: PC Police Step Up Efforts to Completely Ruin Stand-Up Comedy.

NIKE, MEET A WOMAN WHOSE CONVICTIONS MAY ACTUALLY COST HER EVERYTHING: Nike features Colin Kapernick who has made millions of dollars for kneeling in protest at NFL games. Now meet Barronelle Stutzman, who stands to lose her business, her home and her life savings as the penalty for her convictions.

YOUR DAILY TREACHER: Cory Booker Is Like Spartacus, Without the Spartacus.

21st CENTURY RELATIONSHIP ENDERS: Exit Strategy: Did This Guy ‘Red Pill’ His Way Out of a Doomed Relationship?

ROGER KIMBALL: What the Deep Throat State just swallowed: The New York Times’s op-ed confirms everything the President has said about his enemies. “This latest bulletin from the engine room of fake news barely rises above the level of name calling. It has the acrid smell of desperation.”

IT’S A COUPLE OF YEARS OLD, but for some reason my paper on military coups. made the SSRN Top 5 last week.

WHY IS HIGHER EDUCATION SUCH A CESSPIT OF DISCRIMINATION? Stanford Law School study finds conservative profs shunned by elite schools.

The study, “Testing a Beckerian-Arrowian model of political orientation discrimination on the U.S. law professor labor market: Measuring the ‘rank gap”, 2001-2010,” sheds light on the suspicion many conservatives in the labor market have, “am I being discriminated against?”

The study finds that “conservative and libertarian law professors are underrepresented in top-tier legal academia, whether compared to the American population overall, those who graduate from law school, or elite lawyers who look most like law professors,” later adding that the issue is likely “not discrimination against conservatives and libertarians so much as discrimination against anyone who is not liberal.”

“To the extent the legal academy is concerned about diversity, given the significant role politics plays in the law, few types of diversity could be more beneficial to legal education than increased political diversity among law school faculties,” Phillips surmises. “Ironically, liberal students and law professors will arguably benefit the most if the percentage of conservative and libertarian faculty members increases.”

Phillips argues that, in some academic fields, graduates are “less harmed” by a lack of intellectual diversity, but for law school graduates, the inability to “candidly and accurately assess the weaknesses in their own views and the strengths in opposing views” is akin to “professional suicide.”

“Law school graduates who are ill-equipped to make persuasive arguments in front of half of the judiciary are ill-equipped to be lawyers,” the study reads. “Likewise, an environment that is subtly or openly hostile to or ridicules conservative or libertarian perspectives will have a chilling effect in the classroom, harming students of all political views.”

The study finds that, when analyzing the hiring practices of law schools between 2001 and 2010, three categories of professors, “liberal,” “unknown,” and “conservative/libertarian,” appear to be unevenly distributed, “indicating that law schools were not equally hiring across rankings over the decade studied. But the distribution of conservatives/libertarians and liberals was relatively similar.”

Phillips argues that having a lack of politically diverse professors has a direct impact on law students who go on to affect legal policy.

I agree.

“I WILL BE GIVING STINK EYE WARNINGS TODAY BUT TOMORROW I’M ISSUING CITATIONS.” ‘I’m only going to say this once’ — Dad’s post about school drop-off etiquette going viral.

WHY IS HIGHER EDUCATION SUCH A CESSPIT OF SEXISM? OCR Investigating ‘Financial Discrimination’ Against Men at Tulane. “The United States Department of Education has launched a Title IX investigation into Tulane University amid allegations the school engages in ‘financial discrimination’ against male students and prospective applicants.”