WE COULD USE A THOUSAND SPOTLIGHTS ON THIS STUFF (AND NOT JUST IN NEW YORK):  Shining a Spotlight on Critical Race Theory in New York High Schools. 

FINALLY! U.S. Army approves plans for a future ‘tactical space layer.’ Oh, never mind — for a second I thought it said “tactical space lawyer.” Now that would be cool.

HMM: Omega-3 supplements do double duty in protecting against stress.

21ST CENTURY QUESTIONS: Do Brain Implants Change Your Identity?

BYRON YORK: Finally, the facts about Officer Sicknick’s death.

But we still don’t know who shot Ashli Babbitt.

NANCY PELOSI: Pelosi: ‘Thank you George Floyd for Sacrificing Your Life.’ So she’s saying the goal was convicting Derek Chauvin; Floyd just provided the excuse?

Best response: “Considering that this is the same woman who thought wearing kente cloth imported from China was tantamount to reparations, this is completely on brand.”

Plus: “Powerful should stop pretending to empathize, it always comes across psychotic.”

Video:

Speaker Pelosi: "Thank you George Floyd for sacrificing your life for justice … Because of you and because of thousands, millions of people around the world who came out for justice, your name will always be synonymous with justice."pic.twitter.com/JfapSsKdtX

— The Recount (@therecount) April 20, 2021

I’M NOT LIKE OTHER GIRLS.

ST. GRETA ALREADY PAYING DIVIDENDS: So Far Germany Seeing Coldest April In 104 Years, Second Coldest Since 1881, Snowiest Since 1986.

(Via Kate of Small Dead Animals, who quips, “They Have Their Shadenfraud To Keep Them Warm.”)

A PLAGUE OF CHILD ABUSE: Masking Children Is Unnecessary—and Harmful. The pandemic has turned American adults into selfish neurotics who have been punishing innocent children for over a year, and still can’t restrain themselves. Social distancing and masks hinder learning while harming children emotionally, socially, and physically, all for no purpose other than providing false comfort to adults who ought to know better. In my City Journal article, I present the evidence that these restrictions are both pointless and damaging.

TL;DR. Why Americans Are Suckers for Quick Fixes From Psychologists:

“The goal of this book is to explain why we keep falling for the ideas that psychologists tell us about the ways they’re going to help fix society,” says Jesse Singal, author of The Quick Fix: Why Fad Psychology Can’t Cure Our Social Ills. “They’ll offer some incredible new way to fight racism or to improve education or to improve gender equity in the workplace. There’s a rush of attention and often a rush of research dollars. Everyone gets really into them. There’s the NPR, New York Times coverage. And then a few years later, more research comes out. We realize the idea was barely true, if that, and it ends up having wasted a lot of time.”

Singal shows how the underlying research that propelled phenomena such as “power posing” (which promised to empower women by changing their posture), the self-esteem movement (which tried to reform poorly performing students and even criminals through enthusiastic, unearned praise), and the Implicit Association Test (which purports to measure “unconscious bias” against blacks and other marginalized groups) often can’t be replicated and sometimes doesn’t even measure what it purports to address.

New video from Reason TV:

THE NEW LEFTY LINE IS THAT EXPANDING THE COURT TO ACCOMMODATE IDEOLOGICAL ALLIES IS THE OPPOSITE OF “COURT PACKING” BECAUSE REASONS: Biden’s court packing committee contains an army of profs open to altering Supreme Court.

IMMINENT: Jury Delivers Verdict in Derek Chauvin Case.

Update: Guilty on all counts. More to come.

INTIMIDATION: Vandals leave pig head, smear blood outside former home of Chauvin defense witness.

OH, THAT PUNITIVE LIBERALISM: Biden’s Withdrawal From Afghanistan Timed to Humiliate US.

(Classical reference in headline.)

PJ MEDIA VIP ROUNDUP: Facebook Gives ‘Far, Far More’ Than $3M to NYT Each Year. What Does It Get in Return?

And: Kruiser’s (Almost) Daily Distraction: Might Be Time to Go Full Ron Swanson.

Finally: Progressive California Couple Flees from… Low Taxes?

That VODKAPUNDIT promo code is still good for a nice little discount, if you’ve been thinking of becoming a VIP supporter.

DISPATCHES FROM THE NEWSPEAK DICTIONARY: Biden Bans ‘Illegal Aliens’ (Not the Activity, Just That Term For It).

The great thing about being a Democrat is that you can screw up as much as you want, you can lie about whatever you want, you can be as much of a scumbag as you want, and then you can just redefine the terms of the debate to favor you.

For example, do you know what the word “infrastructure” means? If you answered anything except “Whatever the Dems want to spend other people’s money on,” you’re wrong. Or how about “bipartisan”? You probably thought a bill in Congress is only bipartisan if both Democrats and Republicans vote for it. Wrong again! In 2021, “bipartisan” now means “Even if no Republicans vote for it, there are probably other Republicans in America who would have voted for it if they were in Congress.”

If a word doesn’t mean what you need it to mean at the moment you need it to mean that thing, just redefine it on-the-fly. If it doesn’t work, you can always just pretend you never said it and none of your fellow Democrats in the press will give you a hard time about it.

George Orwell didn’t write “Politics and the English Language” as a how-to guide.

GOOD: Asian Americans Create Gun Group as Ownership, Hate Crimes Rise.

This is from Stephen Gutowski’s new firearm-news site, The Reload. Looks good.

THUG LIFE: Who Killed Adam Toledo? “The immediate cause of Toledo’s death was the bullet fired by Officer Stillman. But it’s worth examining how a 13-year-old boy ended up in a full sprint through a dark alley at 2:30 AM with a gun in his hand and a police officer on his tail.”

Read the whole thing.

FASTER, PLEASE: The Coming Bipartisan Backlash to Public School Wokeness.

THE CITY OF BROTHERLY LOOTING: Storm Warning in Philadelphia. While hapless city officials try appeasing activists, residents and business owners brace for the Chauvin verdict.

GLENN GREENWALD ON WHAT THE TRUTH ABOUT OFFICER SICKNICK’S DEATH SAYS ABOUT THE MEDIA:

They never cared in the slightest about Officer Brian Sicknick. They had just spent months glorifying a protest movement whose core view is that police officers are inherently racist and abusive. He had just become their toy, to be played with and exploited in order to depict the January 6 protest as a murderous orgy carried out by savages so primitive and inhuman that they were willing to fatally bash in the skull of a helpless person or spray them with deadly gases until they choked to death on their own lung fluids.

He’s right of course. If you support BLM then you necessarily support the routine verbal abuse of police officers as racists akin to the Klan. So it was very curious that a police officer would suddenly become the hero of this same group of progressives apart from the politics of doing so. In fact, you may recall people were simultaneously claiming Sicknick was a victim of the mob and that the same Capitol Hill police had treated BLM protesters unfairly. He was both a victim (where needed) and a perpetrator.

QED: Guess what Maxine Waters requested before going to Minneapolis.

YES ANOTHER “DOG BITES MAN” EXAMPLE OF DEMOCRAT HYPOCRISY: AOC’s ‘Squad’ Wants to Defund the Police But Pays Thousands for Personal Security.

MUCH TO THE DISMAY OF THE PUBLIC-HEALTH ESTABLISHMENT: There Will Be No Third Wave of Covid Deaths. There may be a lot more infections in the UK, but few severe cases, according to a professor at Bristol University with a strong track record for predicting trends in Covid and other viruses.

GRIFTERS GOTTA GRIFT: Planned Parenthood Ditches Margaret Sanger, Dives Head First Into Trans Debate for New Revenue Stream.

COMPETITION IS GOOD: Jeff Bezos’ Amazon signs rocket deal to launch network to rival SpaceX.

That said, Elon’s fixing to ship me my equipment, while Bezos has just signed a deal. So Bezos has some catching-up to do.