#JOURNALISM:
This is a direct quote:
“The Times provided Mr. Portnoy with detailed questions about this article. Barstool executives did not respond to repeated messages. Mr. Portnoy did not provide answers.”
Here is reality https://t.co/IIHcpY72V7 pic.twitter.com/N3Ew8JEq8Z
— Dave Portnoy (@stoolpresidente) November 20, 2022
And it seems Dave Portnoy agrees with my bring your own camera advice. And that the NYT fears it.
RED VS. BLUE: Texas Vs. California Budgets: 2022 Edition. “For a while California’s tech and entertainment industry strengths were outrunning its massive blue state economic mismanagement and green energy delusions. That’s no longer the case.”
If Elon Musk can make Twitter run smoothly and profitably with a headcount 75-80% smaller than when he bought it, the employment shakeout at other Bay Area tech firms could kill off Sacramento’s golden-egg-laying goose.
THE ONLY PEOPLE WHO LIKE HIGH GAS PRICES ARE THE NOMENKLATURA WHO WANT THE PROLES FORCED ONTO PUBLIC TRANSPORTATION WHILE THEY DRIVE THEIR ELECTRIC VEHICLES: Voters Say, ‘Drill, Baby, Drill.’
THEY’LL STAY WOKE AND BROKE: ‘Bull***t’ — CNN’s New Chief Addresses Nasty Rumors That It Might Become ‘Centrist.’ “Though he’s rejiggered the lineup since replacing Jeff Zucker in May, viewers can still expect nothing close to a down-the-middle foray into facts.”
IN THE FUTURE I RECOMMEND DRONING ON IN YOUR BEST BEN STEIN IMPRESSION: UCF students complain about professor dressing up as different characters in video lessons. They want boring, give them boring.
HAPPY Cyber Monday. #CommissionEarned.
GLEICSCHALTUNG! University changes ‘Thanksgiving Closure’ to ‘Fall Break:’ A professor argued last year that ‘we are not a white Christian organization, we are a university.’ How dare Professor Twitchell erase the Indigenous People who were an integral part of the first Thanksgiving.
IVORY BLOAT: NC STATE SPENT $131 MILLION MORE ON ADMINS THAN TEACHING LAST YEAR. And I’m sure it’s hardly the worst example. The frequent focus on high college president salaries (colleges are complicated organizations, and imagine what you’d demand to run a place like Berkeley) may mask the real problem of the sheer number of admins. I suspect many colleges could use the Musk/Twitter treatment.
THAT PRETTY WELL SUMS HIM UP: Trump deems Kanye West a ‘seriously troubled man’ who ‘just happens to be Black’ after Mar-a-Lago trip fallout.
KRUISER’S MORNING BRIEFING: Republicans Might Make House Takeover the Wrong Kind of Interesting. “The problems with not winning a decisive majority in the House are going to be rearing their ugly heads for quite some time. There is now a chance that they might get uglier than a Hillary Clinton Halloween mask.”
DISPATCHES FROM WEIMAR AMERICA: Balenciaga and the rise of paedo chic. “Balenciaga is blaming the photographer, and is even threatening to sue him. It has apologised for the pics, and for the inclusion of ‘unsettling documents’, and has wiped the campaign from its Instagram. The photographer, meanwhile, insists he had nothing to do with choosing the products or the models. He just set up the lighting and clicked. So no one’s to blame? You know how it is – you take a few photos to promote your products and, darn, you accidentally include children with pervert teds and a nod to a ruling that dismantled part of the child-porn law. Could happen to anyone.”
UPDATE (FROM GLENN): It’s a mystery how this could have happened:
TWITTER IS FUN AGAIN: Twitter new user signups at an ‘all-time high,’ says Elon Musk.
As of November 16th, Twitter was adding more than 2 million new users per day over the last seven days, according to one of the graphs Musk shared. He added daily signups are up 66 percent compared to the same seven-day period in 2021.
Musk said user active minutes were also at an all-time high, with Twitter’s userbase averaging nearly 8 billion active minutes per day over the last seven days as of November 15th – representing a 30 percent increase from the same period last year. He also used a graph to claim hate speech impressions recently decreased.
To be fair, I’ve also noticed an uptick in spam accounts following me, which I block as soon as I catch them.
On the campus of Peking University in the capital, whose students led the Tiananmen protests in 1989, a swelling crowd gathered to face down the security guards, then began to sing the left-wing anthem The Internationale.
At Tsinghua University in Beijing some students took part in silent protests and held up blank pieces of paper, while others loudly called for: “Democracy, rule of law, and freedom of expression!”…
Footage showed people gathering and chanting “Freedom! We want freedom!” under Sitong Bridge, where Peng Lifa was arrested after unfurling a banner last month….The Chinese government has blamed “forces with ulterior motives” for linking a deadly fire in the western Xinjiang province to its strict Covid measures….
[T]he English-language edition of the Global Times, a Communist Party newspaper… quoted an academic at Shanghai’s Fudan University, saying: “Due to ideological differences, it has become almost an instinct of Western countries and media to criticise communist governments with an aim to subvert the latter with colour revolutions.”…
Chinese social media appeared to be devoid of any news about the rallies.
Yes, their social media platforms suppress everything that could threaten the regime. Good thing that could never happen here.
EVERYTHING IS GOING SWIMMINGLY: White House Report Card: The need for Thanksgiving ‘talking points’ says it all.
This week’s White House Report Card finds President Joe Biden vacationing on exclusive Nantucket Island, where the average home price is $3.6 million, and still telling the rest of us how to live.
From paying off countries for U.S. global warming to telling some 22 million people to give up their sporting rifles, Biden was full of Thanksgiving advice. And if you didn’t believe him, the White House handed out talking points for the Thanksgiving dinner table to prove he’s smart.
He’s smart. Real smart. Not dumb like people say.
RIGGED: How Corporations and a Nonprofit Partnered to Stop the Red Wave. “Rock the Vote was ahead of the curve in combining corporate partnerships and nonprofits to boost Democrat voter registration and turnout. Rock the Vote’s blueprint has since become the Democrat standard without the IRS ever lifting a finger against a nonprofit blatantly violating the tax code.”
IT ISN’T ELECTION DENIAL WHEN THE RIGHT PEOPLE DENY ELECTIONS: Election Denier Refuses to Give Up House Leadership Position.
GLENN GREENWALD: The Media’s Deranged Hysteria Over Elon Musk’s Promised Restoration of Free Speech.
They always show you what they’re afraid of. (Bumped).
CHANGE? McCarthy struggling to secure GOP votes in House speaker’s race. “McCarthy launched his effort to be House speaker earlier this month in a closed-ballot vote by his conference. At the time, he only earned 188 of the 218 votes necessary to become speaker, with 31 votes going to his surprise challenger: House Freedom Caucus Chairman Andy Biggs (R-AZ). Biggs is one of the dozens of Republicans who have refused to support McCarthy’s speakership bid. That opposition, combined with a less-than-stellar turnout by Republicans in the 2022 midterm elections, is jeopardizing McCarthy’s chances of securing the gavel.”
EVERYTHING IS GOING SWIMMINGLY: Thanks, Joe! 41% of small businesses can’t pay their rent this month.
The gym that I love has just closed for that very reason.
Related: US Business Activity Contracts for Fifth Straight Month.
IT STILL HASN’T BEEN ACTED ON, SO MAYBE THIS IS HAVING AN EFFECT: Asian American groups urge rejection of nominee for U.S. Attorney in Tennessee’s Eastern District: Casey Arrowood prosecuted University of Tennessee professor now cleared of spying charges.
The Biden administration in August nominated Arrowood for the top job at the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Knoxville despite his role in the wrongful prosecution of University of Tennessee professor Dr. Anming Hu as part of former President Donald Trump’s “China Initiative.”
In an exclusive interview with the Tennessee Lookout earlier this month, Hu called the nomination “ridiculous” and shocking and has since penned a letter to President Joe Biden urging him to withdraw Arrowood’s name from consideration.
After the story was published, a slew of advocacy groups, including APA Justice, Asian American Scholar Forum, Tennessee Chinese American Alliance and United Chinese Americans, have teamed up with Hu to try to defeat Arrowood’s nomination. . . .
Armed solely with a Chinese press released translated on the fly via Google, Sadiku in 2018 falsely accused Hu of being a spy, tried to press the UT professor into spying on China for the U.S. government and, when Hu refused, spent more than a year surveilling Hu and his teenage son, trial testimony showed.
When that surveillance turned up no evidence of espionage by Hu, testimony showed, Sadiku and other federal agents convinced UT leaders to help ensnare Hu by approving his proposal for a NASA research grant — without telling Hu the project could run afoul of an obscure provision of the law that the university had repeatedly insisted did not apply to Hu or any of its professors.
Arrowood then mounted a wire fraud case against Hu in 2020. When Hu refused to plead guilty in the case, Arrowood took it to trial. The case proved so weak a jury in U.S. District Court deadlocked. When Arrowood threatened to retry Hu, U.S. District Judge Tom Varlan stepped in and tossed the case out of court last year.
Flashback: Trial reveals federal agents falsely accused a UT professor born in China of spying.
And this was an ordinary case, not a politically charged one. And it gets worse.
CYBER MONDAY DEALS are here. #CommissionEarned
Companies such as Alphabet Inc.’s Google, Delta Air Lines Inc. and International Business Machines Corp. have reduced educational requirements for certain positions and shifted hiring to focus more on skills and experience. Maryland this year cut college-degree requirements for many state jobs—leading to a surge in hiring—and incoming Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro campaigned on a similar initiative.
U.S. job postings requiring at least a bachelor’s degree were 41% in November, down from 46% at the start of 2019 ahead of the Covid-19 pandemic, according to an analysis by the Burning Glass Institute, a think tank that studies the future of work. Degree requirements dropped even more early in the pandemic. They have grown since then but remain below prepandemic levels. . . .
The majority of its U.S. roles at IBM no longer require a four-year degree after the company conducted a review of hiring practices, IBM spokeswoman Ashley Bright said.
Delta eased its educational requirements for pilots at the start of this year, saying a four-year college degree was preferred but no longer required of job applicants.
Walmart Inc., the country’s largest private employer, said it values skills and knowledge gained through work experience and that 75% of its U.S. salaried store management started their careers in hourly jobs.
“We don’t require degrees for most of our jobs in the field and increasingly in the home office as well,” Kathleen McLaughlin, Walmart executive vice president, said at an online event this fall. The company’s goal is to shift the “focus from the way someone got their skills, which is the degree, to what skills do they have.”
A four-year college degree holder has more lifetime earnings than one without. The lifetime earnings of a worker with a high-school diploma is $1.6 million while that of a bachelor’s degree holder is $2.8 million, according to a 2021 report by the Center on Education and the Workforce at Georgetown University.
But many people don’t finish college and are left with mountains of debt—more than 43 million people in the U.S. hold a total of $1.6 trillion in student-loan debt. While a college degree can provide specific workplace skills, workers can gain the skills needed for many jobs without a four-year degree.
Black and Hispanic people are less likely to have a college degree compared with white and Asian people, according to the Commerce Department. Men are less likely than women. . . .
Mr. Deitchman said since the policy change he is seeing more applicants and higher quality job applicants.
“I would rather have someone with experience,” he said. “It’s just something that should have been done years ago.”
Employers are learning the difference between credentialed and educated. All is proceeding as I have foreseen.
NOTHING TO SEE HERE, MOVE ALONG: Energy Crisis Reshaping Global Markets.
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