LIFE IN TODAY’S AMERICA:

Faceless, unelected handlers.https://t.co/YzLYkEQtHR

— wretchardthecat (@wretchardthecat) May 13, 2023

OPEN THREAD: Twice as nice.

DESANTIS STEPS IN AND MEETS WITH VOTERS AFTER TRUMP CANCELS IOWA RALLY, CAUSING ONLINE FIRESTORM.

THE NEW SPACE RACE: South Korean moon probe snaps picture of NASA’s powerful lunar orbiter (photo).

GET WELL SOON: Where The Hell Has The Lid Been?

TRUNALIMUNUMAPRZURE! So now Joe Biden wants to split off Great Britain as an ally?

This weekend, we learned our latest lesson about what happens when Joe Biden’s handlers allow him to off of the script. Like me, you may have thought that Biden’s recent trip to Ireland was just a free vacation on the taxpayer’s dime so he could look at castles. But according to recent comments Biden made at a fundraiser, he was studying the political situation in Great Britain and particularly in Ireland and Northern Ireland, where relations have been strained amid post-Brexit trade discussions. Amazingly, he told people at the fundraiser that he had been over there “making sure the Brits didn’t screw around and Northern Ireland didn’t walk away from their commitments.” Needless to say, when officials in Great Britain heard about this, many of them were simply aghast.

Well, let’s face it, the Brits are okay, I guess, but they’re no Islamic Republic of Iran: Biden Plans to Continue Iran Deal Talks Despite Regime’s Brutal Crackdown.

MASS FORMATION PSYCHOSIS: Psychologist Breaks Down How Society Descended Into COVID Insanity.

[Belgian clinical psychologist Mattias Desmet] went on to explain that, having met this first condition, the population is afflicted with what he calls “free-floating” anxiety and aggression, by which he means anxiety that does not have a clearly identifiable source. There is nothing in the environment to attach the anxiety to and therefore no obvious solution to remedy it.

That’s when demagogues with a narrative to push — who, in the context of COVID in the West, also happened to enjoy an iron-clad grip on the corporate media — seize on this anxiety to present those suffering with something, or someone, to blame. Those people then seize on the opportunity to, they hope, soothe their anxiety by neutralizing the enemy — which, in this case, was both the virus itself (which justified lockdowns and vax mandates) and anyone who resisted the lockdowns — their fellow countrymen.

The COVIDians found community — something they longed for but had not found in their meaningless jobs or on Twitter or wherever they had been looking — in banding together to defeat the unvaccinated. In this way, otherwise rational human beings — particularly liberal women, who are statistically the most negatively affected by the modern techno-dystopia — are turned into vicious, rabid animals willing to condone the most inhumane treatment of their enemies, weaponized cynically by the social engineers as they are unleashed on the public.

And the result was this:

https://twitter.com/wakeupfromcovid/status/1458474280472047617?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E1458474280472047617%7Ctwgr%5E911a935e61f7155b61a8ae4a7c3443d42bc1547d%7Ctwcon%5Es1_&ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Fpjmedia.com%2Fnews-and-politics%2Fbenbartee%2F2023%2F05%2F13%2Fpsychologist-breaks-down-how-society-descended-into-covid-insanity-n1695174

Ben Bartee’s article is just for our VIP members; please use the discount code LOYALTY if you’ve been thinking of becoming a supporter.

WELL, GOOD: New Alzheimer’s Drug Shows 35% Reduction in Cognitive Decline in Late-Stage Trial. I mean, you really want drugs that reverse the decline, or at least stop it cold. But this is an improvement over what’s out there now.

WEAK: Turkish Election: Turkey election: Count shows President Erdogan under threshold needed to avoid runoff.

EVERYTHING IS GOING SWIMMINGLY: Cancer drugs among top 5 most affected by shortages in the US.

EVERGREEN QUESTION: Dave Chapelle Slams San Francisco: ‘What The F— Happened To This Place?’

In a surprise performance Thursday at San Francisco’s Masonic Auditorium, the comedian offered his thoughts on the state of the City by the Bay.

And they were not good.

“What the f-ck happened to this place?” Chapelle asked the crowd.

He ripped into the city for its homeless crisis. Chapelle said he went to an Indian restaurant a few nights earlier and watched a man defecate right in front of the restaurant.

San Francisco’s Tenderloin District has long been notorious for homelessness and drug use. But according to Chapelle, the entire city is now the Tenderloin.

San Francisco has become “half ‘Glee,’ half zombie movie,” he said.

“Y’all [N-words] need a Batman!”

Good luck with that. In the meantime: San Francisco Chaos Proves It: Law and Order Is a Public Good.

GOOD LUCK, GUYS. WE’RE ALL COUNTING ON YOU. Microsoft bets that a fusion power plant from Helion Energy will be operating this decade.

FAILED PRESIDENT SAYS WHAT? Obama on the view of gun ownership in America. “I think somehow — and there are a lot of historical reasons for this — gun ownership in this country became an ideological issue, and a partisan issue, in ways that it shouldn’t be.”

What he means by this is that his divisive and partisan efforts backfired and now he’s sad to be on the losing side.

First comment on the story: “According to Everytown the state with the strongest gun laws is CA and they’ve had 16 mass shootings so far this year according to the Gun Violence Archive data. The state with the highest firearms per capita is Wyoming and they have had 0 mass shooting so far this year. The state with highest gun ownership rate is Montana and they have had zero mass shootings so far this year. California’s gun ownership rate of 28% is almost a third of that of Montana but they have had had 16 mass shootings. According to Everytown stats with respect to gun related violence in Montana and Wyoming; 84% of gun related deaths are suicides in Montana and 86% in Wyoming. 11% of gun related deaths are homicides in Montana and 10% in Wyoming. In California, 45% of gun related deaths are homicides.”

Plus: “Yet he allows himself to be surrounded by armed guards 24/7.”

Related: “So Biden is saying he got into the race to sharpen the divisions.”

I ALREADY LOVE THOSE, YOU DON’T HAVE TO SELL ME: States Attack Private Shooting Ranges as ‘Antigovernment Paramilitary Training Camps’.

READER FAVORITE: resqme Family Pack, The Original Emergency Keychain Car Escape Tool. #CommissionEarned

ILYA SOMIN: A Flawed Attack on “Libertarian Elitism” About Voter Ignorance.

WELL, GOOD: FDA approves non-hormonal treatment for menopausal hot flashes.

AND THEY’RE NOT WRONG: Democrats’ Nightmares–African Americans See Racism in Democrat Attacks on Clarence Thomas.

HEH: Cops hoping to spot lurking mountain lion set up camera. Something menacing appeared.

DEAL OF THE DAY: Men’s Swim Trunks Quick Dry Board Shorts with Zipper Pockets. #CommissionEarned

MEH, AFTER THAT STUPID AND MANIPULATIVE STEM-CELL CAMPAIGN AD I DON’T REALLY CARE WHAT HE HAS TO SAY. Michael J. Fox opens up about his battle with Parkinson’s disease.

BIDEN CALLS ‘WHITE SUPREMACY’ THE ‘MOST DANGEROUS TERRORIST THREAT’ IN SPEECH AT BLACK COLLEGE:

Joe Biden is a born political panderer. It’s how he won the Democratic Party nomination, and it played a large role in his victory over Donald Trump.

Telling people what they want to hear is a political skill that most politicians possess. But there may never have been a politician as adept and skilled as Joe Biden in pandering to voters based on their race, their gender, their sexual identity, or any other aspect of their personhood that can be sliced, diced, and pureed to create a message tailor-made for a particular Democratic constituency.

Biden gave the commencement address to the historically black college of Howard University on Saturday and turned on the pander up to “10” in his bid to win over his audience.

Biden discussed racism and said that hatred “never goes away” and only “hides under the rocks.”  “A vivid demonstration when it comes to race in America, hope doesn’t travel alone. It’s shadowed by fear, by violence, and by hate,” he said.

And “unexpectedly” right on cue! Feds on Parade: Hundreds of ‘Patriot Front’ Members March in Khakis and Masks Towards U.S. Capitol (video).

ALIENS: Saturn’s rings much younger than planet itself, new study says.

SCIENCE: Professor says ‘junk citations’ have created ‘distrust’ in academic research.

21st CENTURY RELATIONSHIPS: Meet your new virtual girlfriend.

There weren’t many details provided in the FAQ section of the clone’s website. But in case you think I’m painting an unfairly salacious picture of this project, it says, “Your Virtual Girlfriend” right at the top of the page. So what are we to assume that means exactly? There’s a difference between “curing loneliness” and some of the other activities people might expect to engage in with their “girlfriend.” (A request for comment was not immediately returned today.)

How “real” would this “girlfriend” experience be? When a Wall Street Journal columnist recently created a clone of herself, the result was pretty good and even seemed realistic enough to fool someone for a short time. But any conversations that became complex caused the fakery to be fairly obvious in a short time.

On the one hand, this looks like one of the least dangerous applications of AI to show up recently, at least in terms of robots taking over the world. But at the same time, perhaps it’s just me but this looks kind of sad and potentially dangerous in another way. Are people going to get so caught up in a “relationship” with this clone that they begin cutting themselves off from the real world? And when the realization sets in that the relationship is never going to be “consummated” (to put it politely), might the person’s loneliness and even depression become even worse?

Related: Glenn’s recent Substack essay: AI and the Screwfly Succession: What if love really does conquer all?