WELL, YES: ‘Go woke, go broke’: Billionaire Chamath Palihapitiya suggests that Northeast cities like NYC and Boston are hemorrhaging income due to political ideology — while the South keeps booming. “Palihapitiya sent out a screenshot of a Bloomberg article based on how six southern states had contributed more to U.S. gross domestic product than the northeast corridor of Washington-New York-Boston for the first time in history.”
If you live in this world, you’re feeling the change of the guard.
I DON’T MIND THIS, SO LONG AS IT WORKS:
Decapitation strike on Iran is feeling inevitable. https://t.co/RoKOAV6DFU
— Scott Adams (@ScottAdamsSays) October 22, 2023
OPEN THREAD: Do that comment voodoo that you do so well.
THE NEW SPACE RACE: SpaceX fires up Starship prototype in deorbit burn test (video).
BUT IF YOU POINT THIS OUT YOU’RE RACIST OR SOMETHING:
Darwin has a rule. If you make too many mistakes you don't survive. The corollary is that you only deserve second chances when you learn from the first. Apparently they don't teach this rule in too many institutions of higher learning.
— wretchardthecat (@wretchardthecat) October 22, 2023
The right side of history but on the wrong side of the facts; no matter they would compensate with good intentions. It was classic hubris. Too bad other people have to die for it.
— wretchardthecat (@wretchardthecat) October 22, 2023
IDENTIFYING TYPE 2 DIABETES via vocal analysis.
THE GLORIES OF MULTICULTURALISM:
That’s woke mind virus for you: simping for people that would literally throw you off the roof if they got an opportunity to do so
— Chertok (@coolerkdawg) October 21, 2023
JEFFREY CARTER: Black Monday.
I saw Black Monday trending on Twitter. Most of the people tweeting about Black Monday weren’t alive for Black Monday. If they were, they were potty training or learning their colors.
TL:DR There will be no Black Monday tomorrow. No one, and I mean no one, can call a market crash like that. As a matter of fact, the dean of Finance Professor Eugene Fama said something really prescient to me once. “You only see crashes in the rearview mirror.” He’s right of course.
Of course, the fact that the predictions for tomorrow have no basis doesn’t rule out a Black Monday either.
THAT’S GOOD, SINCE THEY DON’T WORK: CVS pulling popular cold medications from shelves. I always assumed they put out the ineffective phenylephrine products mostly as a placebo to pacify people angry because they made pseudoephedrine, which works wonderfully, so much harder to get.
BRYAN CAPLAN: Stop Thinking Like A Tourist.
The year is 1997. You visit a lovely rural town in North Dakota. Population: 3000. You take a bunch of pictures with your analog camera to treasure the sweet memories.
Twenty years later, you return. The lovely rural town is now a regional fracking center. Population: 100,000. The charm has vanished beneath a tidal wave of new construction — residential, commercial, and industrial. You take one picture with your smart phone where you shed a tear of sorrow with New Frack City in the background. Your caption: “Progress?”
From a tourist’s point of view, you’re clearly right. Lovely rural towns are much nicer to visit than regional fracking centers. Almost anyone who saw Before-and-After pictures would agree with you: The town’s gotten far worse.
But what’s so great about the tourist’s point of view anyway? Tourism is just one tiny industry in a vast economy. If a billion-dollar fracking industry replaces a ten-million-dollar sight-seeing industry, that’s a $990M gain for mankind, not a “tragedy.” The transformation is clearly good for the 97,000 new residents of the town. It’s good for everyone who consumes the new petroleum products. And while the original inhabitants will probably gripe about all they’ve lost, they’re free to sell at inflated prices and move to one of the many remaining lovely rural towns.
And there’s no moral high ground in wanting to deprive those 97,000 people of a living so you can take pretty pictures. Being anti-growth is selfish.
READER FAVORITE: Ninja K32014 Foodi NeverDull Premium Knife System. #CommissionEarned
DAVID THOMSPON: Broadcasting An Attitude.
And then acting all surprised. Via the comments, a conundrum for our times:
Hire or fire? 🔥 pic.twitter.com/6RdKKS4heF
— 🌈 Tess T. Eccles-Brown, PhD (@TTEcclesBrown) October 21, 2023
In the comments, Jen replies,
Never mind the ‘f*ggot’ necklace, the bullring might as well say MASSIVE LIABILITY, DO NOT EMPLOY.
The above does seem to be yet another variation of, “I’ve chosen to send a round-the-clock provocative, anti-social message. Why are people noticing my round-the-clock provocative anti-social message?”
As always, life imitates Gary Larson’s classic The Far Side cartoon:
JON STEWART’S APPLE TV SHOW CANCELED because he wanted to report critically on China.
ANALYSIS: TRUE. The Media Will Never Forgive Israel for Not Bombing That Hospital.
Few things are as dangerous as the newsroom that wants a story to be true.
An overzealous editor is how the really dangerous stuff gets printed.
The free press is supposed to operate from a set of principles, working within established guardrails to spare readers the publication of false information, including hoaxes and lies that may incite violence or escalate preexisting hostilities. All bets are off, however, when news editors have a deep-seated psychological need for a story to be true. And on this score, American media failed miserably this past week when major outlets falsely reported an Israeli missile strike had hit the Al-Ahli Arab Hospital in Gaza, leveling it completely and killing at least 500 civilians.
The story was suspect from the get-go, considering the sole source of the claim was the Gaza health ministry — in other words, Hamas, the Palestinian terrorist organization that runs Gaza. But this didn’t matter. The U.S. press wanted the story to be true, as evidenced by the indefensibly slipshod and irresponsible coverage that clogged up newsfeeds around the world.
There was indeed an explosion in the vicinity of the hospital, but the facility still stands. It was not leveled. It wasn’t even struck directly. Whatever exploded did so in a nearby parking lot. The civilian death toll from the explosion is estimated to be “50 at most,” a European intelligence officer told Agence France-Presse. Contrary to Hamas’s claims, there is no evidence of an Israeli missile strike. In fact, separate assessments by both Israeli and U.S. intelligence agencies suggest the damage was caused by the failed launch of a Palestinian Islamic Jihad rocket in Gaza, producing an explosion at ground level that killed people gathered near but not in the hospital.
Yet these are the news headlines readers saw this week:
“Israeli strike kills hundreds in hospital, Palestinians say,” declared the New York Times’ breaking news headline. Inexplicably, the photo that went with the front-page headline showed a different building damaged by a completely unrelated airstrike, though one would obviously assume the photo was that of the “destroyed” Al-Ahli Arab Hospital.
Or as America’s Newspaper of Record reported: New York Times Patiently Awaiting Zoom Call From Hamas To See What They Should Print Today.
DON’T TRUST CHINA. CHINA IS ASSHOE.
Maybe it wasn't a good idea to base the Green dream on China.https://t.co/OjJLv2MPHK
— wretchardthecat (@wretchardthecat) October 21, 2023
OUT ON A LIMB: Joe Biden is Jimmy Carter 2.0.
The Democrats have a Hamas problem. It is an alliance of the sick, of the ill, as explained by my friend Charles Lipson in his essay “The Sick Alliance between the Left and Muslim Extremists” here.
“The virulent anti-Israel protests across America and Europe throw a glaring light on the bizarre alliance between left-wing activists and militant Muslims,” Lipson writes. “That odd combination has been the bedrock of political activism at universities and in the streets for years. It began in universities, where it now dominates political discourse, threatens Jewish students, and intimidates anyone brave enough to voice their dissent. We can now see how it has spread far beyond the campus.”
Some readers have already sent messages warning me against making any Biden Carter comparison. If there was a cage match of today’s Biden now, the president who high steps it across short cut grass, and Carter then, only Carter would walk out on his own two feet. Biden is little more than a meat puppet. He will not debate anyone with a brain and lips to speak, let alone sit for hard-ball news interviews. That scripted puff piece by 60 Minutes shouldn’t count. America watched, horrified as he played Israel for campaign photo ops and could barely recite the lines provided to him by his puppet masters. He could barely focus his gaze.
But Biden is too far gone to be actually running the show. Which means, his current and former boss likely is, and as Glenn noted in 2011 in the Washington Examiner: When Jimmy Carter Is your best-case scenario, you’re in trouble. “Meanwhile, on foreign policy — another Carter weak point — Obama also looks worse. Carter blew it with Iran, encouraging the Iranian armed forces to stay in their barracks, while Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini’s radical Islamists (whom Carter thought of as ‘reformers’) took power, and then approved the ill-conceived hostage rescue mission that ended with ignominious failure in the desert. Obama, by contrast, could only wish for such success.”
FOLLOW THE MONEY: Biden Paid $2.75 Million in Cash for Beach House After Chinese Shakedown.
A SPOUSE WILL NOTICE THINGS THAT YOU DON’T, AND NAG YOU TO GET THEM LOOKED AT: Adults who live alone may have greater risk of dying from cancer.
A FRIEND SAYS HE KNEW HE WAS MIDDLE-AGED WHEN HE STARTED TAKING A CPAP TO A BOOTY CALL. What’s in Your ‘Spend the Night’ Bag?