DISPATCHES FROM THE BLUE ZONES: San Francisco Whole Foods hit with 560 calls of violence, drugs, vagrants before closing.

“Male [with] machete is back,” according to one 911 call; “Another security guard was just assaulted,” according to another call.

One call noted that security guards at the store were assaulted by a knife-wielding man, who then sprayed employees with a fire extinguisher.

One man reportedly overdosed from fentanyl and methamphetamine in the bathroom in September, according to the Times.

At least 14 people were arrested during the 13 months the Whole Foods in the downtown was open, which included serious charges of grand theft and battery, according to the outlet.

That’s an average of about 10 calls each week. And this being San Francisco, it’s safe to assume management didn’t bother calling in “minor” problems like shoplifting.

CRISIS BY DESIGN: Border Cities Declare States of Emergency Ahead of Title 42’s Expiration.

FOR CERTAIN VALUES OF “EASY”: Building a Dyson Sphere Around the Sun Would Be Easy if We Used Jupiter for Raw Materials.

Not everybody agrees that constructing a Dyson sphere would end up being such a huge undertaking. In an interview with Green, astrophysicist Jason Wright compared such an effort to Manhattan, a human and interconnected “megastructure,” which was constructed over a long period of time, bit by bit.

“It was planned to some degree, but no one was ever like, ‘Hey, let’s build a huge city here,'” Wright told Green. “It’s just every generation made it a little bigger.”

In the same way, a Dyson sphere or swarm of satellites could be constructed over time to harness all of a star’s energy, he argued.

Well, get cracking.

CHATGPT, HOW DO MORONS ACT? Mike Pence appearance at UNC causes some to leave campus: ‘scared for their safety.’

If the presence of a boring former veep on campus frightens you, you shouldn’t be in college. In fact, you should be in a mental institution.

MORE LIKE THIS, PLEASE: Vivek Ramaswamy Schools Chuck Todd on the Evils of Transitioning Children.

WHERE’S CLARENCE, YALE? It was in 2018 that Texan Harlan Crow commissioned a portrait to be done of Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas for display at his alma mater, the Yale University law school.

Now it’s 2023 and the portrait, though completed, framed and delivered to the campus, is nowhere to be seen. And nobody at Yale Law School is responding to requests for an explanation, according to the Washington Free Beacon’s Eliana Johnson.

SEGREGATION NOW, SEGREGATION TOMORROW, SEGREGATION FOREVER! Illinois State University set to hold segregated graduation ceremonies.

FASTER, PLEASE: Starship could be ready to launch again in ‘six to eight weeks,’ Elon Musk says.

“The outcome was roughly in (line) with what I expected and, maybe slightly exceeded my expectations,” SpaceX CEO Elon Musk said during a Twitter Spaces chat on Saturday evening.

The April 20 liftoff of Starship, as the vehicle is called, was tremendously powerful, causing some damage to SpaceX’s launchpad in South Texas.

Musk said he was “glad to report that the pad damage is actually quite small,” though it would take “six to eight weeks” to get the infrastructure prepared for another launch. He later added that when the rocket’s engines — 30 out of 33 of which fired on for the flight test — reached “full thrust,” it “probably shattered the concrete.”

But: SpaceX Starship Effectively Grounded by FAA After in-Flight Explosion. “At this juncture, a month or two seems optimistic, considering that the full impact could take weeks and corrective actions could take much longer to implement.”

DEAL OF THE DAY: Real Slim Leather Wallet for Men. #CommissionEarned

KRUISER’S MORNING BRIEFING: Joe Biden’s Toughest Basement Primary Competitor Might Be Joe Biden. “It’s beyond difficult to believe that Biden can make it to another finish line, let alone serve a full term. The Democrats can sell that fiction to their idiot electorate, that’s not going to make Old Joe any more coherent though. He can still get lost in a crowded room.”

JOURNALISTIC SEDITION: Biden Challengers Will Have To Beat Censorship Regime in 2024: RFK Jr.’s ‘edited’ ABC News interview portends more ‘election fortification.’

Flashback: Bring Your Own Camera! Anti-Trump reporter gets unwelcome surprise. And the busted reporter is screaming that it’s unfair: “Ryan is not happy that the the White House has the tape. She complains that she was not aware that the exchange was being recorded and that she never consented to it. ‘This is freaking Nixonian,’ she adds.” Well, in the sense that both recordings are evidence of wrongdoing, yes.

Heck, this was my advice back in 2008.

BELIEVE AND RESPECT ALL WOMEN, UNLESS IT WOULD HURT DEMOCRATS:

On Monday, Hunter Biden will finally make it to Arkansas. The Natural State is not a Biden family favorite but there is one thing that would ordinarily be an attraction: Biden’s daughter Navy Joan. In the Biden family, the four-year-old girl remains “she who must not be named” literally. Not only has President Biden refused to refer to her as a grandchild or even include a Christmas stocking with the other children, her father Hunter is fighting to prevent her from using the Biden name. Indeed, the only reason that Hunter is coming to the same state with his daughter is to seek to limit his child support.

The viciousness of the Biden family in dealing with this little girl is only matched by that of the media. Reporters who profess to support women and denounce deadbeat dads have either ignored this story or belittled her mother, Lunden Roberts.

Roberts is widely dismissed as a “former stripper.” That appears [to be] how she met Hunter, but it is often used to paint her in the same way that the media gleefully reported Hillary Clinton denouncing women involved with her husband as mere “bimbo eruptions.”

The media ignores Roberts because it wants to ignore what the Bidens have done collectively. This is one single mother’s story that is not considered fit to print.

Yes, Roberts was an exotic dancer. She used that job to go to one of the most expensive colleges in the country, George Washington University where I teach. When she became pregnant, she decided to have her child and raise her on her own. She has raised this child without a father and fought one of the most powerful families in the world.

When Navy Joan is older, there is every reason for her to be proud of the struggle that her mother went through in seeking a college education and raising her against all odds.

Despite Joe Biden long campaigning against deadbeat dads, his son refused to acknowledge that he was the father of Navy Joan and, after a court forced him to confirm his paternity through DNA testing, he continued to fight support for his child. Hunter’s delay and evasion of filings and depositions led a court to repeatedly threaten sanctions.

However, the effort to bar this child from using the Biden name has moved this scandal from the realm of hypocrisy to monstrosity.

To be fair, the Biden family is genuinely monstrous. And so are its media enablers, who know exactly what they are doing.

Related: The ‘cabal’ that bragged of foisting Joe Biden on us must answer for his failed presidency.

NOTHING TO SEE HERE, MOVE ALONG: Biden CIA chief met with Epstein several times after financier convicted of child sex crime. “Other notable names the Journal reported in Epstein’s calendar include Obama White House counsel Kathryn Ruemmler, who met dozens of times with Epstein after leaving the administration but before joining Goldman Sachs as a top attorney, as well as professor and activist Noam Chomsky and Bard College President Leon Botstein.”

WELL, YES: RNC Chairwoman: ‘China Is Running This White House.’

WHEN “JOURNALISTS” TALK ABOUT ETHICS, LAUGH IN THEIR FACES: Politico Aims at Gorsuch and Misses: Another ‘ethics’ hit on a conservative justice turns to dust when you dig into the specifics.

The confusion arises because Justice Gorsuch didn’t sell real property; Walden Group did. As Ms. Przybyla’s story acknowledges, the company’s sole purpose was to hold the Colorado house. After Mr. Duffy bought it, the partners distributed the money proportionately among themselves and dissolved the company. It was that transaction, not the property’s sale, that Justice Gorsuch was required to report, and did. The closest description for taking a distribution from the group is “sold,” which is why he described it as such. It would have been false to list Mr. Duffy as the buyer.

Does Justice Gorsuch’s compliance with the law conceal something nefarious? That seems implausible. “I’ve never spoken to him,” Ms. Pryzbyla quotes Mr. Duffy as saying of Justice Gorsuch. “I’ve never met him.” Nor has Mr. Duffy argued a case before Justice Gorsuch. Ms. Pryzbyla searched Mr. Duffy’s political contributions and found “that they went primarily to Democrats,” including Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand and Hillary Clinton. Lawyers in Mr. Duffy’s firm have been involved in several cases before the justices, as counsel to either litigants or friends of the court. Justice Gorsuch sided with the firm’s clients in some cases and against them in others.

One openly partisan website characterized this revelation as a “bribery scandal.” Given that the purchase price was $670,000 less than the sellers had sought, it’s unclear who’s supposed to have bribed whom.

This is all just battlespace preparation for the fight after the Court strikes down affirmative action. And, longer term, for an effort to either neutralize the Court, or to pack it and take it over, whenever Democrats have the power.

Related: “A full-blown Color Revolution-style attack on the US Supreme Court as an institution is now in its early stages:” A color revolution edging into a hot war on the conservative Justices.

Also related: Justice Samuel Alito: ‘This Made Us Targets of Assassination:’ The author of the Dobbs abortion ruling answers attacks on the court’s ‘legitimacy.’

WATCH: Biden’s Latest Alzheimer’s Moment Is Actually Very Sad.

DON SURBER: Kennedy Jr. is a Trojan Horse. “Commentators on the right tend to suffer the Bush Syndrome of wanting love and respect from the enemies of America we call the left. This explains the praise of Robert Francis Kennedy Jr., who is challenging Biden for the presidential nomination.”

It’s fun that there’s someone out there saying (some of) the things he’s said. And it’s generally the case that incumbents who face strong primary challenges lose in the general election. But yeah, ultimately he’s not my friend.

UPDATE: In the comments, this from Howie Carr:

But whatever you say about RFK Jr., he never drowned a woman, like his uncle. He never crippled one, like his brother. He never raped an underage babysitter, like another of his brothers. He’s never been accused of raping a woman, like one of his cousins, or beating a teenaged neighbor girl to death with a golf club, like another of his cousins.

Come to think of it, his opponent for the Democratic nomination, Joe Biden, has been accused of rape, by his former aide Tara Reade. And unlike Biden, none of Bobby’s daughters have ever written in their diaries that Daddy used to take long showers with them when they were 11 years old.

Compared to Joe Biden, in fact, Bobby Kennedy Jr. is a paragon of virtue.

Low bar, but true.

DODDERER IN CHIEF:

Your 2024 Democratic Presidential nominee, folks. https://t.co/B9FYoSPYre

— Rod Dreher (@roddreher) April 29, 2023

Related: The ‘cabal’ that bragged of foisting Joe Biden on us must answer for his failed presidency.

TRUTH:

https://twitter.com/xenophonrocks/status/1652923644547350529

WELL: The New York Times Uncovered The Worst-Kept Secret In Academia: Summer study-abroad programs are cushy vacations for students and boondoggles to attract elite faculty. “I’m sure I’m an outlier. Plenty of professors who benefit from these programs love them. Same for administrators who tag along on the trips! Plus all students love vacations with academic credit. Rant over. This background brings me to the latest breathless reporting in the New York Times.”

Related: NY Times goes after Scalia Law School for doing what law schools do.

Plus:

@AOC has been found in more ethics violations than any of the SCOTUS justices.https://t.co/cJwJMic5Qn

— Holden (@Holden114) April 29, 2023

JOANNE JACOBS: Surrendering Concord’s Minutemen. “Concord High School in Northern California is under pressure to give up its ‘Minutemen’ mascot, reports Stephanie Magallon for NBC Bay Area… Some parents want to eliminate the rifle and add a Minutewoman to save the symbol.”

I DO LIKE PIZZA: With Defamation, You Get Pizza: From the Malign to the Ridiculous in Artificial Intelligence.

JOSH KRAUSHAAR: The GOP’s quiet winning streak. “Zoom out from the most eye-catching headlines, and Republicans showed clear signs of momentum — from the GOP’s surprising unity on Capitol Hill to Senate Republicans’ recruitment success to polls showing Trump running competitively against Biden.”

GOOD: Researchers Fight Back Against ‘Ideological Capture’ of Modern Science.

WAIT, WHAT? Tucker Carlson WASN’T Fired, Says ‘I’m Still Employed by Fox.’