Archive for 2023
September 24, 2023
HIGHER EDUCATION BUBBLE UPDATE: Students unsuccessfully protest tuition payment enforcement at historically black university.
SADLY TYPICAL: Cornell University silent after prof receives ‘Courage in Education’ award. “Randy Wayne, an associate professor at the Ivy League institution, received the award from the Steamboat Institute for his ‘commitment to advancing free speech and intellectual diversity.’ Cornell’s theme for the 2023 to 2024 academic year is ‘free expression and academic freedom.’ ‘I believe that the reason they are not celebrating my award is because Cornell really has no interest in free speech,’ Wayne told Campus Reform.”
SCHEDULED TO LAND AT 10:55 AM EDT: OSIRIS-REx probe will bring pristine asteroid samples to Earth today. Watch it live.
NUKEGPT:
You know that AI is taking off when…Microsoft plans to power data centers with nuclear reactors: https://t.co/DZJyIsV7TR
— Max Tegmark (@tegmark) September 23, 2023
For all his faults, and his outsized ego, France’s President Macron has made significant pro-business moves, cut some corporate taxes, and slightly trimmed its bloated welfare state.
Italy’s Giorgia Meloni is at least attempting to reform Italy’s stagnant economy. Poland’s economy is easily beating its neighbour, and stealing a lot of its factories into the bargain.
By contrast, Germany is paralysed by a coalition comprising the Social Democrats, the Greens, and the Free Democrats that can agree on almost nothing….
The coalition’s one big idea was splurging €10bn on getting Intel to build a new chip factory in the country in an attempt to drag Germany into the 21st century.
Given the coming glut of semiconductors on the global market, it already looks like a white elephant. Otherwise, Chancellor Scholz’s coalition appears to have no clue how to fix the mess.
Related: Germany went from envy of the world to the worst-performing major developed economy. What happened?
For most of this century, Germany racked up one economic success after another, dominating global markets for high-end products like luxury cars and industrial machinery, selling so much to the rest of the world that half the economy ran on exports.
Jobs were plentiful and the government’s financial coffers grew as other European countries drowned in debt, and books were written about what other countries could learn from Germany.
No longer.
Now, Germany is the world’s worst-performing major developed economy, with both the International Monetary Fund and European Union expecting it to shrink this year.
It follows Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and the loss of Moscow’s cheap natural gas — an unprecedented shock to Germany’s energy-intensive industries, long the manufacturing powerhouse of Europe.
If only somebody had warned them a few years ago about the dangers of being dependent upon Russian energy. If only.
WELL, OF COURSE. COVERING FOR DEMOCRATS IS LITERALLY THEIR JOB NOW. Media Let Biden Take Credit for Pause in Border Crisis. Now They’re Letting Him Shift Blame.
WAPO STORY ON DAVE PORTNOY IS PUBLISHED, IMMEDIATELY GETS COMMUNITY NOTED ON X/TWITTER:
You’d think after being publicly humiliated by having your “journalistic” activism exposed to millions of people, the Post would have pulled the plug on the piece entirely.
But that would have made too much sense.
Instead, they published the Portnoy story anyway … and immediately got roasted by community notes on X (formerly Twitter).
“A phone call between Emily Heil and Dave Portnoy was shared prior to publication, in which the WaPo journalist admits to intentionally misleading advertisers into speaking negatively of the One Bite Pizza Festival. They agreed to an interview the next day, but Wapo cancelled.”
This weekend, New York will host Dave Portnoy's One Bite Pizza Festival.
Participating pizzerias have had to navigate buzz around the festival and backlash against the Barstool Sports founder's controversial remarks and allegations of sexual misconduct. https://t.co/v2XqLxkJwg
— The Washington Post (@washingtonpost) September 22, 2023
Exit quote:
The @washingtonpost got community noted for lying 😂😂😂. Ain't no fun when the rabbit got the gun https://t.co/kUtVMsFI9M
— Dave Portnoy (@stoolpresidente) September 23, 2023
LOL:
CASUAL PRESIDENTS 🤍
A series inspired by @JohnFetterman pic.twitter.com/7kZ7M2MgYb
— stepfanie (@stepfaniex) September 20, 2023
JOHN LUCAS: More Mush From the “Elites:” Military incompetence and analytical mush from David Ignatius and the Washington Post. “There is an ongoing campaign to paint Milley as the savior of the Constitution from an insane President Trump. Ignatius’ puff piece is part of that campaign. . . . But I think that we can all agree that Milley’s promise to tell the Chinese if we were going to attack them was ‘bold.’ But it is not a boldness to be admired.”
Read the whole thing for a classic Fisking of the risible Ignatius.
September 23, 2023
PRO PUBLICA USED TO PRETEND TO BE NEUTRAL, BUT THEY’RE LETTING THEIR PARTISAN SHILL FLAG FLY FREELY NOWADAYS: ProPublica Buries Its Clarence Thomas News: The outlet’s latest hit piece unwittingly debunks its own political narrative about the Supreme Court justice.
Justice Clarence Thomas has been attending private events with fierce critics of Donald Trump. That’s the only real news in the latest hit piece from ProPublica, which describes itself “an independent, nonprofit newsroom that produces investigative journalism with moral force.” But you have to read between the lines to find it.
The outlet obtained a photograph of Justice Thomas with documentary filmmaker Ken Burns. It said Michael Bloomberg, the former mayor of New York, was at an event Justice Thomas attended. It presents photographic evidence of that too, though it doesn’t note Mr. Bloomberg’s presence in the caption. And it said Justice Thomas had attended a 2018 event of Stand Together, a network founded by libertarian businessman Charles Koch.
What ProPublica doesn’t say in its 4,500-word piece is that Mr. Burns has described Mr. Trump as “Hitleresque” and “the greatest threat to American democracy since the Second World War.” It doesn’t say that Mr. Bloomberg has called Mr. Trump a “carnival barking clown” and sought the nomination to challenge him in 2020. It doesn’t say that the Koch network is reportedly spending tens of millions to defeat Mr. Trump in 2024.
Why leave all that out? Because ProPublica wants you to think Justice Thomas is in the tank for Mr. Trump. In April it complained: “Thomas’ approach to ethics has already attracted public attention. Last year, Thomas didn’t recuse himself from cases that touched on the involvement of his wife, Ginni, in efforts to overturn the 2020 presidential election.”
The site misleads its readers by omitting the anti-Trump material from its latest attack on Justice Thomas. Mr. Burns is identified as someone “whose films Koch has financially supported.” The Koch network is described as having “spent over $65 million supporting Republican candidates in the last election cycle.” The piece omits Mr. Bloomberg’s liberal views on the environment but mentions that at California’s Bohemian Grove with him and Justice Thomas was the author Bjorn Lomborg, who “has for years argued the threat of global warming is overstated.”
What ProPublica has disclosed isn’t an abuse of power but a set of facts that, when interpreted without cherry-picking, portray a justice moving in a politically heterodox circle.
Well, to be fair, that’s something that the folks at ProPublica probably can’t imagine.
OPEN THREAD: Party on, dudes.
I WASN’T WORRIED BEFORE, BUT NOW THAT THE EXPERTS SAY NOT TO. . . No, the OSIRIS-REx probe will not bring back asteroid space ‘germs.’ “There is no need for any alarm or concern.”
INSERT JOURNALIST JOKE HERE: No Brain, No Problem: The Surprising Intellect of Jellyfish Changes Our Fundamental Understanding of the Brain.
MICROBIOME NEWS: Study finds connection between gut microbiome and bone density.
THE ABRAHAM ACCORDS CONTINUE TO BEAR FRUIT: Netanyahu touts possible ‘historic’ normalization with Saudi Arabia.
WELL, GOOD: “In the paper, ‘Ranitidine Use and Incident Cancer in a Multinational Cohort,’ published in JAMA Network Open, the researchers claim that despite contamination with a probable human carcinogen N-nitrosodimethylamine (NDMA) found in ranitidine, there was no statistically significant evidence that exposure to the drug was associated with an increased risk of cancer.”
NOW OUT FROM ANDREW WAREHAM: A Victorian Empire (A Poor Man at the Gate Series, Book 14).
BOB MENENDEZ: I’m being indicted because everyone is racist.
Related: “That made me think of Hunter Biden.” What Menendez is accused of is basically a low-rent version of what Hunter Biden did.
THE 21ST CENTURY IS NOT TURNING OUT AS I’D HOPED: “It’s important to understand that syphilis is still a serious public health challenge. It has reached record levels in the United States and around the world. Though the arrival of penicillin in 1943 briefly made it seem like a solved problem, the injectable form of the drug now used has been in short supply for months, while cases of congenital syphilis passed from mother to child are rising.”
FELLOWSHIP OF CHRISTIAN ATHLETES SCORES BIG NINTH CIRCUIT WIN FOR RELIGIOUS LIBERTY AND FREEDOM OF ASSOCIATION. Overturning a lousy case that allowed blatant anti-religious policies in the process.
THE NEWHALL INCIDENT REVISITED: Learning from a tragic moment in American law enforcement history.