HAMAS TAKING THE WRONG LESSONS FROM M*A*S*H RERUNS: Gaza hospital chief admits to being Hamas commander, using clinic as military base.
Archive for 2023
December 21, 2023
KEVIN DOWNEY JR: Yes, Americans, We’re Being Replaced — ALL of Us.
WHICH MAKE HAD THE HIGHEST RATE OF HOGGING THE PASSING LANE AT EXACTLY THE LIMIT? Tesla drivers had highest accident rate, BMW drivers highest DUI rate, study finds.
UNEXPECTEDLY: Christopher Nolan Says Fellow Directors Have Called to Complain About His ‘Inaudible’ Sound.
“We got a lot of complaints,” Nolan said about the “Interstellar” sound design. “I actually got calls from other filmmakers who would say, ‘I just saw your film, and the dialogue is inaudible.’ Some people thought maybe the music’s too loud, but the truth was it was kind of the whole enchilada of how we had chosen to mix it.”
“It was a very, very radical mix,” the director continued. “I was a little shocked to realize how conservative people are when it comes to sound. Because you can make a film that looks like anything, you can shoot on your iPhone, no one’s going to complain. But if you mix the sound a certain way, or if you use certain sub-frequencies, people get up in arms.”
As this 2014 clip of Rob Brydon and Steve Coogan riffing on the unintelligibility of Batman and Bane in The Dark Knight Rises highlights, this isn’t exactly a new complaint about Nolan’s movies:
DISPATCHES FROM POST-WEIMAR AMERICA: Four times Jewish students were attacked on campuses in 2023.
When Iowahawk said…
…Perhaps college headmasters shouldn’t have taken him so literally that they’ve demanded students start partying like it’s 1939.
UPDATE: Jonathan Haidt on Why Antisemitism Sprouted So Quickly on Campus (post #1).
Political commentator and Atlantic author David Frum summed up the moral uniqueness of the academy in this tweet, four days after the attack:
Since then, there have been hundreds of antisemitic incidents on campuses including vandalism of Jewish sites, physical intimidation, physical assault, and death threats against Jewish students, often from other students. The response from university administrators has often been slow, weak, or entirely absent.
* * * * * * * *
The Coddling of the American Mind tells the story of how American universities lost their collective minds, beginning around 2014 when student demands for protections from speech seemed to appear out of nowhere, including calls for trigger warnings, safe spaces, bias response teams, and mandatory trainings around language use. The students were supported by some faculty members and some administrators, and their combined force pressured many university leaders to accede to their demands even though, privately, many had misgivings.2
The new morality driving these reforms was antithetical to the traditional virtues of academic life: truthfulness, free inquiry, persuasion via reasoned argument, equal opportunity, judgment by merit, and the pursuit of excellence. A subset of students had learned this new morality in some of their courses, which trained them to view everyone as either an oppressor or a victim. Students were taught to use identity as the primary lens through which everything is to be understood, not just in their coursework but in their personal and political lives. When students are taught to use a single lens for everything, we noted, their education is harming them, rather than improving their ability to think critically.
This new morality, we argued, is what drove universities off a cliff. For a while, the descent was gradual, but at Halloween, 2015, in a courtyard at Yale, the free fall began. Students and administrators espousing the new morality demanded reforms at Yale and, over the next few months, at dozens of other schools. With a few exceptions, university leaders did not stand up to the new morality, critique its intellectual shortcomings, or say no to demands and ultimatums.
Read the whole thing.
(Updated and bumped.)
DRAG RACING with the Tesla Plaid.
THIS HAS BEEN A LONG TIME COMING, WITH PLENTY OF BLAME TO GO AROUND WASHINGTON, THE PENTAGON, AND THE NAVY ITSELF: U.S. Naval Deterrence Is Going, Going, Maybe Even Gone.
This was only one of several recent assaults on American naval assets in the region. They have happened despite the presence of the Ford carrier strike group in the eastern Mediterranean and the Eisenhower strike group in the Gulf of Aden—a conventional level of naval deterrence that should have reduced aggressive activities by U.S. enemies. Instead, Iran attacked American ships and allies.
These events show that American naval deterrence is failing, and a recent report from the Sagamore Institute concludes that it could soon evaporate.
The report, “Measuring and Modeling Naval Presence,” models the effect of various ships and combinations of ships across a mix of maritime regions. The model pitted an Arleigh Burke-class destroyer, the U.S. Navy’s current utility platform of choice, against a People’s Liberation Army Navy Luyang III destroyer in several locations ranging from the high seas to the waters approaching the Taiwan Strait. It suggested that the deterrent value of American Navy ships operating in close proximity to a determined adversary has recently declined.
While the report said the American Navy currently maintains “presence dominance,” the ability to maintain its values and interests upon the high seas, it also indicates that the U.S. margin of naval leadership is shrinking and America could swiftly lose its ability to maintain mare liberum, the free sea. This would have huge negative implications for the global economic system, which depends on open seas to move 80% of the volume of the world’s $100 trillion global domestic product.
Read the whole thing.
OUTLOOK NOT SO GOOD: These Are the Soldiers Who Are Going to Defend America if We Go to War?
READER FAVORITES: Flying Orb Ball, 2023 Upgraded Flying Ball Toy, Hand Controlled Boomerang Hover Ball and Tikduck Flying Orb Ball Toys. #CommissionEarned
THIS IS NOT A POINT OF PRIDE: Colorado’s grade on gun control improves to A minus, says Giffords center. “Colorado earned its A- because it imposed waiting periods, banned “ghost” guns, enacted legislation on victims’ legal access, increased the minimum age to purchase firearms, and invested $1 million in community violence intervention.”
MORE CONSEQUENCES: Antisemitic activism hurting job prospects as academics, doctors kicked out. “Since October, more than 200 law firms have signed onto a letter to top law schools warning students that their firms have ‘zero tolerance’ for antisemitism.”
TIME TO ‘FORTIFY’ THE ACT, THEN. Falling ACT Scores Hold a Lesson for Universities.
TRUNALIMUNUMAPRZURE: Biden’s Latest Mangle-Pander Must Be Seen to Be Believed “Sometimes, the word salad is so thoroughly tossed that you’d swear somebody put his brain on Shuffle.”
NOT ENOUGH CONSEQUENCES: Claudine Gay debacle shows rejecting Western values has real consequences.
SOME PARTS OF THE INTERNET SHOULD NOT BE SCRAPED: AI image-generators are being trained on explicit photos of children, a study shows.
KRUISER’S MORNING BRIEFING: Democrats Want the Border Crisis to Get Worse for the Election. “It’s almost as if the administration is deliberately trying to inject them into the population just in time for the election.”
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STALKING HORSE? How Christie became a ‘monumental problem’ for Haley — and a potential boon to Trump.
Chris Christie has singularly devoted his presidential campaign to tearing down Donald Trump.
But with the start of the primaries just a few weeks away, some top Republicans in New Hampshire say Christie is now positioned to help pave the way for Trump’s nomination by siphoning votes away from Nikki Haley, Trump’s closest-polling competitor in the state.
“Chris Christie is a monumental problem for Nikki Haley,” said Mike Dennehy, a former Republican National committeeman from New Hampshire who is neutral in the race. “They are both currently splitting the Independent vote, and Haley desperately needs those votes if she is to have a chance of knocking off Trump in New Hampshire.”
This is a strange story since Haley’s “monumental problem” — and DeSantis’ and Ramaswamy’s and Christie’s — is Donald Trump’s seemingly insurmountable lead in every poll. I guess the press needs to make it look like a horse race, but this is a lame attempt.
WELL, THEY’RE RIGHT: Most feel Christmas and retirement are Scrooged by ‘Bidenomics.’
VODKAPUNDIT PRESENTS YOUR WEEKLY INSANITY WRAP [VIP]: When Is an Insurrection Not an Insurrection? “It’s only a little illegal to stage a protest in the Capitol when Linda Sarsour does it. That’s the lead crazy on today’s Insanity Wrap, an entire week’s worth of the best bad news.”
Plus:
• Don’t watch even one second of this video.
• I know the real reason Democrats are trying to keep Trump off the ballot.
• Christmas is the time for… penis fractures?
So much more at the link, you’d have to be crazy to miss it.
ACADEMIA’S CULTURE OF CORRUPTION: Fresh Allegations of Plagiarism Unearthed in Official Academic Complaint Against Claudine Gay.
MY LATEST SUBSTACK ESSAY: Civilizational Jenga: Bit by bit, our ruling class is eliminating our societal safety margins.
TAKE THE MONEY AND RUN (ON GAS): Nearly half of Buick dealers accept GM’s buyout offer. “General Motors Co.’s Buick brand said that nearly half of its U.S. dealers have opted to take a buyout instead of moving forward with its electric-vehicle future.”
Plus: “Buick is the second of the Detroit automaker’s brands to shift toward an all-electric future, following Cadillac. The Cadillac brand also went through a dealer buyout program. Some 880 franchises that were under the Cadillac umbrella were required to invest at least $200,000 each to sell EVs starting this year. Hundreds of dealers opted to instead take a buyout.”