QUIZ: How Weird Was the ‘Wired’ Interview With Pete Buttigieg?

What do you get when you cross a cheap Soviet propaganda piece with a spot-on Babylon Bee parody of America’s mainstream media? You get Wired’s interview with Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg.

Headlined “Pete Buttigieg Loves God, Beer, and His Electric Mustang,” Virginia Heffernan’s airier-than-a-puff-piece reads like Marianne Williamson on shrooms interviewing Marianne Williamson on edibles.

Whatever you want to call it, Heffernan’s creation has been making the rounds on social media for all the wrong reasons, so I thought you, gentle reader, and I might play a game with it together.

I’ll show you several pairs of sentences. In each pair, one will be an actual line from Wired and the other is something I made up. You try to guess which is which, and there will be a key at the end revealing the correct answers.

The quiz is for entertainment purposes only. Please, no wagering.

FUTURE SHOCK: Poll: 61% of Americans say AI threatens humanity’s future.

THE NEW SPACE RACE: SpaceX Reveals Starship Flight Test 2 Launch Timeline . “Along with the narrative, SpaceX also provides a timeline for its operations and seeks authorization for six months starting from the 15th of June. This suggests that the firm aims to be back on its feet in just two months after the shocking visuals of its launch pad ‘captivated’ attention. Footage from the launch site has also suggested that repairs are moving quickly, and unverified reports have claimed that SpaceX is testing its flight termination system.”

But: “Even if it receives the FCC’s approval, SpaceX must convince the FAA to allow it to conduct another test launch. SpaceX’s launch license for Starship limited it to one flight only, and the agency had explicitly stated that any further attempts would require pre-approval.”

2025 CHEVROLET CAMARO Z/28: Last Call for Chevy’s Internal Combustion Engine Muscle Cars?

WELL, GOOD: Tonsillectomy both cost- and clinically effective for adults, finds study.

MEGAN FOX WITH A SCORCHER: The Weird Lies Harry and Meghan Tell.

PROGRESS: Study suggests ear acupuncture can help men lose weight.

SETH MANDEL: Campus Diversity Is Campus Jew-Hatred.

One area of American higher education has seen explosive growth: the programs and officers charged with spreading the gospel of Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion.

This is not a coincidence.

Much like “Hate has no home here” lawn signs and “Coexist” bumper stickers, DEI university activity has become a reliable indicator of overt hostility to Israel and, at the very least, suspicion of any visible expression of Jewishness.

On campus, DEI bureaucracies are straightforward ideological enforcers. Their ideology views Jews as emissaries of (white) power. That’s why DEI officials aren’t merely indifferent to campus Jew-baiting, but its ringleaders.

Take CUNY. The taxpayer-funded university system’s pervasive anti-Semitism—harassment of students, administrators overheard complaining that there are “too many Jews” on the faculty, and support for the Boycott, Divestment, and Sanction campaign to isolate Israel—is the subject of state and city investigations. Amid such complaints, CUNY’s chancellor in 2021 hired a new chief diversity officer, Saly Abd Alla, and put her in charge of investigating anti-Semitism.

Abd Alla was a firm supporter of BDS while working as civil-rights director of the Minnesota chapter of the Council on American-Islamic Relations, a powerful anti-Zionist pressure group.

Read the whole thing.

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FASCISM, STRAIGHT UP: ‘These Are OUR Kids’: KJP Slams Restrictions on Trans Surgery.

TALES FROM WEIMAR AMERICA: Colorado School District Hosts Drag Show Amid Teachers Union Embrace of Gender Ideology.

The performance was just one among the Vilar’s 2022-2023 STARS series lineup, the product of a partnership between the facility and the school district intended to provide “an array of performing arts genres from dance and theater to world music” to Eagle County students. Eagle County parents trust and expect STARS performances to be positive, educational experiences for their children. The description of Muse, however, should have raised red flags.

“What does it mean to be a woman?” the flier asked. “There’s hardly one answer, and exploring the question calls for some acrobatics … Get ready to see powerful women, graceful men and every permutation in between.” Just vague enough to masquerade as a children’s show, this language didn’t do the performance justice. Muse, rated for children aged eight and above, focused on an adult male transitioning to a female and featured provocatively dressed men performing sexual dances for an audience full of children.

Young audience members were clearly disturbed. One student expressed his concern by interrupting the show: “This is wrong,” he cried. “Don’t you know we’re in third grade?”

Parental consent for this school sponsored field trip was assumed and covered under a blanket permission slip that authorized student attendance to all STARS performances throughout the year.

If they aren’t telling you what it is then they don’t want you to know.

SAME: Johnny Depp: ‘I Don’t Feel Boycotted by Hollywood Because I Don’t Think About Hollywood’.

ROBERT SPENCER WITH THIS BREAKING NEWS ITEM: Oh Yes, He Did: Iraqi Cleric Blames Israel for the Death of Muslim Leader… in the Year 661.

IT’S GOOD TO BE THE CZAR: Vladimir Putin’s secret Black Sea bunker.

You would think that the architects who designed Vladimir Putin’s palace thought of everything.

After all, the 190,000-square-foot, billion-dollar complex, perched on a rugged bluff overlooking the Black Sea, has every luxury that an autocrat could possibly desire. As revealed by Alexei Navalny’s investigation, the palace has its own church, wine cellar, and casino. It has a hookah lounge complete with a stripper pole, an arboretum, and an ice rink for the hockey games Putin likes to play with cronies. But good luck ordering takeout — security is tight. Putin’s imperial dacha is sealed off from the country he rules by 17,000 acres of woodland and a special no-fly zone.

The precautions are more than paranoia on Putin’s part. Earlier this month, Russian authorities claimed that two drones had attempted to assassinate Putin in a failed strike that ended in an explosion above the Kremlin.

But, despite all these princely luxuries and castle-like defenses, the palace’s builders appear to have neglected one crucial detail. They failed to hide plans showing two elaborate tunnels running beneath the palace complex — plans that any competent state-security apparatus would fight tooth-and-nail to keep secret.

In fact, they were posted publicly to the Russian internet. Metro Style, a now-defunct Russian contractor, posted the diagrams to their website to showcase their work in the early 2010’s. They were viewable online as late as 2016.

Today, Insider is publishing annotated versions of the diagrams with English-language translations.

Much more at the link.

WHY IS HIGHER EDUCATION SUCH A CESSPIT OF ANTI-SEMITISM? Conservative Israeli scholar at Princeton target of cancel culture campaign.

I guess it adds variety to the pervasive anti-Asian racism.

DISPATCHES FROM THE BLUE ZONES: Now Connecticut Is on the Verge of Protecting Pedophiles, Too.

BUT THEY’RE FINE WITH DIVERSITY OATHS: Biden admin calls for removal of criminal background question on college applications.

I WONDER IF THESE CAN BE SCALED UP: Nuclear waste powered battery lasts thousands of years. “The Bristol team warned that their radioactive diamond batteries wouldn’t be suitable for laptops or smartphones, because they contain only 1g of carbon-14, meaning that they provide very low power — only a few microwatts, which is less than a typical AA battery. Therefore, their application so far is limited to small devices that must stay unattended for a long time, such as sensors and pacemakers.”

KRUISER’S MORNING BRIEFING: Disturbing Democrat Trans Cult Thinks It Owns Your Children. “At this point, I often think that anything short of abolishing the Dept. of Education is merely putting a butterfly band-aid on a severed carotid artery.”

CYNICISM:

Money is the root of all virtue. Without private jets how could climate leaders save the world from 'climate emergency'?https://t.co/LFJvip6Opp

— wretchardthecat (@wretchardthecat) May 16, 2023

DON SURBER: Beating the Woke.

COLD WAR II: China’s Targeted Espionage Continues Apace. “While China has attempted to steal trade secrets in semiconductors, aerospace and biotech, their espionage also has far more prosaic targets. Here’s the interrogation of a woman who stole the secret formula for the chemical lining inside a Coke can.”

Plus: Project Titan(ic) engineer charged by DOJ for stealing Apple’s self-driving car tech. “The United States Department of Justice has announced formal charges against a former Apple engineer. As reported by CNBC, Weibao Wang has been accused of stealing Apple’s autonomous driving technology for a Chinese self-driving car startup.”

OF HIS BOWELS, AND THE NATION: White House Report Card: Zogby says Biden ‘seems to have lost control’.

FIGHT THE POWER: Equal Protection Project Files Opposition To Biden Admin’s Proposed Title IX “Gender Identity” Sports Change.

MEANWHILE, OVER AT VODKAPUNDIT: Who Wants to Help Me Watch Chicago Commit Suicide?