OPEN THREAD: Ring out the weekend.

THE NEW SPACE RACE: Lunar lander company ispace sees opportunities in Japan-U.S. Artemis agreement.

DISPATCHES FROM THE EDUCATION APOCALYPSE: Jerry Seinfeld’s Commencement Address Sparks Walkout by Antisemites at Duke University.

Seinfeld, who is Jewish, is the parent of two Duke students and an active supporter of the university. He has been vocal in his support for Israel following the Hamas terrorist attacks on Israel on October 7. His wife also funded a pro-Israel protest at UCLA last week. When Seinfeld was announced  as this year’s commencement speaker, some students expressed opposition to his appearance over his support of Israel, and warned that there would be a display of opposition at the commencement ceremony.

The 70-year-old comedian also made headlines recently for blaming “the extreme left” for ruining comedy.

“Nothing really affects comedy. People always need it. They need it so badly and they don’t get it. Used to be you would go home at the end of the day, most people would go, “Oh, ‘Cheers’ is on. Oh, ‘M.A.S.H.’ Is on. Oh, ‘Mary Tyler Moore’ is on. Oh, ‘All in the Family’ is on. You just expected there’ll be some funny stuff we can watch on TV tonight. Well, guess what? Where is it?” Seinfeld said last month. “This is the result of the extreme left and PC crap and people worrying so much about offending other people. When you write a script and it goes into four or five different hands, committees, groups: ‘Here’s our thought about this joke.’ Well, that’s the end of your comedy,” he said. “They move the gates, like in skiing. Culture, the gates are moving. Your job is to be agile and clever enough that wherever they put the gates, I’m gonna make the gate.”

Exit quote:

Oh no. I hope Jerry Seinfeld can handle a tough audience. https://t.co/ZfkHybI3U1

— Omri Ceren (@omriceren) May 12, 2024

UPDATE:

Organizer Of Walkout Against Jerry Seinfeld Revealed https://t.co/lMLCO8C1OG pic.twitter.com/OkD06vlo97

— The Babylon Bee (@TheBabylonBee) May 12, 2024

FISH HEADS, FISH HEADS, EAT THEM UP, YUM: Can Omega-3 Change the Way Children Think and Feel?

READER FAVORITE: Apple AirPods (2nd Generation) Wireless Ear Buds. #CommissionEarned

PROF. STEVEN CALABRESI: Judge Aileen Cannon is a Heroine: She is scheduled on June 21st to hear oral argument on whether special counsel Jack Smith was unconstitutionally appointed. “The liberal news media is full of false stories about how Judge Aileen Cannon of the United States District Court for the Southern District of Florida has delayed former President Donald Trump’s trial unnecessarily for allegedly mishandling classified documents. But, in fact, the Biden Administration and its Attorney General, Merrick Garland, are themselves to blame for the current delay. Special Counsel Jack Smith claims to be an inferior officer of the United States, but in fact he holds no such office. Smith is a mere employee of the Department of Justice, and he lacks the power to initiate prosecutions. Lucia v. Securities and Exchange Commission, 585 U.S. __ (2018) holds that only officers of the United States can take actions that affect the life, liberty, and property of citizens. Judge Cannon has asked for oral argument on June 21, 2024 on former President Donald Trump’s motion to dismiss Special Counsel Jack Smith’s indictment on the ground that Smith was unconstitutionally appointed to his current job because he is not an inferior officer.”

I MEAN, THE EVIDENCE IS ON HER SIDE:

I didn’t compare him to one. He IS one. https://t.co/LUqXuSjktV

— J.K. Rowling (@jk_rowling) May 12, 2024

JESSE WALKER: The Night I Asked ChatGPT How To Build a Bomb: Yes, you can trick the bot into giving you information it’s supposed to keep to itself. No, that isn’t something to worry about. “It didn’t occur to me to ask ChatGPT for a bomb recipe until I heard that ChatGPT would not give me a bomb recipe. That felt like a challenge.”

BOB GRABOYES: Five Lessons on the Nature of Pro-Hamas Students, Professors, and Administrators.

UPDATE (From Ed): Graboyes writes:

In sum, Michael Moore’s Weltanschauung rests on a taxonomy devised by 19th century German racists and discredited for nearly a century—but he apparently never bothered to read what those racists actually said about their taxonomy. By Michael Moore’s reasoning, Adolf Hitler would not qualify as antisemitic.

Flashback: Michael Moore, finding Minutemen in the very strangest places.

SELF-DEFENSE: Reloading On The Fly.

GOP TO GAIN FIVE SENATE SEATS IN 2024? Senate GOP campaign insiders tell The Epoch Times they are quite confident about retaking the Senate majority in November with a two-seat gain and a pickup of five is a reasonable possibility.

MASCOT OF THE ANOINTED REACHES EXPIRATION DATE: Queen Greta has exposed the truth about the green movement.

So, Greta Thunberg has a new cause. She’s found a new crusade to throw her weight behind. Forget saving the planet – now she wants to save Palestine.

Yes, the pint-sized prophetess of doom has swapped raging against industrialism for raging against Israel. Mother Nature will just have to wait – her erstwhile valiant defender is busy fixing the Middle East now.

Yesterday, Greta was snapped at the protest in Malmo, Sweden against Israel’s inclusion in the Eurovision Song Contest.

She looked the part. She had a keffiyeh draped over her shoulders and a smug look on her face: the two must-haves of every puffed-up bourgeois activist who gets off on fuming against Israel.

The keffiyeh really has become the uniform of the self-righteous. Go into a hip coffee shop or overpriced Soho burger joint and I guarantee you’ll see a Gen Z’er decked out in the Palestinian scarf.

Whatever happened to the sin of “cultural appropriation”? Not long ago, the right-on raged against white dudes who wear their hair in dreadlocks and white women who don kominos. “Stop stealing other people’s culture!”, they’d yell. Yet now they themselves spend their days in Arab attire.

That image of Greta in Malmo, looking very satisfied with herself, summed up the role the keffiyeh plays in the life of the 21st-century activist. Keffiyeh-wearing is less about drawing attention to the plight of the Palestinians than drawing attention to you. Look at me in my Arab garb, aren’t I good and hyper socially aware – that’s the needy cry of these hipster appropriators.

Yet beneath their radical chic, darker sentiments lurk.

Not least of which is radical environmentalism embracing its nihilistic origins. Plus ça change: the original European environmentalists who had a strange coalition with Islamists were awfully totalitarian as well.

UPDATE:

pic.twitter.com/xkIAuP9AL7

— Declaration of Memes (@LibertyCappy) May 12, 2024

(Classical reference in headline.)

WOEING: NASA wants a cheaper Mars Sample Return—Boeing proposes most expensive rocket.

THIS SEEMS UNSURPRISING: Study finds poor muscle health is common in people living with obesity, increases risk of early death.

THEY HATE US, THEY REALLY HATE US!

In her speech, Pelosi argues that voters are “blocked” from making good, rational decisions and voting Democrat because of their culture and views on God

Watch: pic.twitter.com/YAtkNoBGVN

— Winston Marshall (@MrWinMarshall) May 11, 2024

I can’t say it’s at all surprising to see Pelosi channeling Meryl Streep channeling Hillary in the climactic scene from her dystopian 2015 Harvey Weinstein-produced movie The Giver— it’s leftists all the way down:

UPDATE: Oxford Union Debate: Mumford and Sons Musician Rips Pelosi’s Elitism Apart.

DADS ARE HUMAN TOO: (Warning, Spoiler Alert) Glenn and I watched the next to final episode of Young Sheldon where the dad, George dies of a heart attack. Like so many other fans of the show, I am heart-broken because as George Sr.’s character grew over time, I looked forward to seeing the complexity of the interactions he had with his family. If you watched the Big Bang shows, you know that Sheldon and his mom badmouth the dad for the most part, talking in negative terms about him to others and between themselves. He had an affair (turns out to be false) he was a bad dad, etc. In the Young Sheldon show, he is a long suffering dad who sacrifices constantly for the family even as they treat him as the butt of jokes:

Chuck Lorre had two jobs when creating Young Sheldon. One was to make a funny show, and two, undo all the damage made to George Cooper throughout The Big Bang Theory’s run. George was dead when The Big Bang Theory started, but Sheldon and his mother revisited him occasionally. More times than not, they had negative things to say about him, making him seem like the worst husband and father. When he was cast, Lance Barber was aware of the prevailing perception of George. In an interview with TV Line, Barber revealed that there were active efforts to change the character and make him more human instead of the butt of the joke. He and everyone in production overhauled the character to create a new person whom people could identify and sympathize with.

The belittling that the family did to this man was just sad. If he wanted anything, the wife said no, the kids put themselves first, especially Sheldon, and even the mother-in-law picked at him. When he got a better job earlier in the series, everyone cried and wouldn’t move, so he endured a lower status job at a high school. When he needed space in the house, he was told to get out of the way, etc. Right before George dies, things are looking up for him, he gets a college coaching job and the kids are nicer to him and so is the wife. Now that he is gone, they will have to go on without him. It’s sad.

George’s life and death seem like a metaphor for how our society treats men–they are expendable and an easy target for jokes and hit pieces on toxic masculinity. No one notices the sacrifices they make to keep the world moving–whether that be working to support a family, sacrificing their time or their lives for others while getting less and less in return and little notice. Except when that work and sacrifice and the men that do them are gone, then the world or in this case the Cooper family might actually miss the man that they so easily scorned while he was here.

THE NEW SPACE RACE: NASA Administrator Bill Nelson to meet with partners in Italy, Vatican, Saudi Arabia.

PAST PERFORMANCE IS NO GUARANTEE OF FUTURE RESULTS: Far-left U. Wisconsin student groups suspended after antisemitic chalkings.

The University of Wisconsin chapters of Anticolonial Scientists and Mecha have been placed on interim suspension pending an investigation into chalkings which “endorsed violence, supported terrorist organizations and/or contained antisemitic comments.”

According to the student paper The Daily Cardinal, an interim suspension means a group “must cease activities [during] an investigation and decision from the CSO [Committee on Student Organizations].”