AT THE SAME TIME, WEIRDLY, LOTS OF MONEY IS FLOWING FROM CHINA INTO OUR POLITICAL CLASS:

“In my 30 years of public service, I’ve never seen U.S. Navy readiness at such a low point. And it’s not just me. This is a widespread, bipartisan concern… CRS told me “the U.S. Navy is in its worst state for designing, building, maintaining, & crewing ships in over 40 years.” https://t.co/y8lsuaCK96

— John Ʌ Konrad V (@johnkonrad) June 11, 2024

OPEN THREAD: This is no one-night stand, it’s a real occasion.

THE NEW SPACE RACE: China selects new batch of astronauts with an eye on the moon.

REAL CLEAR POLITICS: The Myth of American Inequality. Everything you’ve been hearing from academics and journalists about about income equality in America is wrong. No, it hasn’t been increasing. No, it’s not worse in America than in Europe (and middle-class Americans are much richer than middle-class Europeans). And no, the tax burden on the rich hasn’t been shrinking– their share of the tax burden has actually been increasing. Phil Gramm explains why in his lecture accepting the Manhattan Institute’s 2024 Hayek Book Prize for The Myth of American Inequality, co-authored with John Early and the late Robert Ekelund.

I’M NOT SAYING THAT IT’S ALIENS, BUT IT’S ALIENS: These Mysterious Objects Still Puzzle Scientists Thousands of Years Later.

JOINING PLANET FITNESS AS A JOKE GYM:

HOLY SHLIT. Internal memo from 24 hour fitness @24hourfitness advises that BLM and pride symbols are always approved forms of “freedom of expression” but the American Flag and US logos are only allowed to be worn on Holidays.

Credit: @Carlos__Turcios pic.twitter.com/G8iPd1NmeD

— Libs of TikTok (@libsoftiktok) June 11, 2024

OLD AND BUSTED: “Republicans pounce.”
NEW AND HOT: “Republicans seize”

WHY IS UCLA SUCH A HOTBED OF NAZI SYMPATHIES? They’re Gonna Need a Bigger Lawsuit: UCLA’s Rabbi Was Physically Assaulted Last Night.

The Chabad Rabbi of UCLA was just physically assaulted live on camera. The students subsequently began calling him a “Zionist pedophile Rabbi,” telling him to “go back to Poland.” We are in such a dark, dangerous time in our country, with almost no leadership fighting back pic.twitter.com/eZN9MysrYf

— Shabbos Kestenbaum (@ShabbosK) June 11, 2024

WOULD YOU WANT TO KNOW? First-of-Its-Kind Test Can Predict Dementia up to Nine Years Before Diagnosis.

THIS IS MAKING PHRENOLOGY LOOK RELATIVELY SCIENTIFIC [Updated and moved to top]: Government dictates that biomedical studies include not genetic diversity (which may or may not be appropriate), but “diversity” as dictated by arbitrary government classifications, has entrenched pseudo-science in the research community, to wit: “In a first vote, 11 committee members unanimously said available data on the drug shows that it is effective at treating Alzheimer’s patients at the early stages of the mind-wasting disease. But several advisors noted that more data is needed in Black and Hispanic patients, among other groups.” Exactly how do they think “Hispanic Alzheimer’s” would be different from “non-Hispanic white people” Alzheimer’s?

UPDATE: I’m *for* research on genetic factors in disease and treatment. I’m *against* using the American bureaucracies invented classifications as incredibly crude proxies for genetics. These were never intended to be used as such proxies. In fact, when the current panoply of classifications was created by the federal government in 1978, it specifically came with the disclaimer that these were not genetic or anthropological categories. How could they be when “Hispanics” can be from any mix of continents, Asians include everyone from Indians (Caucasians) to Chinese (East Asian) to Filipinos (mostly Austronesians), the white category goes from Iceland to Yemen, and African America can be anywhere from 2 to 100% African, and Africa is itself a very genetically diverse continent, with many Somali and Ethiopian groups more closely related to Arabs than to sub-Saharan Africans? For more on the topic, see the final chapter of my book Classified.

HMM: Few Americans get recommended lung cancer screening.

FOX BUTTERFIELD, CALL YOUR OFFICE! ‘There’s a concerted effort to make people afraid of crime,’ Moriarty claims.

During a May 28 event, Hennepin County Attorney Mary Moriarty explained she believes there’s an effort to cause the public to fear crime.

“Moderate Democrats have done a lot of work in making people afraid of downtown Minneapolis,” she said. “There is a concerted effort to make people afraid of crime.”

The conversation took place between Moriarty and Dr. T. Anansi Wilson, a Mitchell Hamline School of Law professor. The discussion centered around being “good trouble” and activism.

“White supremacy is ingrained everywhere,” Moriarty said. “White supremacy is what we all live in. It’s the water. It’s what we swim in here.”

Wilson agreed and took it a step further, explaining his belief that white supremacy is embedded in all public policy, including the Constitution. “We have to think about the Constitution as the living will of the white supremacist, slave-owning, genocidal, xenophobic, sexist, homophobic, cis-heterosexist, capitalistic, classics [sic] maniacs, right,” Wilson said.

Moriarty, a white, lesbian woman, was elected to serve as Hennepin County attorney in 2022. Her campaign included progressive approaches to criminal justice such as “restorative justice programs” and “alternatives to incarceration.”

“Crime is down,” Moriarty said repeatedly throughout the conversation.

Flashback to four years ago this month: Minneapolis City Council members intend to defund and dismantle the city’s police department.

—CNN, June 8th, 2020.

Evergreen:

(Classical reference in headline.)

THE EV BUBBLE IS DEFLATING: VW Is Shifting EV Investment Dollars to Fund Further ICE Development.

READER FAVORITE: Waterpik Cordless Advanced Water Flosser For Teeth. #CommissionEarned I got one of these and it works really well.

NOT A RINGING ENDORSEMENT OF NEW YORKERS’ INTELLECT: New York to Require Gun Sellers to Hang Signs Saying Guns Can Be Dangerous.

WE MUST FOLLOW THE SCIENCE … EXCUSE ME, THE MONEY: U.S. Right to Know’s Rebecca Raney lays out how the world’s biggest and most influential scholarly entomology association avoided discussing the possibility a certain insecticide produced by corporate sponsors is injurious to bees. It’s analogous to “agency capture” in government. Call it Scholarly Capture.

I HAD BEEN ASSURED TARRIFFS WOULD NEVER MAKE THIS HAPPEN: Volvo suddenly shifts EX30, EX90 production to Belgium to avoid China-made EV tariffs.

SHOCKER: California’s billionaire utopia may not be as eco-friendly as advertised: A land trust claims the plan could ‘destroy some of the most self-reliant farmland’ in the state.

DON’T GET COCKY: Nate Silver Issues Dire Warning to Democrats About Biden.

READER BOOK PLUG: Now out from Russell Working, The Insurrectionist.

SO BIDEN CAN’T EASILY PARDON HUNTER, BUT A RE-ELECTED TRUMP COULD, IN THE NAME OF POLITICAL PEACE. And Kathy Hochul could pardon Trump in the name of political peace, saying that the message that no one is above the law has been delivered. Just saying there’s a deal here somewhere.

THE VERY HIGHEST OF TECH ETHICS: AI trained on photos from kids’ entire childhood without their consent: Kids “easily traceable” from photos used to train AI models, advocates warn.

SAD: The Great Deterioration of Local Community Was A Major Driver of The Loss of The Play-Based Childhood.

PROMISES, PROMISES: Rachel Maddow ‘worried’ Trump will send her to ‘camps’ if he’s elected president.

Rachel Maddow said she is “worried” that Donald Trump returning to the presidency could mean she might wind up in “camps” intended to house illegal immigrants.

The MSNBC primetime host told CNN on Monday that she was “worried about the country broadly if we put someone in power who is openly avowing that he plans to build camps to hold millions of people, and to ‘root out’ what he’s described in subhuman terms as his ‘enemy from within.’”

Maddow added: “For that matter, what convinces you that these massive camps he’s planning are only for migrants? So, yes, I’m worried about me — but only as much as I’m worried about all of us.”

Flashback to September of 2008: Naomi Wolf: Sarah ‘Evita’ Palin to Usher in Rovian Police State.

Exit question:

What is more likely if Trump wins: Rachel Maddow gets sent to a concentration camp

or….She makes another 100 million dollars peddling a BS Conspiracy theory? https://t.co/aQk2ale9NF

— Saagar Enjeti (@esaagar) June 11, 2024