OLD AND BUSTED: Robocop.
The New Hotness? Robolawyer! ChatGPT-4 just passed the bar exam, scoring in the 90th percentile. It crushed a bunch of other advanced tests too. Check out these numbers.
UPDATE (FROM GLENN): The Coming Symbolic-Analyst Meltdown.
JENNIFER SEY: The predictable economic fallout of lockdown policy.
Widespread business closures due to lockdowns caused mass layoffs of, primarily, hourly wage workers with little to no savings. Then the government spent money that we did not have so people could pay their rent and not starve. And then they did it again.
Of course, this caused inflation. Then the Fed raised interest rates to halt the inflation.
And now we are experiencing the ensuing disaster that is unfolding in real time. And the little guy is left holding the bag whether through exorbitant pricing of basic necessities like milk and eggs or small business investors wondering when and if they’ll be able to extract their money from SVB to pay their employees and vendors.
No, I’m not a banker. But it’s easy to see what happened and that’s the rough outline in the simplest possible terms.
You can’t shut the world down and think there will not be consequences. You just can’t.
All of this happened — lockdowns forcing small business closures — while corporate employees worked from home and screeched “we’re all in this together” while ordering Uber Eats, watching Netflix and working kinda, sorta sometimes. And of course, while continuing to take their salaries and bonuses and stock payouts. And continuing to do so to this day.
No company dared speak out against lockdowns. I can’t think of a single one. Instead, they laid people off with “empathy”, gave them two weeks salary and continued advocating in support of lockdowns — or at the very least going along with them, staying silent — knowing that the bill was coming.
Earlier: “The Democrats saw an opportunity with the emergence of Covid to crush a roaring economy under a president they didn’t like. So they, & their base, did everything in their power to impose crushing restrictions on small businesses…Locking people up at home not only tanked the economy & drove up prices, it completely disrupted the global manufacturing & supply chain that was in place. You can’t just flip that on and off like a light switch.”
Read the whole thing; it’s tough to argue with, based on the healthcare profession’s pivot in the summer of 2020…
…And the more recent pivot by the DNC-MSM, such at the Atlantic. The change is subtle, but see if you can spot the difference in tone between the first two and last two headlines:
● Parents Are Losing Their Minds Over Masks in Schools.
—Atlantic headline, August 18th, 2021.
● Mask Mandates Don’t Need to Make Sense.
—Atlantic headline, February 20, 2022.
● Now Is as Good a Time as There’ll Ever Be to Leave Your Pandemic Bubble.
—Atlantic headline, March 3rd, 2022.
● Speech Therapy Shows the Difficult Tradeoffs of Wearing Masks.
—Atlantic headline, March 2, 2022.
As Ace of Spades writes, at the start of a lengthy post on that last headline, “The masking mandates that the corrupt US and state and local governments forced on children, under pressure from the corrupt teachers unions have imposed developmental disorders on children that they may never recover from. The early years of development are critical ones. You don’t get those back. These are critical years of development in which children’s brains are wired to rewire themselves like crazy. Their brains will reconfigure themselves during these years like in no other point in their lives, ever. There is no ‘Do Over’ switch on a child’s formative years.”
A UNITER, NOT A DIVIDER! The Hater’s Guide to Woodrow Wilson.
If you were dragging getting out of bed to start this week, thank Woodrow Wilson. Daylight saving time is just one of a battery of ways that Wilson and his presidency changed America, most of them for the worse.
I come now not to explain Wilson, but to hate him. A national consensus on hating Wilson is long overdue. It is the patriotic duty of every decent American. While conservatives have particular reasons to detest Wilson, and all his works, and all his empty promises, there is more than enough in his record for moderates, liberals, progressives, libertarians, and socialists to join us in this great and unifying cause.
The roll call of the worst presidents in American history includes some consensus top choices. James Buchanan and Franklin Pierce both contributed mightily to the nation’s slide into the Civil War, and Andrew Johnson did enduring harm to Reconstruction in the war’s aftermath. But all three of those men were repudiated by the end of their single term in office. They left no heirs who would acknowledge their influence, no fleet of academic hagiographers who could see themselves reflected in those presidencies.
Wilson, by contrast, served two full and consequential terms. He was the only Democrat re-elected to the job during the century between 1832 and 1936. He was lionized by liberals and progressives in academia and the media for most of the century after he left office in 1921. In my youth, and perhaps yours, Wilson was presented in history books as a tragic hero whom the unthinking American people didn’t deserve. He was often placed highly on academics’ rankings of the presidents. Princeton University named its school of international relations for him. Even in rescinding that honor in June 2020, the university’s press release declared: “Though scholars disagree about how to assess Wilson’s tenure as president of the United States, many rank him among the nation’s greatest leaders and credit him with visionary ideas that shaped the world for the better.”
Nah. Wilson was a human pile of flaming trash. He was a bad man who made the country and the world worse. His name should be an obscenity, his image an effigy. Hating him is a wholesome obligation of citizenship.
As Glenn asked in 2020, when Princeton removed Wilson’s name from its public policy school, “if they’re going to ban Wilson because he was a racist — and he most certainly was — what about FDR, who segregated bathrooms when Secretary of the Navy, and imprisoned over 100,000 people because of their race?”
WHAT COULD POSSIBLY GO WRONG? Scientists revive ancient ‘zombie viruses’ from Siberian permafrost that can infect amoeba cells.
QUESTION ASKED: Who’s Running America?
If Fetterman were to die tomorrow, the New York Times might inform us that apart from a legal technicality, his staff is marching on in his absence and occasionally showing up at his gravesite to briefly display a piece of upcoming legislation to his tomb. And for many people doing business with the late Senator Fetterman’s office, the senator’s existence is irrelevant.
Not only does the Senate Democrat majority consist of the D.C. staffers in two offices trying to work around the elected officials whose names are on the door, but the Senate’s proudest son is sitting in the Oval Office (when he’s not vacationing every other day in Delaware) and appears to have trouble completing sentences or remembering that his son didn’t die in Iraq.
Who’s actually running the White House? More of the same folks who are running the Senate.
Questions like these are not meant to be raised. Anyone who objects to legislation being cosponsored from a psych ward is a cruel ‘ableist’ bigot mocking a sick man’s disability. Asking how functional Biden is risks accusations of ‘ageism’ or discriminating against stutterers. Politics can be ugly and cruel, but you also can’t hide mental incapacity forever behind victimhood.
The country’s in the very best of hands, to coin an Insta-phrase.
UPDATE: We’ve Noticed: MSNBC’s Jen Psaki Admits ‘Biden Does Nothing at 9 AM.’
JUST NBC THE FINANCIAL EXPERTISE! Jim Cramer Is Going to Destroy Us All.
Things are so bad right now that a new “inverse” EFT has been created that allows investors to do the opposite of what Cramer says. I might have to get on that train if his track record is any indication.
For the love of God, I am personally begging Jim Cramer to stop giving financial advice. He’s got the reverse Midas touch, and I’d prefer the economy not collapse in on itself. I’ve got kids and dreams, after all. If CNBC has any care for humanity, they’ll remove him from the air and lock him in a padded room.
If only there had been other signs that Silicon Valley Bank was in trouble. If only:
AMERICA’S NEWSPAPER OF RECORD: Tucker Carlson Obtains 40,000 Unseen Hours Of Biden Falling Down Air Force One Stairs.
UNRESTORED COPY OF DETECTIVE COMICS #27, THE FIRST BATMAN COMIC, GOING ON SALE AT AUCTION. “The issue of Detective Comics #27 has a collector’s rating of 6.0, or ‘Fine’, from third-party memorabilia evaluator the Certified Guaranty Company…Some comics enthusiasts think that, even at a 6.0, the issue could break that $1.74 million tally. ‘$1.5 million is not an unreasonable guess. It may set a record. It’s so sought after that it’s gonna get crazy attention,’ Ted VanLiew, owner of Super World Comics in Holden, Massachusetts, told the New York Post, adding that Detective Comics #27 is one of the ‘holy grails of comics.’”
DISPATCHES FROM WEIMAR AMERICA: California ‘Teacher of the Year’ faces 14 charges in child sexual abuse case.
FLASHBACK TO 2010: Angelo Codevilla on America’s Ruling Class.
As over-leveraged investment houses began to fail in September 2008, the leaders of the Republican and Democratic parties, of major corporations, and opinion leaders stretching from the National Review magazine (and the Wall Street Journal) on the right to the Nation magazine on the left, agreed that spending some $700 billion to buy the investors’ “toxic assets” was the only alternative to the U.S. economy’s “systemic collapse.” In this, President George W. Bush and his would-be Republican successor John McCain agreed with the Democratic candidate, Barack Obama. Many, if not most, people around them also agreed upon the eventual commitment of some 10 trillion nonexistent dollars in ways unprecedented in America. They explained neither the difference between the assets’ nominal and real values, nor precisely why letting the market find the latter would collapse America. The public objected immediately, by margins of three or four to one.
When this majority discovered that virtually no one in a position of power in either party or with a national voice would take their objections seriously, that decisions about their money were being made in bipartisan backroom deals with interested parties, and that the laws on these matters were being voted by people who had not read them, the term “political class” came into use. Then, after those in power changed their plans from buying toxic assets to buying up equity in banks and major industries but refused to explain why, when they reasserted their right to decide ad hoc on these and so many other matters, supposing them to be beyond the general public’s understanding, the American people started referring to those in and around government as the “ruling class.” And in fact Republican and Democratic office holders and their retinues show a similar presumption to dominate and fewer differences in tastes, habits, opinions, and sources of income among one another than between both and the rest of the country. They think, look, and act as a class.
And from Glenn in February at his Substack: Thoughts on our ruling class monoculture.
YES. NEXT QUESTION? Was Sweden right about Covid all along?
To understand Sweden, you need to understand a word that’s hard to explain, let alone translate: lagom. It means, in effect, “perfect-simple”: not too much, not too little. People who are lagom don’t stand out or make a fuss: they blend right in – and this is seen as a virtue.
Essays are written about why lagom sums up a certain Swedish mindset – that it’s bad to stand out, to consider yourself better or be an outlier. That’s why it’s so strange that, during the lockdowns, Sweden became the world’s defiant outlier.
Swedes saw it the other way around. They were keeping calm and carrying on: lockdown was an extreme, draconian, untested experiment. Lock up everyone, keep children out of school, suspend civil liberties, send police after people walking their dogs – and call this “caution”? Anders Tegnell, Sweden’s state epidemiologist, never spoke about a Swedish “experiment”. He said all along he could not recommend a public health intervention that had never been proven.
Tegnell also made another point: that he didn’t claim to be right. It would take years, he’d argue, to see who had jumped the right way. His calculation was that, on a whole-society basis, the collateral damage of lockdowns would outweigh what good they do. But you’d only know if this was so after a few years. You’d have to look at cancer diagnosis, hospital waiting lists, educational damage and, yes, count the Covid dead.
The problem with lockdowns is that no one looks at whole-society pictures. Professor Neil Ferguson’s team from Imperial College London admitted this, once, as a breezy aside. “We do not consider the wider social and economic costs of suppression,” they wrote in a supposed assessment of lockdown, “which will be high.” But just how high? And were they a price worth paying?
Flashback to November: Sweden Wins! Country That Refused Lockdown and Kept Schools Open Has Lowest Pandemic Mortality in the World.
I HOPE THEY GET THE ADRENOCHROME DOSAGE RIGHT: Biden to address bank closures Monday morning.
AND AGAIN: Signature Bank shut down in connection with Silicon Valley Bank collapse. Founded in 2001, the New York-based Signature Bank was popular among crypto companies.
Signature was notable for having former Democratic Congressman Barney Frank on its Board. Frank’s signature Dodd-Frank Act, crafted in the wake of the 2008 financial crash, sought to improve accountability and transparency in the financial system.
Under that law, banks with assets in excess of $50 billion were deemed as being potentially “too big to fail,” and were therefore subject to a host of rigorous testing and regulation.
Also notable:
2022: Jim Cramer recommends Signature Bank.
2023: Signature Bank shuts down.
How does he do it? pic.twitter.com/2QskFTUPe6
— KanekoaTheGreat (@KanekoaTheGreat) March 12, 2023
CIVIL RIGHTS UPDATE: Florida GOP bill would restore young adults’ constitutional rights. “After the tragic Parkland mass shooting in 2018, Florida lawmakers raised the age to purchase a long gun in Florida to 21. You already have to be 21 to buy a handgun, so this almost entirely removes 18-20 year-olds’ ability to buy a gun for self-defense. Now, some Republican lawmakers are now fighting to roll back that change and restore young Floridians constitutional rights. A group just introduced the Minimum Age for Firearm Purchase or Transfer Act, which would lower the age to purchase a firearm in Florida back down to 18…This push deserves widespread support. Depriving 18, 19, and 20-year-old adults of their constitutional right to self-defense was always an immoral restriction that did not actually make us any safer.”
WHAT HAPPENED ON JANUARY 6th? Roger Kimball is interviewed in a new podcast the London Spectator’s Freddy Gray.
WHAT RIPPLE EFFECTS WILL SVB’S COLLAPSE GENERATE? Silicon Valley Bank Collapses: The Ghosts of 2008 Stir.
An additional worry is that the run on Silicon Valley Bank may spread. Bank runs are a mix of the rational and the rational. At their core is the mismatch at the heart of banking. Banks tend to borrow short-term (your deposit is a loan to the bank) and lend long. This creates a mismatch, which is generally fine—it’s how the banking system works. But it means that banks will only have a limited amount of funds to hand back to their depositors at any given moment. If enough of a bank’s depositors decide to ask for their money back at once, then the bank can face a liquidity crunch that could bring it down. Under the circumstances, depositors with more than $250,000 with the bank who hear of other depositors pulling out their money out, might decide (even if they believe that the bank is fundamentally sound) that they should get their excess money out—better safe than sorry—and so a bank run spreads.
Related: Silicon Valley Bank imploded in a single day. It could be just the tip of the iceberg.
Funny how these things tend to happen, now that “Milton Friedman isn’t running the show anymore.”
GOT WOKE, WENT BROKE: Woke head of ‘risk assessment’ at Silicon Valley Bank ‘prioritized’ LGBT initiatives — including organizing a month-long Pride campaign — before bank lost BILLIONS and collapsed.
A head of risk assessment at the beleaguered Silicon Valley Bank has been accused of prioritizing pro-diversity initiatives over her actual role after the firm imploded on Friday.
Jay Ersapah – who describes herself as a ‘queer person of color from a working-class background’ – organized a host of LGBTQ initiatives including a month-long Pride campaign and implemented ‘safe space’ catch-ups for staff.
In a corporate video published just nine months ago, she said she ‘could not be prouder’ to work for SVB serving ‘underrepresented entrepreneurs.’
It comes after the firm became the largest bank to collapse since the 2008 financial crisis – disclosing a $1.8 billion loss in its finances.
Who the hell was in charge of risk management at SVB and what the hell were they focused on???
— Comfortably Smug (@ComfortablySmug) March 11, 2023
To be fair, there was a even more spectacular collapse preceded by a Pride celebration in 2021: Democrats lecture Americans on wokeness, then abandon our values abroad.
BACK TO THE FUTURE: Sales of vinyl albums overtake CDs for the first time since the late ’80s.
WAR IS PEACE, FREEDOM IS SLAVERY: Biden-Harris Want You to Know About the Great Job They’re Doing Lowering Your Energy Bills.
And they want to help even more! Did Biden kill the oil boom for good?
MATT TAIBII: The Democrats Have Lost the Plot.
A longtime editor once cracked that the Democrats have been stuck since the mid-sixties trying to run Kennedy clones in elections, cranking out one toothy, tallish facsimile after another, from Gary Hart to John Kerry to Beto O’Rourke. Goldman is one of the latest, a literal handsome Dan who’s an heir to the Levi Strauss fortune, worth over $250 million, and who opposed Medicare for All and the Green New Deal while marketing himself as “tough on crime.” All of these qualities make him the kind of quintessential born-on-third-base triangulator the party loves.
* * * * * * * *
This made the end of Goldman’s foray in this direction all the more confusing:
GOLDMAN: Because you said earlier, I believe that you did not see Russia— you could not confirm that Russia interfered in our election in 2016, that you don’t believe that. Is that your testimony here today? You don’t believe that they did?
TAIBBI: I think it’s possible that they may have on a small scale, but certainly not to what’s been reported.
GOLDMAN: What’s been reported or what’s been included in the indictments?
TAIBBI: Well, again, indictments are allegations. They’re not proof.
GOLDMAN: I understand. It’s pretty detailed allegations…
TAIBBI: And the Mueller indictment, by the way —
GOLDMAN: You should go back and read the indictments, and tell us if you think there’s no proof of it.
Here I was going to point out that the second of the cases Goldman cited had been dropped by prosecutors because Concord showed up in court, but Goldman stepped on that quickly:
TAIBBI: Some of those defendants, by the way…
GOLDMAN: Let me move on. Please, let me move on. That’s how this works. You should know this by now.
The irony is that what Goldman was doing, confusing accusations with proof — as Thomas Jefferson said, the phenomenon of people whose “suspicions may be evidence” — was the entire reason for the hearing. Michael and I were trying to describe a system that wants to bypass proof and proceed to punishment, a radical idea that this new breed of Democrat embraces. I think they justify this using the Sam Harris argument, that in pursuit of suppressing Trump, anything is justified. But by removing or disrespecting the rights to which Americans are accustomed, you make opposition movements like Trump’s, you don’t stop them.
Yesterday was memorable for other reasons, but a depressing eye-opener as well, forcing me to see up close the intellectual desert that’s spread all the way to the edges within the party I once supported. There are no more pockets of Wellstones and Kuciniches who were once tolerated and whose job it is to uphold a constitutionalist position within the larger whole. That crucial little pocket of principle is gone, and I don’t think it’s coming back.
Read the whole thing.
UPDATE: And speaking of losing the plot:
Congresswoman, how does badgering a non-MAGA, non-Republican journalist to give up a source constitute fighting “Extreme MAGA Republican lies”?
Can you please identify something @ShellenbergerMD or I said that is extreme, a lie, or a conspiracy theory? https://t.co/xLolSBFIsp
— Matt Taibbi (@mtaibbi) March 11, 2023
Related: Twitter hearing uncovers Democrats’ chilling message to journalists.
(Updated and bumped.)
JUST NBC THE BRILLIANT STOCK PICKS! CNBC’s Jim Cramer eviscerated for touting Silicon Valley Bank weeks before disastrous collapse.
CNBC’s “Mad Money” host Jim Cramer is being shredded across social media after footage resurfaced of him urging viewers in February to invest in Silicon Valley Bank (SVB), which collapsed on Friday.
SVB had been the 16th largest bank in the United States and was connected to a number of Silicon Valley industries and startups. The closure of the bank was announced by the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC), making it the worst U.S. financial institution failure in nearly 15 years.
Upon the news of SVB’s collapse, a clip went viral of Cramer in February speaking positively about the bank in a list of “The Biggest Winners of 2023… So Far.”
“The ninth-best performer here today is SVB financial. Don’t yawn,” he told his viewers on Feb. 8. “This company is a merchant bank with a deposit base that Wall Street has been mistakenly concerned about!”
Flash-forward to yesterday: ‘Shellshocked:’ Silicon Valley Bank Shut Down by Regulators, Marking Stunning Downfall. “Silicon Valley Bank’s sudden meltdown ranks as the second biggest collapse in banking history and the largest since the Great Financial Crisis.”
UPDATE: Get woke, go…:
Who the hell was in charge of risk management at SVB and what the hell were they focused on???
— Comfortably Smug (@ComfortablySmug) March 11, 2023
Related: Bank of London weighs rescue bid for UK arm of Silicon Valley Bank. The Bank of London is exploring the possibility of assembling an offer for SVB UK as start-up founders warn Jeremy Hunt that its collapse will “cripple” the British tech sector, Sky News learns.
But their pronouns were perfect.
(Updated and bumped.)
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