NEWS YOU CAN USE: Don’t Allow Wokism To Ruin Thanksgiving.
Author Archive: Ed Driscoll
November 22, 2022
SCHADENFREUDE OVERLOAD: The delicious fall of Sam Bankman-Fried.
In any case, FTX was big on ESG [Environmental, Social and Governance]. On a video from January this year the company’s founder Sam Bankman-Fried and the vlogger Nas Daily — the first a shyster, the second possibly a naif — claimed that FTX existed only to make money that could then be given away. The two young men are weirdos in different ways — but the main one, Bankman-Fried, looks about fourteen and has a face like a stress ball being scrunched by somebody who’s very stressed indeed.
This pair talk about all of the things that our age values most, claiming as they do that making money to pass on to special causes is much better than merely getting rich and buying a Lamborghini. If you make money and give it away to these causes, they say, that makes you way more happy than spending it on yourself.
With some infelicitous turns of phrase, Daily says various things about Bankman-Fried, which the latter then responds to. “He is funding everything you can think of: global warming” (“It’s one of the biggest problems that we have to tackle together as a world”). “Covid-19 preparedness” (“We have to be ready for the next pandemic”). “Neglected tropical diseases” (“More than a billion people suffer from them — we have to eliminate these diseases”). “And of course animal welfare” (“Animals deserve to live just like we do; it’s also why I’m vegan”).
Putting aside for a moment whether animals deserve to live just like we do, this is a pretty comprehensive catechism of our day. Bankman-Fried might have added something about BLM, but it is possible that the most up-to-date shyster knows to veer ever so slightly away from last season’s ones.
For here we are in the realm of the sort of sanctimonious fraud that our species has known throughout history. The great writers from Chaucer and Boccaccio knew these types. Many classic works of literature feature them. But one of the strangest aspects of human beings is not that we continually throw up such people but that people always fall for them.
Well, not everyone. As The Onion joked in April: Man Who Lost Everything In Crypto Just Wishes Several Thousand More People Had Warned Him.
AND NOW FOR SOMETHING COMPLETELY DIFFERENT: COMEDIANS AGAINST COMEDY! Monty Python’s Eric Idle blasts anti-woke comedians, says he loathes conservatives: ‘I hate them intensely.’
Tech journalist Kara Swisher interviewed legendary British comedian Eric Idle on Monday, where he spoke extensively about the state of comedy in his heyday and said he hated conservatives.
Swisher asked, “How do you look at cancel culture today, because now everybody is watched under great scrutiny,” asking if Idle had seen the recent Dave Chappelle’s monologue on “Saturday Night Live.”
“What do you think of the comedians like Dave Chappelle, for example, who’s saying that he’s being subjected to censorship?” she asked.
Idle appeared to disregard Chappelle’s claim that cancel culture is a phenomenon because, “Well where does he say it? On SNL,” later adding, “Well you’re not being that much canceled, are you? If you were in your room complaining I’d have a lot more sympathy.”
Swisher agreed, “Right, so then he doesn’t pay the price, he just says he pays the price.”
Neither commenter mentioned how Chappelle has been ousted by venues and targeted with physical violence for his comedy routines.
Idle offered one example of what does worry him however, saying, “I didn’t like it when Bill Maher complains about the audience for not laughing, they’re telling you they don’t find it funny. You shouldn’t moan about the audience. There’s nothing wrong with the audience. If they don’t laugh at your jokes, there’s something wrong with your joke. And so… I’m not terribly sympathetic to that sort of attitude, to be honest.”
Swisher acknowledged that Chappelle’s humor can be witty, but condemned his commentary on transgender people as creepy, to which Idle agreed, “yeah.”
I’m so old, I can remember a British comedy team where absolutely nothing was an off-limits subject of jokes. But then, as an early writer for America’s answer to Monty Python once said, “You can only be avant-garde for so long, before you become garde.”
PARTY OF YOUTH UPDATE: Nancy Pelosi Embodied America’s Gerontocracy Problem.
DON SURBER: Why Michelle cried racism. “To be sure, black women straightened their hair for decades to fit in to white society. I get that they had to do that to get ahead, but those days ended long ago. But straightening her hair was her choice. Even with a Harvard Law degree and a husband as president, Michelle Obama straightened her hair. I thought it an odd and dated hairstyle but I am of the you-do-you school of thought, as long as you do not harm others. Now she contends she had to straighten her hair to get Obamacare passed. Given that it passed with Democrat votes only, she implies that Democrats were the racists because they were the only ones who could have stopped passage.”
ROGER SIMON: FTX Scandal Exposes ‘Woke’ as the Crime Syndicate of Our Times.
More than Enron, more than Madoff, this is the paradigm case of the United States in our times.
Greed has taken over society to such a degree no one can see straight, let alone see such obvious fakery when it’s in front of their eyes, especially when “social justice” pronouncements are there playing the role of papal dispensations without the inconvenience of any thoughts of God or the afterlife.
Bankman-Fried wouldn’t have happened if all kinds of people and organizations, celebrated and uncelebrated, didn’t want, above anything else, more and more of the cash from that trough.
No matter. As Gordon Gecko assured us in “Wall Street”: “Greed is good.”
These days, it’s practically orgasmic. Watching the various talking heads before his unmasking, extolling the supposed crypto genius as the next Carnegie or Vanderbilt is an object lesson in how these people think. (Make me rich, please, please—especially if I don’t have to do any work for it.)
Ditto for the various celebrities on his bandwagon—Larry David, Tom Brady. Who knows if they even understand what blockchain is, but they love the cash and it’s seemingly hip to invest in crypto—above the curve, doncha know?
But who is this Bankman-Fried really and what would make him think he could actually do things such as create a “back door” between his two allegedly separate companies FTX and Alameda, so he could do what he would with other people’s money?
Yes, he looks like a Rip Van Winkle holdover awakened from a Big Brother and the Holding Company concert, circa 1967. Maybe that was a plus—made him seem “cool” to his customers.
Related exit question: How Do We Protect Ourselves from Billion-Dollar Boy-Men?
I’VE GOT A BAD FEELING ABOUT THIS: Harrison Ford Will Be De-Aged to Fight Nazis in Indy 5. The 80-year-old actor will appear as a 40-something for the long-awaited Indiana Jones sequel.
De-aging technology so far has been notoriously less-than believable, with actors ranging from Robert De Niro in The Irishman to Kurt Russell in Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2 often appearing like stiff Polar Express versions of themselves.
But Ford insists the new film, which hasn’t yet revealed its title, successfully pulls off a retro Indy. “This is the first time I’ve seen [the technology] where I believe it,” the actor said. “It’s a little spooky. I don’t think I even want to know how it works, but it works.”
After the sequence, the film’s narrative will leap forward to 1969 – using Ford as his current self – and that’s when the bulk of the action takes place.
Mangold explains he wanted “the chance to dive into this kind of full-on George [Lucas]-and-Steven [Spielberg] old picture and give the audience an adrenaline blast. So that the audience doesn’t experience the change between the ’40s and ’60s as an intellectual conceit, but literally experiences the buccaneering spirit of those early days.”
Their hope, producer Kathleen Kennedy added, was that audiences would watch the opening and think, “‘Oh my God, they just found footage.’”
Kathleen Kennedy, eh? What could possibly go wrong?
SECONDS OUT: Second Major Cryptocurrency Exchange Could Be Poised To Go Bankrupt.
Genesis Global Trading could be poised for bankruptcy less than two weeks after fellow cryptocurrency exchange FTX suddenly imploded.
According to a Monday report from Bloomberg, Genesis has been facing a liquidity crunch as users spooked by the collapse of FTX began rapidly withdrawing their assets. Unnamed sources told the outlet that executives at Genesis have spent the past several days asking investors for $1 billion in fresh capital, which has not yet materialized.
Meanwhile, back at FTX: Sam Bankman-Fried tries to broker FTX bailout from his home in the Bahamas, despite being booted from the crypto company.
BIDEN GIVES PG&E $1 BILLION TO KEEP THE DIABLO CANYON NUCLEAR PLANT OPEN:
The case for nuclear power as a climate solution got a big boost Monday, when the Biden administration announced it’s giving Pacific Gas & Electric Co. a $1.1-billion grant to help the company keep operating California’s last nuclear plant.
The Diablo Canyon plant is currently scheduled to shut down in two phases, with the first reactor going offline in 2024 and the second in 2025. But Gov. Gavin Newsom has led a spirited push to keep the reactors humming five more years, saying they’re badly needed to help the Golden State grapple with power shortages and worsening heat waves.
The federal money doesn’t guarantee Diablo Canyon will stay open longer. But it increases the likelihood of California continuing to rely on the plant, along the Central Coast in San Luis Obispo County — despite decades of anti-nuclear activism and public concerns about what would happen if an earthquake erupts along one of the seismic fault lines near the facility.
Why it’s like Team Brandon thinks of the White House as a bank or something.
November 21, 2022
EVERYTHING SEEMINGLY IS SPINNING OUT OF CONTROL: AP Fires Reporter Whose Anonymously-Sourced and Retracted Story Claimed Russia Killed Polish Civilians.
NEW VIDEO FROM AMERICA’S NEWSPAPER OF RECORD: Californians Move to Texas, Episode 5: Buc-ee’s!
More here: Watch: Hilarious Babylon Bee Take as Californians Discover the Wonder of Buc-ees.
MICHAEL WALSH: The Sting. “If you knowingly sit down at a fixed poker game and lose your entire stash, would you also complain that some of the other players also cheated? If it was a friend who brought you into the game, would you then go to another one with him? And having lost all your money when you bet the farm, would you re-mortgage it and bet it all again on the chance that this time things would be different? If you’re a Republican, the answer is: of course you would, because you just did and you’re about to do it again.”
JOEL KOTKIN: After Intersectionalism.
We are now, already in LA and soon in New York City, entering an era of relentless jostling between an ever-wider array of ethnic groups—Black, Asian, and most consequentially Latino. At the same time, the Jewish presence in America’s cities is shrinking. Even with the high birthrates of Orthodox Jews, New York City’s Jewish population is roughly 25% smaller than its midcentury high. In Los Angeles, the community’s size has not decreased but its political power has, as non-Jews have won electoral offices once held by Jewish community members in the San Fernando Valley and the Westside. In the new arena of ethnic competition, Jews, like other diminishing white ethnic groups, will need to make alliances for pragmatic reasons that may vary from city to city.
Finding the best political course will be far more complex than in the heyday of postwar multicultural liberalism, when the alliance between Jews and African Americans seemed a clear-cut matter of moral and political sense. Without a larger framework like the one provided by the Civil Rights movement, competent Jewish leaders now need to forge ties with other ethnic communities that will depend on who is ascendant and willing to accept Jewish concerns.
The real question is not how to prevent ethnic groups from uniting into some potential revolutionary force aimed at overthrowing the “white” majority, but how to integrate them into the broader economy and society. Doing so will not mean the elimination of all ethnic conflict, which, at its most basic level, is a healthy expression of minority groups fighting for their voice in a democratic society. It should, however, reduce the scale and intensity of that conflict, as the different groups involved recognize that their fight for a larger piece of the pie is taking place within the common community of American life.
As Tom Wolfe wrote in his last novel, “A phrase pops into his head from out of nowhere. ‘Everybody… all of them… it’s back to blood! Religion is dying… but everybody still has to believe in something. It would be intolerable — you couldn’t stand it — to finally have to say to yourself, ‘Why keep pretending? I’m nothing but a random atom inside a supercollider known as the universe.’ But believing in by definition means blindly, irrationally, doesn’t it. So, my people, that leaves only our blood, the bloodlines that course through our very bodies, to unite us. ‘La Raza!’ as the Puerto Ricans cry out. ‘The Race!’ cries the whole world. All people, all people everywhere, have but one last thing on their minds — Back to blood!”
Next are the “ground rules.” Aside from feeling like he was being told off by a teacher, Cockburn found said rules frustratingly vague. “Stay tasteful and legal,” “be nice to everybody always” and “use content warnings for sensitive topics.” Content warning: what a load of BS.
Next there’s the “toots” rather than “tweets.” Not a big deal, but so incredibly twee. On the plus side, users have almost twice as many characters, 500, to write a post.
But as much as Musk-skeptic celebs try to convince us that Mastodon is the new hip thing, the truth will always out. A few days ago New York Times columnist Paul Krugman announced that he was opening a Mastodon account “as a precaution against the possible Muskocalypse on this site.” Within a few hours Krugman posted an update, saying: “so far things are not going well on Mastodon. After the initial post, nothing I try to post is showing up. And despite setting it *not* to send an email every time someone follows me, it’s sending them. I hope these are just teething problems.”
What Krugman is saying is that not even his young, tech-savvy interns can figure out how to work Mastondon, since it’s very unlikely he’d even know how to login: “By 2005 or so, it will become clear that the Internet’s impact on the economy has been no greater than the fax machine’s.”
JIM TREACHER: Happy 80th Birthday, Joe! “It’s weird, though… The White House has barely even mentioned the happy occasion. Biden didn’t make any public appearances on his birthday, and he doesn’t really seem excited about it. Just last month, he said: ‘I can’t even say the age I am going to be. I can’t even get it out of my mouth.’ Sad emoji! Granted, these days there are a number of words Joe can’t get out of his mouth. But “eighty” seems fairly easy to pronounce, right?”
JOURNALISTS WANT TO RE-CREATE TWITTER ON MASTODON. MASTODON IS NOT INTO IT:
Unfortunately for some of the journalists who have joined the service, this mass-blocking (or “defederation”) approach is now being applied to them. A server that caters specifically to journalists was set up recently by Adam Davidson, creator of NPR’s Planet Money podcast. At last count, the server, called journa.host, had about thirteen hundred users, including some prominent journalists (and me). Earlier this week, a user of another network pointed out that about forty-five “instances” are blocking all content from members of journa.host.
Among the reasons given for blocking users from the server are that it is allegedly populated by “click-bait/tabloid journalists” who “can be expected to collect, search through, and misinterpret anything you say with the goal to share this publicly to an as big audience as possible, enabling hate and harassment to any one as long as it gives them clicks [sic].” Others who have blocked the server say that its members are likely to be “surveillance capitalists” or “mainstream propagandists.”
The administrator of an academic server wrote that the journa.host server is “willing to host some extremely scumbag journalist types and we don’t need to be on their radar.” Another said that “reporters mining social media for fodder without the authors’ knowledge or consent is a plague on every other social media platform, and I think [the Mastodon universe] should nip it in the bud.” (For the record, I’m aware that some users might think that what I’m doing with this article also fits that description.)
One journalist who is on Mastodon noted that there is also a cultural difference between the way people often behave on Twitter and expectations on Mastodon. “I’m seeing a clear signal that this is at least in part about norms and conduct,” he said, including “a legacy insistence on sharing your articles, live-posting breaking news, etc.” from journalists more used to Twitter. “That doesn’t fly here.” Despite attempts by Mastodon veterans to educate new users about these differences, he said, many journalists are “stomping around doing the same-old same-old.”
It’s hall monitor hell: Thread about activist (woke) journalists eating one another on Mastodon accidentally hilarious.
A CRIMINAL ORGANIZATION MASQUERADING AS A POLITICAL PARTY: All the best crooks are Democrats.
(Classical reference in headline.)
CHUCK SCHUMER FINALLY ADMITS IT: Democrats don’t want any real immigration law.
Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer made some startling admissions last week about his immigration views: “We have a population that is not reproducing on its own with the same level that it used to. The only way we’re going to have a great future in America is if we welcome and embrace immigrants, the Dreamers and all of them, because our ultimate goal is to help the Dreamers but to get a path to citizenship for all 11 million or however many undocumented there are here.”
The honesty was breathtaking. For so long, Schumer (D-NY) and his party have danced around the truth: They want to legalize anyone coming over our border for any reason.
Schumer wasn’t always this brazen about wanting open borders for all. In 2014, he bragged that President Barack Obama was serious about enforcing immigration law and had “deported more people than any other president.” Schumer used to at least mouth some lines about securing the border when pushing for legalization. No more.
That’s why it’s so important Americans know that the jig — the idea that Democrats want anything resembling reasonable immigration policies — is up. But it’s going to require Republicans putting on their big-boy pants and pointing it out.
Flashbacks:
—Twitchy, December 28, 2018.
● “Trump took to Twitter on Thursday to remind Democrats that even former President Barack Obama spoke out against illegal immigration. Trump dug up a 2011 tweet from former President Obama which said: ‘I strongly believe that we should take on, once and for all, the issue of illegal immigration.’ ‘I totally agree!’ Trump wrote, retweeting the former president.”
—The Daily Caller, December 27, 2018.
—Hot Air, October 30, 2018.
—Instapundit, January 31, 2017.
THE IGER SANCTION: Disney board boots CEO in overnight power play. “The end of Bob Chapek’s run as CEO of Disney came so suddenly and ignominiously that employees at first thought the e-mail announcement was a hack or a joke. Late last night, the board at the House of Mouse gave Chapek the boot only a few months after extending his contract through 2024. In his place, the board reinstalled former CEO Robert Iger, who never really left in the first place[.]”
November 20, 2022
I FEEL THE NEED…THE NEED FOR SPEED: Caroline Ellison, one of the central figures behind FTX’s collapse, previously tweeted that regularly using amphetamines made the ‘non-medicated’ life seem ‘dumb.’
UPDATE:
https://twitter.com/WallStreetSilv/status/1592638816866930688?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E1592638816866930688%7Ctwgr%5E727ea32345c607bf84d973d3451a4653befad250%7Ctwcon%5Es1_&ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Finstapundit.com%2F%3Fs%3Dbankman
LET’S GO BRANDON: The coming housing crisis.
JAS OBRECHT: The “Golden Era” of Guitar Player Magazine — Behind the Scenes at a Groundbreaking Music Magazine.
In April 1978 I sent my resume to Guitar Player magazine. At the time, I was living in a run-down neighborhood in Detroit and had been an editor at Gale Research Company for about a year. Every day, new magazines arrived at Gale, and during breaks I read every issue of Rolling Stone, Billboard, Cashbox, and my two favorites, Guitar Player and Living Blues. The front section of Guitar Player featured a column, Pro’s Reply, bylined by one of the magazine’s editors, Dan Forte. The column featured Dan’s photo in the heading, and every month he interviewed a famous or historically significant player. From 2,300 miles away, I thought he had the best gig in the world.
I desperately wanted out of Detroit. A deadly street gang, the Errol Flynns, were on the rise. From my front porch I could point up and down my street to where several murders had recently occurred. So I dutifully mailed my resume off to all of the magazines I’d been reading, along with copies of articles I’d written for Gale’s Contemporary Authors series on Jim Morrison, e.e. cummings, Mao Zedong, Christopher Lee, and others. With its small editorial staff of just Don Menn and three assistant editors, Guitar Player seemed like the longest shot of all.
A few days later, much to my surprise, I received a telephone call at work from GP’s office coordinator, Clara Erickson, asking if I’d be available to speak with Don Menn at 5:30 that afternoon. Dan Forte, she told me, had just parted ways with the magazine. “The drive home from downtown Detroit is really stressful,” I told Clara, “and I like to unwind by watching My Three Sons when I get home. Could he call a half-hour later?”
When he came back from lunch, Don asked Clara, “Did you get ahold of that Obrecht guy?” Clara responded, “You’re not gonna believe this, Don. He asked if you could call a half-hour later so he could watch My Three Sons.” Don, bless his heart, reportedly quipped, “Oh, my God. He has a sense of humor – let’s hire him!” They arranged for me to fly out for a meeting at their offices in Cupertino, California, a few days later.
If you were a fan of the magazine (I’m pretty sure I had every issue from about 1983 to 1991 or so), read the whole thing.
MARK JUDGE: Culture, Country and Honor Really Do Matter. This New Film Shows Us Why.
The Banshees of Inisherin, the great new film from writer/director Martin McDonagh, is superficially about a broken friendship. The plot involves two old friends, one of whom decides he doesn’t want to talk to the other anymore. Their collapsed friendship has been described as a metaphor for Ireland during that country’s civil war in 1923, the year the film is set.
This is true up to a point, but the critics have missed what I think is the deeper meaning of this fine movie. The Banshees of Inisherin is a film about the dishonor of those who sit out the battles, both literal and cultural, that define their times.
The story: Colm Doherty (Brendan Gleeson), a man in his mid 60s, has stopped talking to his younger friend Pádraic Súilleabháin (Colin Farrell), with whom he had been friends for twenty years. Colm describes Pádraic as a “nice guy” who is nevertheless “dull.” Colm wants to spend whatever time he has left on Inisherin, the small island off the coast of western Ireland, trying to compose a song on his fiddle. He’s trying to do something that will outlast him. The rest is blarney.
Read the whole thing.