I’M NOT EXPECTING AN EARTH-SHATTERING KABOOM: NASA awards grants to 5 universities for quiet supersonic overflight education plans.

WAIT, ALL THE BEST PEOPLE TOLD ME IT WAS ALWAYS GOOD FOR YOU: Risk of heart attack, stroke rises with more frequent use of marijuana.

JESSE SINGAL: If You Can’t See That Adam Rubenstein Was Treated Unfairly, You’re Being A Jerk.

What happened to Adam Rubenstein was, in fact, quite bad! At least by the standards of negative outcomes for someone who was in a very privileged position. He’s not a war orphan, but he did experience a pretty harrowing smearing in part because his own colleagues flew entirely off the rails. And if you look at the subset of those colleagues who are tweeting openly about all this, you’re just not seeing much remorse or reflection. Some of them are claiming that it was Rubenstein who did the smearing because of an unconvincing demand for a correction issued on Twitter by Edward Wong, a Times reporter Rubenstein criticized in his piece.1 If you’re worried about smearing, maybe raise your voice a bit when your own outlet is melting down? A lot of this concern for exacting journalistic standards seems sudden and opportunistic — where was it a few years ago?

Many journalists are exhibiting a complete lack of empathy here. I can already hear their rebuttals — something something THERE ARE WARS GOING ON AND CIVILIANS ARE DYING AND YOU’RE WRITING ABOUT A SINGLE JOURNALIST? — but that’s silly. Setting aside the fact that the people making this argument will then turn around and spend half a day ranting about a headline that doesn’t sufficiently bash Donald Trump (even though CHILDREN ARE DYING), there just have to be some standards within the halls of journalism’s most exalted institutions. If the supposed best journalists in the country care this little about the truth, and about fair and accurate reporting, what kind of message does that send?

A truthful one.

HOLLYWOOD IS GARBAGE: Video: Rapaport Oscar Skit Rips Hollywood’s Silence on Israeli Hostages.

STANDING UP AGAINST RACISM AND BIGOTRY: Wisconsin student pushes back against ‘blatantly anti-white’ assignment.

WHY ARE WE SUPPORTING HIGHER ED SO EXPENSIVELY WHEN IT’S SUCH A CESSPIT OF HATE? Building evacuated as angry mob of Berkeley students violently shuts down Jewish event: ‘Dirty Jew.’

MY LATEST SUBSTACK ESSAY: Some Parts of America Still Work. Hint: They’re not in the government or academic worlds.

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YEP: Red China Isn’t ‘Back’ Under Xi Jinping. It Never Went Away.

A CLUE AS TO WHAT’S WRONG WITH AI: “High-quality data means a combination of sources such as Wikipedia, the news, code, scientific papers, books, social media conversations, filtered web pages, and user-generated content, such as that from Reddit.”

Well, that plus the deliberate lying.

And this is interesting: “We should expect closer scrutiny on the antitrust issues raised by exclusive access to expensive sources of data such as Reddit and Elsevier. Large tech companies, with their vast resources and access to enormous datasets, will further entrench their market positions, making it difficult for smaller entities to compete.”

YOU HAD ONE JOB, GOOGLE: More Google Shenanigans. “Google is a propaganda machine masquerading as a search engine. . . . As with Google Gemini, some patient internet sleuths have poked around to see how Google answers questions in order to see just how biased it is. In most cases, Google stacks the algorithm to ensure you get the kind of answers they prefer you see, but in at least a few they simply ignore your question and return results that are to a question you didn’t even ask.”

THE ENEMY WITHIN: Police Groups Slam Biden Judicial Pick for Ties to Group That Celebrated Cop Killers as Freedom Fighters: Adeel Mangi is already under fire for work with an anti-Israel think tank.

STEPHEN HALBROOK: Second Amendment Roundup: Cargill Bump Stock Argument in Supreme Court.

NICE THAT SOMEONE IS NOTICING: Judge: Feds Used ‘Selective Prosecution’ Against Conservatives, Ignored Antifa. “A judge in California threw out charges against two far-right political agitators, saying the federal government engaged in ‘selective prosecution’ by charging right-wing rioters but not the far-left agitators they fought against, and who did the exact same thing.”

EVERYTHING IS GOING SWIMMINGLY: Liberal Pundits Debate Biden Replacement Schemes.

DO WE NEED MORE LAWS IN SPACE? Don Surber: “The answer is a Little Red Hen no. The government did not build it, therefore, the government does not own it.”

RIGGED: More Election Rigging: Biden Admin Now Using Financial Aid to Pay Students to Aid Voting.

MATT TAIBBI: I Wrote What? Google’s AI-Powered Libel Machine: Misadventures in Gemini, Google’s dystopian deep-slander invention.

OPEN THREAD: Share important knowledge.

MY LATEST SUBSTACK ESSAY: Some Parts of America Still Work. Hint: They’re not in the government or academic worlds.

As always, if you like it, please take out a paid subscription.

RIGGED: Trump is disqualified from Illinois ballot, judge rules.

THE NEW SPACE RACE: Rocket Lab pushing for first Neutron launch in 2024.

SUSTAINED SMALL CHANGES ARE BETTER THAN CRASH DIETS: Scientists Urge People To Think Twice Before Going on a Diet.

ANTHROMORPHIZE HARDER: Destined to Die, Odysseus Moon Lander Stoically Sends Back Its First Grainy Pics.

Alternate headline: Probe designed to last until next lunar night works as planned.

MARK JUDGE: In Defense of Affirmation. “Lack of affirmation is a serious problem in modern culture, and a more complex issue than people think.”

THE SUPREME COURT IS NOT SUPPOSED TO BE A WISH-FULFILLMENT DEVICE: Female law professor breaks down crying while working on constitutional law syllabus because conservatives now win cases at the Supreme Court.