EVERY SUCCESSFUL SYSTEM ACCUMULATES PARASITES, AND SCIENCE HAS BEEN A SUCCESSFUL SYSTEM: Scientists warn: Declining academic standards mixed with DEI a recipe for disaster.

HISTORY OF HATE: A history of Students for Justice in Palestine, the anti-Israel group behind recent campus controversy.

MARTYR? HE DIED OF OLD AGE, THE DICTATOR OF A SLAVE STATE. High School Holds Candlelight Vigil for ‘Martyr’ Fidel Castro. “Cuba is a mess from which people flee on cobbled-together floating deathtraps, and if these kids had gotten a decent education, they would know that.”

Public schooling isn’t working out.

TAKE A LONG MARCH OFF A SHORT PIER: Jamaal Bowman Says He Takes ‘Marching Orders’ From Activist Group Working To Defund Police.

GOOD: Gosnell documentary duo strike gold with DC climate trial ‘verbatim podcast.’

DON SURBER: Why I will root for the Chiefs: A leftist’s racist attack on a 9-year-old boy cannot stand.

MARK JUDGE: The Private Eye and the Senate’s Gay Porn Star: Standing outside the circle of retribution.

THEY’VE BEEN TAUGHT TO: Why Do So Many Young Americans Hate Israel? Of course, college students have a history of idiocy on foreign affairs: “In 1934, 25,000 American college students took part in a one-hour walkout from classes to demonstrate their opposition to U.S. involvement in any war. The strike mushroomed to 175,000 participants in 1935, then 500,000 in 1936— nearly half the national college student population. The student antiwar movement began to crack when communist-aligned students changed their position—again and again—not as a result of studying the facts but out of obedience to their party. For them, ignorance was indeed bliss.”

FDR had the guts to call them idiots. Biden doesn’t, but then, his brain isn’t hitting on all cylinders either.

WHERE LEFTISTS RULE, SO DOES HATE: Britain’s Jews Are Being Terrorized.

WHY IS HIGHER EDUCATION SUCH A CESSPIT OF HATE? Missouri Student Pleads Guilty for Damaging Display Supporting Israeli Hostages.

PAUL CARON: Taylor, Travis, And Taxes: Addressing The Environmental Cost Of Private Jet Travel.

TO BE FAIR, IT’S MEANT TO: Joe Biden’s war on fossil fuels is hurting America.

When Joe Biden assumed office in 2021, the progressive press hoped, as the LA Times crowed, that he would “turn America into California again”. To the great loss of America, the West and, of course, Californians, he is living up to this credo in spectacular fashion.

California’s last two large oil producers, ExxonMobil and Chevron, this week announced a combined $5 billion in write-offs of their assets in the state.

The Golden State once boasted a giant fossil fuel industry, but climate hysteria has been the state religion for almost two decades. Not long ago, California was home to a host of top 10 energy firms — in 1970 ARCO, Getty Oil, Union Oil, Oxy and Chevron constituted the five largest industrial companies in the state. Now only Chevron, which has been reducing its headcount in northern California and is clearly shifting its emphasis to Texas, remains.

This predicament can’t be blamed on California running out of oil and gas; some estimates of the state’s oil and gas reserves are considerably larger than those of Texas. Monterey shale, located under the state’s economically struggling midsection, holds almost two-thirds of the nation’s total supply of shale oil. Tapping this source, one USC study notes, could bring as many as 500,000 new jobs to the state in a matter of years.

But such palatable returns do not mean much to the state’s powerful environmental lobby. California regulations have managed to cut production by more than half in less than 30 years. In the Golden State, this ban threatens to eliminate an industry that, according to a 2019 report from the Los Angeles Economic Development Corporation, amounted to 152,000 direct jobs, as well as an additional 213,000 related jobs. Nearly half those jobs comprise black, Asian, or Latino workers.

California reflects the kind of mindset that has captured the Biden administration. Just two years ago the bond firm Pimco predicted that America was about to seize “energy dominance”. But White House officials are so soaked in green ideology that they have abandoned the basic logic of geopolitics, according to which energy is power.

The other possibility is that they intend the likely and foreseeable consequences of their actions.

OPEN THREAD: Be here now.

THE NEW SPACE RACE: Final preparations underway for launch of first Intuitive Machines lunar lander.

YEP:

The enemy is learning. If the Houthis get enough free throws they'll eventually score a point.https://t.co/rCl0EGhtbG

— wretchardthecat (@wretchardthecat) January 31, 2024

HMM: Even More Evidence That Alzheimer’s Was Being Spread by Now-Banned Injections. “The practice of injecting children with growth hormone extracted from the brains of deceased people was abandoned long ago – with good reason.”

IT WOULD TAKE A HEART OF STONE NOT TO LAUGH: Inside the meltdown at The Messenger: Out-of-touch brass, outraged staffers and pure pandemonium.

JOHN HINDERAKER: Leftists firebombed my office last Saturday night. “This photo shows what the corridor outside my office looks like. . . . I am working with the FBI to try to identify the perpetrators. As I told them, the list of potential suspects is long, as my organization is active, and unusually effective, across a broad range of issues. I will have more to say about this before long.”

SPACE: Cygnus spacecraft arrives at space station with 8,200 pounds of cargo.

MUCH LIKE AMERICANS’ SAVINGS IN THE BIDEN ERA: Moonquake Alert – The Moon Is Shrinking, Causing Landslides and Seismic Shaking.

CYCLE OF MISERY: The Business of Building Commercial Aircraft.

Predictably, the incident triggered a new round of discussion about the decline of Boeing as an aircraft manufacturer. Nearly every source points to the same instigating event: the 1997 merger with McDonnell-Douglas, which changed Boeing from an engineering-driven company focused on building the best airplanes possible to one which focused overwhelmingly on financials and stock price.

As far as I can tell, this characterization is accurate. And yet it misses a big part of the picture: the brutal structure of the commercial aircraft industry that drives companies like Boeing to create things like the 737 MAX (an update to a 50-year-old airplane) instead of creating a new model from scratch. By unpacking how the commercial aircraft industry works, we can better understand Boeing’s behavior.

Interesting analysis.

BUT IT’S FUN TO BUY GEAR: Stop being a gear-acquisition guy and learn to shoot better instead.

Good advice, though. I’ve been more diligent in my practice in recent years, and I’ve gotten better.

YOU CAN PREVENT CARJACKINGS AND AUTO THEFT: BMW Adds Manual Transmission Option for 2025 Z4 M40i.

ALSO LESS NONCOMPLIANCE, I SUPPOSE: Injected antipsychotics may be more effective against schizophrenia than pills.

THE NEW SPACE RACE: Starlab signs deal with SpaceX to lift private space laboratory into orbit.