CDR SALAMANDER: The German Elections: Take the Win.
Author Archive: Glenn Reynolds
February 24, 2025
ICYMI: MY LATEST SUBSTACK ESSAY: Let’s Go Privateering! An old idea gets new enthusiasm.
Plus Grok Image Generator’s delightful idea of what a modern privateer might look like.
YES:
“They are profoundly aware that they MUST act fast and with some degree of ferocity, even recklessness, else we will default back to the status quo of leaders who pretend to be in charge while the embedded system runs things behind the scenes.” All of this👇👇 https://t.co/D6IAg56aRQ
— Randy Barnett (@RandyEBarnett) February 23, 2025
RCP AVERAGE: “Right Track” numbers surge upward.
MEGAN MCARDLE: Academia Finally Got Schooled: Universities, colleges took prestige and public support for granted. Now they are paying the price.
The left, not the right, picked this fight. Too many institutions set themselves up as the “Resistance” to Trump and tried to make a lot of mainstream political opinions anathematic, while expecting to be protected from backlash by principles such as academic freedom that they were no longer honoring. This was politically naive and criminally stupid for institutions that rely so heavily on U.S. taxpayer support. . . .
By presenting their expertise as part of a political fight, academics were not only squandering their credibility. They were asking to be treated like political adversaries. And in a real political fight, the ability to get your opponent’s journal article retracted is way less important than his ability to cut off your supply lines.
This danger has been evident for years, yet when I asked academics if this was really wise, most were curiously oblivious to the risks. Though they complained about stingy state legislatures and meddling Republican politicians, many bizarrely took them as evidence that there was little cost to politicizing academia — essentially, “They’re already attacking us, so there’s no point in trying to placate them.” They did not seem to grasp how much worse it could get.
Fundamentally, they took their prestige and public support for granted and seemed unable to imagine a world where the word “education” no longer conjured reverent deference among most of the population. Like children throwing rocks from an overpass, they felt protected by their elevated position, assuming their targets could do little but yell back. They weren’t expecting one of the drivers to get out of the car and grab a baseball bat from the trunk.
It’s not like they weren’t warned.
Plus: “The institutional left can’t control what Republicans do. It can only control its own behavior. And that behavior, however well-intentioned, was reckless in the extreme.” I’m not convinced that the behavior was at all well-intentioned, but sure.
ANDY KESSLER: The You-Do Economy: Self-service may seem inconvenient, but it’s a new frontier of individualism.
Inside View: Columnist Andy Kessler speculates on issues including earnings at Apple, AI at Google, weight loss drugs including Ozempic, the rise of the humanoid robots like Tesla’s Optimus, and arguably the biggest question of all: Is Snoop Dogg overexposed? Photo: Cfoto/Zuma Press/Chris Pizzello/AP
It started slowly. We dial our own phone numbers instead of an operator. We pump our own gasoline (except in New Jersey). With pensions phasing out, most of us plan for our own retirement and trade our own stocks. I call it the You Do Economy.
Technology, which eats people, replacing low-end jobs, has turned this trend into a runaway train. We use self-checkout lines at grocery stores. Airlines prefer if we check in ourselves and either show or print our own boarding passes. Airline kiosks spit out baggage tags that often take a doctorate to figure out how to attach. Hotels want us to check in and out ourselves (though I always forget to print out the bill so I can expense it). Need customer service? Forget it. Read the FAQ. Or go watch a video on YouTube. Else we’re on hold for 45 minutes, minimum.
We are almost forced to buy clothes and shoes online. Physical stores don’t stock the quantity or variety of Amazon and other sellers. Then, of course, we have to haul ourselves to Whole Foods, Staples or UPS with our returns—lugging with us five boxes of uncomfortable sneakers.
We swipe our own credit card to pay—cash is almost dead. Even worse, restaurants don’t bother with menus (remember when Covid spread via paper?). Instead, we scan QR codes and squint at menus on our phones. We’re asked to tip at counter-service restaurants.
Is that it? Heck no. People used to rely on editors to fact-check or amend the record. Now on X and most recently Facebook, we get “community notes,” which are corrections done by, you guessed it, you and me! Artificial intelligence could do the fact checking, but, no, it hallucinates so bad we’re forced to question everything it comes up with.
We have to install our own updates, and we’re even subject to buggy beta software, so we have to find all the problems instead of quality-assurance teams doing the job. We install a dozen streaming services instead of the old cable feed. Changing shows means almost acrobatic precision presses on our remote.
We do our own taxes, even though the Internal Revenue Service has virtually all our financial information already. We need to be our own health advocates. All this takes more time, and time is money. It’s unpaid work for all of us.
If we abolished the Income Tax, or replaced it with a flat tax or the Fair Tax, that would help with the tax issue. As for the other stuff, some of it brings more choice, but some of it is just a way of exporting costs to customers.
HARSH, BUT FAIR:
Hey Patty, where are your posts defending coal miners, natural gas technicians, and other blue collar workers in the energy field? https://t.co/nd3oHTP2IZ
— The🐰FOO (@PolitiBunny) February 23, 2025
AND IT”S GLORIOUS: Matt Taibbi: Trump is Trolling the AP. “People are claiming the White House is bullying the AP, repeating the saw that Trump is telling them ‘what words to use.’ If you don’t see the irony, you’ve never used the AP stylebook.”
BRINGING BIGOTRY AND ANTI-SEMITISM TO ACCOUNT: George Washington University Retaliated Against Jewish Students Who Lodged Anti-Semitism Complaint, Federal Probe Finds.
Every successful system accumulates parasites. American academia has been very successful for a long time.
February 23, 2025
HOW’S IT GOING?
Voters are mostly liking what they see in the first month of the new presidency. By 57/43 voters say Trump doing a better job than Biden in advance look at poll coming out Monday.
Job approval at 52 but closing the border, cutting waste are hugely popular. So is resetting merit…
— Mark Penn (@Mark_Penn) February 23, 2025
TELL THE THEATER KIDS WHO SEEM TO RUN THE BUREAUCRACY TO SIT DOWN AND SHUT UP: An upside-down American flag flew over Yosemite National Park yesterday, as the park plummets into ruin because of Orange Hitler’s fascist plan to make the federal government somewhat smaller. “So the number of employees who run the park and serve visitors has PLUMMETED from about 1,151 to about 1,140, with NPS staffing falling from about 451 to about 440. It’s like we don’t even have a national park there anymore, Hitler Hitler Hitler. Eleven actual employees have been laid off, in a savage Nazi assault on the very concept of public parks. These numbers show that Yosemite National Park has been ruined, and everything has gone straight to hell, and the park is under attack.”
OPEN THREAD: Ring out the weekend.
OPENING A BIG GAP IN DAYTIME RADIO: Trump names Dan Bongino as Deputy FBI Director.
The press will say “Trump appointed a talk show host,” but Bongino has a lot of law enforcement experience and a lot of knowledge of high-level Washington.
🚨BREAKING: President Trump names Dan Bongino as Deputy Director of the FBI. pic.twitter.com/bzS5102DBz
— Benny Johnson (@bennyjohnson) February 24, 2025
MY LATEST SUBSTACK ESSAY: Let’s Go Privateering! An old idea gets new enthusiasm.
Plus Grok Image Generator’s delightful idea of what a modern privateer might look like.
SCIENCE, UNSETTLED: We’ve Been Misreading a Major Law of Physics For Almost 300 Years.
THE LEGAL ACADEMY IS NOT COVERING ITSELF WITH GLORY THESE DAYS:
Stevie's statement in that clip is all the funnier when put in the context of his "areas of expertise": pic.twitter.com/LR5qc5EhVe
— Progressing California (@ProgressingCali) February 22, 2025
CHICKS DIG BAD BOYS: At the Courthouse With Luigi Mangione’s ‘Fangirls.’
Jeffrey Dahmer got fan mail from women. Why should this guy be any different? Is it really about politics, or just atavistic lust for a killer?
Women love killers.
The original, real, gender roles were that women gave life (birth, the gardens) and men took it (hunting, war).
If you cut through a LOT of nonsense, these archetypes ("fertile," "my protector") aren't unpopular today!
Am I kidding here? https://t.co/OV78nXZL0x
— Wilfred Reilly (@wil_da_beast630) February 23, 2025
WE CAN HOPE: Ilya Shapiro: Is DEI about to die? His book came out just in time!
ROGER KIMBALL: The Three Amigos Give a Progress Report.
EVERYTHING IS GOING SWIMMINGLY IN NEWSOM’S CALIFORNIA: Feb. 25-26 California Bar Exam Is In Shambles: Free July Exams Offered To All 5,600 Registrants If They Bail Or Fail.