OPEN THREAD: Monday, Monday.
Author Archive: Glenn Reynolds
February 10, 2025
MY NEW YORK POST COLUMN: Incompetent or crooked? Elon Musk exposing Washington’s rotten system. “Generally, when auditors find that an organization’s accounting system makes errors easy to commit and difficult to spot, they assume the system is designed that way because it is intended to facilitate fraud.”
METAPHOR ALERT: NASA expects to continue using electric vans it acquired to transport astronauts to the pad for Artemis missions even though the vehicles’ manufacturer has gone out of business. They should last quite a while; it’s not like they’re getting much use.
WELL, GOOD: Radical Study Proposes a Single Cause to Explain Alzheimer’s Disease. Let’s get to a cure.
CHANGE: Trump’s all-out assault on woke is tearing down the left’s cultural sway. “The right just experienced its best three weeks in the culture war in 50 years.”
Related: The country has what can only be described as “bullshit fatigue.”
HOW IT’S GOING:
CNN: "We're living in a different world… 70% of Americans say Trump is doing what he promised to do."
Incredible.
pic.twitter.com/V0eAkwexji— Benny Johnson (@bennyjohnson) February 10, 2025
GOOD QUESTION: Canned foods are convenient, affordable and nutritious. Why do they have a bad reputation? “Canned foods are not the villains they’re made out to be. These pantry staples are affordable, nutrient-rich and exceptionally convenient. They have a long shelf life, provide great value and can be a lifesaver when you’re scrambling to figure out what’s for dinner on a hectic weeknight. Of course, there are some caveats to consider when selecting canned foods, but if you shop wisely, they can be a powerful asset in your kitchen.”
I think it’s because they’re too dead-center middle class, associated with 1950s housewifery which we’re supposed to hate.
HYBRIDS, NOT E.V.s, ARE THE FUTURE: Subaru Has Two New Hybrids—and It’s Only Getting Started.
ELON’S A BUSY MAN:
BREAKING: A group of investors led by Elon Musk have made a $97 billion bid for control of OpenAI, according to Elon's lawyer Marc Toberoff – WSJ
Elon: “It’s time for OpenAI to return to the open-source, safety-focused force for good it once was,” he said in a statement provided… pic.twitter.com/XPnusA9S1L
— Sawyer Merritt (@SawyerMerritt) February 10, 2025
WELL, I’M CERTAINLY NOT GOING THERE IN PERSON: Exploring Venus may require exotic tech like balloons and ‘aerobots.’
THIS IS A FOLK TREATMENT I’D NEVER HEARD OF: Human breast milk found to enhance corneal healing in new research.
Years ago, a young patient’s mother told Emily McCourt, MD, associate professor of ophthalmology at the University of Colorado School of Medicine, that she hadn’t used a prescribed ointment to treat her baby’s chemical corneal burn but instead used her own breast milk.
“I remember thinking, ‘Well, that’s interesting because this patient looks amazing,” McCourt recalls. “Then, I thought about all my patients who said they’ve used breast milk in their baby’s eyes for blocked tear ducts and rashes. There was a real opportunity to look into what was happening and why.”
Interesting.
THE DEEP STATE IS REAL, BUT IT’S NOT ALL THAT SPECTACULAR:
On the one hand it's hilarious and pathetic – but on the other it's incredibly instructive – that US corporate media continues to refer to propaganda outlets funded by USAID as "independent media."
Trump and Musk attack "independent media"! (by cutting their US Govt funding). https://t.co/IHoOGIK0nh
— Glenn Greenwald (@ggreenwald) February 10, 2025
More like pathetic and dishonest, and kinda cringey.
Related: Your Job Is to Push the Yes Button: The secretaries make the game clear.
Notice when a counter-argument doesn’t describe the argument: I refute (thing I will only vaguely reference). This mode of “argument” is somehow becoming the new normal, quickly.
A gaggle of former Secretaries of the Treasury — Robert Rubin, Lawrence Summers, Timothy Geithner, Jacob Lew and Janet Yellen — warn in the New York Times today that the President of the United States is interfering with the operations of the executive branch. No, really. It remains entirely true that warnings about the threat to “Our Democracy” are, in fact, warnings about the threat to Our Bureaucracy. Five people who’ve served at the top levels of the federal government can’t produce one clear and reasonable premise between them.
They just want the money to go to their crowd, because it always has and they feel entitled to it.
The administrative state is impartial, honest, accurate, and pure. “Civil servants” are good; political people are bad. But this is how Article II begins: “The executive Power shall be vested in a President of the United States of America.” Our entire system of government is premised on the authority of people who, having been elected to office, are accountable to be the people of the country for their choices. A function of government that “has historically been operated by a very small group of nonpartisan career civil servants”: not present in the Constitution. Prove otherwise, if you’d like to try. Show me the authority of that “very small group of nonpartisan career civil servants” in Article II, and tell me exactly where to find it.
Five former senior government officials, feeling themselves wonderfully virtuous, have casually upended the entire American system of government without noticing that they’ve done it. Dire warning: The President of the United States is acting like he’s in charge of the executive branch.
More reason to abolish the civil service.
Related: Smashing the ‘rice bowls’ — how elites are lashing out at Trump and Musk’s reforms.
THE E.V. BUBBLE CONTINUES TO DEFLATE: The EV transition hits some snags at Porsche and Audi.
EVs are cool in some respects, but most people rationally don’t want them. And broad adoption would require more electrical generation capacity than greens can tolerate.
VINAY PRASAD: NIH reduced indirects from 60+% to 15%: 10 things you should know. “You might not realize that when the National Institutes of Health gives out grants, it also pays the institution getting the grant with ‘indirects’, which can be used for any purpose. That means if 100 dollars is paid to the individual grant recipient, 60 dollars or more may be paid to the university. For some facilities it is 90 (see links below). This is obviously money that can’t be spent on more grants. . . . The NIH is now in line with many philanthropic associations that cap indirects at 10-15%. See below. This is widely considered acceptable by universities.”
YOU WOULD NEED A HEART OF STONE NOT TO LAUGH:
Tens of thousands of angry liberals in D.C. had to drive to work today for the first time in four years, and their seething rage at having to go to work—for Donald Trump!—is making me laugh so hard.
— Sean Davis (@seanmdav) February 10, 2025
Related:
Joe Biden's final jobs report is out and it's a doozy.
– 589,000 jobs revised into oblivion
– 70% of jobs created in the government sector
– 99.2% of jobs going to foreign-born workersThis is the mess they’re handing Donald Trump. pic.twitter.com/zUmz4pfBKU
— Peter St Onge, Ph.D. (@profstonge) February 10, 2025
NOT FADE AWAY: James Lileks on Buddy Holly.
GABBY GIFFORDS’ STAFF forgot to turn off replies before putting up an idiotic post.
RACIST, SCHMACIST: After objecting to schools’ ‘equity’ programs, liberal parents attacked, called ‘racist.’ Nowadays if they’re calling you racist, it usually just means they’re defending some sort of grift or graft.
IN SOME WAYS, CHANGING THIS CALCULUS WILL DO MORE GOOD THAN ANYTHING:
The calculus for joining government is radically changing. The promise of gaining control of enormous dark money government slush funds and routing them to your friends who stand up totally vague and nebulous NGOs that then launder the money back to you and your other friends, is…
— Tyler Winklevoss (@tyler) February 9, 2025
CDR SALAMANDER: 21-Days of Trump Chapter 2: How is Everyone Holding Up? Not we Americans…but the rest of the world. “Our poll of 28,549 people across 24 countries revealed four things. First, Europeans are almost alone in mourning Trump’s election. . . . The USA is EU-positive, which is something that the Europeans should leverage. Instead they seem intent on making problems with the relationship—something that does not help either party. The media and ruling class still get their view of the USA from the New York Times and Washington Post—and their derivatives—and it shows. People in the USA who only have those news sources hate their own country, so this is no shock.”
Related:
HOW BUREAUCRATS THINK ABOUT ACCOUNTABILITY: “Elon Musk and DOGE are doing what amounts to a comprehensive audit of the federal government, and it is driving the Democrats nuts. This is, of course, because the federal budget is their piggy bank that funds both the leftists themselves and all their evil plans.”
IT’S AMAZING HOW FAST THEY’VE COLLAPSED ONCE THE MONEY SPIGOT WAS CLOSED:
Today, the entire local opposition called for a massive demonstration against mining.
Every political party joined the call, along with 90% of all NGOs, universities, churches, and activist groups. They ran a month-long mainstream media and social media campaign, had the backing… pic.twitter.com/y6UJrtWF19
— Nayib Bukele (@nayibbukele) February 9, 2025
If your ministry has to close down after state funding dries up, it's not a "ministry," it's a state church. https://t.co/yNiKarMLkG
— @instapundit (@instapundit) February 10, 2025
It’s as if the global left was always a sham. I’m reminded of after the fall of the Soviet Union, when all sorts of “grassroots” “popular rebellions” disappeared overnight once the outside funding stopped.
GOOD: The Supreme Court’s SFFA Decision Has Caused An Unprecedented Shift In Law School Admissions. Proof that they were discriminating according to race before.