OUR POLITICAL CLASS WOULD LIKE TO JAIL MUSK JUST FOR OPPOSING THEM, AND EVEN MORE FOR MOCKING THEM: Is Durov a New Assange? Or Is Musk the Next Durov? The Durov Affair reveals that society is shifting from “a revolt of the public” to a digital “big state.”

BOB GRABOYES: The Super-Definitive Ranking of Presidents: A 100% totally Scientific™ cost-benefit analysis of all 45 U.S. presidents. “Two recent BW posts (“Polls, Pols, and Poli-Sci” and “Presidential Prodigiousness Potpourri”) lambasted the Bizarro World of presidential rankings from the 2024 Presidential Greatness Project Expert Survey. Some of the more ludicrous findings are summarized/caricatured in the graphic above. Several readers asked me to offer my own rankings. I can’t do a 1-through-45 list, but I can lump them into five tiers: (T#1) highly positive, (T#2) somewhat positive, (T#3) neutral, (T#4) somewhat negative, and (T#5) highly negative.”

#JOURNALISM:

Kamala is clearly reading notes for many questions from @DanaBashCNN.

Why is this important?

She had the questions prior to this interview, crafted notes with staff/experts, and is still struggling.

This is hard to watch. Wow.#KamalaAndTim

— Kimberly Klacik (@kimKBaltimore) August 30, 2024

UPDATE:

She committed a coup against her own running mate and sitting President.

She looks tired and soulfully corrupted.

Her look and shaky voice in this interview shows it all. pic.twitter.com/OaCyd2Po5C

— Benny Johnson (@bennyjohnson) August 30, 2024

DANA: Trump suggested you happened to turn black recently for political purposes..

KAMALA: "Next question, please." pic.twitter.com/kb9niY58oj

— Benny Johnson (@bennyjohnson) August 30, 2024

DANA: "You had said that you and your wife used IVF but it turned out you used a different kind of fertility in order to have children."

WALZ: "I certainly own my mistakes when I make em.. I think people know who I am." pic.twitter.com/jWPmSXsH2I

— Benny Johnson (@bennyjohnson) August 30, 2024

DANA: "You said you carried weapons in war but you have never deployed actually in a war zone."

WALZ: "The one thing I'm never going to do is.. I'll never demean another member's service."

WOW. pic.twitter.com/9vUQnIv29u

— Benny Johnson (@bennyjohnson) August 30, 2024

OPEN THREAD: Party on, dudes and dudettes.

LEADERSHIP:

What we’ve learned from Biden’s tenure is that apparently it’s an option to just not have a president. We’d always imagined that the presidency is a rather essential job. I guess not. We can go 4 years without one. Maybe that should be an option on the ballot in future elections.

— Matt Walsh (@MattWalshBlog) August 29, 2024

It's pretty weird to be in a world where the US president, not just AF1 is missing; where Russia is being bombarded daily and the British PM has nothing better to do than gaol people who write mean Facebook posts.

— wretchardthecat (@wretchardthecat) August 29, 2024

GREAT! NOW GO TO ORBIT: Blue Origin successfully completes 8th manned New Shepard space tourism flight.

HMM: Common Blood Pressure Drug Extends Lifespan And Slows Aging in Animals.

NANOTECHNOLOGY UPDATE: New Nanoparticle Cancer Treatment Successfully Shrinks and Eliminates Pancreatic Tumors.

IT’S A SHAME: Listeria outbreak: As deaths rise, repeated health violations linked to Boar’s Head facility.

LEXUS MAKES GREAT CARS, BUT NOT EXCIITING ONES: Lexus Said It Found Its Mojo By Studying European Rivals’ Driving Experiences.

#SCIENCE: Flawed Anti-Hunting/Anti-Gun Study Got the Headlines JAMA Wanted.

THE FUTURE: After AGI and After the Singularity There Will Be a Computronium Universe.

Perhaps our universe is a simulation running in someone else’s computronium universe.

SEEMS LIKE AN ENDLESS CHORE: New Sisyphus Cooling Technique.

BOEING TAKE NOTE: New algorithms could enhance autonomous spacecraft safety.

IT’S ALWAYS IN THE LAST PLACE YOU LOOK: Scientists discover a long-sought global electric field on Earth.

COLOR ME UNSURPRISED: Study: Recreational drug use triples odds of repeat heart emergencies.

MARK JUDGE: Exploding the Left’s ‘Language Virus’ with William S. Burroughs.

HMM: Fifth Circuit’s Won’t Revisit Its Earlier Precedent Holding Illegal Aliens Lack Second Amendment Rights.

Full opinion here.

THEY’RE JUST ANOTHER ARM OF THE MACHINE, AND SHOULD BE TREATED THAT WAY: Corporate Media Partnered with DNC to Smother Dissent at Convention.

WHICH MAKES CALLS FOR “GENDER JUSTICE” RATHER PROBLEMATIC: International ‘equity’ scholars can’t define ‘gender’ after 5 years of research.

CHANGE: DC suburbs now allow MAGA.

HIGHER EDUCATION BUBBLE UPDATE: U of Wisconsin offers LGBT courses on ‘Queering Ecofeminism’ and ‘performance activism.’

KIRA DAVIS: Does It Matter If Kamala Is Really Black Or Not?

Trump has been suggesting Kamala Harris isn’t really a Black woman, or at least doesn’t identify as one. Naturally left-wingers are deeply offended by this line of questioning, and view it as yet another racial aggression from the WORLD’S WORST PERSON™. There are plenty of conservatives who are also uncomfortable with Trump’s questions about Kamala’s race. Some say it’s a distraction. Some say it’s Trump’s ego clouding his judgement. Some say he needs to stop obsessing about this meaningless issue because it makes him look petty and unstable.

There’s something I’ve learned to do with Trump when he utters uncomfortable things – which he does frequently. The instinct of the modern American, particularly in the intellectual class, is to clutch one’s pearls and declare the questionable utterances “unhelpful” or “Trump’s ego in action.” It can end there, if you let it. But I’ve learned to ask, “Is it true?”

Nine times out of ten, if you look past the uncomfortable bluntness of Donald Trump and just evaluate the thought he’s conveying, he is saying something true.

So, when I heard him being (seemingly) petty about Kamala’s race case, I first cringed and then asked, “Well, is it true? Does it matter if Kamala considers herself black or not?”

I’ve thought about that for a while now and I’ve come to the conclusion that, yes, it does matter. And yes, Trump is right to bring it up. . . . Trump’s point is that Harris never really identified as a Black woman before very recently. Critics says she was part of an HBCU and that’s proof enough of her identity claims, but even white people attend HBCUs.

He usually is. The pearl-clutching doesn’t come from any sort of decency or delicacy. It is a defensive mechanism to keep people from talking about things that undercut the narrative.

WHEN THE RULING CLASS ACTIVELY PROMOTES DECLINE:

Red Sea
Black Sea
South China Sea
Gaza Pier
Panama Canal
Baltimore Bridge
Navy shipbuilding delays
China's maritime dominance

Why do DC politicians, the DoD, and US media treat these as isolated incidents instead of symptoms of the systemic decay in American ocean influence?

— John Ʌ Konrad V (@johnkonrad) August 28, 2024

Related: Our Crisis of Institutional Competence.

UPDATE:

The fact that the US Navy seems to have entirely given up on securing access to the Suez Canal – only one of the top five or so strategic locations on Planet Earth – and nobody's gotten so much as a letter of reprimand over this strategic defeat is genuinely disturbing. pic.twitter.com/hT4J7oyzIY

— Armchair Warlord (@ArmchairW) August 29, 2024

NEITHER ONE CAN SPEAK COHERENTLY IN PUBLIC, WHICH IS A PROBLEM: White House Report Card: Biden, Harris hiding instead of building ‘Big Mo.’