SPOOK THEM HARDER: They Must Be Spooked: WI Supreme Court to Revisit Limited Drop Box Ruling.

GO AWAY, GRETA, YOUR 15 MINUTES ARE OVER. ALSO, YOU’RE A MORAL MONSTER.

Really neat how some 20-year-old singer is responsible for Israeli policy but Palestinians in Gaza are not responsible for anything Hamas does. https://t.co/rfkhqiYmyL

— Bonchie (@bonchieredstate) May 10, 2024

Related:

The Palestinians sent a contestant, but the timer went off early and they were no longer available.

— igK (@igKress) May 12, 2024

OPEN THREAD: Ring out the weekend.

THE NEW SPACE RACE: Lunar lander company ispace sees opportunities in Japan-U.S. Artemis agreement.

FISH HEADS, FISH HEADS, EAT THEM UP, YUM: Can Omega-3 Change the Way Children Think and Feel?

PROF. STEVEN CALABRESI: Judge Aileen Cannon is a Heroine: She is scheduled on June 21st to hear oral argument on whether special counsel Jack Smith was unconstitutionally appointed. “The liberal news media is full of false stories about how Judge Aileen Cannon of the United States District Court for the Southern District of Florida has delayed former President Donald Trump’s trial unnecessarily for allegedly mishandling classified documents. But, in fact, the Biden Administration and its Attorney General, Merrick Garland, are themselves to blame for the current delay. Special Counsel Jack Smith claims to be an inferior officer of the United States, but in fact he holds no such office. Smith is a mere employee of the Department of Justice, and he lacks the power to initiate prosecutions. Lucia v. Securities and Exchange Commission, 585 U.S. __ (2018) holds that only officers of the United States can take actions that affect the life, liberty, and property of citizens. Judge Cannon has asked for oral argument on June 21, 2024 on former President Donald Trump’s motion to dismiss Special Counsel Jack Smith’s indictment on the ground that Smith was unconstitutionally appointed to his current job because he is not an inferior officer.”

I MEAN, THE EVIDENCE IS ON HER SIDE:

I didn’t compare him to one. He IS one. https://t.co/LUqXuSjktV

— J.K. Rowling (@jk_rowling) May 12, 2024

JESSE WALKER: The Night I Asked ChatGPT How To Build a Bomb: Yes, you can trick the bot into giving you information it’s supposed to keep to itself. No, that isn’t something to worry about. “It didn’t occur to me to ask ChatGPT for a bomb recipe until I heard that ChatGPT would not give me a bomb recipe. That felt like a challenge.”

BOB GRABOYES: Five Lessons on the Nature of Pro-Hamas Students, Professors, and Administrators.

UPDATE (From Ed): Graboyes writes:

In sum, Michael Moore’s Weltanschauung rests on a taxonomy devised by 19th century German racists and discredited for nearly a century—but he apparently never bothered to read what those racists actually said about their taxonomy. By Michael Moore’s reasoning, Adolf Hitler would not qualify as antisemitic.

Flashback: Michael Moore, finding Minutemen in the very strangest places.

SELF-DEFENSE: Reloading On The Fly.

WOEING: NASA wants a cheaper Mars Sample Return—Boeing proposes most expensive rocket.

THIS SEEMS UNSURPRISING: Study finds poor muscle health is common in people living with obesity, increases risk of early death.

THE NEW SPACE RACE: NASA Administrator Bill Nelson to meet with partners in Italy, Vatican, Saudi Arabia.

WELL, GOOD: Oral rinse could identify bacteria linked to stomach cancers.

HIGHER EDUCATION BUBBLE UPDATE: Nearly Half of All Masters Degrees Aren’t Worth Getting: According to new research, 23 percent of bachelor’s degree programs and 43 percent of master’s degree programs have a negative ROI.

I have a nephew who became a welder instead of going to college. Now out of welding school, after only a couple of months he’s earning an hourly wage that equates to a six-figure income. He has $3000 of debt.

SHE’S RIGHT:

What kids actually need:

Less therapy, less tech, less diagnosis.

More time outside, exercise, independence, genuine freedom, more time with each other.

Higher expectations for their conduct and achievement.

And a focus on something other than their emotions! https://t.co/J6e49dLggv

— Abigail Shrier (@AbigailShrier) May 11, 2024

FIGHT THE POWER: Custodians’ union to sue Columbia, says didn’t protect staff from ‘bratty,’ ‘privileged’ protesters.

NOW THEY TELL US: NY Times Editorial Board: Cancel Culture Created the Campus Crisis.

HIGHER EDUCATION BUBBLE UPDATE:

Compare and contrast @Wharton @UofPenn response to protesters’ calls for the genocide of Jews, a global intifada, and the encampment with the faculty’s response to the removal of LGBTQ+ stickers from six office doors and/or desks in a faculty office suite on campus.

Do you… https://t.co/R43KXEcfPQ

— Bill Ackman (@BillAckman) May 9, 2024

Also:

Penn faculty, students break down in tears after cops sweep pro-Hamas encampment

Related:

Organizations that supported antisemitic “protests” on college campuses and enabled Hamas’s agenda in the U.S. should lose their tax-exempt status. https://t.co/7SM4skB3UE

— Joni Ernst (@SenJoniErnst) May 10, 2024

DECLINE IS A CHOICE: Victorinox says it’s developing Swiss Army Knives without blades. “The development of the new tools come as Victorinox CEO Carl Elsener Jr. told Swiss media outlet Blick that he was concerned about laws in some countries that prohibit people from carrying knives.”

ANN ALTHOUSE ON MAUREEN DOWD: “Dowd seems to approve of using the criminal process not for its proper purpose — to enforce specific written law — but to expose and humiliate one’s political enemy. . . . It’s so exciting — sexually and politically — that she doesn’t see the downside. The aggressive desire to humiliate and crush him makes him sympathetic and makes you look like a bully.”

Not just look like. Plus: “I’m imagining the jurors talking about this testimony and trying to connect it to the elements of the crime — assuming they can get their mind around what this crime even is.”

And from the comments: “Dowd is just saying the quiet part out loud: She will vote for a known rapists like Joe Biden and Bill Clinton but Trump is bad! Well actually that isn’t it. What every single person in the world is realizing is the part about there being no actual crime here.”

NOTHING TO SEE HERE, MOVE ALONG:

USA vs China maritime industries at a glance pic.twitter.com/yvQ66SI0cx

— Mike Schuler (@MikeSchuler) May 9, 2024

The reason there will be no major reindustrialization in the US is because our environmental laws are written in a way where a single activist group with funding from China can prevent the construction of a chemical plant for a decade through environmental impact reviews.

— Nathan Carson (@ndcarson) May 10, 2024

HE’S RIGHT OF COURSE: Columbia Law Professor Says Columbia University Violated Federal Laws, Fostered A ‘Hostile Environment’ On Campus. “If Mitts’ analysis is correct, the consequences for Columbia for violating Title VI and Title VII could be severe. While it is likely that Columbia would take whatever remedial action the government or courts demanded to avoid severe penalties, a standoff could lead to dire consequences potentially including a loss of federal funding. . . . Columbia’s profit margins are razor thin—$200 million in operating income on $6.1 billion in revenue—meaning that liability or federal sanctions would likely force the university to either cut costs, borrow money, or eat into its endowment and thereby reduce its long term competitiveness.”

Nobody thinks that Columbia — or any of the other top universities — would take such a mild line with a group denouncing, abusing, and physically attacking black students, or gay students, or trans students.

Make them pay.

Related: Pushback Works.

NATURE HAS A SAD: The Importance of Distinguishing Climate Science From Climate Activism.

FLASHBACK:

Brooks is, of course, horrified at Trump and his supporters, whom he finds childish, thuggish and contemptuous of the things that David Brooks likes about today’s America. It’s clear that he’d like a social/political revolution that was more refined, better-mannered, more focused on the Constitution and, well, more bourgeois as opposed to in-your-face and working class. . . .

One of the most famous things about the Tea Partiers was that — as befits a relentlessly bourgeois protest movement — they left things cleaner than they found them. Rich Lowry reported from Washington, DC: “Just as stunning as the tableaux of the massive throngs lining the reflecting pool were the images of the spotless grounds afterward. If someone had told attendees they were expected to mow the grass before they left, surely some of them would have hitched flatbed trailers to their vehicles for the trip to Washington and gladly brought mowers along with them.” . . .

Yet the tea party movement was smeared as racist, denounced as fascist, harassed with impunity by the IRS and generally treated with contempt by the political establishment — and by pundits like Brooks, who declared “I’m not a fan of this movement.” After handing the GOP big legislative victories in 2010 and 2014, it was largely betrayed by the Republicans in Congress, who broke their promises to shrink government and block Obama’s initiatives. . . .

When politeness and orderliness are met with contempt and betrayal, do not be surprised if the response is something less polite, and less orderly. Brooks closes his Trump column with Psalm 73, but a more appropriate verse is Hosea 8:7 “For they have sown the wind, and they shall reap the whirlwind.” Trump’s ascendance is a symptom of a colossal failure among America’s political leaders, of which Brooks’ mean-spirited insularity is only a tiny part. God help us all.

Just a reminder of how we got here. And who’s responsible.