LIZ SHELD: Hunter Biden’s Federal Gun Charges to Go to Trial After Appeal Dismissed.

YES THE “YELLOW PERIL” HYSTERIA OF A CENTURY AGO WAS BASED ON ASIANS ACTUALLY REPRODUCING:

The end of the Chinese hordes.https://t.co/U4lmLlokZD

— wretchardthecat (@wretchardthecat) May 10, 2024

NEWSWEEK: Biden Withholding Aid From Israel Sure Looks Impeachable. Nah, that kind of thing only matters if Trump does it.

“AMERICAN FECKLESSNESS:” THE BIDEN TRADEMARK.

If you weren't thinking about these things already, if you are Israel or India or Saudi Arabia, you will certainly be asking yourself: How can I safeguard myself, as much as possible when it comes to my wealth or defense, from American fecklessness?

— Alberto Miguel Fernandez (@AlbertoMiguelF5) May 9, 2024

ALEX BERENSON: Yep, they’re still trying to make H5N1 a thing. “The H5N1 story is only interesting for one reason (one they don’t get) – it shows how unlikely Covid is to have natural origins.”

NATE SILVER: The long, strange political shadow of 2020. “Even with Trump in charge, 2020 was probably the most left-wing moment in the US in my lifetime.1 Since then, the share of voters who say Democrats are too liberal has risen by 7 points. And Trump is counting on a continued backlash against the left. Consider what were perhaps the three most important political questions at the time: first, the fiscal response to the pandemic; second, the public health response; and third, the protests and accompanying ‘racial reckoning.’ For the most part, it was the left’s preferences that prevailed on these.”

Plus, on Covid: “Many of the most excessive examples involve California, which is why it’s a little rich when Gavin Newsom speaks of California as the ‘true freedom state’.”

HEATHER MAC DONALD: Hysterics for Hamas: Why have young women been so prominent in the recent campus chaos?

The female tilt among anti-Israel student protesters is an underappreciated aspect of the pro-Hamas campus hysteria. True, when activists need muscle (to echo University of Missouri professor Melissa Click’s immortal call during the 2015 Black Lives Matter protests), males are mobilized to smash windows and doors or hurl projectiles at the police, for example. But the faces behind the masks and before the cameras are disproportionately female, as seen in this recent gem from the Princeton demonstrations.

Why the apparent gender gap? One possible reason is that women constitute majorities of both student bodies and the metastasizing student-services bureaucracies that cater to them. Another is the sex skew in majors. The hard sciences and economics, whose students are less likely to take days or weeks out from their classes to party (correction: “stand against genocide”) in cool North Face tents, are still majority male. The humanities and soft social sciences, the fields where you might even get extra credit for your intersectional activism, are majority female. (Not surprisingly, males have spearheaded recent efforts to guard the American flag against desecration.) In progressive movements, the default assumption now may be to elevate females ahead of males as leaders and spokesmen. But most important, the victim ideology that drives much of academia today, with its explicit enmity to objectivity and reason as white male constructs, has a female character.

Student protests have always been hilariously self-dramatizing, but the current outbreak is particularly maudlin, in keeping with female self-pity.

As George Orwell wrote: “It was always the women, and above all the young ones, who were the most bigoted adherents of the Party, the swallowers of slogans, the amateur spies and nosers−out of unorthodoxy.”

WHEN SATIRE APPROACHES TRUTH:

Biden Strikes Deal Where Hamas Gets To Keep American Hostages In Exchange For Fifteen Votes In Michigan https://t.co/bCkU6m09IL pic.twitter.com/SRxE58SW6l

— The Babylon Bee (@TheBabylonBee) May 9, 2024

OPEN THREAD: You know how this works by now.

THE NEW SPACE RACE: China launches its first medium Earth orbit broadband satellites.

NUKE THE SITE FROM ORBIT, IT’S THE ONLY WAY TO BE SURE: Chinese scientists create mutant Ebola virus to skirt around biosafety rules – and it causes horrific symptoms and kills group of hamsters.

VITAMIN D UPDATE: The Sun Isn’t Enough: New Study Revolutionizes Vitamin D Guidelines.

We’ve actually known this for ages, but I guess now it counts as official or something.

ARNOLD KLING ON STATUS-DRIVEN SYNDROME: “The more titles an organization has, the more it will select for people who really care about titles. . . . Some organizations, especially government agencies, tend to select for individuals who prioritize status-seeking over the search for the best answers.”

Related: Social Media and other Status Games.

A 100-DAY REPORT ON THE FIRST RECIPIENT OF A NEURALINK BRAIN COMPUTER INTERFACE: Restoring Autonomy to People Living with Quadriplegia. “I’m beating my friends in games that as a quadriplegic I should not be beating them in.”

THE EV MARKET IS DEFLATING: Lucid, Tesla, Rivian, and Fisker Have Another No Good Very Bad Day.

WHY IS BIDEN WORKING SO HARD TO SAVE A TERRORIST ORGANIZATION? Biden Commits To Saving Hamas, Will Cut Off Offensive Weapons To Israel If It Enters Rafah. Does he want “forever wars” in Ukraine and Gaza? And if so, why?

THIS IS BECOMING A TREND: Police Clear Pro-Palestinian Encampment in Amsterdam. “Police used bulldozers and quickly cleared the barricades.”

Plus: “Just one more bad idea Europe has imported from US campuses.” To be fair, U.S. campuses are fertile generators of bad ideas.

WILL ANYONE? Will You Miss The Chevrolet Malibu?

CULTURE OF CORRUPTION: New research reports on financial entanglements between FDA chiefs and the drug industry.

I WONDER WHERE IT CAME FROM: California city declares a public health emergency after tuberculosis sickens 14.

HEALTH: Neuropathy very common, but underdiagnosed, study says.

GET WOKE, GO BROKE: Harvard Bond Offering Raises Less Money Than Expected.

CHANGE: AstraZeneca pulls COVID-19 vaccine from global markets. “The company has admitted it could cause rare blood clots but said the vaccine was pulled for commercial reasons.”

SPOILER: NOTHING WILL HAPPEN UNTIL IT’S A CRISIS, AND THEN IT WILL BE TOO LATE. Reforming Social Security Now, Before It’s Too Late.

CHARLES KRAUTHAMMER ONCE WROTE: “If lying about authorship is now a hanging offense, there are not enough lampposts in Washington to handle the volume.”

But maybe you should at least review the stuff that goes out in your name: Kristi Noem and the open secret about the political publishing industry: Nobody writes their own books.

Now, there has been a noticeable distinction between how “insiders” and “outsiders” have interpreted the flaming dumpster fire that is the publicity tour related to South Dakota Governor Kristi Noem’s upcoming book. The general public seems confused about the idea that Noem seemingly didn’t know about so many things that were in *her own book*. . . .

The Kristi Noem saga has exposed an open secret about the political publishing industry: a tiny percentage of “authors” in the space write their own books. And those real authors are often smothered by fake authors with a machine in place to promote their fake autobiographies, which take time and opportunity away from those who have put in the work.

For politicians, I would estimate that maybe 1 percent write their own books. Some spend occasional time with their ghostwriter in order to best express their personality and ideas. Others, like Noem, just mail it in entirely, and have the ghostwriter rely upon public material from speeches and appearances.

As for your favorite TV personality/social media influencer? It would be generous to say that 5 percent write their own books. It is very rare to hear about cable news talking heads with faces full of delicately applied makeup putting in that kind of hard work.

These tasks are usually delegated to an underpaid 20-something, who may or may not be in routine contact with the “author” during the writing process.

I write all of this to say that there is an incredible lack of authenticity amongst the political class, who attempt to give off the impression that they have the time, ability, intelligence, and fortitude to publish their own works. It goes without saying that their constituents deserve so much better than being suckered into financing this endless grift.

The fake authors acquire tons of money, a reputational boost, and sometimes, the prestige of being on the New York Times best selling author list. All for maybe doing a handful of phone calls with the real author, who usually receives a low-end five figure amount (think 10 to 20 grand) for six months of hard work.

The famed professional bodybuilder Ronnie Coleman famously commented that “everybody wants to be a bodybuilder, but nobody wants to lift no heavy-ass weights.” The same applies to publishing. Everybody wants to be an author, but very few in the political space want to put in the work to become one.

At least read the manuscript. Or at the very least, have a knowledgeable staffer do so.