THAT’S DISAPPOINTINGLY LOW: Half of people would reveal STD to new sex partner.
Author Archive: Glenn Reynolds
June 8, 2024
AND THEY THOUGHT ELON WAS RETRO WITH STAINLESS STEEL SPACESHIPS: Wooden Satellites.
STARSHIP VS. STARLINER: Jim Meigs: Can Boeing Catch Up with SpaceX? The aerospace giant’s long-delayed Starliner finally flies astronauts, while Elon Musk’s enterprise pushes into the next frontier. The new space race is on. “The mission Starliner is finally conducting—carrying astronauts to the ISS—is one that Elon Musk’s SpaceX has been doing routinely since 2020. Now, Musk’s team is working on a much bigger breakthrough in space travel.”
Related thoughts here. Personally, I’d be happy to see SpaceX face real competition. I think even Elon might feel that way. But at present if it comes from anyone it’s probably going to be from the Chinese.
NAYIB BUKELE, PHILOSOPHER KING? “He is, without a doubt, the most popular democratically elected leader in the world. . . . In his first five years as president, Bukele has transformed El Salvador. The country that was once the most dangerous in the world, overrun by criminal gangs such as MS-13, now has among the lowest murder rates in the world. The turnaround has been so profound that Salvadorans who left the country to live abroad now want to return home.”
HIGHER EDUCATION BUBBLE UPDATE: Gen Z goes to work instead of college – ‘you can make really good money.’
If only there had been some sort of warning.
THEIR CONCERN WITH FREE SPEECH IS HIGHLY SELECTIVE: FBI defends ‘First Amendment rights’ of LA student group whose fundraising poster features terrorist logo.
THEY’RE ACTUALLY AGAINST OUR DEMOCRACY, NOT DEFENDING IT: The Left’s Attack on the Secret Ballot and on Same Day voting.
IT’S SKED FOR 10:30 EDT THIS MORNING: Virgin Galactic launching final commercial spaceflight on VSS Unity spaceplane today.
MEANWHILE, IN A PART OF AMERICA THAT STILL WORKS:
Falcon 9 lands for the 300th time pic.twitter.com/syimP1jcxl
— SpaceX (@SpaceX) June 8, 2024
Related:
With the success of Starship, it’s important to realize how important and counter-intuitive it was for @elonmusk to overcome his team’s resistance and use stainless steel. https://t.co/XesQwYgGIK pic.twitter.com/fmTt2Dkfbl
— Walter Isaacson (@WalterIsaacson) June 7, 2024
GOOD: Spain’s anti-Israel virtue signaling backfires. “Spain, though, is sticking with its consulate in Jerusalem for now, even though Israel said the consulate will not be able to provide resources to Palestinians. Spanish media is reporting that this is because Spanish diplomats in Jerusalem and Tel Aviv don’t want to live or work in Palestinian territory, both because of the lesser quality of life and because of concerns about their own safety. Maybe, just maybe, rewarding terrorists with a country so you could condemn the world’s only Jewish state was a poorly thought-out plan in the first place.”
HOLLYWOOD:
Female Star Wars showrunners putting a crackling campfire in space is the kind of thing that happens when you get rid of mansplaining pic.twitter.com/rPASr1TeQh
— Joel Berry (@JoelWBerry) June 6, 2024
STATISTICS: ‘Record’ Temperatures: a Statistical Certainty.
THE ENEMY WITHIN: Islamists Keep Stabbing People. Why Aren’t We Talking About It? “And herein does Savodnik answer his own question. The ‘right thinkers,’ ie, progressive elites in Europe and in the US, do not believe the West is worth saving. They welcome those who will contribute to their nihilistic project of tearing down Western civilization in the suicidal effort to atone for its sins while allowing far more brutal regimes to seize or emerge in Western spaces.”
Our society is run by fools, and morons, and people who displace their — justifiable — self-hatred onto the society that they run.
HMM: The Cultural Roots of our Demographic Ennui.
At times, it may feel like we’re living in P. D. James’s The Children of Men, but the Right Honorable Baroness might have gotten one thing wrong. Her story of a global epidemic of infertility finds the world caught in paroxysms of terrorism, xenophobia, and violent authoritarianism. But the soundtrack of a world without a future may turn out to be less the explosion of a pipe bomb in downtown London than the cool hiss of a suicide pod.
The rest of this century will feature every major nation seeking to manage population decline—a recipe for aversion to wasting precious warm bodies on the field of battle. Revolution and violence have a certain appeal to the young and dispossessed, but an older society with money in the bank has more to lose. Aging comfortably, rather than exerting power, will be the order of the day. And the back half of the twenty-first century may resemble less a rage against the dying of the light than an emotionless flip of the switch.
Related: Free Will, Children, and the Great Filter: Thoughts on the Population Implosion.
Plus: ‘The Population Bomb’ was wrong: The world now struggling to make more babies.
June 7, 2024
OPEN THREAD: When it’s all over, we’ll make some calls from my car.
CONGRATULATIONS! (Thread).
My client, @theHFDF, has won another huge victory, this time in the 9th Circuit! This was a case that I prosecuted in Central District of California challenging @LASchools mandatory COVID vaccination mandate for all school employees. A majority panel of the 9th Circuit…
— Brant Hadaway (@BrantHadaway) June 7, 2024
EVERYTHING IS GOING SWIMMINGLY: High Excess Death Rates in the West 3 Years Running Since COVID – “Serious Cause for Concern.” “A study highlights persistent high excess death rates in the West from 2020 to 2022, despite COVID-19 measures and vaccines. Over three million excess deaths were reported in 47 countries, urging a reevaluation of pandemic policies and their effectiveness.”
LACK OF SELF-AWARENESS AND SELF-DISCIPLINE COMES WITH A COST: How Elites Have Empowered The Far Right: The US, UK, EU and Canada went far left on immigration — and are paying the price.
This is the problem when your elites are a moronic, self-absorbed monoculture.
C.S. LEWIS UNDERSTOOD THE “EDUCATED CLASS:”
Why does the workman believe the football scores in the newspapers but not the big stories? Because he may have watched the match himself or knows someone who has. Information corruption will blind the educated most, who only know things at second-hand. pic.twitter.com/9sBQuBwH6q
— wretchardthecat (@wretchardthecat) June 6, 2024
WELL, THEY DO LOOK FUTURISTIC, AND THEY’RE KINDA BULLETPROOF: Militarized Cybertruck cop cars are coming: A California company is advertising ‘tactical response’ Tesla Cybertruck upgrades for police cruisers, including shotgun racks and sirens.
AS I SAID, I’M SO CYNICAL I ASSUME THIS IS A SHAKEDOWN OF SOME SORT: US agencies to probe AI dominance of Nvidia, Microsoft, and OpenAI: DOJ to probe Nvidia while FTC takes lead in investigating Microsoft and OpenAI.