PRETTY SURE THAT MEANS I’M CREATING SPACE LIFE MOLECULES IN MY OFFICE: Study Reveals Dusty Chaos May Be Key to Formation of Life-Building Space Molecules.
Author Archive: Glenn Reynolds
April 3, 2024
ELON MUSK AND THE NEW SPACE AGE: “If Elon Musk were a recluse who did nothing but build SpaceX, he would still be the most important figure of the 21st century.”
True.
TO BE FAIR, THAT’S JUST BECAUSE HE’S AWFUL: Americans Disapprove Of Biden On Guns—And Most Other Issues.
WELL, SURE, MOST THINGS THRIVE BETTER IN THE U.S. THAN IN CANADA: Historical study finds Canada lynx might thrive better in U.S.
WE WON’T HAVE ACHIEVED EQUITY UNTIL MEN ARE TREATED FOR PREGNANCY RELATED ISSUES AT THE SAME RATE: Women more likely to get treated for mental health issues around pregnancy.
MATT TAIBBI: On “The View,” A Crack Finally Shows in the Propaganda Facade.
Something interesting did happen, however, and it wasn’t the ferocious conflict-laden exchange that went viral and tickled conservative pundits like Dave Rubin and Megyn Kelly so much, The Root wrote an article complaining. The surprise came in the first moments when the studio audience burst into spontaneous applause after Hughes suggested, “We should try our very best to treat people without regard for race both in our personal lives and our public policy.”
It would be the first of several outbursts speaking less to a race issue than an informational one. Here was evidence that ideas dismissed in elite circles as radical and “dangerous” may be popular and widely accepted, even among fans of the most aggressive idea-policing show on TV.
“This was the audience of The View,” Hughes says, adding that the crowd’s reaction suggested the antiracist ideas they were confronting “do not have deep subscription in the Democratic party base even.”
It’s just woke white people seeking meaning in their sad lives, and the grifters who feed of their neuroses.
LET’S SEE SOME DEMOCRACY SHUTTING DOWN PRO-PALESTINE SPEAKERS, THEN: Pro-Palestine protesters shut down Dem congressman’s speech, University of Maryland president calls it ‘democracy’ in action.
On the other hand, seeing this happen to lefty mouthpiece Jamie Raskin is kinda sweet, to be honest.
MAKE THEM PAY: UT Austin Administrators Tried to Punish Professor over Anti-DEI Crusade. He’s Fighting Back.
University of Texas at Austin finance professor Richard Lowery has annoyed the university’s administration by publicly criticizing its embrace of diversity, equity, and inclusion and suggesting that administrators exploit their positions for their children’s admission.
Lowery’s crusade did not go unnoticed: Several university administrators — and the university president, Jay Hartzell — responded with a “campaign to silence” the professor, which included threatening his job, salary, professional affiliations, and research opportunities, according to a lawsuit Lowery filed against the administrators.
Lowery embraces the fact that his views are unpopular on campus. His bio on his now-private Twitter account reads: “All opinions are mine and almost certainly diametrically opposed to those of my employer.”
Lowery became unpopular on campus by criticizing the UT Austin’s sprawling DEI bureaucracy, which costs $13 million annually in salaries alone. The UT Austin “Faculty Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion, Strategic Plan” requires that “all members of faculty search committees must participate in diverse hiring training” and invests $3 million over four years to support “recruitment and hiring of faculty contributing to diversity, equity, and inclusion.”
The focus on DEI is exemplified by a UT Austin research program that offers a voluntary four-week study for white four- and five-year-old children and their white caregivers to learn about “anti-Black racism.” Lowery criticized the project in an op-ed for the College Fix, writing, “Imagine if such training were to be focused only on black preschool-aged children, a subset the researchers deemed deficient in patriotism.”
In response to Lowery’s public criticism of the university, Hartzell and several senior administrators pressured his supervisor at the Salem Center — a research center at the business school of UT Austin — to discipline him, according to the lawsuit. (While he likely couldn’t be fired from his tenured position as a professor, Lowery’s role at the Salem Center came with a $20,000-a-year stipend and is renewed annually.)
Possibly related: Sources: At least 20 UT employees linked to DEI to lose their jobs.
Add a zero to this and we’ll get somewhere.
IF YOU SUPPORT HAMAS, I’M NOT BUYING YOUR “HUMANITARIAN” CONCERNS: Where Were These Ceasefire Bleeding Hearts for the Past 20 Years of Hamas’s Carnage?
If you care about humanitarian issues, you should be calling on Hamas to surrender. It’s telling that no one is doing that.
EVERYTHING IS GOING SWIMMINGLY: Democrats face ‘horrifying’ reality amid young minorities’ exodus: ‘Leaving in droves.’
NATE SILVER DEBUNKS THE LATEST MEDIA TREND: Americans love Florida, even if you don’t: The rate of “mover’s remorse” is statistically low. Understanding why might help in understanding America. “In principle, a state could still have a net positive migration flow is a lot of people leave it, provided that even more people arrive But Florida isn’t like that: it has a high rate of in-migration and a low rate of out-migration. . . . Sure, in a state with 22 million residents, you’re going to find plenty of leavers, like the half-dozen people the NBC story interviewed. But this is not a typical pattern.”
Plus: “One of the underlying themes in my work is that people make far too many inferences about public opinion from the preferences expressed by their friends or professional peers. That may be especially true for progressives who work in media given the blob-like nature of the mainstream media, where progressive, liberal, centrist and center-right news outlets are all smooshed together, but there aren’t a lot of outright Trump supporters and there isn’t much cultural conservatism. And part of it is that Florida, like no other state, challenges the Emerging Democratic Majority hypothesis. If looked at in a highly abstract way, you might expect Florida — a diverse coastal state — to be solidly blue, but instead it has gotten redder: ground zero for Democrats’ increasing erosion with nonwhite voters. Some 42 percent of the Miami metro’s population was born abroad, the highest rate in the country. Miami proper is majority foreign-born, though many of the immigrants there are patriotic (as immigrants often are) and have become US citizens.”
DON’T TRUST CHINA. CHINA IS ASSHOE.
https://twitter.com/Byron_Wan/status/1775118506138419412
HOW WORKING-CLASS AMERICANS became second-class citizens. “They want higher wages. They want better healthcare—or really, just affordable healthcare. They want fewer migrants competing for their jobs, and they want trade policy that favors America. They want stable jobs that reward their immense efforts with the hallmarks of a middle-class life that so many in the top income brackets take for granted: a home. A vacation with their kids every now and then. Enough in the bank so they don’t have to call the electric company every month to beg forbearance to keep the lights on. Some money to put away for retirement for when their aching bones can no longer perform physical labor.”
SUZANNA SHERRY: DEI and Antisemitism: Bred in the Bone.
Last October, progressive Jews were shocked by the raw antisemitism displayed by their erstwhile allies on the political left. After Hamas terrorists tortured, raped, or murdered more than 1200 Israeli civilians and took some 200 civilians hostage, some progressives – especially on college campuses – celebrated. They chanted the Palestinian mantra “from the river to the sea,” seeking to erase Israel (and Jews) from the face of the earth. The number of antisemitic incidents on campus soared, coming from both students and faculty. A Stanford lecturer forced Jewish students to the back of the classroom and labeled them “colonizers.” Jewish students had to barricade themselves inside a library at Cooper Union, and Jewish students at MIT were told by faculty to avoid the university’s main lobby for their own safety. Many university presidents who had previously sent out campus-wide emails condemning the murder of George Floyd, the Russian invasion of Ukraine, the overruling of Roe v. Wade, and countless other world events suddenly discovered the Kalven Principles and claimed it would be inappropriate for them to take sides, or issued weak statements about how the situation in the Middle East was complicated. This double standard continued as some universities responded to student calls for genocide of Jews by invoking principles of free speech, principles that had been notably ignored when the speech in question was directed at other groups. Most campus DEI (diversity, equity, and inclusion) offices, especially at the most elite universities, had nothing to say about the surging antisemitism.
This essay explains why no one should have been shocked, or even mildly surprised, by the progressive response to the massacre. Progressive or “woke” culture –as exemplified by critical race theory, anti-racism of the Ibram X. Kendi variety, and, especially on college campuses, the DEI juggernaut – is necessarily and inevitably antisemitic at its core. That these related movements have now exposed their antisemitism publicly is no surprise: antisemitism is bred in their bones.
I believe her.
DEMOCRATS HAVE BEEN THE JUNIOR ANTI-SEX LEAGUE FOR DECADES: Is The Modern GOP an ‘Anti-Sex Movement?’
At least if you’re talking about heterosexual sex.
April 2, 2024
FIGHT THE POWER:
It's hard to overstate how important – and strategically brilliant – @jk_rowling's power move was today, a first-move checkmate that effectively
neutered Scotland's dangerous new #HateCrimeBill. By openly and unambiguously breaking this law – on a massive public platform – on… https://t.co/dWKhCSERud— The Heretical Liberal 🇨🇦🏳️🌈 (@Rob_ThaBuilder) April 2, 2024
Plus:
Again with the legacy guff… if your friend History thinks women don't deserve sex-based rights, healthy kids should be medicalised and free speech needs stamping out, I'm not interested in being his buddy. He sounds a massive dick. pic.twitter.com/MYwtoxbSz7
— J.K. Rowling (@jk_rowling) April 2, 2024
Vaguely related, but funny:
This pretty much explains today's society
— Mahatma Gandhi (Parody) (@GandhiAOC) April 2, 2024
OPEN THREAD: Tuesday’s Groovy.
21ST CENTURY RELATIONSHIPS: My husband convinced me to get pregnant. I had the baby, got laid off, and left him — I’m happy with all of my decisions. “I let strangers — an immigrant family — live in my house and pay my utilities while I share a bedroom with my daughter in my childhood home. Instead of putting her in care and finding a new job, I made use of the government benefit, reduced my bills, and embraced the multigenerational family home.”
21ST CENTURY RELATIONSHIPS: Why Young Men and Young Women are Drifting Apart.
21ST CENTURY RELATIONSHIPS: Model goes on date with soldier then bonks him on camera to ‘thank him for his service.’