I HAVEN’T TRIED NON-ALCOHOLIC WINES: The best non-alcoholic wines for 2024 that don’t taste like grape juice. In my experience, non-alcoholic whiskey and gin are execrable, and non-alcoholic beer can be quite good. This article supposedly identifies tasty wines, but as I say, I haven’t tried them.

CULTURE OF CORRUPTION: Ethics probe launched into Harvard overseer whose law firm billed school $42 million.

THE ENEMY WITHIN: Brown U. student tour guides picket in defense of peer who supported tour ‘disruptions’: Parents and students are ‘going to have to listen to what we have to say, too.’

You’re spoiled kids. Why should people particularly care what you think?

That said, I’m in favor of this. Let parents see what they’re about to pay six figures for in all its ignorant, narcissistic glory.

SHINE A SPOTLIGHT ON BIGOTRY: House education committee requests documents from MIT on campus anti-semitism.

LIGHTING DEAL: 90 Teeth 1/2” Inch Drive 25-250 Ft Lb Torque Wrench. #CommissionEarned

OPEN THREAD: I’ve gotten requests for a Sunday Morning open thread, so we’ll give it a try.

CNN POLL: Americans Didn’t Buy Media Spin on Biden SOTU.

THE LEFT IS ALWAYS TRYING TO TURN ANY SORT OF DISAGREEMENT INTO A VARIETY OF “RACISM.”

Because I am raising concerns about the flood of unvetted illegal immigrants overwhelming American cities, the press will often characterize me as “anti-immigrant”.

As an immigrant myself, nothing could be further from the truth.

I am very much in favor of increased and…

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) March 9, 2024

OPEN THREAD: Happy Saturday!

THE NEW SPACE RACE: NASA, Boeing delay Starliner capsule’s 1st astronaut launch to early May.

ASKING THE IMPORTANT QUESTIONS: Should You Let Your Dog Lick Your Face? Here’s The Science.

Since I don’t have a spleen, I’ve been told to avoid dog and cat saliva for fear of sepsis. I don’t know how big that risk is — I was only warned about 10 years ago and I got licked plenty before that. But I do try to avoid being licked now. And I’m sorry, but people who kiss their dogs on the mouth — or worse yet, french kiss them — are just being gross.

DON’T STOP COLD TURKEY THOUGH, OR YOU RAISE YOUR RISK: Though no longer recommended, many older Americans still take low-dose aspirin.

HMM: FDA clears Wegovy manufacturer to market weight-loss drug for heart health.

BACK WHEN I WAS WRITING THE NEW SCHOOL, I TALKED WITH HIM A LOT AND TOURED UDACITY HEADQUARTERS: Software-Defined Humanist Sebastian Thrun Is Always Learning.

WELL, THIS IS THE 21ST CENTURY, YOU KNOW: Lifesaving AI in Aisle 12? 3D mammography is coming to the big box store—and it could transform breast cancer screening.

THEY’RE NOT FLOODING US WITH FOREIGNERS FOR THE GOOD OF THE NATION:

Most Americans do not know that the US census currently counts, for purposes of voting power, all people in a district, regardless of citizenship!

Senate Democrats just voted unanimously to defeat an amendment that would have stopped counting illegals for congressional seat… https://t.co/5gXt4Z1wzP

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) March 9, 2024

THE NEW SPACE RACE: Quest for ice spurs NASA’s first mobile robotic moon mission. He who controls the ice controls the water; he who controls the water controls the Moon. As well as cislunar space and possibly Mars transits.

WHY ARE SO MANY DIVERSITY OFFICERS SO BIGOTED? Johns Hopkins Medicine Chief Diversity Officer resigns after ‘poorly worded’ email about men, ‘White people,’ and ‘Christians.’

COLLUSION: Qatar keeps close ties to American universities.

ICYMI: NATO Officially Adds New Member State. Welcome, Swedes. Putin started a war for fear of NATO encroachment, reaped more NATO encroachment. Smart.

DON SURBER: America wants Biden vs. Trump: Democrats think it is a cinch. Trump supporters want a do-over.

HELEN DALE REVIEWS ROB HENDERSON’S NEW BOOK, Troubled: A Memoir of Foster Care, Family, and Social Class. “Henderson is best known for developing the concept of ‘luxury beliefs,’ which are political ideologies and policy proposals that confer social status on the well-to-do folk who support them. Meanwhile, those same policies injure poor and working-class people when implemented at the state’s behest. His insight is startling and applies to many more interventions than obviously daft ones like defunding the police.”

Plus: “More broadly, Troubled is an excellent primer on the state of elite US higher education. Completed last year—before October 7 and a university presidents’ Congressional hearing now seared into the nation’s eyeballs—it captures the extent to which the activist output of universities is not, in any useful sense, about making things work. It pretends to be at some grandiose moral level but is nothing of the sort. Instead, clever people who’ve never had a difficult day in their lives get to parade their piety, while the Rob Hendersons and Robbie Waynes of the world are left to sink out of sight.”

Here’s a longer, but excellent review of Henderson’s book, too. Excerpt:

I haven’t been able to stop thinking about one aspect of this book: the extent to which dishonesty is entirely normalized in our society among the elite. The luxury classes people pretend to believe that marriage doesn’t matter, but very few of them have children out of wedlock. They pretend to believe that fat-shaming is a serious moral affront, while they spend a fortune on organic food and personal trainers to keep themselves fit and trim. They pretend to believe many things that their lives betray they don’t actually believe at all.

It’s easy to think that most of them are just going along with the crowd and don’t realize they’re lying, but the truth is that most of them do know, which is why they expressed agreement with Rob in private. This is a familiar dynamic; I used to get DMs on Twitter from people apologizing that they couldn’t follow me (though they made a point to daily read my tweets) without upsetting their coworkers. These people included a couple of college professors, a Unitarian minister, and a couple of therapists, and possibly others I’ve forgotten.

Dishonesty is so normalized that this kind of performative fragmentation—signaling that one believes certain things while acting as if one believes other things—may eventually be recognized as a marker of intelligence and proper preparation for class climbing (or class maintenance, if one starts off in that class).

This dynamic is going to destroy us all if we don’t find a way to fix it. Soon.

Yes.

OPEN THREAD: Make it special.

THE NEW SPACE RACE: NASA, SpaceX looking to extend lifespan of Crew Dragon spacecraft to 15 flights.

HUNGER: Study Reveals a Major Drawback to The Health Benefits of Fasting.