YA THINK? “If there’s an online discussion about race, using the term ‘white privilege’ can create a polarized situation, researchers report.”

I find that my own arguments do indeed go over less well when I start out by saying “First of all, you unavoidably suck because of who you are.”

CAN DOGECOIN FIX TWITTER’S BOT PROBLEM? Newly relevant since, as Stephen reports, Musk says his purchase is held up over Twitter’s claim that it’s less than 5% bots. I am enthusiastic about cryptocurrencies, but boy is the bot problem more easily solvable for 99% of people:

1. Make it so everyone can pay $1 a month via credit card with a name for a blue check verification (instead of it being some weird pseudo-endorsement granted by our unseen overlords).
2. Make it so users can choose to see only blue checks if they want, or blue checks and things they retweet. Or both, whatever.
3. Twitter gets millions in revenue, people are spared bots if they choose, and anonymous speech is still fine and available for folks who might want it (like Libs of TikTok) and who offer interesting material. Any blue checks lying about who they are are committing credit card fraud.

Or some variety of that, anyway. Practically every legitimate political problem with social media is solved if you let users choose their filters rather than leave it to companies to choose what you can I can see. The political problem this does not solve is silencing your opponents “disinformation,” which is why nobody seems to want to suggest this most obvious of solutions.

HOW THE JACOBINS GOT CONTROL OF NORTH CAROLINA’S BIG 4 UNIVERSITIES. With an E.B. White quote I had never heard, but which is increasingly topical:

One need only watch totalitarians at work to see that once men gain power over other men’s minds, that power is never used sparingly or wisely, but lavishly and brutally and with unspeakable results.

JUSTICE DELAYED (SIX YEARS!) IS JUSTICE DENIED: Drake University’s student senate discriminates against its Turning Point USA chapter and denies it official recognition due to ‘harmful’ views. And this time they can’t even blame the “Drake Comrades.”

WHO WROTE IT BETTER?

Washington Post: Ignore the hysteria over the Disinformation Governance Board (this is an alternate link; original is paywalled)

Babylon Bee: Trump Announces First Move After 2024 Victory Will Be Appointing Himself Head Of Disinformation Board

One of these takes on the new agency shows a competent grasp of history, politics, and philosophy. The other is the Washington Post.

SATANIC TEMPLE CONSIDERING OPENING ABORTION CLINICS, SAYS IT’S THEIR RELIGIOUS RITUAL. Super on-brand for Satan, or brilliant pro-life psyop?

RELEASE THE FINAL DOBBS OPINION NOW. Justice Alito has reportedly been moved to an “undisclosed location” as angry protesters show up at justices’ houses. If Roberts waits too long in the name of the Court’s inexplicable desire to dump big-time opinions on the last day of the term and someone hurts or kills a justice in the meantime, that’s going to be on him, and the resulting explosion will be a disaster for all of us.

This may be the new normal and justices will just have to learn to deal with it going forward (like other politicians, which is what justices unavoidably are now thanks to years of bad decisions), but they’re not ready yet.

NPR GUIDANCE FOR TALKING ABOUT ABORTION CERTAINLY IS…SOMETHING. Jonathan Turley linked to this for other reasons, but, well, you have to read it to believe it. Stare agog at passages as bad or worse than this one:

Is taking “baby” and “mother” and “life” out of the conversation profoundly biased in favor of those in favor of abortion rights? Science would say no.

Oh really? Would “science” do that? I don’t think even most ardent pro-choicers usually take the issue of life or when it begins “out of the conversation.” But don’t worry, “science” has more!

Scientists have widely differing opinions on when life begins…

Again, do they? NPR thinks the Perseverance rover is looking for evidence of newborn human babies on Mars?

This stuff is only the beginning of the logical pretzels you will encounter. You don’t have to be pro-choice or pro-life to find this embarrassing for NPR. But then what do I know about life? I’m not a biologist.

THERE IS NOTHING NEW UNDER THE SUN. As the Babylon Bee points out using satire, what has been done is being done again. But by far more ridiculous people.

WELCOME TO THE FRICKIN’ PARTY, PAL! I dare you to find a clip more exasperating than this about Musk’s takeover of Twitter. “Saying the quiet part out loud,” indeed. (Sent to me by a colleague.)

THE RISE OF “CONTRACT GRADING.” Sounds kind of like a “labor theory of grading” to me. Doesn’t sound like a great idea if you want good performance, but I admit I would have loved this in math class…

SHAWNEE STATE U SETTLES WITH PROF IT PUNISHED FOR FAILURE TO USE PREFERRED PRONOUNS. “[T]he university agreed to pay $400,000 in damages and Meriwether’s attorneys’ fees. Additionally, considering the 6th Circuit’s ruling, the university is rescinding the written warning it issued Meriwether in June 2018.” Pricey.

NA NA NA NA, NA NA NA NA, HEY HEY HEY, GOODBYE. “A federal judge has struck down the CDC’s mask mandate for airports, train stations and other transport hubs.” (At least until the proverbial Hawaiian judge strikes down the strikedown, I assume…)

I MEAN SURE, MAYBE… The Twitterati are taking this whole “possible free speech” thing super well and I, for one, am glad they are the people who set the agenda for our public discussion.

BECAUSE THE CENSORSHIP HAS MADE IT SO PLEASANT ALREADY. “With Musk on the board, the employees said his views on moderation could weaken years-long efforts to make Twitter a place of healthy discourse, and might allow trolling and mob attacks to flourish.” Might we see some evidence of the success of this project so far? Because all I hear are complaints that the supposed abuses are worse than ever.

FORMER REDDIT CEO ELLEN PAO: WE’RE DOOMED IF ELON MUSK DIALS BACK TWITTER CENSORSHIP. I was going to submit that this might be the dumbest thing ever written, but that’s not fair. There is no way she actually believes stuff like this:

Musk’s appointment to Twitter’s board shows that we need regulation of social-media platforms to prevent rich people from controlling our channels of communication… The people who benefit from unrestricted amplification of their views will also be the same people who have benefited from that privilege for centuries.

Yeah, because rich and powerful people (like Musk, who could just buy Twitter outright if he wanted) were the people who had trouble getting their message out before free speech was a thing. All of this argument for social media censorship of “dangerous” viewpoints is an establishment snow job. The target of the censorship is John and Jane Q. Public. Anyone who says it’s not is lying.

THE RECENT OBERLIN RULING ISN’T GREAT FOR FREE SPEECH. It arguably holds the college responsible for the speech of its student government (see p. 18-21), which will likely incentivize colleges to do even more to control student speech. That said, this may well be a “hard cases make bad law” situation without a lot of precedential value. I mean, good luck convincing a jury that the college does NOT control student speech when administrators are saying stuff like this:

Another example was a text message sent by [Dean of Students Meredith] Raimondo after the student newspaper published a letter from a retired Oberlin professor, which expressed criticism of the college’s “handling of the Gibson matter.” Raimondo sent a text message to another administrator that stated, “F-him. I’d say unleash the students if I wasn’t convinced this needs to be put behind us.”

It’s easy to see this going another way (with regard to student speech, at least) if Oberlin administrators had been privately saying things like “Man, this student senate resolution might get us in even more hassle with the Gibsons, but we can’t just take it down.”

GEORGE LEEF, TO WHOM I OFTEN LINK, HAS A NOVEL OUT. From Bombardier Books: The Awakening of Jennifer Van Arsdale: A Political Fable For Our Time. Check it out; good reviews on Amazon, and I bet he could use more!

ZE GERMANS ARE LOSING ZE PLOT AGAIN.

YALE LAW STUDENTS DISRUPT DISCUSSION ABOUT FREEDOM OF SPEECH. FIRE is looking into this, but it bears repeating: the cure to speech you don’t like is more speech, not silencing the person you don’t like. Yale has committed itself to this principle, but seems to have done little or nothing to explain why “equal justice under law” on free speech is the only protection the protesters have for their own speech, should a mass of people take a dislike to what they have to say. Lawyers (and law students), of all people, need to understand this principle.

SOCIAL MEDIA: CALLS FOR VIOLENCE ARE NOT FREE SPEECH, WE MUST BAN THEM! (THUNDEROUS BLUE CHECK APPLAUSE.)

ALSO SOCIAL MEDIA:

SELF-CENSORSHIP ON CAMPUS: FACTS VS. NARRATIVE. The Twitterati (an unrepresentative group that nevertheless wields enormous cultural power) lost its mind over the last couple of days after the New York Times published an op-ed (paywalled, sorry!) from a politically liberal college student and recent FIRE intern cogently pointing out that she expected debate at college but instead found it rife with self-censorship. Apparently, making this personal observation, or polling 37,000 college students to prove it (as FIRE did), makes you conservative regardless of your actual principles or beliefs. Is it really so hard to process the idea that a free speech group could actually be serious about defending everyone’s free speech, regardless of viewpoint?

I PROBABLY WOULD HAVE LET THEM KEEP THAT ONE.

1. Invade the Ukraine
2. Take over Chernobyl
3. ????
4. Profit!

WHO YOU GONNA BELIEVE?

John Stuart Mill in On Liberty, 1859: “Complete liberty of contradicting and disproving our opinion, is the very condition which justifies us in assuming its truth for purposes of action; and on no other terms can a being with human faculties have any rational assurance of being right.”

The FBI, on Twitter, 2022:

For those who might say “oh, this is only about foreigners,” that doesn’t matter — if the “foreigners” are right about the electoral system being compromised, they’re doing us a favor by telling us so, even if it’s for their own selfish reasons.

FEDERAL JUDGE MAKES SURPRISE CHANGE IN SPEECH AT GEORGETOWN LAW: Scheduled to talk about originalism, Judge James C. Ho instead announces “I’m going to spend my time today talking about Ilya Shapiro” and then does so for the entire speech.

“If Ilya Shapiro is deserving of cancellation,” he concluded, “then you should go ahead and cancel me too.”

Georgetown, cut your losses and just let Shapiro go to work. This is passing “embarrassing” and is headed straight for “career-ruining humiliation” territory.

UPDATE (FROM GLENN): Georgetown Law Self-Cancels Its Elite Status.