HIGHER EDUCATION BUBBLE UPDATE: College students don’t spend much time studying.

They’re not more likely to have paying jobs than earlier generations, research shows. In 2024, the average first-year student reported spending 5.3 hours per week in campus activities and clubs, 9.3 hours working for pay and 11.9 hours relaxing and socializing.

Yet most think they’re working hard. “Sixty-four percent of four-year college students say that they put ‘a lot’ of effort into schoolwork, yet only 6 percent report spending more than 20 hours per week studying and doing homework,” Hess and Fournier write. As a result of the low-expectations culture, “students are not getting the opportunity to master the work habits, knowledge, or skills that a college education is supposed to provide.”

Professors complain that students complain about what used to be a normal reading load and normal writing assignments. Everything’s too hard, they say. But used to inflated grades in high school in college, they expect to get A’s.

Replacing “gentleman’s C’s” with “warm-body A’s” was not an improvement.

ONE OF A KIND: Farewell to a Great American Funny Lady.

THE POST RUNS THIS HEADLINE YET REFERS TO HIM AS “HER” AND “SHE” THROUGHOUT THE STORY: Transgender swimmer Ana Caldas wins 5 races at national championship event: ‘Real-life South Park episode.’

FLORIDA MAN FRIDAY [VIP]: ‘This Is the Symbol of America, Man.’ “It’s time for your much-needed break from the serious news, and this week, we learn why Disney World is the most magical place on Earth, how to rescue a bald eagle, and what not to do with a corpse on a New York City subway car.”

THE NEW SPACE RACE: Lockheed Martin delivers completed Orion to NASA for Artemis 2. “EGS will now take Orion to processing facilities at the center to load consumables such as propellant, water and oxygen, followed by installation of its launch abort system. Orion will then go to the Vehicle Assembly Building to be integrated with the Space Launch System rocket currently being assembled there.”

DEMOCRACY IS WHEN THE ELITES DENY THE PEOPLE THE REPRESENTATION THEY VOTED FOR: German Government Looking for an Excuse to Ban ‘Extremist’ Alternative for Germany Party.

NOW THIS IS WHAT I VOTED FOR: Trump unveils 2026 budget blueprint that includes deep cuts to non-defense spending.

Donald Trump unveiled his budget proposal blueprint – or “skinny budget” – for the 2026 fiscal year, which would include a $163bn cut to federal spending, eliminating more than a fifth of the non-military spending excluding mandatory programs, according to a release by the Office of Management and Budget.

The proposed budget would raise defense spending by 13% and homeland security spending by nearly 65% compared to 2025 enacted levels, according to the office. Non-defense spending would be reduced by roughly 23%, the lowest level since 2017. It is thus very much in line with the second Trump administration’s efforts to drastically shrink the size of the federal government through staffing cuts and office closures, and its aggressive anti-immigration agenda.

C’mon, Congress.

MORE LIKE THIS, PLEASE: RFK’s HHS Critiques Damaging Gender Dysphoria ‘Treatments’ for Kids.

“AS SOON AS” IS THE HARDEST-WORKING PHRASE IN HIGH-SPEED RAIL:

The new CEO of California's High Speed Rail Authority unveils an ambitious plan to have trains running from Palmdale to Gilroy as soon as 2045.https://t.co/pprBnVDk4e pic.twitter.com/bldxe6VVyo

— Rob Pyers (@rpyers) April 30, 2025

Palmdale to Gilroy, eh?

To be fair, “high-speed” is not the same as “high traffic.”

IT’S TIME FOR VICTORIA TAFT’S West Coast, Messed Coast™: Top FBI Biden Laptop and COVID Censor, Elvis Chan, Has Left the Building.

CHANGE: ‘No Participation Trophies’: Trump Revamps Performance Reviews for Top Bureaucrats.

Performance reviews are about to become much more difficult for the upper echelon of federal government employees.

The Trump administration will soon introduce rules to end what the Office of Personnel Management describes as an “everyone gets a trophy” culture permeating the federal workforce, RealClearPolitics is first to report.

The ranks of the Senior Executive Service, top bureaucrats serving throughout the government and across administrations, swelled to around 8,000 under President Biden. Most live in Washington, D.C. They typically earn an annual salary between $183,000 and $250,000. An overwhelming majority, 96%, according to an OPM memo, receive above-average performance ratings even as public trust in government continues to crater.

“Above average” doesn’t mean what it used to.

BOOM:

🚨 #BREAKING: U.S. SMASHES job expectations for April, +177,000 vs +138,000 expected

— Eric Daugherty (@EricLDaugh) May 2, 2025

Below the headline: “Federal government employment declined.“

A VERY PUBLIC EDUCATION: Typical Leftist Calls on Secret Service to Murder Trump — Oh, and She’s Teaching Your Kids.

COME SEE THE VIOLENCE INHERENT IN THE LEFTISM:

The question isn’t “who is the audience”. We all know who reads the Atlantic.

The question is “what is the purpose”.

The purpose is to legitimize violence against Trump supporters. https://t.co/qXzyLtiTIe

— Oilfield Rando (@Oilfield_Rando) May 2, 2025

UPDATE (From Ed): Past performance is no guarantee of future results:

By the way, if “Hitler’s terrible tariffs” implies that Trump’s tariffs are bad, then going full Godwin means it’s time for the Atlantic to go full libertarian as well: Hitler’s Handouts — Inside the Nazis’ welfare state.

—Michael Moynihan, Reason magazine, August/September, 2007.

DECOUPLING: Apple Says Most of Its Devices Shipped Into U.S. Will Be From India, Vietnam.

The company was among the hardest-hit of the tech giants last month because of its exposure to China, a primary target of the Trump administration’s global tariff pressure. Most of Apple’s devices are assembled in the country, and investors are closely watching its efforts to shift final assembly to India and other countries.
…
Apple expects that a majority of iPhones sold in the U.S. in the June quarter will come from India, Chief Financial Officer Kevan Parekh said in an interview. A majority of the company’s other devices sold in the U.S. from April to June—including iPads, Macs, the Apple Watch and AirPods—will come from Vietnam, he said.

The company’s shares have recovered much of the value they lost after President Trump’s Liberation Day tariffs sent them spiraling, thanks to a pause on so-called reciprocal tariffs for smartphones. The administration continues to weigh other actions that could affect tech companies, and the company faces 20% duties on imports from China and 10% from those sent via India.

China is a good place to get out of and not just because of tariffs.

CATHERINE SALGADO: May Is Military Appreciation Month, and There’s Much to Celebrate.

THE NEW SPACE RACE: FAA grounds Firefly Aerospace’s Alpha rocket until failure investigation is complete.

The U.S. Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) is requiring an investigation into Alpha’s latest flight, an April 29 launch from California’s Vandenberg Space Force Base that ended in failure.

“A return to flight is based on the FAA determining that any system, process, or procedure related to the mishap does not affect public safety,” the agency wrote in an update the day of the mishap. “In addition, Firefly may need to request and receive approval from the FAA to modify its license that incorporates any corrective actions and meet all other licensing requirements.”

The April 29 mission, which Firefly called “Message in a Booster,” was the sixth to date for the two-stage, 96.7-foot-tall (29.6-meter-tall) Alpha. The rocket was supposed to deliver a prototype version of Lockheed Martin’s LM 400 multi-mission satellite bus to low Earth orbit, but that didn’t happen.

Just after its two stages separated, Alpha suffered a mishap “that led to the loss of the Lightning engine nozzle extension, substantially reducing the engine’s thrust,” Firefly wrote in a post-launch update. (Alpha’s upper stage is powered by a single Lightning engine.)

Better luck next time, fellas.

KRUISER’S MORNING BRIEFING: ‘Maryland Dad’ Is Such a Scumbag Dems Will Probably Run Him in ’28. “The only way that the Democrats will move on from Kilmar Abrego Garcia is if they can swap him out for another criminal lowlife who is fresher in the news cycle. It’s almost riot season in the cold weather Dem-run cities, and you know they’re casting their eyes about for their next George Floyd.”

THIS WAS INEVITABLE: Google is quietly testing ads in AI chatbots.

A report from Bloomberg describes how Google began working on a plan in 2024 to adapt AdSense ads to a chatbot experience. Usually, AdSense ads appear in search results and are scattered around websites. Google ran a small test of chatbot ads late last year, partnering with select AI startups, including AI search apps iAsk and Liner.

The testing must have gone well because Google is now allowing more chatbot makers to sign up for AdSense. “AdSense for Search is available for websites that want to show relevant ads in their conversational AI experiences,” said a Google spokesperson.

If people continue shifting to using AI chatbots to find information, this expansion of AdSense could help prop up profits. There’s no hint of advertising in Google’s own Gemini chatbot or AI Mode search, but the day may be coming when you won’t get the clean, ad-free experience at no cost.

It’s a sure thing that advertisers would pay dearly to tailor ads to the privacy-busting data made available by LLM queries and chatbots.

WHY DID THE SCORPION STING THE FROG? Who Are the Maudes, and Why Did Biden Try to Ruin Their Lives? “If you watched Donald Trump’s cabinet meeting on Wednesday, you may have seen Secretary of Agriculture Brooke Rollins hold up a photo of the Maude family of South Dakota. I’d heard a little bit about the fifth-generation ranching family before that, but I decided to learn more because I couldn’t believe the story Rollins told about how the Joe Biden administration treated them. It’s unbelievable. Or maybe it’s not, given all we’re learning about the last four years.”

2026 PREVIEW: Kemp neck and neck with Ossoff in possible Georgia Senate matchup. “Kemp has not announced whether he will enter the race to unseat Ossoff, but he is facing unyielding pressure from Republican leaders who see him as their strongest shot.”

I’M CONVINCED, THEY DON’T HAVE TO KEEP PROVING IT: California Democrats Prove Again That They Care More About Perverts Than Kids.

THAT’S (D)IFFERENT BECAUSE SHUT UP:

🚨 LMAO! A reporter just EMBARRASSED Chuck Schumer after Chuck claimed Trump’s poll numbers were bad

REPORTER: “There's a poll out today that has your approval rating lower than any other Congressional leader at 17%…”

SCHUMER: “POLLS COME AND GO!”

🤣🔥 pic.twitter.com/z0EgsFOkth

— Nick Sortor (@nicksortor) May 1, 2025

SAD NEWS: Dennis Prager Suffers a ‘Setback’ in His Recovery.

FASTER? PLEASE! ‘Son of Blackbird’: US secret hypersonic jet may unleash 4,000 mph speed in 2025.