MY NEW YORK POST COLUMN: Fauci’s follies — time to toss the ‘science is settled’ groupthink.

DON SURBER: It’s the candidates, stupid: Democrat nominees are creepy and kooky, mysterious and spooky. They’re all together ooky.

THIS IS NOT A RECIPE FOR SOCIETAL SUCCESS: Status matters so much for success in our world now because we so often just trust high status folks to run stuff, without much accountability re concrete performance metrics.

KURT SCHLICHTER: Democrats Want to Close the Prisons, Except Not for People Like You.

Socialism is not about making lives better or creating prosperity or security or any of those things. It’s about jerks living out their personal psychodramas while they get off on making you miserable.

Nothing demonstrates that more than the idea of defunding the police and getting rid of prisons. After all, you wicked normal people deserve to have thugs, junkies, murderers, rapists, and other Democrat constituencies turned on you to make you pay for the crime of being you. You need to understand the deep hate that lives within all these people, and that’s why, in every single leftist sector of society, you see the actual criminals not merely being ignored but being idolized. The DSA types would free these barbarians for the express purpose of allowing those barbarians to hurt you, because you deserve to be hurt. You deserve to be killed. You deserve to be raped. Why? Because these freaks don’t like you and it amuses them to see you in pain.

But there’s a practical side to it too. The old Soviet Union understood it. Regular criminals were victims of society, and you, being the foundation of society, need to be victimized in return. If you were a regular criminal, you were treated infinitely better than someone who committed a real crime, that is, a political crime. If you opposed the regime, then you were a real criminal.

Leftists still think that way.

IF THEY SUCCEED, THEY WILL BE JUDGED AND FOUND WANTING:

Bill Gurley on Anthropic: "I don't think they think they're writing software. I think they're midwifing a deity" https://t.co/H1DlxyuH1R pic.twitter.com/h3kAIpbUyp

— Ruben (@rdominguezibar) August 1, 2026

“Sinners in the hands of an angry AI” would be fun to write.

ICYMI:

The inconvenient truth. pic.twitter.com/P8QmsX5GcA

— iamyesyouareno (@iamyesyouareno) August 3, 2026

INTEGRITY IS ALL ACADEMIA HAS. AND YET.

Dozens of Duke University academics signed a letter declaring the lacrosse team guilty of rape allegations made against them by a black stripper. When the prosecuting attorney was disbarred for misconduct based on his conduct during the trial and the NC attorney general declared… https://t.co/STb0iTJ1fS

— Wesley Yang (@wesyang) August 2, 2026

OPEN THREAD: Monday, Monday.

THE NEW SPACE RACE: Artemis moonsuits take a dive.

METFORMIN UPDATE: Diabetes Drug Used For More Than 60 Years Found to Unexpectedly Affect The Brain.

MY NEW YORK POST COLUMN: Fauci’s follies — time to toss the ‘science is settled’ groupthink.

Fauci’s continuous four-decade tenure, unprecedented for an NIH institute director, gave him deep institutional knowledge, relationships across government, and high public visibility.

After so long in office, he had connections everywhere — and he used them with relish.

People who crossed him were unlikely to get funded; people who pleased him had a much better shot.

No wonder he saw himself as the embodiment of science itself.

But science isn’t something that people are; it’s something people do.. It’s a system in which hypotheses are tested, supported or falsified, and developed further.

And allowing one person, with all his human biases and weaknesses, to hold so much power over science for so long can only do that system harm.

Read the whole thing, as they say.

HMM: Hair Loss May Be an Overlooked Side Effect of Ozempic and Mounjaro.

PUTIN’S QUAGMIRE: More Fuel Tankers, Warehouses and Oil Refineries Are Burning in Russia.

THEY’RE THE POWERHOUSES OF THE CELL: Mighty mitochondria: Scientists uncover new role for fighting bacterial infections, including drug-resistant superbugs.

DO THEY THINK IT’S STILL 2020? THERE’S PLENTY OF OIL. Ferrari Thinks Biofuels Can Help Keep Combustion Alive. And “climate change” as an issue is already fading.

COVERING THE IMPORTANT NEWS:

MY NEPHEW HAS AN AR-15 IN .458 SOCOM. IT’S IMPRESSIVE. Ammo: .458 SOCOM.

MISOGYNY IS IN OUR DNA!!! Female mammoths were cavemen’s preferred prey.

AIR CONDITIONING FOR EVERYONE! German official calls for national heat action plan for 2027. Haha, just kidding. They seem more concerned with “tackling climate change,” which no doubt means further carbon emission reductions that will be a pimple on the ass of China’s increased emissions.

CHANGE: Strength training is replacing weight loss as the top goal at the gym — and it has to do with GLP-1s.

ICYMI: ANDY KESSLER HAS A NICE COLUMN ABOUT MY SEDUCTIVE AI BOOK IN THE WALL STREET JOURNAL.

Archived version here.

NEWS YOU CAN USE: The Kitchen Habits That Are Truly Dangerous and the Ones That Are Just Gross.

THE LEADERS, AT LEAST, ARE NOT COMPLACENT, THEY ARE COMPLICIT: Europe Is Suicidally Complacent About the Islamist Threat.

I LOVE THIS:

Important announcement: I am upping my offer, $10 million dollars for a head-to-head basketball game between the defending WNBA champion Las Vegas Aces and a boy's high school state title team of my choice. If the Aces beat my team, I will give them $10 million.

— Clay Travis (@ClayTravis) August 3, 2026

There’s no way they will accept, of course, which tells you all you need to know.

MOST ENVIRONMENTALISM IS MORE FOCUSED ON MAKING YOUR LIFE WORSE THAN ON MAKING THE PLANET BETTER: Don Surber: The plastic straw man argument. Communists: Making life miserable for the middle class one mandate at a time.