Friday, December 12, 2025

Online Debate on Child Spanking

Stefan Molyneux and Malcolm Collins have Debate: Is Hitting Children Good?!?. Molyneux subsequently posted his debate prep.

This is a funny topic. Among the general public, people overwhelmingly believe that spanking is beneficial, and even a necessary part of childrearing.

But among experts, meaning academics, child psychologists, and pediatricians, only opposition to all spanking is acceptable. Must never be done.

In the history of human civilation, all successful societies have used corporal punishment.

I have run across commentary by social scientists, where they are not only opposed to spanking, but do not understand the purpose to it. This baffles me. Social science researchers are supposed to be able to look at data, and deduce causes for behavior. If they want the reasons for spanking, they could just ask any parent. And yet they cannot figure it out. This causes me to doubt any research that they do.

Both Molyneux and Collins have unusual personal stories that color their views. Molyneux emphasizes Libertarian principles, while Collins talks a lot about evolutionary principles.

They do not talk about the published research much. It is mostly anti-spanking, but not really convincing as the studies not have good controls, and only really show that extreme and frequent beatings are harmful. They do not show that any method of discipline is better than any other.

They both have unusual and well-thought out philosphies that are worth considering, even if you disagree. Both have their own podcasts where they expound on their views at great length.

Wikipedia says:

The Collinses also employ corporal punishment in disciplining their children, which is based on Simone's personal observation of lions and tigers during a safari trip, despite clinical consensus that it impairs childhood development.
This is Wikipedia bias. His view is based on a great many things, including published research, as you can see in the debate. No, there is not a clinical consensus. Wikipedia is essentially saying that Collins is impairing his kids based on seeing lions on a safari.

Molyneux started to lose me when he talked about how abolishing spanking was a step in a multi-century project to adopt the Non-Aggression Principle and reach a libertarian utopia. Collins had more immediate concerns, such as keeping his child off the street.

One of the main arguments against spanking is that emotional manipulation is more effective. The idea is that mom smothers the baby with love and affection, and then discipline the child by withdrawing affection. Doing this makes the child loyal and obedient, better than spanking. That may be correct, but I do not agree with it.

Thursday, December 11, 2025

Thank the Christian Dark Ages for Modernity

I found this on Twitter.

This view is widespread, but I have criticized it many times. It is anti-Christian propaganda. Most of what created the modern world was invented during the period labeled the Christian Dark Ages on this chart. Christian Europe advanced centuries ahead of the rest of the world.

The chart gives the impression that Europe would have done better without Christianity, or that Europe was falling behind the rest of the world. Not true. The opposite is more accurate.

It is true that when the Roman Empire moved east, some areas got left behind. But Christians were playing the long game, and making changes that would take centuries to pay off.

Everyone agrees that scientific advancement skyrocketed in Christendom after about 1500, while the rest of the world lagged far behind. That built on earlier advances, such as those described in Renaissance of the 12th century.

I get the impression that a lot of educated people think that Christianity somehow held back scientific progress, and that we might have advanced farther without it. That is completely crazy, as all Christian countries did much better than all non-Christian countries. The difference is so dramatic that it is hard to imagine Christendom doing better than it did.

Wednesday, December 10, 2025

Swedes are getting dumber

I found this online. Could be fake, I don't know. The cause for getting dumber is probably AI and other technologies.

Tuesday, December 09, 2025

Zionist Takeover of the Republican Party

News:
Hatred of Jews threatens Western civilization itself, Fine said.

U.S. Rep. Randy Fine says antisemitism serves as a “canary in the cold mine” when it comes to destructive hate.

“Jews have been around for 3,000 years. In fact, we’re the oldest civilization that has existed,” the Atlantic Coast Republican said, “and the antisemitism was around for most of that 3,000 years. What we have seen over that history is that every civilization that has hated Jews has not stopped at hating Jews.” ...

“I serve with two antisemites in Congress. Of 220 Republicans, two of them are antisemitic,” Fine said.

This is all nonsense. The Sumerians, Egyptians, and Chinese had older civilizations. Judaism did not even become a religion until about 500 AD. Israel only since 1948.

Jews are not particularly hated. Jews have high-status positions thoughout the West. Those two Congressmen do not hate Jews. Fine called Tucker Carlson "the most dangerous antisemite in America", after Carlson hosted Nick Fuentes. Glenn Greenwald says Fine is more anti-Islam than Fuentes is anti-Jew.

Fine is Jewish, and has a $30M fortune from Las Vegas gambling fees. He was probably doing slimy things that Christians do not do.

Fine is leading a Jewish effort to purge the Republican Party of those who do not fully support the Jewish agenda. 80% of Jews vote Democrat, and yet the Jews want to take over the Republican Party as well. And not just the majority. Any dissent must be silenced.

I found this online comment:

There have always been two large groups of Jews.

The secular and the religious.

The secular group is where the globalists, marxists, fascists, censors etc come from. Globalists who demand multiculturalism for everyone except the Jew.

The religious is filled to the brim with Zionists and where the child sacrifices, blowing mosques and churches, and killing Palestinian children come from. Nationalists who demand multiculturalism for everyone except Israel.

There is some truth to this. The secular and religious Jews sometimes seem to be opposites. Then they agree on certain things.

Monday, December 08, 2025

Controlling Subscription Costs

I am trying to control subscription costs, and finding it more difficult than expected.

When you buy something online with Visa or Mastercard, the merchant is prohibited from saving the 3-digit security code. Unless it is a recurring subscription.

You might think that the fees will terminate when the card expires. Nope. Mastercard Automatic Billing Updater (ABU) and Visa Account Updater (VAU) are services that provide merchants with the info from a replacement or updated charge card. So the charges continue without your notice or approval.

If you paid on your phone with Google or Apple Pay, then you can use those services to cancel. However Google will typically charge your card 1-2 days in advance of renewal, on the excuse of trying to maintain uninterrupted service. If you cancel before the renewal date, then presumably Google will undo the charge.

If you subscribed to Twitter/X on Google Play, then you cannot even use Twitter to manage the subscription. Google owns the payment contract. Twitter does not even see the charge card number. You can only cancel or renew on Google, not Twitter. When I tried, Twitter gave me this message:

Premium -- Expiring soon
Your features will be available for the remainder of your billing period. Looks like you bought this subscription on the X Android app. You’ll need to manage or cancel your subscription from there.
I knew that Google and Apple take big commissions on their app store sales, but I had no idea that they own the renewal rights.

I guess I will have to lose my blue check mark until I free myself from Google.

Some banks offer virtual credit card accounts. These used to have the advantage that you could set them to expire in a money, and with a low credit limit. Then you use one to buy some online services, and then let it expire with the confidence that any unwanted charges will be severely limited.

However, no more. Visa and Mastercard now block these services. You can still get a virtual card, but Visa and Mastercard will renew it and send the updated info to the merchants.

It appears to me that I can still open a vitual charge account, allow it to be scheduled to expire in three years, and then manually cancel it after a month. This should be a way to avoid the card updater service.

Another alternative is Privacy.com. It is not a bank, but it can create virtual charge accounts and let you manage them online. It has a free plan, with premium plans starting at $5 per month.

I find that I have to have multiple bank cards, because charges are sometimes inexplicably declined. Sometimes I have to call the bank and ask them to unfreeze the card. Often I cannot figure out why a completely routine charge was questioned.

All in all, these charge accounts are extremely good deals for consumers, but some of the rules are baffling. If a purchase is declined, why can't the bank app tell me why? If I am buying with the phone on a merchant card terminal, why can't the phone let me approve the amount of the purchase? Who decided that restaurants should be able to add tips after I approve the bill and get my card back? Why isn't easier to control expenses?

Sunday, December 07, 2025

Stanford Students are Mentally Disabled

News:
The students at America's elite universities are supposed to be the smartest, most promising young people in the country. And yet, shocking percentages of them are claiming academic accommodations designed for students with learning disabilities. 

In an article published this week in The Atlantic, education reporter Rose Horowitch lays out some shocking numbers. At Brown and Harvard, 20 percent of undergraduate students are disabled. At Amherst College, that's 34 percent. At Stanford University, it's a galling 38 percent. Most of these students are claiming mental health conditions and learning disabilities, like anxiety, depression, and ADHD. 

Obviously, something is off here. The idea that some of the most elite, selective universities in America—schools that require 99th percentile SATs and sterling essays—would be educating large numbers of genuinely learning disabled students is clearly bogus.

I would think that colleges would want a reputation for rigorous standards and mentally competent graduates. Instead they have DEI admissions, mentally disabled students, and easy A grades on all the courses.

Saturday, December 06, 2025

How Drug Companies Manipulate Research

Dr. Josef explains Study 329: Why I Stopped Trusting Medical Research.

Briefly, a drug company manipulated a study to claim that the anti-depressant Paxil was good for children, and then made $11 billion in sales. It later paid $3B to settle govt claims about fraudulent research.

A p-value of 0.11 was moved to less than the required 0.05 by restructuring the data.

He ends by saying that the journal should retract the publication. There must be a better solution. The study data were not faked. They were just artfully presented, with some relevant data omitted. This was considered acceptable at the time. Possibly someone could figure that out by reading the study.

We need higher standards for medical study publications.

In the meantime, you should know that the research behind psychiatric drugs is questionable.

Friday, December 05, 2025

Superiority in applying organized violence

From an interview, Palantir C.E.O. Alex Karp Defends Aiding Trump’s Immigration Policies:
You wrote a book last year called the technological republic and you quote Samuel Huntington in it and 2:45 you that argues the following argues that the rise of the west was not made 2:50 possible quote by the superiority of its ideas or values or religion but rather by its superiority in applying organized violence.

3:01 What do you mean by that? And is that what Palantir ultimately does?

3:06 Well, I I I think one of the most interesting about that, about the quotes, that quote, is it's indisputably and obviously true.

Some of those European and American ideas, values, and religion did contribute to the ability to apply organized violence.

Europe had to fight a lot of wars to get where it is today. So did the USA.

one of the biggest one of the biggest problems we have in our 3:39 elite institutions especially our ivy leagues is this indisputable truth that 3:44 no one would listen to the superior of our ideas if our ability to organize in violence was inferior

that every single 3:52 person in the world believes outside of the faculty of Harvard and certainly all of our adversaries know to be true is 3:59 viewed as something that's kind of worthy of great discussion and dispute.

And the primary reason they dispute it 4:05 honestly is because at their core they they want to undermine the superiority of western values which are meritocracy, 4:13 rule of law, accepting that inputs and outputs are not the same, that are the 4:18 basis of building the superiority on the military on the military plane. Yo

He has gotten rich from supplying AI to military contractors.

Thursday, December 04, 2025

Immigrants did not build this country

News:
Democrat Rep. Pramila Jayapal says immigrants from Somalia, India, Latin America, and Africa “built this country and make this country what it is today.”
She is from India.

No, East Indian immigrants did not build USA. There are many hard-working and productive Indian-Americans, but on balance, Indians are a net negative.

It is much more accurate to say that Britain and the USA built India. Without that help, India would not even be a real country.

The situation with Somalians is much worse. The news out of Minnesota makes it appear that all the Somalians are criminal parasites.

Monday, December 01, 2025

Constitution not to Advance Mohammedanism

Constitutional scholar Clayton Cramer writes:
Joseph Story was an early Supreme Court justice. His Commentaries on the Constitution of the United States have been cited repeatedly by the Supreme Court. There are 172 citations in federal court decisions since 2021. Concerning freedom of religion, let me quote from there:
1877. The real object of the [First] amendment was not to countenance, much less to advance, Mahometanism, or Judaism;, or infidelity, by prostrating Christianity; but to exclude all rivalry among Christian sects, and to prevent any national ecclesiastical establishment which should give to a hierarchy the exclusive patronage of the national government. [2 Story, Commentaries on the Constitution of the United States 606 (1873).
If you examine the laws of the early Republic, you will see that this appears repeatedly. The dominance of Christianity was simply assumed. The Pennsylvania Constitution of 1776, section 10, includes this requirement for officeholders: ...
He goes on to give examples of requirements to be Christian or Protestant.

Some people act as if the First Amendment means an obligation to admit Mohammedans or Jews into the USA. No, the truth is more nearly the opposite.

NPR Radio reports:

President Trump's extensive new travel ban took effect just after midnight on Monday, barring nationals of 12 countries from entering the U.S. and partially restricting those from another seven. ...

The ban mostly affects countries in Africa and the Middle East. ...

The 2017 ban — initially targeting Muslim-majority countries — prompted immediate outcry and legal challenges, forcing the first Trump administration to make a number of revisions. The Supreme Court upheld a revised version in 2018, but former President Joe Biden promptly rescinded it on his first day in office in 2021, calling it a "stain on our national conscience." ...

The full ban applies to foreign nationals from 12 countries: Afghanistan, Myanmar, Chad, the Republic of Congo, Equatorial Guinea, Eritrea, Haiti, Iran, Libya, Somalia, Sudan and Yemen.

Heightened restrictions apply to people from Burundi, Cuba, Laos, Sierra Leone, Togo, Turkmenistan and Venezuela.

No, it was not a "stain on our national conscience." It was a stain that we admitted so many Mohammedans.

Sunday, November 30, 2025

Not Born That Way

New video:
Tucker Carlson Network

Tucker and Piers Morgan have a heated debate on whether or not people are born gay.

Neither of them are scientists, so it is not much of a debate.

I wonder how Morgan can be so sure that people are born gay, while there is no gay gene. And there are statistical variations that are hard to reconcile with people being born gay.

Somehow respectable people have been trained to say that, even though it does not even make any sense.

I am sure he would be a lot less eager to say that people are born criminal, or low IQ, or even male.

Saturday, November 29, 2025

Some Investors Understand Power Laws

Veritasium posted a new video on power laws, and how they occur naturally. It argues, for example, that fires in Yellowstone Park will occasionally be much worse than what is typical, and fire prevention tactics make the matter worse.

It also explains hwo venture capitalists make all their money on 10% of their investments. And how some people are far richer than you might expect from variation in incomes.

Another video says Europe's economy is dying.

Everyone complains that there is no good reason why anyone whould make more that $1 million per year, or be worth more than $1 billion.

I wonder if these are related. Maybe there is a law of nature that California venture capitalists and bankers understand, and that Europeans do not. As a result, Silicon Valley can crank out entrepreneurs to follow daring business plans and get big on new technology markets, and Europe cannot.

Wednesday, November 26, 2025

Pinker Pushes Jewish Atheism Again

I have posted many times about Steve Pinker's Jewish Atheist pro-Enlightenment anti-Christianity, such as here, and he is at it again:
Whatever humane advances we might attribute to Jesus, his followers did not adopt them for an awfully long time. For some 1,400 years that separated Constantine’s embrace of Christianity in the early 4th century to the rise of the Enlightenment in the 18th, most Christians remained untroubled by slavery, the persecution of heretics, and brutal colonial conquest.
(The full article is behind a paywall.)

Notice that he does not compare Christianity to other belief systems. Christianity is actually quite tolerant of heretics. The Enlightenment itself was very much a Christian movement, and made possible only by Christianity.

It is ridiculous to complain about Christianity and older economic systems. Christianity had no power to change these systems. Someday it might be considered immoral to have employment without a retirement plan, and someday atheists will blame Christianity for that.

It’s notable that Kingsnorth, in his essay railing against modernity, consistently cites the Christian, never the “Judeo-Christian,” tradition.

America was founded on the secular Enlightenment principles of equality, rights, flourishing, and democratic governance. It’s no coincidence that Jews thrived here. Nor can it be a coincidence that a movement founded on parochial Christian theocracy would be accompanied by a recrudescence of the world’s oldest hatred.

No, this is crazy Jew talk. Jews hate Chrstians much more than Christians hate Jews.

Gaza had three Christian churchs -- Catholic, Greek Orthodox, and Baptist. Israel has now bombed all three. American Christians have strongly supported Israel anyway.

There is no Judeo-Christian tradition. The term originally meant Jewish converts to Christianity. Only recently has it been used in the sense that Pinker uses it, which is to undermine Christianity. America was founded on Christian principles. Not Jewish.

Tuesday, November 25, 2025

UN Pushes Replacement Migration

Wikipedia says:
The Great Replacement (French: grand remplacement), also known as replacement theory or great replacement theory,[1][2][3] is a debunked[4][5] white nationalist[6] far-right conspiracy theory[3][7][8][9] coined by French author Renaud Camus. Camus' theory states that, with the complicity or cooperation of "replacist" elites,[a][7][10] the ethnic French and white European populations at large are being demographically and culturally replaced by non-white peoples—especially from Muslim-majority countries—through mass migration, demographic growth and a drop in the birth rate of white Europeans.[7][11][12]
It fails to mention this UN document:
Replacement Migration: Is it A Solution to Declining and Ageing Populations?

ESA/P/WP.160
21 March 2000
ENGLISH ONLY
Population Division
Department of Economic and Social Affairs
United Nations Secretariat

Monday, November 24, 2025

DNA Tracing Catches Criminals

A new book claims:
We found that adding anyone charged with a felony to the law enforcement DNA database in Denmark reduced future criminal convictions by over 40 percent. Again, people responded to the higher probability of getting caught by committing fewer crimes. Being added to the database also increased enrollment in school and rates of employment — signs that folks really were on a better path. This effect was largest for the youngest men, those ages eighteen to twenty-four.
That effect seems high to me.

I do believe that radical invasions of privacy are inevitable in the future. The criminal justice payoff is too large. Everyone's DNA could be registered at birth. Surveillance cameras could be everywhere, with face recognition. GPS tracking of everyone's phone and car. All money could be traced.

Friday, November 21, 2025

The Most Dangerous Cognitive Bias

Veritasium posted a new video on the psychological effects of overconfidence.

Here is the Wikipedia explanation of a related concept:

The Dunning–Kruger effect is a cognitive bias that describes the systematic tendency of people with low ability in a specific area to give overly positive assessments of this ability. The term may also describe the tendency of high performers to underestimate their skills. It was first described by the psychologists David Dunning and Justin Kruger in 1999.
The published effect is really just a misunderstanding of regression to the mean. It is further misunderstood by most of the people quoting this effect.

Thursday, November 20, 2025

Rep. Massie Leads the Epstein Coverup

Congress Thomas Massie is celebrating that Congress approved his bill to release Jeffrey Epstein files. However, it does not release all the files.

Exceptions include: classified documents, materials related to ongoing investigations, and invasion of privacy.

It is good that some more documents will be released, but this is just another coverup.

The Epstein story was big because of allegations that he was trafficking underage prostitutes to the rich and famous, and then using Israeli intelligence to blackmail them. There is no proof of any of this. From what we know, he only procured prostitutes for himself, and they were all, or nearly all, over the age of consent.

The story is that Epstein supplied 1000 underage girls to rich clients, and yet no one has been able to find a single example.

What we do know is that dozens of women were paid millions of dollars to make accusations, and those accusations were never verified. If Epstein were really video recording encountered to be used as blackmail, then there would be some evidence.

Harvard economist Larry Summers is now a casualty of the Epstein emails. But Summers was not using prostitutes. The emails merely reference an extramarital affair.

Separately we learn that the FBI has covered up for over a year the motivations behind the assassin who shot Donald Trump in the ear. And it turns out that he used preferred pronouns.

Wednesday, November 19, 2025

O'Reilly says Fuentes is Frightening

Bill O'Reilly joins those denouncing Nick Fuentes:
So Fuentes 3:38 goes on there and he says this stuff 3:41 about organized jewry and I'm going, 3:44 "What are you talking about?" All right. 3:46 He doesn't define it.

Now earlier um few 3:50 years ago he did define how he believes 3:55 uh and it's scary. Roll that tape.

[Alex Jones] 3:59 Let's just get the Hitler thing out of 4:00 the way. Do you actually admire Adolf 4:03 Hitler

[Fuentes] 4:05 in some ways? Yes. And I'm not a 4:08 national socialist and I'm not a you 4:10 know I wouldn't identify that way 4:11 because I'm a I'm a Christian. ...

4:24 I don't share this uh histrionic Jewish 4:27 view that Hitler is this exceptionally 4:30 boogeyman evil figure.

[O'Reilly] 4:34 Now that is really frightening. Now I 4:37 don't care what Nick Fuentes says. I 4:40 don't care. He doesn't know anything. 4:44 He's dumb.

Frightening? If he doesn't care about Fuentes dumb opinions, then what is frightening?

Yes, there is an organized Jewry. Why else is O'Reilly making this video? He would not make a video about an obscure theological point just because he disagrees with a dumb comment from someone he does not care about.

Fuentes said he does not share a Jewish belief, and O'Reilly says that is frightening.

O'Reilly is not Jewish, and retired a multi-millionaire. He should not have to rush to the defense of Jewish beliefs, but does it anyway. That only happens because there is an organized Jewish effort to ostracize Fuentes.

Most of the YouTube comments favor Fuentes.

The organized Jewry and Zionists are losing the hard Left Democrats, Blacks, and young people. Now they might be losing conservative Republicans. That would be a disaster for them. So they are desperate to hang on to conservative Republicans.

Mark R. Levin not only wants to cancel Fuentes, he wants to cancel Tucker Carlson, Megyn Kelly, and other mainstream conservatives who do not profess allegiance to Israel. This issue is not about Hitler and Stalin. It is about Jewish supremacy and Israel.

Tuesday, November 18, 2025

Black Women Uncomfortable about Hair

News:
Michelle Obama has claimed that Black women have to straighten their locks to 'follow white people's beauty standards' during a furious on-air rant. ...

'Let me explain something to white people. Our hair comes out of our head naturally in a curly pattern,' an exasperated Michelle began.

'When we straighten it to follow your beauty standards, we are trapped by the straightness.

'That's why so many of us can't swim, and we run away from the water. People won't go to the gym because [they're] trying to keep [their] hair straight for y'all! It's exhausting, expensive and takes up so much time.'

Only about 15% of the world has curly hair. Most of Asia has straight hair. She is straightening her hair mostly to conform to Asian styles, not White. Lots of White women curl their hair.

She has been saying crazy things for months.

Monday, November 17, 2025

Sierra Club goes Woke, and goes Broke

A leftist biology professor posts:
This happens over and over again. It happened with the Southern Poverty Law Center. It happened with the ACLU. It happened with the Audubon Society. And now it’s happening with the Sierra Club. What is happening? An organization with a narrowly defined but admirable mission cannot resist the ideological Zeitgeist, and embraces social justice precepts that are not universally accepted. The organization becomes riven with controversy, and it erodes, becoming damaged. (This also happened with Scientific American, remember?)

The NYT from a week ago tells us how this is happening to the Sierra Club, which has lost money and membership after deciding to branch off into Social Justice Warriorism. Read about it by clicking the headline below, or find the article archived here for free.

That article starts:
The Sierra Club calls itself the “largest and most influential grass roots environmental organization in the country.” But it is in the middle of an implosion — left weakened, distracted and divided just as environmental protections are under assault by the Trump administration.

The group has lost 60 percent of the four million members and supporters it counted in 2019. It has held three rounds of employee layoffs since 2022, trying to climb out of a $40 million projected budget deficit.

Its political giving has also dropped. Federal campaign-finance records show $3.6 million in donations from the Sierra Club during the push to defeat Donald J. Trump in 2020, but none as Mr. Trump stormed back to the presidency in 2024.

The article shows support collapsing in about 2020, but the real problem started decades earlier when it went pro-immigration. There are a lot of arguments for and against immigration, but for an environmentalist, migration from the Third World to the USA is overwhelmingly bad. The Sierra Club should have been overwhelmingly against it.

The story has surprisingly little to do with Donald Trump. If anything, Trump should have united them with opposition to coal-burning and other policies.

Sunday, November 16, 2025

Ancient Roman Road Map

Source

A new study identified over 68,000 more miles of ancient Roman roads than were previously known.
Year 150 AD. This is amazing.

Saturday, November 15, 2025

Some Christians more Anti-semitic than Hitler

The word anti-semitism is being thrown around looseely on both the Right and the Left, but this is new to me. From a recent Noam Chomsky interview:
the evangelicals have a very 1:36:03 interesting position on Jews and on Israel. They're the most extreme anti-semites in human history. Their 1:36:12 theology, if you look at it, is that uh it's not 100% of evangelicals, but a 1:36:18 leading part of it uh there's got to we got to look for Armageddon.

1:36:23 Yeah. the then the second coming Christ comes. What happens when Christ comes back? 1:36:30 Those who are saved go to heaven. Everybody else goes to eternal 1:36:36 predition. Mhm. What happens to the Jews? Yeah. Actuallyund according to one of the 1:36:43 denominations 160,000 can convert in time. The rest go to eternal predition. 1:36:50 Yeah. Did Hitler call for that? No.

Not even Hitler comdemned the Jews to Hell. Some evangelical Christians do, making them more anti-semitic than Hitler.

I am not sure this is true. I thought most evangelical Christian Israel-supporters believe that Jews have their own deal with God, and therefore not judged so harshly.

Even if he is right, it is bizarre to hear an atheist professor, of Jewish descent I think, complain about some religious after-life belief. If every religion condemned non-believer to Hell in the after-life, why would Chomsky care?

I post this as an example of alleged anti-semitism. It reminds me of Tucker Carlson being called an anti-semite and enemy of the Jews for saying that Christian Zionism is a heresy.

People are entitled to their religious views, which always include negative beliefs about rival religions.

Update: Chomsky is in the news from disclosures of Jeffrey Epstein emails. They were friends, and discussed many matters such as Israel and finance. There is no implication of sexual misbehavior, but everyone with any association with Epstein is being blamed.

Friday, November 14, 2025

A Third of Americans Households are Rich

People complain about the shrinking AMerican middle class, as if that were a bad thing, but look at this graph; Note that the figures are inflation adjusted, and they are for household income, not individual income.

We do have more two-earner households.

Making $150,000 a year is wealthy. You can live in a nice house, drive fancy cars, eat high-class food, and go on exotic vacations.

This wealthy sector went from 5% to 34%. So a third of American households are rich.

Thursday, November 13, 2025

No Need for Foreign Workers

News:
President Donald Trump drew criticism from those within his "Make America Great Again" base after he reinvigorated debate on one of his party's most controversial issues: H-1B visas.

The visas allow U.S. companies to hire highly skilled foreign workers for up to six years.

The issue resurfaced after Trump told Fox News’ Laura Ingraham in an interview that aired Tuesday that bringing foreign workers to the U.S. on H-1B visas is important to "bring in talent" to the U.S. While Ingraham argued that the U.S. has talent at home, Trump said that wasn’t the case.

It is not true that the visas are for highly skilled workers. There are other visa programs for that: EB-2, EB-3, O-1. The H-1B visas go to Indians and others will skills comparable to an average American college graduate.

Ben Shapiro defended the visas citing Elon Musk, Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella, and Google CEO Sundar Pichai. He says they created many thousands of American jobs.

I can see the argument for Musk as he founded SpaceX, and essentially founded Tesla and a couple of other companies. But Nadella and Pichai happened to be at the right place at the right time, and cashed in on cloud computing and AI developed by others.

Google and Microsoft hired thousands of Indian programmers and engineers as cheaper substitutes for Americans, and then had to hire Indians to manage them. Nadella and Pichai rose in that environment, but are they responsible for any innovative products that created jobs? Not that I have heard. They are now making good AI products, but they are playing catchup to OpenAI and Anthropic.

Wednesday, November 12, 2025

Atheist Believed in Parallel Universes

Victor J. Stenger was a physicist who retired and spent the rest of life promoting Atheism. Here are some of his quotes:
The problem is that people think faith is something to be admired. In fact, faith means you believe in something for which you have no evidence.

Proof is not required to believe [in a god]. But some sign, some evidence is needed. None exists... Find some inkling of evidence. There is none.

Science flies you to the moon. Religion flies you into buildings.

Sounds like a skeptic, but in this recently-released interview, he says he believes in many-worlds theory!

This is baffling to me. There is not an inkling of evidence for it. It requires rejecting most of science.

Believing in parallel universe is goofier than believing in God or the Bible.

Tuesday, November 11, 2025

Olympics Returns to Sex Discrimination

Olympic competitions for women used to be just for women. Now it is returning to that.

News:

The Olympics is increasingly likely to ban transgender athletes from all female competition following a science-based review of evidence.

Kirsty Coventry, the new president of the International Olympic Committee (IOC), told Telegraph Sport in January that she favoured a blanket ban and, after winning the presidency in March, commissioned a review that assessed the permanent physical advantages of being born male.

This should not have required a science-based review of evidence. The most decisive thing was probably the Pres. Trump executive order for a sex-based policy. It stated the obvious, after our scientific organizations went woke.

Monday, November 10, 2025

Guinness Book goes Woke

The new 2026 edition of the Guinness Book of World Records has 2 whole pages on the WNBA, and only a half page each on the NBA, MLB, NFL, and NHL.

What drives this? I don't think anyone cares about women's basketball records.

Sunday, November 09, 2025

The Rise of Nick Fuentes

Nick Fuentes has been in the news. He has this Wikipedia bio:
Nicholas Joseph Fuentes (born August 18, 1998) is an American far-right[8] political commentator, activist, and live streamer. He hosts America First, a livestream promoting white nationalism,[9][10] Christian nationalism,[7] white supremacy,[11] white genocide conspiracy theory, misogyny, anti-immigration, anti-miscegenation, anti-LGBTQ, scientific racism, Islamophobia, and antisemitism, including Holocaust denial.[10][12][13][14] His supporters are known as Groypers.
He has 500k followers on Rumble.

His enemies are digging up quotes to trash him, such as this:

Nick Fuentes: “Jews are running society, women need to shut the fuck up, Blacks need to be imprisoned for the most part, and we would live in paradise”

Fuentes: “White men need to run the household, they need to run the country, they need to run the companies. They just need to run everything.”

Apparently some people are alarmed that he might be the heir to Charlie Kirk, in the attention of young conservative men.

Saturday, November 08, 2025

Watson, of DNA Fame, dies

The London BBC reports:
Nobel Prize-winning American scientist James Watson, one of the co-discoverers of the structure of DNA, has died aged 97. ...

"We have discovered the secret of life," they said at the time.

His later comments on race led to him saying that he felt ostracised by the scientific community.

In 2007, the scientist, who once worked at the University of Cambridge's Cavendish Laboratory, told the Times newspaper that he was "inherently gloomy about the prospect of Africa", because "all our social policies are based on the fact that their intelligence is the same as ours - whereas all the testing says not really".

The comments led to him losing his job as chancellor at Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory in New York.

Academics are proved wrong all the time, and they do not get fired for it. No, they get fired for saying something true, but offensive.
Working with images obtained by King's College researcher Rosalind Franklin, without her knowledge, Crick and Watson were able to construct a physical model of the molecule. Maurice Wilkins, who shared the Nobel with Crick and Watson, had worked with Franklin to determine the DNA molecule's structure.
This is a little misleading, as she was credited with the images. She might have gotten Wilkins' share of the prize, if she had been still alive, and if the public knew how much those images influenced Watson.

NY Times obituary.

Update: Noah Carl writes:

It’s crucial to note, of course, that Watson’s views on race and intelligence are scientifically unimpeachable. The testing does show large average differences between Africa and Western countries. Meanwhile, surveys of experts working in relevant fields reveal non-trivial or high levels of agreement that genes contribute to psychological group differences. ... ...

Watson’s work on the structure of DNA has certainly earned him a place in history, whatever his (less accomplished) critics might say. But perhaps what he should be remembered for above all is possessing that rarest of qualities: he wasn’t a coward.

Some quotes here:
I’ve given my DNA to two of these companies. I’ve told them they can publish everything except the structure of the gene that will tell me if I’m predisposed to Alzheimer’s. I don’t want to know.
I am always amazed when people are afraid to learn their genes. Watson seems like as much as a DNA enthusiast as you will ever find, and yet he was afraid to learn one of his genes.

That gene is not even dispositive. It is just a risk factor, like cholesterol level and body mass index.

Not a coward? Ha ha.

I don't get it, but the entire related subjects of race and intelligence drive people bonkers. They do not want to know the scientific facts, and they run from examining the implications.

I would say that less that 5% of the population just want the truth, whatever it is.

Update: Here are the snide comments of a Watson-hater.

The Watson-Crick DNA work did indeed depend on the work of others, as with all scientific progress. Their crucial original idea was that DNA had two strands with paired bases, so that the strands could be split and copied as a biological process. This was the secret of life that made digital genetic coding possible. No one else had this idea.

Friday, November 07, 2025

John Rocker was Right

Vox Day writes:

Twenty-five years ago, the Atlanta Braves pitcher John Rocker wrote an impassioned observation about the decline of New York.

“Imagine having to take the 7 Train to the ballpark looking like you’re riding through Beirut next to some kid with purple hair, next to some queer with AIDS, right next to some dude who just got out of jail for the fourth time, right next to some 20-year-old mom with four kids. It’s depressing. The biggest thing I don’t like about New York are the foreigners. You can walk an entire block in Times Square and not hear anybody speaking English. Asians and Koreans and Vietnamese and Indians and Russians and Spanish people and everything up there. How the hell did they get in this country?”

He was roundly condemned for this by the national media, by Major League Baseball, and was even forced to undergo professional counseling for the thought crime of noticing the consequences of the foreign invasion the city was undergoing. And now, with what appears to be the imminent election of a socialist Muslim born in Uganda to the highest elective office in New York City, he’s taking a well-earned victory lap.

25 years ago I criticized New York for its rapid decline into a third world country. I was forced to undergo Psychological Counseling, as if I were the crazy one. 25 years later, the city is voting in a muslim socialist for mayor.

This is an object lesson for all of the puritanical goodthinkers and immigration fetishists who drank the equalitarian Kool-Aid. Those Cassandras you condemned for being “crazy” and “racist” and “bigoted” were right all along. All of history, recent and ancient, clearly testifies to the obvious fact that if you permit a sufficient number of foreigners to enter your country, they will change it to suit their preferences with absolutely no respect for what was there before them.

The equalitarian ideology has failed. The Enlightenment has failed. Multiculturalism and anti-racism have failed. Immigration is a clear, present, and existential danger to most of the nations of the West.

If you are still having trouble understanding the concept, ask an American Indian to explain it to you.

I remember this, as an early cancelation. I think a Sports Illustrated reporter baited him into redneck some trash talk, and he naively complied. I guess his employer forced him into a public apology, but that did not help.

Thursday, November 06, 2025

Women Vote for Socialist Mohammedan

A Fox News Poll found that Zohran Mamdani got 81% of the under-30 female vote in New York City.

I guess NY Jews are not as powerful as I thought.

Was it because he is young, socialist, or Mohammedan?

I mentioned the Helen Andrews theory that feminization is the core driver behind woke politics. Maybe this helps explain the NYC mayor election. Otherwise it is hard to understand voting for a socialist Mohammedan.

As recently as 1950, NYC was 90% White.

Virginia elected a attorney general in spite of this:

In October 2025, Jones came under fire for a 2022 text conversation with fellow delegate Carrie Coyner, in which Jones repeatedly made statements advocating violence against then–House Speaker Todd Gilbert and his family. Jones stated that if he had two bullets and could shoot Gilbert, Adolf Hitler, or Pol Pot, Gilbert "gets two bullets to the head".[29][30] Jones acknowledged that he had talked about hoping Gilbert's children would die because "Only when people feel pain personally do they move on policy", before describing Gilbert and his wife as "evil" and "breeding little fascists".[31][32][33]
Update: Polls also show that Momdani got 83% of the foreigner vote. Also a big majority of the non-white vote.

Wednesday, November 05, 2025

Jailed for Saying Sexual Choices are Mental

News:
A man in Switzerland is facing jail after refusing to pay a fine for a comment courts have ruled discriminates against the LGBTQ community after a three-year legal battle.

Emanuel Brunisholz, a Swiss wind instrument repairman, was convicted under the country’s anti-discrimination laws for an old Facebook comment.

In 2022, he pointed out that the biological differences between men and women are obvious by their skeletal structure.

“If you dig up LGBTQI people after 200 years, you’ll only find men and women based on their skeletons. Everything else is a mental illness promoted through the curriculum,” he wrote on Facebook.

The post was reported to police, and Brunisholz was questioned a few months later. He was found guilty of discrimination and incitement to hatred by a court in Bern.

He appealed the decision in regional court in 2023 but was again found guilty and racked up 600 Swiss francs ($753) in court fees.

The court issued a fine of 500 Swiss francs in lieu of a ten-day jail term but Brunisholz refused to pay the fine and accepted incarceration instead, posting his summons on X earlier this month. He is to begin serving his sentence on December 2.

Tuesday, November 04, 2025

Neo-con Woman tries to Defend Feminism

Alternet reports:

Conservative/libertarian journalist Cathy Young has, at times, been highly critical of what she views as the excesses of third-wave feminism. Back in 2016, an op-ed Young wrote for the Washington Post was headlined "How Feminism Came To Be All About Hating Men."

Although the piece draw criticism from some progressives and praise from right-wing media, Young emphasized that she had no use for sexism whether it was male-bashing from the far left or misogyny from the far right. And in a lengthy article published by the conservative website The Bulwark on October 22, Young aggressively calls out a trend in the MAGA movement: blaming women for a wide range of problems.

"The latest intellectual buzz on the right is about a Compact Magazine essay that boils down to 'Women ruin everything,'" Young explains. "The piece by Helen Andrews, titled 'The Great Feminization'

I would not call The Bulwark a conservative website. It seems to hold mostly neo-con Trump-hater essays.

I mentioned Andrews' view, so I am posting a contrary view.

It’s not that women are bad, says Andrews; but their distinct qualities and values — “empathy over rationality, safety over risk, cohesion over competition” — transform these institutions in ruinous ways. Let too many women flock to academia, and we get touchy-feely stuff instead of “open debate and the unfettered pursuit of truth.” Too many women in journalism spell the decline of “prickly individualists” willing to brave public disapproval. '''

LET’S NOT MINCE WORDS: This a grotesquely misogynistic screed. ...

Today, there is research showing that female faculty (younger faculty, at least) and Ph.D. students in North America and the United Kingdom are more left-wing than their male peers; they are also more likely on average to prioritize social justice over truth-seeking, to support the suppression of views deemed harmful to oppressed groups, and to believe that it’s more important for the curriculum to have racial and gender diversity than to include “foundational texts.” ... Andrews tweeted:

Men have the concept of an honorable enemy. Men can engage in conflict with an opponent and still respect them. When the conflict is over, they’ll shake the other guy’s hand and accept the outcome gracefully.

Women don’t have that. If you’re her enemy, you are subhuman garbage. No rules govern the fight; no shaking hands when it’s over. It is never over. ...

Whatever the reason, this is actually the number one thing I worry about with the Great Feminization. I see it already in the female-dominated Democratic Party.

I cannot figure out these neo-cons. There is a lot of opinion, but little substance. She apparently copies a silly David French argument that her Andrews' theory does not match the French Revolution.

Another Bulwark article complains that Tucker Carlson interviewed Nick Fuentes. Exactly why this is so upsetting is not clear. It tries to imply that Fuentes is a Nazi.

It is weird that they hate Fuentes so much. He is primarily known for being America First, and being Christian. He once made an ambiguous offhand comment about "six million cookies", and Jews were very offended. The most outrageous thing he said in the interview was that he like Stalin. He did not say why.

There is also a systematic effort to ostracize Tucker Carlson, as he does not support Israel's war on Gaza.

Fuentes is “the most dangerous man in America to Jews.”
A Republican congressman Randy Fine says:
Make no mistake. Today, Tucker Carlson is the most dangerous antisemite in America.
It is weird that they focus on some podcasters, while a Mohammedan anti-Israel foreigner is about to be elected mayor of New York City. The Trump-haters talk about Nazis and Hitler all the time. Here is Ben Shapiro, a right-wing Jew, with a 41-minute rant against Tucker Carlson and Nick Fuentes. Young continues:
Democrats are once again comparing the Trump administration to Hitler and Nazi Germany. The renewed rhetoric was the subject of debate at a Congressional hearing that included the Democratic governors of three sanctuary states.

Democrats have either called or compared President Donald Trump and his supporters to Nazis for years, going back to his first administration.

That trend began again in May when Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, a Democrat, compared the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) to the Gestapo.

New rule: Just ignore anyone talking about Nazis. But some deny that they do it.
MSNBC host Nicolle Wallace said on Monday she doesn't believe any Democrat has compared President Donald Trump to German dictator Adolf Hitler.

Apparently Fuentes is an extremely divisive figure in the right-wing. He has just enough of a following to get attention. Some disagree with him, but think that he is raising important issues. Others consider him a huge embarrassment, and wish that he would go away.

Shapiro is particularly disturbed that Carlson said that Christian Zionism is a heresy. Shapiro is not a Christian. I do not know why he would even have an opinion on this. I do not post opinions about what Jewish law ought to be.

Mark Levin went into a rant against Carlson and Fuentes before a right-wing Jew audience:

we canceled Pat Buchanan. We canceled the John Birch Society, ... We cancel stuff all the damn time.
I assume that "we" means the Jews.

No, I do not agree with canceling Buchanan, Birch Society, or Carlson. They are all mainstream conservatives, and are not anti-semitic. Fuentes is more of a trouble-maker. I am not sure about Fuentes, but he is just another guy with an opinion.

Some of these Jews seem to be trying to convince us that Jews are the gatekeepers of the popular media. Only certain opinions are allowed.

Update: This dispute has gotten bigger than I expected. In short, conservatives are being split into America First and neo-con pro-Israel factions.

Monday, November 03, 2025

Kamala Harris writes Delusional Book

One of the craziest things about Kamala Harris's new book, 107 Days, is her claim that Joe Biden was fully competent to be President, but not to campaign for re-election.

She was happy to be his VP, without calling out his senility. But she says that he had a obligation to drop out earlier, and endorse her. She blames her election loss on not having enough time to campaign.

She also blames Donald Trump for not more accurately defining what he would do as President, and blames Elon Muskinnnnnnnth

All of this is crazy, as Harris's popularity declined the more she campaigned. The more the voters saw of her, the more they disliked her. And Trump has done a very good job of keeping his promises.

The most revealing thing here is that Harris implies that the Presidency is an easy job that can be done by a senile old man who is incompetent to do press interviews.

No, the USA Presidency is the most important and difficult job in the world.

So how could she work in the White House, and think that it is such an easy job?

The obvious explanation is that Biden was not doing the job. He was a figurehead, and a cabal of Democrat operatives were actually running the country.

It seems obvious now that everyone knew that Biden and Harris were both incompetent. Their support came from people who were really supporting the secret cabal running the White House.

Sunday, November 02, 2025

The Child Abuse Pediatricians

The NY Times announces a new podcast:
this doctor’s controversial career paralleled the rise of a new subspecialty: child abuse pediatrics, a field devoted to detecting — and preventing — child abuse.

The Preventionist charts this doctor’s path to Pennsylvania, as well as the profound damage that can result from separating parents and children; the final episode is the unvarnished story of one mother’s struggle to reunite her family after it was torn apart

Apparently this new child abuse pediatricians are like crooked lawyers for hire. If you have a messy divoce or child custody case, they can be paid to produce bogus affidavits creating suspicion of the other parent committing child abuse.

Saturday, November 01, 2025

Prince Andrew Stripped of his Titles

The NY Post reports:
In just a matter of hours on Thursday, Prince Andrew was cut loose from the royal family, stripped of his status and henceforth to be called Andrew Mountbatten Windsor. His abruptly-formed new life, without titles and banished to the King’s Norfolk home, is a dramatic contrast to the position he was born into as the favorite son of the late Queen – and with his shocking years-long public downfall now finally complete, he will reportedly be in “hell”.
This is all from unproven rumors about Jeffrey Epstein.

I hear people refer to the Satanic Panic of the 1980s, but it is just as bad today. The evidence against Epstein was extremely thin.

Yes, he would get massages from teenaged girls, and sometimes paid for prostitution. That can be illegal and embarrassing, but not a big deal.

What makes the Epstein story a major scandal are sensationalist allegations of pedophilia, blackmail, foreign intelligence covert operations, trafficking underage girls, systematically providing prostitutes and maybe underage girls to the rich and famous, and a DoJ report of 1000+ victims.

As far as I can tell, none of this is true. Yes, Epstein got convicted of a minor offense that was strangely federalized, and his girlfriend G. Maxwell also got convicted.

I question her guilt. She was supposed to get immunity as part of a plea deal. At her trial, a couple of women told unverified stories about events 20 years earlier. One of the them was an admitted schizophrenic who was obeying voices she said she heard in her head.

The women telling stories all got paid $3M+ for telling them.

Some say where there is smoke there is fire. I say that if there were really 1000 victimes, someone would be able to find at least one credible one. No one has.

I don't know why British royalty would go along with this nonsense. Prince Andrews says he is innocent, and no one has any evidence against him that would hold up in court. Even if he did visit a prostitute, the royal family surely has a long history of extramarital affairs.

The Pizzagate conspiracy theory made more sense.

Friday, October 31, 2025

The Kalergi Plan

Wikipedia reports:
The Kalergi Plan, sometimes called the Coudenhove-Kalergi Conspiracy,[1] is a debunked far-right, antisemitic, white genocide conspiracy theory.[2][3] The theory claims that Austrian-Japanese politician Richard von Coudenhove-Kalergi, creator of the Paneuropean Union, concocted a plot to mix and replace white Europeans with other races via immigration.[4] ...

The conspiracy theory stems from a section of Kalergi's 1925 book Praktischer Idealismus ("Practical Idealism"), in which he predicted that a mixed race of the future would arise: "The man of the future will be of mixed race. Today's races and classes[a] will gradually disappear owing to the vanishing of space, time, and prejudice. The Eurasian-Negroid race of the future, similar in its appearance to the Ancient Egyptians, will replace the diversity of peoples with a diversity of individuals."[1][8] Modern far-right individuals seek to draw relationships between contemporary European policy-making and this quote.[1]

See, for example, Practical Idealism In Action - The Kalergi Plan.

Thursday, October 30, 2025

Israel and China Control VPN Services

People get talked into using VPN services, as a necessary tool for privacy. But a lot of them are controlled by Israel:
ExpressVPN is one of the biggest VPNs in the world. Millions of people use it to hide their online activity, stay safe, and protect their privacy. But there is a major problem. ExpressVPN is owned by an Israeli-linked company with deep ties to the Israeli military and the surveillance industry.

That means when you use ExpressVPN, your money could be helping fund the same system of occupation and violence that is starving and bombing Palestinians in Gaza.

Here is everything you need to know.

In 2021, ExpressVPN was bought for $936 million by Kape Technologies, a London-based company with strong Israeli roots.

Kape is not a small player in the market. It is owned by Israeli billionaire Teddy Sagi, one of the richest men in Israel. Kape has also bought CyberGhost, Private Internet Access, and ZenMate, making it one of the largest VPN empires in the world.

So when you think you are choosing between different VPNs, you may actually just be choosing between products controlled by the same Israeli company.

And many of the others are controlled by China.

If you get your internet from Concast, then it has the ability to spy on you. A VPN might be worse.

Wednesday, October 29, 2025

OpenAI to Spend Trillions

Axios reports:
OpenAI has committed to spend about $1.4 trillion on infrastructure so far, equating to roughly 30 gigawatts of data center capacity, CEO Sam Altman said on Tuesday. ...

That total includes the already announced deals with AMD, Broadcom, Nvidia, Oracle and other partners.

Yes, but: That's just the starting point, Altman said. Over time, the company would like to have in place a technical and financial apparatus that would allow it to build a gigawatt of new capacity per week at a cost of around $20 billion per gigawatt.

It is hard to imagine that he will get the money, or that he can get the gigawatts.

Maybe he already has artificial super-general intelligence, and can use it to get what no one else can.

Tuesday, October 28, 2025

Ideas too Toxic for Wikipedia

Wikipedia claims to be not censored. As if to prove that, it has a List of ethnic slurs, including notorious ones that I avoid here.

But there are certain views that are considered so toxic that they are not permitted. Not only that, but people holding any of these views can be permanently banned from Wikipedia.

I am not just saying that editors cannot express these opinions on Wikipedia. If someone is editing a Wikipedia on tiddlywinks, and he expresses one of these views elsewhere, then he can be doxed and banned from Wikipedia.

Here is the current list of toxic opinions.

  • That white people are more intelligent than non-whites.
  • That white people are more industrious than non-whites.
  • That white people are more physically adept or attractive than non-whites.
  • That white people are morally and ethically superior to non-whites.
  • That the various cultures of white people are better than the cultures of non-white people.
  • That white people have the right to live in a white-only nation.
  • That, in majority-white countries, a large majority of crimes are committed by non-whites due to genetic factors.
  • That violent, abhorrent or deceptive actions are justified in the pursuit of these beliefs.

...

So Wikipedia itself claims the free speech right to post racial slurs, but if anyone else claims that right, he will be banned from Wikipedia.

Some of these are matters of fact. Some are opinion. Many are subject to interpretation.

These bans are foolish. For example, I certainly think that the good guys won WWII, but how can I hold that view if the contrary view is suppressed? The winners write the history books. My opinion is meaningless if I am unable to learn the opposing views. I often go to Wikipedia to get unpopular views. More and more, I use AI for that.

It goes on to say:

The very existence of a "white race" is a pseudo-scientific idea that has been rejected by the scientific community since the late 1960s – shortly after the discovery of molecular genetics.
It is funny how these people can lodge all these complaints against the White race, and then claim that no such race exists. Actually, consumer dna services will tell you your racial makeup, based on dna.