Our Woman Celebrities are Narcissists

News:

Michelle Obama: ‘I’m not divorcing Barack — I’m choosing me’

A lot of people were pushing her to run for President. I do not think she is really liked. She is way too much of a narcissist. Even when she says she is still married, it is all about her.

This is old news, but UK BBC reported:

Kanye West has been ordered to pay Kim Kardashian $200,000 (£167,000) per month in child support in a divorce settlement.

The former rapper and reality TV star will share joint custody of their four children. ...

The couple have four children: North, 9, Saint, 6, Chicago, 4, and Psalm, 3.

In several statements submitted earlier, Kardashian, 42, had said she "very much" wanted the marriage to be ended, adding that this would "help Kanye to accept" that the relationship was over.

Ye, 45, had previously fought against the separation.

Kardashian is a billionaire, from her celebrity tv shows. Kanye West is Black, so their kids are half-Black. Apparently she bailed out of the marriage, and demanded millions in child support! Only in America does this happen.

Rising Interest in Astrology and Mysticism

Religious practice has declined in recent decades, so has everyone become more rational? No, of course not.

AP reports:

A lot of American adults — about 3 in 10 — make use of astrology, tarot cards or fortunetellers at least once a year. But only a small fraction of them rely on what they learn from these practices to make major decisions.

That’s according to a nationwide survey released Wednesday by the Pew Research Center, encompassing 9,593 U.S. adults who were interviewed last October.

Overall, according to Pew, about 2 in 10 U.S. adults say they engage in at least one of these activities mostly “just for fun,” while about 1 in 10 say they engage mostly because they “believe the practices give them helpful insights.” Only about 1% say they rely “a lot” on what they learn from these practices when making major life decisions.

Yet it’s a big business. The psychic services industry — which encompasses various specialties such as astrology, palm-reading, psychic readings and fortunetelling — generated an estimated $2.3 billion in revenue in 2024 and employed 105,000 people, according to market research firm IBIS World.

The Catholic Church has a long history of discouraging superstition. As Christianity declines, superstition will increase.

Democrat Strategy for Male Voters

News:

Democratic Party strategist and activist Olivia Julianna has been enlisted to advise the party on strategies to appeal to young male voters. This follows reports that Democrats have scrapped a $20 million public relations campaign, code-named SAM: 'Speaking with American men', which was previously aimed at winning back this demographic.

Julianna has suggested that the party should address issues such as abortion from a male perspective, emphasizing how men could benefit from such policies. She has also stated that many young conservative men are pro-choice, support gay marriage, and are in favor of the Black Lives Matter movement.

The Democratic Party's new approach involves deploying Julianna as a prominent voice to engage with young men.

This sounds like a joke, but it is not.

Crazy Somali Criminal Addict Allowed to Stay

British news:

A Somali criminal seeking asylum in the UK has avoided deportation after a judge ruled that returning him to his home country would cause him too much "stress."

The unnamed asylum seeker, who has been dependent on alcohol since 2006, would suffer stress if deported to Somalia, which would worsen his mental health.

Judges in the upper immigration tribunal ruled that deportation would breach article three of the European Convention on Human Rights, which protects against persecution and inhumane treatment.

The Home Office had argued the man, jailed for unspecified crimes, could receive necessary medication and treatment in Somalia for his schizophrenia and auditory hallucinations.

The Upper Tier Tribunal was told the man moved to the UK in 1999 when he was 29, claiming his family faced persecution due to their clan membership.

He was accompanied by his support worker during the hearing and was described as having a "high level of vulnerability" and "complex needs" with long-standing health problems.

"The severity of his mental health problems is closely linked to his stress levels and use of alcohol," the tribunal noted.

The man has been "significantly dependent" on alcohol since 2006 and has served prison time for crimes that were not specified in court papers.

The whole asylum system needs to be abolished. It is just a system for importing the worst people.

Here is a good Libertarian debate:

Dave Smith and Alex Nowrasteh debate the resolution, "Government restrictions on the immigration of peaceful and healthy people make sense from a libertarian standpoint, especially in present-day America."

Comedian and host of the podcast, Part of the Problem, Dave Smith defends the resolution. Taking the negative is Alex Nowrasteh, the Vice President for Economic and Social Policy Studies at the Cato Institute. He's the coauthor (with Benjamin Powell) of Wretched Refuse? The Political Economy of Immigration and Institutions.

Smith argues that the big majority of Americans do not want mass immigration, and they elected Pres. Trump to stop it. A Libertarian should want to let those people live as they wish, instead of swamping them with Somali refugees or other immigrants.

Nowrasteh argues that government should not have the power to restrict anyone's travel. He also cited academic studies claiming that immigration was beneficial.

So if immigration is beneficial, why is almost everyone against it? It is not, of course, if it forces unwanted lifestyle changes on people.

A telling point was that Smith has kids. He narrowly won the debate, according to their voting rules.

A point of issue was that USA has tight immigration rules from 1925-65, and they have been dramatically loosened since then. Which policy was better for the nation?

Many other changes went on in the XX century, so this is not a great argument either way. But I think we had nicer and more pleasant communities back then, and a lot less crowded. About 90% of the immigration has been for the worse.

Dominoes Falling or Dice Rolling

Sam Harris rants against free will, and apparently his model of the universe is falling dominoes and rolling dice. He says:

i mean just 46:11 viewing people as physical systems that are not separate from the universe. there really is just the universe doing its 46:17 thing it's doing its thing deterministically. you know just one domino is falling and hitting the next 46:23 and if you if you believe that there's a component of randomness in there then there's some you know jiggle to the 46:30 system that is that is in indeterministic and uh therefore 46:36 intrinsically unpredictable, but in neither case neither with dominoes 46:41 falling or dice rolling do you get a picture of a will that can that tr can 46:48 independently author its own uh doings.

Wow, what a silly argument. His theory is that his brain works by either falling dominoes or rolling dice, and neither has free will. Neither is conscious either.

When he is not denouncing Pres. Trump or free will, he is promoting meditation. What is the point of meditation if the mind is just dominoes and dice? Does that somehow get those dominoes and dice to function better?

He charges $150 per year to listen to these wacky rants.

People hold him up as a rational leftist, but he is not.

Demographic Delusions: World Population Growth

I regularly see articles claiming that civilization is going to collapse because of dramatic population declines. The truth is more nearly the opposite.

Paper from 2023:

Demographic Delusions: World Population Growth Is Exceeding Most Projections and Jeopardising Scenarios for Sustainable Futures

by Jane N. O’Sullivan

The size of the world’s population has profound implications for demand for food, energy and resources, land use change and greenhouse gas emissions. This study examines why most population projections have underestimated world population growth, and the implications for actions required to achieve sustainable societies. The main determinant of future population is family size choices. ...

Unless political will is rapidly restored for voluntary family planning programs, the global population will almost certainly exceed 10 billion, rendering sustainable food security and a safe climate unachievable.

As interviewed last year:

Richard: Fertility rates are declining sharply in OECD countries, and China’s population is now dropping rapidly. Is world population growth in the rear-view mirror, a problem we no longer have to worry about?

Jane: “Declining sharply” and “dropping rapidly” are emotive terms that exaggerate the trends and distract from the far more rapid growth elsewhere. Globally we increase by somewhere between 70 million and 90 million annually, and that pace has been unrelenting for more than 40 years. We don’t have hard evidence that the curve has started to bend, let alone that it is on track to peak any time soon. So, the problem hasn’t gone away, and the impacts of the human population get more serious and intractable every year. ...

Every two or three years, the UN publishes an update of their population estimates and projections. Almost every update this century has revised the world population upward. Their mid-2022 release estimated the mid-2022 population to be 7.975 billion. This was 21 million higher than their 2019 projection anticipated it would be, despite more than 15 million unanticipated deaths due to the Covid-19 pandemic. It was 177 million more than the 2010 projection expected, and 253 million people more than was projected in 2000. Despite their consistent underestimation of growth, their model continues to assume all high-fertility countries are experiencing rapid fertility decline, even though their historical data show they haven’t.

Here is some ominous new research:

A new study published in the open-access journal PLOS One suggests that human populations may need a fertility rate of at least 2.7 children per woman to reliably avoid long-term extinction, significantly higher than the commonly cited replacement level of 2.1. The research was led by Takuya Okabe of Shizuoka University, Japan. ...

In stark contrast to the newly suggested sustainability threshold of 2.7 children per woman, global fertility rates have been steadily declining for decades. According to the United Nations, the global average fertility rate in 2024 was approximately 2.3 and is projected to drop below 2.1 by mid-century.

The authors conclude that true population sustainability – as well as the sustainability of languages, cultural traditions, and diverse family lineages – requires rethinking conventional fertility targets.

The island nation of Japan has a population of 123 million. No, there is no danger of Japanese extinction.

Some minor languages and cultures could go extinct. My guess is that they will be preserved by AI models. English is becoming the universal language, and obscure languages are just a nuisance.

The George Floyd Con, 5 Years Later

The Boston Globe reports:

Five years ago, the 8-minute, 46-second smartphone video of George Floyd‘s murder upended the long frustrating campaign for racial equity. The recorded death by Minneapolis police tugged at people’s hearts, anger, and ultimately, their wallets.

In the months that followed, organizations across the country made sweeping proclamations of antiracism, pledging to give billions upon billions to initiatives to combat racism and end violence and injustice on Black communities.

In Greater Boston, at least 20 foundations, organizations, and corporations pledged about $1 billion in grants, investments, and scholarships for equity-related causes, according to a Globe review of announcements in response to the racial reckoning of 2020. They variously aimed at reducing disparities in health and wealth and reforming the criminal justice system, among other issues afflicting Black America.

But five years later, it’s difficult to discern what all that money bought.

It was all a con. Floyd died of an overdose. Even if he were murdered, that would not prove anything, but an isolated crime.

Dirty Canard About White People

Jung-Freud writes:

It’s an oft-heard complaint, even a canard, about white people in general and white conservatives in particular. The immigration issue is framed in terms of white dislike for other races. It’s misleading, even among most white right-wing types. While it’s true that some whites do harbor disdainful, contemptuous, hostile, and even hateful views in regards to nonwhite groups, sometimes grounded in facts (especially black criminality) and sometimes grounded in ignorance(of different peoples & cultures), the main issue regarding mass immigration isn’t about race/ethnicity but territoriality.

As he explains, most people, all over the world, do not want their communities invaded by a foreign ethnicity or culture.

Why? He tries to explain it. People like their own kind, regardless of the characteristics of the foreigners.

I am not sure the reasons matters. In some cases, people do not like being around the others. In other cases, the foreigners bring in crime and other problems. In some cases, the foreigners are nice and well-behaved, but they play soccer instead of baseball, eat rice instead of potatoes, and prefer to speak another language.

Economist Predicts No Growth from AI

Here is an AI skeptic, and he is maybe the biggest Economics big-shot.

MIT Technology Review reports:

A Nobel laureate on the economics of artificial intelligence

Daron Acemoglu has long studied technology-driven growth. He thinks we should slow down and make sure we’re using AI the right way.

For all the talk about artificial intelligence upending the world, its economic effects remain uncertain. But Institute Professor and 2024 Nobel winner Daron Acemoglu has some insights.

Despite some predictions that AI will double US GDP growth, Acemoglu expects it to increase GDP by 1.1% to 1.6% over the next 10 years, with a roughly 0.05% annual gain in productivity.

He is widely praised for his analysis of big trends, but I have criticized him here and here.

I tried asking an AI LLM how I could give a politically respectable account of how nations succeed and fail. It said to give all the credit to institutions, and occasionally blame colonialism, but never draw attention to human capital. In other words, say exactly what Acemoglu says.

He pretends to be data-driven, but I do not believe it. He just gets ahead by telling people what they want to hear.

I am reminded of Economist Paul Krugman writing that the internet's effect on the economy would be no greater than the fax machine's.

I occasionally see others argue that AI is not intelligent, or is still looking for the killer app, or is just a gimmick, or has not progressed. For example, Gary Marcus says AI progress has ended.

Wake up. AI has made very consistent progress over the last 15 years, and has shown no sign of slowing down. Its economic value is already many billions, particularly in image processing, text drafting, and software coding.

OpenAI announced that it will buy Jony Ivy's startup for $6.5B, and Windsurf for $3B. And it intends to lose $44B before it makes a profit. It is supposed to be a nonprofit, so it still has to legally figure out how to be a for-profit. So there is legitimate skepticism about whether its plans will pay off.

Maybe not, but ChatGPT technology is incredibly useful, and the latest models from Google, Anthropic, Meta, and the Chinese are getting really good.

The wait for self-driving cars and humanoid robots is frustrating.

A few decades ago, the whole world was computerizing, and economists complained that there were no measurable productivity gains. Acemoglu even wrote a 2014 paper complaining about it. So why were companies computerizing?

The computers were leading to great efficiencies that the economists were not measuring.

We are going to see the same thing with AI. Soon the whole world will be running on AI, and it will work so well that we will wonder how we got by without it. But Acemoglu and other economists will deny that AI has any economic impact.

Update: New interview:

Nobel Laureate Busts the AI Hype

MIT Sloan Management Review

While many people are predicting that AI will rapidly transform the economy, MIT economist Daron Acemoglu offers a more modest forecast. Drawing from his research, in this brief video he explains why AI might automate only 5% of tasks and add just 1% to global GDP over the next decade. Acemoglu also asserts that AI’s potential is less clear than the internet’s was and that human judgment trumps algorithms, and he challenges leaders to innovate with AI rather than simply slash costs.

He doubles down on his argument that AI is over-hyped, and will be of little consequence. He says that he cannot be replaced by AI, but I think he can.

Russia to use Phones to Track Foreigners

News:

The Russian government has introduced a new law that makes installing a tracking app mandatory for all foreign nationals in the Moscow region.

The new proposal was announced by the chairman of the State Duma, Vyacheslav Volodin, who presented it as a measure to tackle migrant crimes.

"The adopted mechanism will allow, using modern technologies, to strengthen control in the field of migration and will also contribute to reducing the number of violations and crimes in this area," stated Volodin.

Using a mobile application that all foreigners will have to install on their smartphones, the Russian state will receive the following information:

Residence location
Fingerprint
Face photograph
Real-time geo-location monitoring

"If migrants change their actual place of residence, they will be required to inform the Ministry of Internal Affairs (MVD) within three working days," the high-ranking politician explained.

This seems outrageous, and foolish for a country that wants tourism.

And yet I think it is inevitable that most countries with do something like this. The technology is cheap, easy, and efficient.

Most tourists are not going to secret locations, or anything like that. My guess is that soon most will not mind.

The USA desperately needs to better monitor millions of people. Mainly, criminals on parole or probation, and foreigners on temporary visas or claiming asylum or without authorization. Nearly all have smart phones, and they could be tracked.

NY Times: Professors Rant about Fascism

New video:

We’re Experts in Fascism. We’re Leaving the U.S. | NYT Opinion

Legal residents of the United States sent to foreign prisons without due process. Students detained after voicing their opinions. Federal judges threatened with impeachment for ruling against the administration’s priorities.

In this Opinion video, Marci Shore, Timothy Snyder and Jason Stanley, all professors at Yale and experts in authoritarianism, explain why America is especially vulnerable to a democratic backsliding — and why they are leaving the United States to take up positions at the University of Toronto.

... Their motives differ but their analysis is the same: ignoring or downplaying attacks on the rule of law, the courts and universities spells trouble for our democracy.

I post this as an example of Jewish Leftist hatred and paranoia. The complainers are mostly Jewish, but their complaints include the Trump administration deporting foreigners who advocate killing Jews.

For more unhinged academics, see the physics-related blogs of Peter Woit and Scott Aaronson. They are both fanatical leftist Trump-haters, and regularly rage about how he is destroying universities and becoming the new Hitler.

So you think they agree? Nope. They disagree like Stalinists and Trotskyists. Woit says Aaronson needs psychiatric help, and Aaronson says Woit is an antisemitic piece of s**t.

What is going on? The dispute concerns protests at Columbia U. that disrupted the college, and took the side of Gaza against Israel.

In my opinion, Columbia should not put up with disruptive protests about foreign issues that have nothing to do with the college.

Columbia gets billions in federal aid, and should stop refusing to comply with Trump administration demands. The demands are things that Columbia should be doing anyway, such stopping discriminatory policies.

The broader issue is whether Jews should be held accountable for the death and destruction in Gaza. I don't want to put words in the mouths of these guys, but I think they are not being fully straightforward.

Jews believe in protecting what is good for the Jews, above all else. The view Gaza-Hamas and their sympathizers as a threat to the existence of Israel, and hence to the security of worldwide Jews. That cannot be tolerated. If necessary, they will kill a thousand enemies to retaliate for the death of one Jew.

Others, such as many modern leftists and much of the Islamic world, see Jews as evil and the Gaza destruction as proof.

A lot of influential Jews are Trump-haters, but Trump and his supporters are mostly pro-Jewish, and do not see Jews as evil.

I sometimes blame Jews on this blog, but I do not blame them for destroying Gaza. Gaza is at war with Israel, and continues to hold hostages while it refuses to surrender. I do not have have any opinions about what Israel should or should not do, and I do not think anyone should be surprised at what it is doing.

Israel defenders like Aaronson like to say that they favor a two-state solution for the Palestinian Arabs, but that appears hopeless to me. Woit appears to want the Jews to surrender Israel to the Arabs in the way that South Africa surrendered the nation to the Blacks. That also appears hopeless. They both pretend to be holding the moral high ground, but I see nothing moral about advocating something impossible, or about resisting Trump when he is making constructive proposals.

Illegal to Sell Tasmanian Rocks

News from 2017:

A police raid in Sydney has netted more than 150 stolen Aboriginal artefacts which were being illegally offered for sale online.

The Tasmanian department of primary industries said the raid was prompted by reports the items were on the verge of being sold.

"It is very concerning that these culturally significant items are just being treated as a commodity," natural and cultural heritage division chief enforcement officer Luke Bond told AAP.

The items are believed to have been taken from a number of locations around Tasmania.

They look like simple rocks to me. How culturally significant could they be?

Pinker on Harvard's Troubles

New podcast:

Today's guest is Harvard psychologist Steven Pinker. Pinker and Reason's Nick Gillespie discuss recent shifts at Harvard toward greater institutional neutrality and free speech, while warning that threats to academic freedom now come from both internal ideologies and external political forces—including pressure from the federal government under President Donald Trump.

Pinker defends the role of federal science funding but cautions against political micromanagement of academia, emphasizing the need for independent scholarly governance. The conversation also touches on Pinker's admiration for Richard Dawkins, the impact of declining religiosity on moral progress, and the concept of "common knowledge" as explored in Pinker's forthcoming book, When Everyone Knows That Everyone Knows. 

It explains that Pinker published a 2023 essay on what Harvard must do to save itself. It is roughly the same as what Pres. Trump is now ordering it to do. So is he a Trump supporter?

Of course not. He is a Jewish atheist liberal professor Trump-hater. He said he became a USA citizen and voted against Trump. He speaks a lot about free speech, but he does not dare praise Trump.

I am curious about his new book:

But people also go to great lengths to avoid common knowledge — to ensure that even if everyone knows something, they can’t know that everyone else knows they know it. And so we get rituals like benign hypocrisy, veiled bribes and threats, sexual innuendo, and pretending not to see the elephant in the room.

He is very articulate, and his books have arguments that are well-supported and good to read, even when I disagree with them. And so I often criticize him.

I can think of a few things that everybody knows, but most do not like to acknowledge. That race is real. IQ correlates with success. Sex is binary. Trump is a great President, especially compared to Biden or Harris. Immigration is ruining Europe and the USA.

There is a famous common knowledge paradox, The blue-eyed islanders puzzle. Pinker will probably mention it.

He gives the story of the emperor with no clothes as an example. Everybody can see that he has no clothes, but they do not know that the others know until a boy blurts it out.

Another example is Pres. Biden dropping out of the race in 2024. Everyone knew that he was senile and the debate did not change many minds, except to convince everyone that everyone else knew that he was senile.

Maybe he would mention former FBI Director James Comey posting "86 47" as if it were a directive from God. Now everyone knows how much some people hate Trump.

For info on Harvard violating discrimination, see Christopher F. Rufo. Harvard already lost a case at the US Supreme Court.

I occasionally see someone describe his worldview as pro-Enlightenment or Enlightenment liberal, or something like that. Pinker wrote a popular book about it, so that is surely what they mean. They act as if it is the source of all modern goodness and something that everyone should agree with. I intend to post some more criticisms of it.

Pinker's book credits the views of a handful of philosophers in the late 18th century. I am dubious that any of them had any significant impact. He probably is going to say that everyone knew that there is no God, and once some 18C Enlightenment philosophers said it, and then the whole society got the industrial revolution, modern science, democracy, egalitarianism, and all other wonders of modern life.

I believe his view is seriously mistaken. Europe and American did pass up the rest of the world in wealth and accomplishments, and that needs explanations. I have posted many times on various explanations.

I would say that it was Christendom than leapfrogged ahead, not the Enlightment, because the big advance was many centuries earlier and entirely in Christian nations.

Democrats want Racial Reparations

Wash. Times reports:

A House Democrat who introduced a resolution calling for the U.S. to spend trillions of dollars on reparations for Black Americans says there won’t be an income cap for receiving the payout.

All Black Americans would qualify for reparations because, regardless of their current economic status, their ancestors suffered the indignity of slavery, said the resolution’s author, Rep. Summer Lee of Pennsylvania.

You can read her resolution here.

Whereas, in other countries, including South Africa, Canada, Colombia, and others, poorly designed reparations proc- esses have not only failed to bring complete justice, but have created new forms of harm;

You might think that complete justice would also consider how Blacks have damaged. No, of course not. That is not considered, or Blacks would never be able to pay.

Find the Hidden Nazi Message

This tweet has generated millions of views. The claim is that there is a hidden Nazi message. Look for yourself.

There are people who seem to think that this image is so dangerous that everyone should take down and destroy all copies. No, I do not agree. It appears that Matt Walsh was tricked with an ingenious picture, and he refuses to admit it. I congratulate the trickster.

Here is another controversial image.

This was posted by James Comey, the Trump-hater and former FBI Director. Trump 45 fired him in 2017. There is a law against threatening the President. It is bizarre for him to post this. Even when he was FBI Director, he had a strange phobia about Trump.

The Benefits of Science Funding

The NY Times attacks Pres. Trump on a daily basis, and even in the science pages:

The government spends $200 billion annually on research and development, knowing that payoffs might be decades away; that figure would drop sharply under President Trump’s proposed 2026 budget. ...

Here are nine more life-altering advances that government investment made possible.

The government has indeed funded a lot of great work, but the list is not so great.

If you’re reading this on a screen, you’re looking at quantum dots, billions of them.

Quantum dots are tiny crystals of semiconductor stuff, 10 nanometers (billionths of a meter) or smaller in size, and they have become a mainstay of consumer electronics.

No, the technology is used on some high-end displays, but not on most screens. And a typical display has millions of pixels, but not billions.

Are you a robot? Probably not. We know this — “we” being any website you visit that asks you that question — thanks to a security technology called CAPTCHA, a digital puzzle that weeds out nonhuman bots that might be trying to disrupt a billing system or other valuable database.

This technology is now a big nuisance, as the bots are better able to solve the puzzles than humans.

The company’s work on the moon drill paved the way for the development of a suite of cordless consumer products, including the Dustbuster, a hand-held vacuum cleaner that came to define a whole new category of cleaning products.

This is ridiculous. We did not need the Moon for battery-powered tools.

In recent decades, however, many NICUs have begun providing and promoting more comforting forms of touch, including infant massage — an innovation that grew out of a chance observation in a university rat lab.

Now I think the NYT is trolling us. Really? No one had the idea to touch babies until some government scientists played with some rats?!

Smart Babies are Slower to Walk

The most sensitive research topics are genes, race, and IQ. Anything relating all three is forbidden.

The London Telegraph reports:

Late-walking babies ‘may do better in school’

Genes that determine the age of taking first steps linked to educational achievement, suggests study

The study looked at age at onset of walking in over 70,000 infants of European ancestry.

This is respectable research because it avoided racial issues, but there is other research that some groups learn to walk sooner.

These studies just find correlations. They do not mean that a particular baby will be smart just because he walks late.

Psychopaths Are More Attractive

Newsweek reports:

Dark personalities may not just be uncaring, self-obsessed and skilled at manipulation—but they may also look trustworthy, according to a new study that sheds light on how physical appearance can subtly disarm our instincts.

A new study published in the journal Personality and Individual Differences examined how people perceive strangers' trustworthiness based on facial appearance alone.

Researchers found that individuals with high levels of the so-called "dark triad" traits—narcissism, psychopathy, and Machiavellianism—were consistently rated as more trustworthy.

Why? The answer lies in looks. People with high dark triad traits tended to be perceived as more physically attractive—and this perception strongly influenced how trustworthy people believed them to be.

I do not take these studies too seriously. I just post this so you can be on the alert about how you might be manipulated.

Refugee Service Objects to Whites

Millions of non-whites have been brought into the USA as refugees, but when a handful of Whites get in, a migration\ service goes nuts.

AP reports:

The Episcopal Church’s migration service is refusing a directive from the federal government to help resettle white South Africans granted refugee status, citing the church’s longstanding “commitment to racial justice and reconciliation.”

Presiding Bishop Sean Rowe announced the step Monday, shortly before 59 South Africans arrived at Dulles International Airport outside Washington on a private charter plane and were greeted by a government delegation.

Episcopal Migration Ministries instead will halt its decades-long partnership with the government, Rowe said.

I am not sure the Episcopals should be considered Christian. They have become a pro-LGBTQ lobbying group, and apparently White-haters also.

Most Americans think that democracy was brought to South African by the resignation of the White Apartheid government in 1994. Not really. Before 1994, the country had competing parties and elections. Yes, they favored the Whites, but they functioned as a democratic country.

Since 1994, South Africa has suffered one-party rule. Corrupt leaders have ruined the country. It is only more democratic in the sense that the leaders have the same skin color as most of the residents. Otherwise, the government is much worse. It is even worse for the Blacks.

The Whites are being wiped out, and are leaving the country. Most of them speak English, and are well-behaved citizens who could assimilate into the USA.

The White-haters would rather bring in Black Somalians, like the ones harassing a Minnesota mom. It was terrible that Christian groups and White-haters were allowed to repopulate Minnesota with Somalians.

MSNBC complains that the refugees are the descendants of White supremacists. They are also the descendants of those who built a great nation, only to see it destroyed by Blacks.

Princeton Disfavored Whites, Jews, Males

Christopher F. Rufo writes:

Amid the ongoing showdown between the Trump administration and the Ivy League, one university president has positioned himself as a leader of the academic resistance: Princeton’s Christopher L. Eisgruber.

Earlier this month, the Trump administration suspended hundreds of millions of dollars in taxpayer-funded grants to Princeton as part of its investigation into racial discrimination and anti-Semitism at the New Jersey campus. Eisgruber, though, was defiant, telling the New York Times that he’s “not considering any concessions” and calling for other university presidents to follow his lead.

This isn’t Eisgruber’s first bid for the spotlight. After the death of George Floyd in 2020, he declared that Princeton—where he has served as president since 2013—was guilty of “systemic racism.” In a letter to students that September, he went so far as to claim that racism was embedded in the very “structures of the university itself.”

Eisgruber was right to say that he presides over a system of racial discrimination—but not in the way he imagines. The university does not discriminate against “oppressed” groups, such as blacks and Latinos, but against those seen as “oppressors.”

“At Princeton, it’s totally common knowledge that there are favored groups and disfavored groups,” one professor said. “And the disfavored groups are whites, Jews, males,” and others commonly disliked by the Left.

A City Journal investigation confirms that Princeton has, in fact, entrenched a system of racial discrimination and segregation. We have obtained more than a dozen internal documents and conducted interviews with a half-dozen employees, who confirm that the university has flagrantly violated the principles of the Civil Rights Act in the name of “social justice.”

The basic structure of this system is the university’s “diversity, equity, and inclusion” bureaucracy, which has expanded dramatically under Eisgruber’s tenure. An infographic circulated by Princeton shows at least 40 academic and administrative departments with established DEI committees, with the express purpose of adjusting the campus’s racial composition.

I went to Princeton. This has been going on for decades. It got worse in the last ten years. The administration does not believe it is accountable to national policy.

Pride Flags in Utah and Idaho

I thought Utah and Idaho were our most conservative states.

The Hill reports:

The Democratic-controlled cities of Salt Lake City and Boise adopted new city flags this week showing support for LGBTQ+ people in defiance of their respective states’ Republican-controlled legislatures, which have banned traditional rainbow pride flags at schools and government buildings. ...

The measure — which aims to sidestep such violations by adopting the new flags as official city flags — passed unanimously.

These are not just pride flags. The above is a progressive pride flag.

Some people think that these flag represent tolerance, but that is not correct. They represent progress towards a Black-queer dominated society. They are extremely offensive. It is a symbol of hatred, not tolerance.

Memphis Cops Acquitted of Murder

Slate reports:

Tyre Nichols was murdered.

Not killed. Not lost. Not a life that simply “ended.” He was murdered. He was ripped from the fragile thread of existence by the deliberate choices of men who decided that his life did not matter. ...

But for Black Americans, the promise of due process is too often a mirage, a pledge written in ink that fades when touched. ...

For all the names I know — Tyre Nichols, George Floyd, Trayvon Martin, Philando Castile, Breonna Taylor, Eric Garner, Tamir Rice, Sandra Bland, Walter Scott, Michael Brown, Alton Sterling, Freddie Gray, Laquan McDonald, Rodney King, Atatiana Jefferson, Botham Jean, Oscar Grant, Stephon Clark, Sonya Massey — there are thousands more. Names that never became hashtags.

I did not follow this case, but the Black police defendants managed to get an all-white jury, and were acquitted of all state charges.

Some of them may have to federal time. The Constitution says no double jeopardy, but apparently there is an exception when Black want to lynch a cop.

I followed some of the above cases, and they were mostly stories of violent Black criminals who resisted arrest. If there were some systemic racism, I would think that someone would find a good example.

Black Woman Statue in New York City

News:

A new 12-foot-tall bronze statue of a plus-size black woman, titled 'Grounded in the Stars,' has been installed in the middle of Times Square, New York City. The sculpture, created by artist Thomas J. Price, aims to challenge preconceived notions of identity and representation, according to the Times Square website.

The statue, which has drawn significant attention online, is part of a series that seeks to confront societal views on identity. It is described as a nod to Michelangelo's David due to its contrapposto pose, yet it also aims to disrupt traditional ideas of what constitutes a triumphant figure by celebrating marginalized bodies on a monumental scale.

Usually statues commemorate a great man who accomplished something, and try to be beautiful art. This is supposed to be the opposite.

This is weird to fetishize fat Black women. I see more and more examples of this.

Why Are Black Crime Rates So High?

Ben Shapiro has a podcast on facts, and here is a recent episode:

29,322 views Apr 17, 2025 #BenShapiro #DailyWire #TheBenShapiroShow

In America, conversations about race and crime often follow a familiar script: white perpetrators, black victims, and a justice system accused of systemic bias. But what does the data actually say?

In this episode, Ben breaks down the numbers, traces the media’s influence and examines the role of fatherhood, policing, and culture in shaping crime patterns across racial groups.

so why is this 5:28 happening? why disproportionate crime in 5:30 the black community?

the single most 5:32 obvious factor correlating with violent 5:33 crime is lack of fathers in the home. 5:36 according to the Institute for Family 5:38 Studies only 37% of black children are 5:40 living in a home headed by their 5:42 biological parents. 72% of black fathers 5:44 have had a child out of wedlock. studies 5:46 show the number of fathers in a 5:47 neighborhood can actually help alleviate 5:49 the problem of lack of fathers directly 5:51 in the home.

Yes, that is an obvious correlation. Even among Whites, fatherlessness is correlated with violent crime.

This is a typical conservative response. They want it to be true, because then society can be improved by encouraging marriage and stable families. Those things are also good for other reasons.

The most obvious factor is the possibility that Blacks have genes for violent crime. There is not much research on this, as people are afraid of the results.

Ben would probably say that there is a lot of research showing that fatherlessness is correlated with violent crime, and that is true across all races, so why even look at race?

It is possible that fatherlessness does not cause crime at all. Maybe the crime is caused by genes, and those genes are inherited from the mom and dad. And maybe the moms and dads with those genes have all sorts of traits that lead to divorce and unstable relationships. So the genes could be causing the fatherlessness and the crime.

I am sure it is not that simple, and crime has many causes. I am all in favor of improving fatherlessness, but it may not help the crime rate much.

Currently we have many laws and policies that favor fatherlessness. I agree with fixing them.

The London Guardian reports on a hot controversy:

Migrant charities and MPs have accused Yvette Cooper of pandering to racism and stoking the possibility of riots after the Home Office said it would publish the nationalities of foreign criminals in the UK for the first time.

The home secretary has ordered officials to publish the data, including the crimes that have been committed, by the end of the year. It is expected to lead to “league tables” of foreign nationals showing which nationalities are more associated with particular crimes.

Many people do not want to face reality. Britain is being repopulated with foreigners, and some are much more criminal than others.

Apparently education is not the cause:

Indeed, some studies show that Black women are the most educated demographic in America. ...

Despite stereotypes about African Americans, Black Americans in the United States are among those most likely to earn a postsecondary degree. For example, the National Center for Education Statistics reported that from the academic years 2000–2001 to 2015–2016, the number of bachelor's degrees awarded to Black students increased by 75% and the number of associate degrees earned by Black students increased by 110%.2 Black students are making headway in graduate education as well, with, for example, the number of Black students enrolled in master's degree programs nearly doubling between 1996 and 2016.

Cancel Culture Victim gets Payoff

A GiveSendGo fundraiser:

My name is Shiloh and I have been put into a very dire situation. I recently had a kid steal from my 18month old sons diaper bag at a park. I called the kid out for what he was. Another man, who we recently found out has had a history with law enforcement, proceeded to record me and follow me to my car. He then posted these videos online which has caused my family, and myself, great turmoil. My SSN has been leaked. My address, and phone number have been given out freely. My family members are being attacked. My eldest child may not be going back to school. Even where I exercise has been exposed.

I am asking for your help to assist in protecting my family.

This young Minnesota mom was harassed by Somalians who called her a racist. As I write this, she has raised $675,000.

Online bullies, including a Somalian named Sharmake Omar, have tried to get her into trouble with police and CPS.

On Monday, May 5, the Rochester Police Department said they had passed their findings to the City Attorney's Office to review for "a charging decision"

No, I did not donate, but I think it is great that this mom is successfully fighting back against the Somalians who are trying to terrorize her.

I would think that the police and CPS would be smart enough to see that there is not even a complaint that she broke any law. The Somalian filmed himself using the word N***er, baiting the mom into saying the word, and accusing a child of being mentally retarded. Maybe he should be deported.

Natural History Magazine goes Transgender

Natural History magazine is mostly known for publishing the pro-evolution columns from Stephen Jay Gould, and now it has bet its reputation on transgenderism.

It published an article saying that sex is a spectrum, and not binary, and then editorialized in favor of it. It said “the science behind Fuentes’s thesis. . . is solid.”

Biology professor Jerry Coyne remarks:

And Fuentes uses many of the bogus tropes employed to “prove” that sex is nonbinary, even showing a photo of a bluehead wrasse, a fish that forms polygynous groups. When the alpha male dies, one female gets rid of her ovaries and develops testes, taking over the top job. But there are still only two sexes! I have to say that you have to be either ignorant or tendentious to use this animal as an argument against the sex binary, and Fuentes isn’t ignorant. ...

The claim that “the number of mating types (often called “sexes”) has been variable over hundreds of millions of years, ranging from two and sometimes three in most animals, to as many as seven in single-celled animals. . ” is wholly misleading. Well, Dear Editors, all animals and vascular plants have just two sexes (which ones have three?), though single-celled organisms, algae and fungi can have more “mating type”, which I’m okay with calling “sexes”if you want. But Fuentes and the editors, are defending the thesis that animals, including our own species, have nonbinary sex. This is not true.

So there is a single-celled organism with seven sexes? News to me, but that tells us nothing about transgenderism in humans.

As far as I know, humans are 100% unambiguously male or female. I am no expert on this. If it turns out that there are some rare exceptions, that would have little or nothing to do with the transgender activism of today.

I am reminded of the evolution wars of 30 years ago, where leftist-atheist-evolutionists adamantly claimed to be on the side of science. Now they brazenly lie about basic biological facts. Some of them, anyway. I credit Jerry Coyne with coming clean on the facts, even when it does not match his ideology.

Trump takes Step towards Meritocracy

Heather Mac Donald writes:

Trump Takes His Biggest Step Yet Toward Restoring Meritocracy

The administration’s executive order eliminating disparate-impact theory restores the 1964 Civil Rights Act to its original meaning.

Measured in Trump time, it took them eons to get around to it, but the White House has finally taken the most important step it can to restore meritocracy to American society: eliminating disparate-impact theory from civil rights analysis and enforcement.

Disparate-impact theory holds that if a neutral, colorblind standard of achievement or behavior has a disproportionately negative effect on underrepresented minorities (overwhelmingly, on blacks), it violates civil rights laws. It has been used to invalidate literacy and numeracy standards for police officers and firemen, cognitive skills and basic knowledge tests for teachers, the use of SATs in college admissions, the use of grades for medical licensing exams, credit-based mortgage lending, the ability to discipline insubordinate students, and criminal background checks for employees and renters.

Update: She explains herself on a long podcast.

Shakespeare's Birthplace will be De-colonized

The London Daily Mail reports:

William Shakespeare's birthplace will be de-colonised over fears that portraying his success as the 'greatest' playwright 'benefits the ideology of white European supremacy'. ...

It wants to 'create a more inclusive museum experience' and announced it will move away from Western perspectives after concerns were raised that Shakespeare's ideas were used to advance 'white supremacy' ideas.

The trust also said that some of its items could contain language or depictions that are racist, sexist, or homophobic.

It comes amid an ongoing backlash against the writer. Some productions of his works have been slapped with trigger warnings for misogyny, racism and 'problematic radicalised dynamics' that link whiteness to beauty. ...

'Shakespeare's works are full of problematic, outdated ideas, with plenty of misogyny, racism, homophobia, classism, anti-Semitism and misogynoir,' she wrote, with the last word referring to a hatred of black women.

This is just White hatred.

Hillsdale College has a lecture on The Rise of Anti-White Racism | Jeremy Carl. At least he is not ashamed to be White.

AI is Persuasive on Reddit

Web news:

Hey folks, this is u/traceroo, Chief Legal Officer of Reddit. ...

What this University of Zurich team did is deeply wrong on both a moral and legal level. It violates academic research and human rights norms, and is prohibited by Reddit’s user agreement and rules, in addition to the subreddit rules. We have banned all accounts associated with the University of Zurich research effort.

The university did a study showing that AI bots were much more persuasive that humans on Reddit.

If you are having an online discussion, you might be talking to a bot.

Forget about whether it is ethical. Get used to it. There is no going back. It will not stop just because some company lawyer writes a tough letter to a university.

Meanwhile, the hot internet memes are Italian brainrot and whether 100 unarmed men could defeat a gorilla. Actually, the original question used a word that I cannot repeat here.

Getting Tedpilled about the Industrial Revolution

The NY Times published the unabomber manifesto in 1996, and now published a long favorable article about it. It is almost as if it took them 29 years to read it.

It is funny how the manifesto was dismissed as the crackpot essay of a madman at the time. Now it is considered a brilliant critique of modern society.

When we spoke recently, Fitzgerald recited one of Kaczynski’s numbered paragraphs, 173, which had been on his mind in light of artificial intelligence’s rapid advance: “If the machines are permitted to make all their own decisions, we can’t make any conjectures as to the results, because it is impossible to guess how such machines might behave.”

And there was Paragraph 92, which Fitzgerald remembered, and reconsidered, amid the Covid-19 vaccine mandates of which he was personally skeptical. “Thus science marches on blindly,” Kaczynski wrote, “without regard to the real welfare of the human race or to any other standard, obedient only to the psychological needs of the scientists and of the government officials and corporation executives who provide the funds for research.”

“You know what?” Fitzgerald said to himself. “Old Ted was maybe onto something here.”

Online, there is a name for this experience: Tedpilling. To be Tedpilled means to read Paragraph 1 of Kaczynski’s manifesto, its assertion that the mad dash of technological advancement since the Industrial Revolution has “made life unfulfilling,” “led to widespread psychological suffering” and “inflicted severe damage on the natural world,” and think, Well, sure. To encounter Paragraph 156 (“new technology tends to change society in such a way that it becomes difficult or impossible for an individual to function without using that technology”) after asking Alexa to order new socks and think, That’s not so crazy.

Nobody is endorsing what the Unabomber did, but he did get his message out.

A lot of people assumed that the unabomber was a leftist, because he was an environmentalist activist. Maybe so, but his manifesto had stinging criticisms of leftism.

He got caught when his brother turned him into the FBI, and collected the million dollar reward.

Britannica Explains Great Replacement

Encyclopedia Britannica

replacement theory, in the United States and certain other Western countries whose populations are mostly white, a far-right conspiracy theory alleging, in one of its versions, that left-leaning domestic or international elites, on their own initiative or under the direction of Jewish co-conspirators, are attempting to replace white citizens with nonwhite (i.e., Black, Hispanic, Asian, or Arab) immigrants. The immigrants’ increased presence in white countries, as the theory goes, in combination with their higher birth rates as compared with those of whites, will enable new nonwhite majorities in those countries to take control of national political and economic institutions, to dilute or destroy their host countries’ distinctive cultures and societies, and eventually to eliminate the host countries’ white populations. Some adherents of replacement theory have characterized these predicted changes as “white genocide.”

That is all correct, except that it is a far-right conspiracy theory.

Right-wing media personalities, including Fox News commentators Tucker Carlson and Laura Ingraham, also attested to the conspiracy, though in ostensibly milder language that did not directly refer to race or explicitly invoke anti-Semitism. Thus, Carlson claimed that liberal Democrats were attempting to replace “you” (the viewer) — implicitly understood to be white — with immigrants from “Third World” (developing) countries—implicitly understood to be nonwhite—in order to create a permanent electoral majority loyal to the Democratic Party.

So it is really an observation that immigration is replacing Americans with non-Americans.

key aspects of replacement theory came to be accepted by nearly half of Republicans and by a third of all Americans by 2022. Some Republican politicians endorsed the theory as a way of appealing to far-right members of their party and of demonstrating, to some degree, their continued loyalty to Trump.

So it is not extreme, as it is accepted by a third of Americans. But some accept it as way of showing loyalty to Trump!

Replacement theory has been widely ridiculed for its blatant absurdity. It has been just as widely condemned for its encouragement of racist violence through its toxic allegation that nonwhite immigrants (as well as the Jewish figures who allegedly direct their immigration) pose an existential threat to whites.

The article makes no attempt to show that the theory is wrong. Only that it has "blatant absurdity" and a "toxic allegation". It is plainly true that most Jewish politicians, activists, and donors are pro-immigration.

Google now attaches Great Replacement disclaimers to videos, such as this Tucker Carlson interview. The video does not encourage racist violence, of course.

Pete Buttigieg talks about Black Babies

The gay Pink News reports:

The former US secretary of transportation and his husband, Chasten, adopted twins Penelope and Joseph in 2021. Appearing on Wednesday’s (23 April) episode of the Flagrant podcast, the Democratic politician described fatherhood as “the best thing”.

Asked about how he and Chasten imagined having conversations with their children, both of whom are mixed-race, about their experiences in the world and how those would differ from their own, Buttigieg replied: “We think about it all the time and it’s not like we have it all figured out.”

He also talked about their “surprise adoption scenario” – as prospective parents, they were “just on a list” so had no idea how many children they’d get or the youngsters’ racial identity.

“Contending with the hair is already a thing,” he said, when asked to give in a specific example, “especially from Black parents who see stuff on Instagram and they’re like: ‘Let me tell you how to do it’. Lots of advice.”

He could do what the White Hollywood actresses do, and raise the Black kids as transgender.

He explains that, at 2:20:00, because he said he was willing to adopt Black babies, he was on a shorter waiting list and paid a smaller fee. He cites this as proof that race is still a thing in the USA.

A few decades ago, homosexuals stayed in the closet, and most people objected to them adopting kids, and to Whites adopting Black kids.

2:21:44 their lives will be affected in some way by their racial all of ours are but um 2:21:50 one thing about being white is you don't have to think about the fact that when you're white your racial identity is not something that you're reminded of all 2:21:56 the time um in a way that they will be

A lot of people have made this remark that the White race is different from other races, in that Whites do not think about their racial identity, while non-whites think about their racial identity all the time. Some people go further, and use this to deny that there is any such thing as a White racial identity. Only non-white ones.

He announces at 2:25:10 that he is chickening out of running for the US Senate from Michigan, partially because he wants to spend more time with his family. But he is unemployed now, and says at 2:24:00 that he drops his 3.5 year old adopted kids off at school everyday.

No, that is not school. It is daycare. If he wanted to spend more time with them, he would not put them in daycare.

He hints that he will be running for President again. The Democrat Party is all about how many diversity boxes can be checked. That is, they hope people will vote for him because he is homosexual and adopted Black babies.

Wikipedia faces DoJ Scrutiny

News:

Interim DC attorney Ed Martin has written a letter to the Wikimedia Foundation — the organization behind Wikipedia — that calls into question its status as a nonprofit entity. In the letter, which was obtained by The Free Press, Martin claims he found that Wikipedia “is engaging in a series of activities that could violate its obligations” under US law about tax-exempt organizations.

The Great AI Unemployment has Begun

A lot of people do not believe that AI will kill jobs. It is already happening.

A new video explains:

Why Tech Companies Are Pulling Job Listings

In 2025, the tech job market is undergoing a major shift. Tech job postings have dropped by nearly 40% in a month, and software engineer openings are down over 33% in five years. Companies like Amazon, Meta, and Microsoft are freezing hiring, cutting staff, and eliminating roles—despite rising revenues.

Automation and AI have increased productivity, reducing the need for large teams. Meanwhile, 48% of companies prioritize internal training, and 56% of hiring managers are loosening requirements. Although there are still 476,000 tech openings, mismatches persist. The sector is evolving rapidly, favoring flexible roles and AI expertise over traditional tech jobs.

These are the companies that are rapidly growing, and have always hired thousands of software engineers in growth spurts. Not now. Microsoft is even laying off programmers who can be replaced by AI bots.

Remember the big push to import Indian programmers? Demand is drying up, as most can be replaced by AI.

Update: See also Why “Learn to Code” Failed. Colleges are cranking out more computer science graduates than anything, but software jobs are declining.

Update: More bad news for coders: Why Coding will make you Poor.

What is Individualism?

Individualism is sometimes described as what separates Western Civilization from the rest of the world. But what is it?

Typical definition:

individualism, political and social philosophy that emphasizes the moral worth of the individual.

The Center for Individualism should know, and it defines:

Individualism is an idea of society that champions individual liberty, creativity, and self-reliance. A thriving society cannot be engineered by the collectivist designs of central planners, sociology professors, or government economists. Rather, it is is the combined effects of individual actions and the spontaneous collaborations of free people that produce economic growth, cultural vitality, and social wellbeing.

A philosophy site says:

Although individualism has cropped up here and there throughout history, it first became known as a philosophy in the early 19th century, following the American revolution and Declaration of Independence, a statement of extreme individualism:

“We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. — That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed.”

This is liberalism, a political philosophy almost synonymous with individualism.

I thought that individualism meant Ayn Rand egoism, where every man is selfishly out for his own interests. Individualism also means that strangers cooperate for mutual benefit.

About a millennium ago, Western Europe diverged from the rest of the world by becoming individualistic. That meant that people looked out for their individual interests, and also strangers learned to cooperate to form business markets, guilds, and governments. I suspect that the stranger cooperation was the most important part of individualism.

There are theories that Europe succeeded because people evolved higher IQ. That may be true, but I suspect that the larger effect was that Europe developed a higher collective IQ, as a result of strangers learning to cooperate towards common goals.

The paradox here is that Europeans became more cooperative as they became more individualistic. In the rest of the world, people would only cooperate within their clans, and progress was more limited.

Maybe there should be a better word for the individualism that made Western Civilization. And there should be a better understanding of what made it possible. Was it genes? Christianity? Other aspects of European culture?

Therapist advised taking Non-binary Kid to Ireland

News:

Rosie O’Donnell has “no regrets” for choosing to leave the U.S. for Ireland with her child after President Donald Trump won the election.

The comedian told CNN’s The Situation Room Tuesday that she had already decided to leave the country if Trump won the presidency, saying that “not a day has gone by that I thought it was the wrong decision.”

“I knew after reading Project 2025 that if Trump got in, it was time for me and my non-binary child to leave the country,” she said. “And although I was not one of the celebrities who announced that that’s what I would do, I made the decision within my family and my therapist should he win.”

She said that her and her 12-year-old, Clay, who is non-binary and has autism, were “gone before he was inaugurated.”

So her therapist advised her to move to Ireland? And advised her to turn her child non-binary, I guess. This is really sick.

Harvard could lose Tax-exempt Status

AP reports:

For more than a century, the majority of colleges and universities have not paid most taxes. The Revenue Act of 1909 excused nonprofits operating “exclusively for religious, charitable, or educational purposes” in order to continue acting in the public interest.

President Donald Trump is looking to challenge that designation, complaining that colleges and universities are “indoctrinating” their students with “radical left” ideas, rather than educating them. And he has decided to start with the 388-year-old Harvard University, one of the world's most prestigious institutions of learning and the first college founded in the American colonies.

This is not as ridiculous as it sounds. The precedent here is Bob Jones University v. United States, where a college lost its tax-exempt status for similar reasons, and in 1983 lost 8-1 in the US Supreme Court. Bob Jones eventually gave into pressure and changed its policy in 2000, and got its tax-exempt status back in 2017.

Perhaps you will say that the case is not comparable, because Harvard is noble and honorable, and Bob Jones is so repugnant. The Bob Jones issue was that it was religiously opposed to interracial marriage. The Court acted as if there were a national consensus to promote interracial marriage, and so the Congress laws can be ignored.

I do not think that there was any such consensus, but that is not for me to say. That was considered racial discrimination, and now Harvard has been found guilty of even worse racial discrimination. It fought and lost at the Supreme Court, and it appears to be continuing its previous practices. It is also doing many other things that Trump could declare to be against the public interest.

You might say that the President should not have so much power. Or that colleges should have some First Amendment rights. But who spoke for Bob Jones in 1983? Almost no one. Even the court lone dissent was weak.

For some expert legal opinion, here is a famous Harvard Law professor predicting that Harvard would lose a court battle. The administration wants to settle, but the faculty does not.

Douglas Murray make a Fool of Himself

I have commented favorably about Douglas Murray before, here and here. But he has been all over the media lately plugging his latest book, and he is alienating a lot of people.

He is a neoconservative who believes in fighting wars all over the world to suit his ideals. Currently, he is on the side of Israel against Gaza, and Ukraine against Russia.

I used to think that he was an effective polemicist, but now I wonder why I thought that. He is making a terrible case for these wars, and not addressing opposing views very well.

I do not see how there is anything to be gained by the USA getting involved in either of these wars.

Sec. of State Marco Rubio announces:

During his historic comeback campaign in 2024, President Trump vowed to close the book on a dark chapter in America’s constitutional history: the weaponization of America’s own government to silence, censor, and suppress the free speech of ordinary Americans. The American people responded to this promise by giving President Trump a landslide victory last November.

Everything this administration has done since then has been laser-focused on fulfilling the promises made during that campaign. Today, it is my pleasure to announce the State Department is taking a crucial step toward keeping the president’s promise to liberate American speech by abolishing forever the body formerly known as the Global Engagement Center (GEC).

I never heard of it, but apparently my tax money was funding left-wing propaganda.

USA was Funding Mutilations, in India

News:

NEW DELHI, Feb 28 (Reuters) - India's first three clinics for the transgender community closed last month following a stop-work order from the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) that funded them, disrupting services for nearly 5,000 people, two sources said on Friday.

U.S. President Donald Trump ordered a 90-day pause on all foreign aid in January pending a review to ensure all projects funded with U.S. taxpayer money are aligned with his "America First" policy.

I had no idea the USA was funding stull like this. It should all be shut down, and reassessed.

A NY Times op-ed asks for continued USA aid to Haiti:

Almost every night, I get phone calls from people in areas of Port-au-Prince, Haiti, under attack by gangs. “Please ask the police to send officers,” one friend said. “Please help me. We’re going to die!” he told me. Haiti’s emergency phone line, our 911, is pretty useless — often, no one even answers. The police are spread thin and outgunned by murderous gangs, ...

Since last spring, when gangs in Haiti banded together to attack the government, they have mostly stopped fighting one another for neighborhood control and instead work as a united front to rape, torture and kill. Gangs also fight the police and jointly seize territory. They have attacked hospitals, pharmacies, schools and banks. Gang leaders are finding new ways to block security forces, by digging ditches in tracks and drilling holes into walls to sneak into buildings.

Infected by Unconstitutional Animus

There are dozens of court cases against Trump administration policies, if not hundreds. Judges have been getting bolder in trying to obstruct.

Here is a typical order, blocking Trump from deporting aliens from Venezuela and Haiti:

Plaintiffs assert, inter alia, that the decision to terminate (like the decision to vacate) was infected by unconstitutional animus.

No, there is nothing in the US Constitution about animus. It is all made up.

You may hear Democrats complaining about Rule of Law. The complaints should be directed at any judge using the word animus.

The argument goes like this. Trump says alien criminal gang members are bad for America, and should be deported if they have no right to stay. That is, they do not qualify as immigrants.

So leftist lawyers rush into court saying that Trump has animus towards alien criminal gang members, and therefore his orders are unconstitutional.

Sounds crazy, I know, but a number of federal judges have accepted this argument. The US Supreme Court accepted a similar argument, when it ruled that couples could claim benefits under federal law as if they were same-sex married. I do not think that it has made any other animus rulings.

Netflix G20 is Silly

Video movie review:

Want to watch an almost-60 year old girlboss throw stunt men around and do her best to imitate Die Hard? Then G20, the most unintentionally hilarious movie of the year, might just be the film for you!

The USA President is a 60yo Black woman who beats up a team of terrorists, and gets expert computer help from her teenaged daughter.

I wonder what the market is these Black and girl boss movies. Maybe they made the movie when it appeared that Kamala Harris would be he next President, but she is half-Hindu half-Jamaican, has no kids, and is not capable of beating anyone up. Or even playing the role of a competent President.

I don't want to sound racist, but Black people do not show up very well on my tv screen. I can see the facial expressions of White actors much better. Moviemakers should cast actors that are going to look good on the common screens that people have.

In the end, the old Black woman saves the world, and sends her female rival to prison!

Ritalin and Adderall do not Work on Kids

NY Times reports:

In the years since the consensus statement was published, however, the evidence for each of these A.D.H.D. biomarkers has faltered. Attempts to replicate the studies that showed differences in brain electrical activity came up empty. And though scientists have identified complex collections of genes that together may be signs of greater risk for A.D.H.D., they have failed to find a specific gene that predicts the disorder. “There is no single-gene story,” John Gabrieli, an M.I.T. neuroscientist, told me recently. “Fifteen years ago, there was incredible optimism, and now we realize how far away we are.” ...

Though Swanson had welcomed that initial increase in the diagnosis rate, he expected it to plateau at 3 percent. Instead, it kept rising, hitting 5.5 percent of American children in 1997, then 6.6 percent in 2000. As time passed, Swanson began to grow uneasy. He and his colleagues were continuing to follow the almost 600 children in the M.T.A. study, and by the mid-2000s, they realized that the new data they were collecting was telling a different — and less hopeful — story than the one they initially reported. It was still true that after 14 months of treatment, the children taking Ritalin behaved better than those in the other groups. But by 36 months, that advantage had faded completely, and children in every group, including the comparison group, displayed exactly the same level of symptoms.

So use of the ADHD drugs has been increasing, but the evidence is that they do not work.

Harvard Deserves to be Defunded

Academics are claiming McCarthyism about the Trump administration putting conditions on grants to Columbia and Harvard universities.

Let's get this in perspective. Columbia and Harvard have the worst free speech ratings of any USA colleges.

Harvard has a $50 billion endowment, and gets about $10 billion in federal grants a year.

The federal government has a long history of using such conditions to force wokism, leftism, feminism, and DEI on colleges. Boys sports programs were abolished to make room for girls sports programs, and then trans-identifying boys were allowed to compete against girls. Sexual behavior trials were held without the most basic fairness. Incompetent Blacks were promoted to the highest positions.

The colleges are now mostly anti-White, anti-man, and anti-Trump.

The Trump policies may seem a little heavy-handed, but it will take much more to get the colleges to be racially and politically neutral.

Curt Weldon Tells his Story

New interview:

Rep. Curt Weldon: It’s Time to Finally Tell the Truth About 9-11

The Tucker Carlson Show

After twenty years in congress, Curt Weldon was about to become chairman of the House Armed Services Committee when he publicly questioned the accuracy of the 9-11 report. In retaliation, the Bush administration sent federal agents to his daughter’s house and ended his political career. At 77, Weldon has decided to tell the truth about what actually happened on September 11, 2001.

According to him, Osama bin Laden was in Iran in 2001, not Afghanistan. He got destroyed for asking the wrong questions.

He also has theories about 9-11-2001. He says two 9-11 hijeckers were CIA informants. He has info about why Libya was invaded, and Kaddafi killed.

Ukraine is Losing with German Tanks

From a Yahoo news op-ed:

German tanks are failing in Ukraine for the same reasons they lost the Second World War

The leaked report from the German Defence Ministry about the shortcomings of the Leopard 2 tank in the Ukraine should come as no surprise to anybody who even has a cursory understanding of German tank history, or even western tank history in general. ...

The first issue identified is how difficult it is for Ukraine soldiers to mend these tanks and keep them battle worthy. If the engine breaks down it must be taken hundreds of miles for repair in a specialist facility, whereas the old, simple engines of the Russian tanks can be easily fixed by any automotive mechanic, in situ if necessary. ...

We must avoid the same old German tank story from WW2. We must avoid the temptation to make our tanks too complex, too easy to hit, too difficult to maintain and too few.

German cars have this reputation today. Over-engineered, and hard to repair. People praise German engineering, but only if you ignore maintenance as an essential part of good engineering.

Yes, Trump turned out better than Harris

I just listened to some rants by Trump-haters. They have endless complaints, but mostly about Trump's personality, and how they are embarrassed to have him as President.

Funny, I did not hear any arguments that Kamala Harris would have done a better job. Or that she would have made more competent appointments.

Remember her? She was the only alternative to Trump. She ran on open borders, transgenderism, and DEI. Her bold plan for change was to prosecute grocery stores for price gouging. In the campaign, she hid from reporters and was unable to answer simple questions.

For four years of Biden being President, we still do not know who was running the White House. Whatever you think of Trump, he is actually doing the job that he was elected to do. Biden and Harris were incapable.

Optimizing Human Life

The term eugenics has always been a bad word at the NY Times, such as this story relating it to Hitler and other evils.

Now it publishes a pro-eugenics opinion, mirrored here.

Other advocates such as the Collinses believe widespread adoption of the screening could be a boon for public health by lowering health care spending on heritable diseases and, more controversially, for social ills such as violent crime by raising a society’s overall IQ. “Societies that have more intelligent people will have lower rates of crime, of rape, of violence, because intelligence correlates negatively with those societal blights,” Ms. Collins told me. Such population-level engineering, when done by a parent as opposed to the state, has been called liberal eugenics by its advocates.

This Harvard survey shows a lot of support for eugenic embryo screening.

The Vanishing White Male Writer

Jacob Savage writes:

t’s easy enough to trace the decline of young white men in American letters—just browse The New York Times’s “Notable Fiction” list. In 2012 the Times included seven white American men under the age of 43 (the cut-off for a millennial today); in 2013 there were six, in 2014 there were six.

And then the doors shut.

By 2021, there was not one white male millennial on the “Notable Fiction” list. There were none again in 2022, and just one apiece in 2023 and 2024 (since 2021, just 2 of 72 millennials featured were white American men). There were no white male millennials featured in Vulture’s 2024 year-end fiction list, none in Vanity Fair’s, none in The Atlantic’s. Esquire, a magazine ostensibly geared towards male millennials, has featured 53 millennial fiction writers on its year-end book lists since 2020. Only one was a white American man.

Over the course of the 2010s, the literary pipeline for white men was effectively shut down.

What to conclude from this? That there are suddenly no good white men writers anymore? That no one wants to hear what they have to say? That publishers know better what is good for us?

No, all of that is ridiculous. This has become an anti-white-men age.

We canot get a fictional white man President anymore.

News got you down? Need a break from politics? Want to forget your country’s troubles? If substance abuse isn’t your thing, luckily Amazon Prime Video dropped a new movie on Thursday called G20. It’s set in a far-fetched fantasy world where a Black woman was elected president, she is a principled and heroic figure, and the United States still cares about its allies and is respected on the world stage. I know, it’s a leap! But if you can suspend your disbelief, you might just be able to waste over 90 minutes of your time watching this preposterous popcorn thriller just like I did!

Casting a black woman as President was obviously a very deliberate decision. What was the rationale for that decision? To try to make a point that black women are better than white men? To get an audience among those who hate white men?

I don't know, but I see no good explanation. It cannot be to just gain black women viewers. I am not going to watch it, as I am apparently not part of the target audience.

The Corruption of Christianity

News from 2019:

Sweden's first openly lesbian bishop says she has more in common with some Muslims than with conservative Christians and believes Christians and Muslims pray to the same god.

Eva Brunne, a Church of Sweden bishop in Stockholm, has also said Muslim worshippers in churches are "angels" and that churches should remove all crosses that might offend them and instead mark the direction to Mecca for prayers.

This follows a trend in the Swedish Church to find common ground with Islam. During a church meeting last November, a motion to ban the Islamic call to prayer in Swedish cities was voted down, with some church officials saying it would be an "amazing" opportunity for more people to meet the "love of Allah."

Perhaps some see this as a sign that the Christian Swedes are broad-minded and tolerant. No, they are not.

First is the obvious contradiction. Moslems would hate a lesbian bishop.

Second, believing in Christianity means rejecting rival religions like Islam.

I understand Christians who believe in the Bible, or those who accept the teachings but reject the miracles, or atheists who reject it all. But why would someone attend a Christian church headed by someone who seems to think that Islam is a better religion?

Maybe that is inaccurate. A lesbian bishop cannot possibly think that Islam is a better religion. But what is her message? Is she preaching Christianity or not?

I am afraid that European Christianity is dying, and she is a symptom.

Update: Here is an Episcopal Church, supposedly Christian, but really all-gay.

People are Hysterical over Tariffs

NPR Radio reports:

And higher tariffs translate to higher prices for American consumers. Martha Gimbel of the Budget Lab at Yale takes an imaginary walk through a big box store to look at how much more people might pay for t-shirts, rice, medication and other staples.

It goes on to give scary percentages like 45%, but not how cheap this stuff is already.

I pay about $0.10 per serving for rice, and about $4 per t-shirt. These prices are small compared to trips to fast food restaurants, car maintenance, and many other common expenses.

I am not referring to sale prices either. Regular prices for quality rice and t-shirts at those big box stores.

Not that I like being taxed, but government spending is out of control, and we all pay for it somehow. I am not sure tariffs are any worse than any other tax.

The New Facebook Rules

Facebook announces:

We remove dehumanizing speech, allegations of serious immorality or criminality, and slurs. We also remove harmful stereotypes, which we define as dehumanizing comparisons that have historically been used to attack, intimidate, or exclude specific groups, and that are often linked with offline violence. Finally, we remove serious insults, expressions of contempt or disgust, cursing, and calls for exclusion or segregation when targeting people based on protected characteristics.

This list seems like an improvement over their system of fact-checkers. They put a lot of thought into this, so it is interesting to see what they concluded.

Harmful stereotypes historically linked to intimidation or violence, such as Blackface; Holocaust denial; claims that Jewish people control financial, political, or media institutions; references to Dalits as menial laborers; and comparing Black people to farm equipment.

I did not know that any of those things were linked to intimidation or violence. Blackface was mainly done for entertainment. You could run into trouble with Jews by just stating facts.

Finally, sometimes people curse at a gender in the context of a romantic break-up. Our policies are designed to allow room for these types of speech.

So if I just broke up with my girlfriend and I am upset about it, I guess I can say that I hate women.