LIsa Cook Fired from Federal Bank

In case you think Lisa Cook was unfairly fired from the Federal Reserve Bank for some minor mortgage application irregularities, check out her campaign to fire a prominent professor as racist for tweeting criticism of Black Lives Matter for trying to defund the police.

As the article says, this was in 2020, when the whole world went crazy over George Floyd.

Cook writes that "free speech has its limits" and should not be used to "spread hatred and violate the dignity of other people." She suggests that any and all criticism of MLK Jr. causes psychic harm to marginalized communities—"this is real pain you are inflicting"—and likened it to actual racist violence against civil rights protesters in the 1950s and 1960s.

Again, we are talking about a series of tweets in which Uhlig said that defunding the police was a bad idea, as well as an insinuation that he once said something mildly critical about MLK Jr., perhaps in jest. And the cancel culture campaign was successful, albeit temporarily: Uhlig was placed on leave pending an investigation, though eventually reinstated after cooler heads prevailed.

Another Trans Shooter, in Minnesota

I used to think that Minnesota weas a great American state. They came Somalis, George Floyd, and wokism.

Now a boy shot up kids in a Catholic church. He had a male-to-female trans identity. He hated Trump and Catholics. His divorced mom worked for the school, and approved his legal name change.

He regretted his transition and it was illegal for him to get advice about it.

4 shooters out of over 300 mass shooters since 2009 are transgender or non binary.

Feminism has Stopped Civilization Progress

Men and women have some political differences, and the biggest is that men favor rationality and technological progress. The evidence is detailed in a new Aporia article:

Progress Studies is a combination of academic discipline and political movement aiming to study “the causes of civilizational progress”, i.e., the “economic, technological, scientific, and cultural advancements that have transformed human life and raised standards of living over the past couple of centuries”. ...

This is why, if you’re looking for people who are both interested and able in engineering, disagreeable enough to break consensus, and willing to take risks for uncertain payoffs, you will overwhelmingly find men. As a result, technology/markets/future and ideas-oriented groups tend to be around 90% male.9

The article argues that women became much more influential in about year 1970, and that is when progress consequently declined.

A podcast discussing this is The Data: Women May Have Broken Western Civilization.

Ninety Days for Using the N-word on a Somali

I mentioned the Minnesota White mom who got harassed by Somalis in a public park. One of them badgered her into using the Ni**** word on camera, and continued with online harassment.

Now she is being charged:

Shiloh Hendrix, a woman caught hurling racial slurs in a Rochester playground in April, has been charged with three counts of disorderly conduct.

According to the Rochester City Attorney’s Office, the charge is a misdemeanor with a maximum of 90 days in jail and/or a $1,000 fine, ...

The full statement from the City of Rochester is below: ...

“As the legal process moves forward, the City recognizes not only the significant attention and emotion surrounding this case, but also the complex and lasting impacts situations like this have on communities of color and our broader community. Conversations and activities are unfolding across many different spaces, reflecting both immediate reactions and long-term needs. These ongoing efforts will continue regardless of the outcome of the legal proceedings.

“This was a situation that deeply affected many people, especially our communities of color, and caused real turmoil in our community,” shared Mayor Kim Norton. “We acknowledge the lasting impact this incident has had, not only on those directly involved and across our community, but also in the broader conversations happening at the state and national level. These moments remind us of the complexity and far-reaching impacts of situations like this. The City remains committed to staying engaged and proceeding with transparency and care, continuing efforts that support accountability and progress in Rochester.

I see stories like this from Britain or Europe, and thought that it could not happen here, because he have free speech.

Watch the video. She is the one being harassed. If anyone should be charged, it would be the Somali for harassing her. She was just trying to tend to her child in the park.

Yesterday's newspapers had front-page stories about how Pres. Trump was violating our free speech rights by threatening to prosecute flag-burners.

It is obvious from the city announcement that this prosecution is entirely based on the mom being White, and the Somali accuser being Black.

Museum should show American Positives

Atlantic magazine essay:

Trump seemed outraged, in particular, by the Smithsonian’s portrayal of the Black experience in America. He took to Truth Social to complain that the country’s museums “are, essentially, the last remaining segment of ‘WOKE.’ The Smithsonian,” he wrote, “is OUT OF CONTROL.” Then Trump wrote something astonishing, even for him. He asserted that the narrative presented by the Smithsonian is overly focused on “how horrible our Country is, how bad Slavery was, and how unaccomplished the downtrodden have been.”

The rest of the article is behind a paywall, but I can guess. It is typical Jewish anti-American propaganda.

Trump is right. I am tired of hearing how bad slavery was. African slaves were better off when sold to America. When they were freed, they did not go back to Africa. Most Whites are also descended from slaves.

Slavery was just another economic system. Complaining about it is like complaining about feudalism or indentured servitude.

I found an unpaywalled link, and the story is worse than I thought. It is written by a Black man, and instead of "slaves" it refers to "enslaved people". American plantations did not enslave anyone. The slaves were enslaved in Africa, and imported to the USA as slaves.

The Trump administration is, in both public discourse and public policy, arguably the most racist presidential administration in modern American history. Each week seems to bring a new example of its bigotry.

He gives no example, except telling the Smithsonian to emphasize more positive messages.

In 1860, the 4 million enslaved Black people were worth more than every bank, factory, and railroad combined. Today, although they make up 14 percent of the population, Black people own less than 4 percent of the nation’s wealth.

So Blacks were more valuable as slaves than as free? So abolishing slavery was extremely costly? I am not sure what the point is.

Axios complains:

The MAGA movement's obsession with American identity and Western civilization is shaping federal policy far more than in Trump's first term — fueling a reckoning over who belongs and what history should be remembered.

Rufo Says Nixon was Set Up

Christopher Rufo says on the Bill Maher show:

12:39 But you're saying they did it to Nixon. 12:41 Are you now saying that Nixon did 12:43 nothing wrong and was wrongly pursued? [Rufo]12:45 Yeah. No, I think if you look at the 12:46 history of Watergate, you see that it 12:48 was a setup from start to finish. You 12:50 know, four of the five Watergate 12:52 burglars, listen, four of the five 12:54 Watergate burglars were connected with 12:56 the CIA, were connected with the FBI. 12:58 You had the judge, Judge Sera, who had 13:00 uh backdoor meetings violating the law 13:03 out to get Nixon.

As expected, no one on the panel agreed with him, but no one could say what Nixon did wrong either.

I agree with Rufo. Nixon will eventually be regarded as innocent, like Pres. Andrew Johnson. Nixon was framed by the Wash. Post, the deputy director of the FBI, and Democrat congressmen who hated him for other reasons. And a gullible press and public that went along with it.

The Democrat War on Men

Ann Coulter writes:

The only really surprising thing about last year's election is that Trump won white men under 20, with about 75% -- the highest percentage of any demographic by race and age. Gen Z and millennial white men were practically pikers compared to the 18- and 19-year-olds, giving Trump a mere 67% of their vote. ...

Within a few years of its founding in 1910, the Scouts realized they needed to keep a sharp eye out for sexual abusers and began compiling a confidential list of “ineligible volunteers," called the "Perversion Files." As the expression goes, "Not all gays who want to go camping alone in the woods with young boys are child molesters, but all child molesters would like to go camping alone in the woods with young boys."

It seems to have worked. Nearly two-thirds of NASA's career astronauts were Scouts, and 41 were Eagle Scouts, including Neil Armstrong, the first man to walk on the moon, and Jim Lovell, the commander of Apollo 8 and 13, who died at 97 only this month. Among the other massively accomplished Eagle Scouts are Hank Aaron, Gerald Ford, Steven Breyer, Sam Walton, Stephen Bechtel, Bill Marriott, Michael Jordan and Steven Spielberg.

What do the Boy Scouts and Catholic Church have in common?

Both did whatever they could, legally, to protect boys from child molesters.

Yes, this meant keeping secret lists of suspected homosexuals. For this they were hated by the Woke Ctrl Left.

The Times’ “ethicist,” Randy Cohen, advised a reader to pull her son out of the Cub Scouts, saying it was “the ethical thing to do" -- at least until gay activists were allowed to go on camping trips with young boys. ...

Indeed, that hated word was entirely extirpated from the group’s name, and it was rechristened “Scouts USA.” Girl members and gay Scoutmasters were the order of the day.

One can only imagine the glee in the newsroom when, two years later, the Times could run this headline: “Boy Scouts Seek Bankruptcy To Survive a Deluge of Sex-Abuse Claims.” But, this week, the same paper innocently published an essay on the importance of Scouting to young men.

My local Boy Scouts is mostly girls now.

Netflix Version of French Lover

Here is the latest Neflix movie. In French language, with English subtitles.

A better title would be Black Lover. Or African Lover.

Obviously the casting decisions were made to appeal to a certain market, but what was it? Who has this as a sexual fantasy?

No Difference between Islam and Islamism

Quillette audio essay:

The Problem Isn’t Islamism — It’s Islam | Obaid Omer for Quillette

Is the real problem “Islamism”—or Islam itself? In this Quillette video essay, writer and free speech advocate Obaid Omer challenges the popular distinction between Islam and Islamism.

For years, Western commentators have used “Islamism” to describe extremist or political versions of Islam, hoping to separate them from ordinary religious practice. But as Omer argues, this linguistic sleight of hand obscures the truth: many practices we dismiss as “Islamist” are in fact rooted in the fundamentals of Islam itself.

A lot of people make this disinction, but it makes no sense. They have separate Wikipedia articles, defining:

Islamism is a range of religious and political ideological movements that believe that Islam should influence political systems.[1] Its proponents believe Islam is innately political, and that Islam as a political system is superior to communism, liberal democracy, capitalism, and other alternatives in achieving a just, successful society.[

Essentially all followers of Islam believe this.

As well as I can figure, the word Islamism was invented to mollify those who are afraid that criticizing Islam is bigoted.

If you believe in one religion, then you do not believe is other religions. That is obvious, and nothing to be embarrassed about.

This guy claims that there is very little historical evidence for Mohammad existing, or for Mecca.

I did not know this: Gooning for Apartheid: How Israel Uses Sex to Whitewash Genocide. I was skeptical, but it has pictures to show.

Fine Against Donald Trump Erased

Ms. James brought the case against the Trumps for fraudulently misstating valuations of their properties in violation of New York’s Executive Law. That law (as I’ve written in these pages) defines fraud in terms of untruths without requiring proof of deceptive intent, negligence or harm. The statute doesn’t even require proof that the untrue information is material. The statute thus lets government target mere untruths.

Trump just won the appeal, but the five judges could not agree on the reasoning, and there will have to more appeals.

Trump does tend to exaggerate, but that should be his constitutional right. Usually businessmen are allowed to do that, as long as they are not deliberately lying to cheat someone out of money.

This continues the Trump pattern of losing in the lower courts, and winning on appeal.

It would be nice if some appeals court struck down that NY law. I hate to think that NY might prosecute me for making a factual mistake on this blog.

No Decrease in Arctic Ice

Do you remember all the predictions that the Artic ice was about to disappear, leaving an open ocean, in the summer at least?

It never happened. The London Guardian reports:

The melting of sea ice in the Arctic has slowed dramatically in the past 20 years, scientists have reported, with no statistically significant decline in its extent since 2005.

The finding is surprising, the researchers say, given that carbon emissions from fossil fuel burning have continued to rise and trap ever more heat over that time.

Most Good Research done by PhDs

Nate Silver was praised for posting:

The most important research paper of the past 10 years is the Google transformer paper ("Attention Is All You Need") and it was written by non-academics and published in an open-access journal.

His point is that non-academics are doing better research than academics.

It is true that there is nothing to stop non-academics from doing and distributing cutting edge research, but this is not an example. The work was done by PhD computer scientists and published at an academic conference.

To an outsider, getting a PhD must seem like a big waste of time. But nearly all the good research is done by PhDs.

The paper was one of the more important papers leading to AI large language models, and Google later got a patent on it. Some claim that the T stands for the transformer of this paper. OpenAI did not claim that until GPT-3. Curiously, Google only claimed it as an encoder-decoder model, and not the decoder model that the LLMs use. Others figured out how to use it for products like ChatGPT.

Freud was a Kabbalah Jew

I thought that Sigmund Freud was a non-religious Jew, but actually he was a big believer in Jewish Kabbalah.

I don't know anything about Kabbalah, but people who believe in weirdo religious cults should be treated with suspicion.

Judaism is a funny religion. There are lots of famous and influential Jews who appear to be non-religious secular atheists. But actually they are of Jewish descent and subscribe to an assortment of views that are primarily held by Jews. Albert Einstein is a good example, and so are most of the Jewish intellectuals of today.

Africa is Bigger than You Think

Reuters:

The African Union has backed a campaign to end the use by governments and international organisations of the 16th-century Mercator map of the world in favour of one that more accurately displays Africa's size.

I am surprised that they do not complain about the term "Sub-Saharan Africa".

Smithsonian Ordered to Stop Woke Exhibits

Pres. Trump has just issued a letter to followup this March executive order:

Once widely respected as a symbol of American excellence and a global icon of cultural achievement, the Smithsonian Institution has, in recent years, come under the influence of a divisive, race-centered ideology. This shift has promoted narratives that portray American and Western values as inherently harmful and oppressive. For example, the Smithsonian American Art Museum today features “The Shape of Power: Stories of Race and American Sculpture,” an exhibit representing that “[s]ocieties including the United States have used race to establish and maintain systems of power, privilege, and disenfranchisement.” The exhibit further claims that “sculpture has been a powerful tool in promoting scientific racism” and promotes the view that race is not a biological reality but a social construct, stating “Race is a human invention.”

The National Museum of African American History and Culture has proclaimed that “hard work,” “individualism,” and “the nuclear family” are aspects of “White culture.” The forthcoming Smithsonian American Women’s History Museum plans on celebrating the exploits of male athletes participating in women’s sports. These are just a few examples.

I think that individualism and the nuclear family are aspects of White culture.

American Nation based on Genetic Identity

John Jay wrote the 1787 Federalist No. 2:

With equal pleasure I have as often taken notice that Providence has been pleased to give this one connected country to one united people -- a people descended from the same ancestors, speaking the same language, professing the same religion, attached to the same principles of government, very similar in their manners and customs, and who, by their joint counsels, arms, and efforts, fighting side by side throughout a long and bloody war, have nobly established general liberty and independence.

This country and this people seem to have been made for each other, and it appears as if it was the design of Providence, that an inheritance so proper and convenient for a band of brethren, united to each other by the strongest ties, should never be split into a number of unsocial, jealous, and alien sovereignties.

Similar sentiments have hitherto prevailed among all orders and denominations of men among us. To all general purposes we have uniformly been one people each individual citizen everywhere enjoying the same national rights, privileges, and protection.

He did not know about genes, but he is essentially saying that Americans have a common genetic identity, and that our constitutional government is naturally suited for that identity. Wikipedia comments:

Since its publication, the conception of nationality presented in Federalist No. 2 has been a persistent issue in American politics. It relates directly to debates of naturalization and multiculturalism, and it was most directly challenged by the American Civil War that contradicted Jay's conception of unity. ...

Federalist No. 2 established the main idea of the Federalist Papers that Americans were a national community with a common interest that necessitated unity.[18] This idea was a direct response to one of the main ideas of the Anti-Federalist Papers, which argued that Americans were too different from one another to form a single nation.

Those differences were minute compared to what is found in immigrants today.

I guess Wikipedia is saying that the nation was wreck in the Civil War by a sub-population outside the main genetic identity.

The lesson here is that the US Constitution was designed for a nation of might be called today Heritage Americans. Others are not suited for the American political system or way of life.

The Great Thirteenth Century

I argued that the modern world was made by the High Middle Ages, and now I see a similar argument was made by a 1907 book, The thirteenth, greatest of centuries. It is in the public domain, and you can download the audio book or listen on Youtube.

Wash. Post Shifts to Pro-liberty Opinions

Ruth Marcus writes a long New Yorker rant:

I stayed until I no longer could—until the newspaper’s owner, Jeff Bezos, issued an edict that the Post’s opinion offerings would henceforth concentrate on the twin pillars of “personal liberties and free markets,” and, even more worrisome, that “viewpoints opposing those pillars will be left to be published by others.” I stayed until the Post’s publisher, Will Lewis, killed a column I filed last week expressing my disagreement with this new direction.

Funny how that works. The boss tell her to do something, and she complains that the boss does not publish her disagreement.

Her main gripe is that the newspaper shifted from being 100% anti-Trump to being 99% anti-Trump. And away from her Ctrl-Left authoritarian opinions.

Supreme Court to Rule on Racial Profiling

The New Republic magazine complains:

President Trump’s Department of Homeland Security just asked the Supreme Court for permission to racially profile the immigrants it’s hunting.

The administration requested that the Supreme Court pause the injunction blocking them from carrying out their “roving” immigration raids in Los Angeles, which involve them being able to simply accost and harass anyone who is speaking Spanish or who looks like they might, whether it be at their job, their school, their place of worship, or more.

“Likewise, apparent ethnicity can be a factor supporting reasonable suspicion in appropriate circumstances — for instance, if agents know that the members of a criminal organization under investigation are disproportionately members of one ethnic group — even if it would not be relevant in other circumstances,” the request reads.

Profiling is essential to police work.

It is not so well known, but a lot of academic research supports predicting criminality and many other traits from faces. It can all be computerized to reduce racial and other biases. See this video:

Join Malcolm and Simone as they delve into the controversial and data-heavy topic of predicting personal traits from facial features. From the discredited study of phrenology to modern AI research, they discuss the potential and ethical implications of determining criminality, political views, sexuality, aggression, and even socioeconomic status just by looking at someone's face. With references to various scientific studies and a touch of humor, this episode offers a thought-provoking look at the intersection of technology, genetics, and human behavior.

Here is a 2011 paper that include pictures, so you can decide for yourself if you can pick out the criminals.

ICE is current under a court order that not only bans racial profiling, but other kinds of profiling also, such as looking for illegal aliens in places that illegals are known to frequent. How else is ICE supposed to do its job?

Profiling is necessary for law enforcement. It always has been. We need a law that lets the police do their jobs.

For another view, see this John Oliver rant. He has been living in the USA for about 20 years, and he is still trying to learn American English. He has mainly learned f**k and s**t.

Pro-transgender Lawsuit from Dem States

A lot of leftist states have filed a lawsuit against Trump's anti-transgender orders.

Since taking office on January 20, 2025, President Donald J. Trump and his administration have relentlessly, cruelly, and unlawfully targeted transgender individuals. The Trump administration has sought to deny their very existence, banish transgender residents from the public square, and refuse them medically necessary healthcare through unlawful Executive Orders (EOs) and a raft of federal agency actions implementing those EOs. What’s more, the Attorney General has not minced words that she will use the Department of Justice to “bring [] an end” to gender-affirming care for transgender adolescents. The result is an atmosphere of fear and intimidation experienced by transgender individuals, their families and caregivers, and the medical professionals who seek only to provide necessary, lawful care to their patients.

Nearly all of that is false. Nobody is denying anyone's existence, or withholding necessary medical care, or banishing anyone.

Trump said that sex is binary, which is a scientific fact. He also opposed the sexual mutilation of minors. He is trying to enforce federal laws that were supposed to protect womens sports.

I wonder how 17 states got such radical transgender governments. It would be one thing to say that adults should be allowed to make personal choices, but it is something else to force everyone to accept them, or to impose bizarre medical experiments on children.

Dismantling the Nuclear Family

Matt Walsh rants:

Democratic Socialists of America published a panel where they called for the dismantling of the “repressive” and “racist” nuclear family.

Not just the Democrat Socialists. Legal and cultural forces have been dismantling the nuclear family for 50 years. For example, the USA has been invaded by immigrants who mostly do not believe in the nuclear family.

Like you you cannot possibly be 7:07 an agent for good in the culture if you 7:10 stand against the family. You cannot 7:12 possibly be. It's it's impossible. 7:14 You're pro- family or anti-f family. 7:15 That's it. That's all that that that's 7:18 what matters to me.

Arabs have no Democracies

Podcast

Is The Arab Brain Incompatible with Democracy?

In this thought-provoking episode, hosts Malcolm and Simone dive into the complexities behind the absence of stable democracies in Arab majority countries. Exploring historical, cultural, and geopolitical factors, they debunk common explanations like colonialism, war, and religion. Instead, they highlight the role of tribalism, the influence of Saudi Arabia, and unique social structures that differentiate Arab societies from other global cultures.

The argument is that the Arab brain evolved to be incompatible with democracy. They have a lot of evidence.

Maybe more is true, and American-style government is only possible with heritage Americans, because of genetic evolution over centuries.

Decline of the American Dream

This chart is being copied widely.

There are many causes for this. Notable ones include anti-marriage policies, and importing foreigner greatly in excess of available housing, driving up prices.

100 Years since Scopes Monkey Trial

This is the 100th anniversary of the Scopes Monkey Trial. The closest modern equivalent was this 2005 trial:

Kitzmiller v. Dover Area School District, 400 F. Supp. 2d 707 (M.D. Pa. 2005)[1] was the first case brought in the United States federal courts testing a public school policy requiring the teaching of intelligent design (ID). The court found intelligent design to be not science.[2][3] In October 2004, the Dover Area School District of York County, Pennsylvania, changed its biology teaching curriculum to require that intelligent design be presented as an alternative to evolution theory, and that Of Pandas and People, a textbook advocating intelligent design, was to be used as a reference book.[4] The prominence of this textbook during the trial was such that the case is sometimes referred to as the Dover Panda Trial,[5][6] a name which recalls the popular name of the Scopes Monkey Trial in Tennessee, 80 years earlier. The plaintiffs successfully argued that intelligent design is a form of creationism, and that the school board policy violated the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment to the United States Constitution.

The judge applied the Lemon Test, in which a school book could be banned if the authors could be shown to have religion motivations.

What is not so well known is that the US Supreme Court has since repudiated the Lemon Test.

I am not sure which was more absurd, the 1925 or 2005 trial. The 2005 judge was deciding the scientific merit of a textbook based finding some unpublished manuscripts of the authors indicating that they had some religious motivations, and removed religious references in order to comply with requirements of secular schools. The judge said that under the Lemon Test, the book could not be used in a public school. I think it was just put in the library, and the science teachers did not even use it.

The judge's opinion had been ghost-written by the ACLU.

How Christianity Remade the World

Dominion: The Making of the Western Mind (published as Dominion: How the Christian Revolution Remade the World in the United States) is a 2019 non-fiction history book by British historian Tom Holland.

The book is a broad history of the influence of Christianity on the world, focusing on its impact on morality – from its beginnings to the modern day.[1] According to the author, the book "isn’t a history of Christianity" but "a history of what's been revolutionary and transformative about Christianity: about how Christianity has transformed not just the West, but the entire world."[2]

Holland contends that Western morality, values and social norms ultimately are products of Christianity,[1][3][4] stating "in a West that is often doubtful of religion's claims, so many of its instincts remain — for good and ill — thoroughly Christian".[5] Holland further argues that concepts now usually considered non-religious or universal, such as secularism, liberalism, science, socialism and Marxism, revolution, feminism, and even homosexuality, "are deeply rooted in a Christian seedbed",[6][7][8] and that the influence of Christianity on Western civilization has been so complete "that it has come to be hidden from view".[1][7]

Others disagree. The Wikipedia article refers to mixed reviews.

This is an important topic. Religion is declining. I am going to collect some more views on this.

From a debate on Tom Holland vs AC Grayling • History: Did Christianity give us our human values?

[Grayling] I would ask Tom this and this 1:16:50 is a surprising question maybe to nominate for me one thing just one thing 1:16:56 that Christianity has introduced that doesn't have some source some parallel some analogy in in 1:17:05 previous and in other civilizations one novelty one innovation in thinking about 1:17:11 anything ethical metaphysical or anything you like and I must have racked my brains over this often enough and I cannot 1:17:19 think of one would love to hear if there is once

[Host]you accept that challenge?

[Holland] absolutely I think the the the ideal of 1:17:25 lifelong matrimony I think that's a very distinctive Christian concept I think 1:17:30 the the category of what by the 19th century is coming to be categorized as a 1:17:35 homosexuality and heterosexuality. I think they have no precedence. I think the notion of secularism the idea of 1:17:42 there being religions. I think all these are entirely exclusive to Christian civilization. I think the concept of 1:17:49 science as it emerges in the 19th century. I think is entirely exclusive to Christian civilization. I think the idea 1:17:57 that human beings are created in the image of God if that is obviously something that Christians should share 1:18:03 with with Jews but that is a it gives a degree of dignity to human beings that 1:18:09 no other cultural tradition that I'm aware of even remotely approximates to.

so I think that all of those that are 1:18:15 essentially what I'm talking in giving that is I am talking about what makes Western civilization distinctive and one 1:18:23 of the things that absolutely makes Western civilization distinctive and it's an inheritance of its Christian 1:18:28 past is its assumption that its values are universal. this has been fundamental 1:18:34 to the way that Christians have understood their faith that that it is for all of humanity

Invented in the High Middle Ages

Some say that the modern world started in Enlightenment of arounnd 1750 AD or so, but here I list the much more important advances of the European High Middle Ages, 1000-1300 AD.

Clocks. Mechanical clocks were invented, and society started running according to schedules.

Universities. Knowledge was advanced by group efforts building on the work of others. The first universities were in Italy, France, and England.

Nuclear family. This was driven by primogeniture, Catholic bans on cousin marriage, and the economics of small farms. The nuclear family became the unit of Western Civilization.

Market economy. The High Middle Ages saw the beginnings of a market economy, with the growth of towns, trade networks (e.g., the Hanseatic League), and guilds.

Individualism, as made possible by the nuclear family and markets.

Agricultural innovations, like the the heavy plow, three-field crop rotation, horse-drawn plows (using horse collars), three-field rotation.

Architecture, like gothic cathedrals, wind mills, and water mills.

English common law.

Banks, double entry bookkeeping. Started in Venice and other cities.

Military technology like stirrups and crossbows.

Navigation technology, like the compass and shipbuilding.

This is what made the modern world possible, not the Enlightment that came centuries later.

Just compare Europe to the rest of the world. There were great civilizations in China, India, and Persia, but they lacked the above innovations, and fell far behind Europe.

I did not mention Christianity, as it started much earlier. However it was crucial to most of these developments, and to Europe leaping ahead.

Here is a more typical view:

In Enlightenment Now, psychologist Steven Pinker argues that 17th- and 18th-century Enlightenment values and modernization have contributed to gradually improving the world on “every single measure of human well-being.”

Further explained:

The Age of Enlightenment refers to a historical period in the 17th and 18th centuries when European intellectuals and philosophers were concerned with re-thinking social values and moving toward a more “progressive” vision for humanity. This included thinking about the most rational ways to go about organizing and governing society to maximize human well-being, including discussions of freedom, equality, and empirical truth.

Pinker says modern prosperity is the result of 17-18C philosophers discovering rational thinking. No, those thinkers were of no consequence, compared to the above innovations.

I have posted other theories Explaining the Great Divergence, and you can find more in Wikipedia:

The Great Divergence or European miracle is the socioeconomic shift in which the Western world (i.e. Western Europe along with its settler offshoots in Northern America and Australasia[2]) overcame pre-modern growth constraints and emerged during the 19th century as the most powerful and wealthy world civilizations, eclipsing previously dominant or comparable civilizations from Asia such as Qing China, Mughal India, the Ottoman Empire, Safavid Iran, and Tokugawa Japan, among others.[3]

Scholars have proposed a wide variety of theories to explain why the Great Divergence happened, including geography, culture, institutions, and luck.[4] ...

"Why do the Christian nations, which were so weak in the past compared with Muslim nations begin to dominate so many lands in modern times and even defeat the once victorious Ottoman armies?"..."Because they have laws and rules invented by reason."
Ibrahim Muteferrika, Rational basis for the Politics of Nations (1731)[29]

As you can see, people want to credit reason, but not credit genes, religion, and the middle ages.

AI Researchers worth more than Athletes

The NY Times has a big article complaining about how much AI researchers are making.

To put these salaries in a historical perspective: J. Robert Oppenheimer, who led the Manhattan Project that ended World War II, earned approximately $10,000 per year in 1943. Adjusted for inflation using the US Government's CPI Inflation Calculator, that's about $190,865 in today's dollars—roughly what a senior software engineer makes today. The 24-year-old Deitke, who recently dropped out of a PhD program, will earn approximately 327 times what Oppenheimer made while developing the atomic bomb.

Many top athletes can't compete with these numbers. The New York Times noted that Steph Curry's most recent four-year contract with the Golden State Warriors was $35 million less than Deitke's Meta deal (although soccer superstar Cristiano Ronaldo will make $275 million this year as the highest-paid professional athlete in the world). The comparison prompted observers to call this an "NBA-style" talent market — except the AI researchers are making more than NBA stars.

The AI researchers are much more valuable to the world economy than some entertainers who play basketball or soccer.

Yes, AI researchers should be paid more than athletes, entertainers, and government workers.

Microsoft says AI will obsolete these jobs:

    
1. Interpreters and Translators
2. Historians
3. Passenger Attendants
4. Sales Representatives of Services
5. Writers and Authors
6. Customer Service Representatives
7. CNC Tool Programmers
8. Telephone Operators
9. Ticket Agents and Travel Clerks
10. Broadcast Announcers and Radio DJs
11. Brokerage Clerks
12. Farm and Home Management Educators
13. Telemarketers
14. Concierges
15. Political Scientists
16. News Analysts, Reporters, Journalists
17. Mathematicians
18. Technical Writers
19. Proofreaders and Copy Markers
20. Hosts and Hostesses
21. Editors
22. Business Teachers, Postsecondary
23. Public Relations Specialists
24. Demonstrators and Product Promoters
25. Advertising Sales Agents
26. New Accounts Clerks
27. Statistical Assistants
28. Counter and Rental Clerks
29. Data Scientists
30. Personal Financial Advisors
31. Archivists
32. Economics Teachers, Postsecondary
33. Web Developers
34. Management Analysts
35. Geographers
36. Models
37. Market Research Analysts
38. Public Safety Telecommunicators
39. Switchboard Operators
40. Library Science Teachers, Postsecondary.
    

Meanwhile Microsoft reporting record profits, laying off programmers, and hiring Indians on H-1B visas.

Canada Hockey Players Acquitted

Quillette reports:

On Thursday 24 July, five former World Junior Hockey players were acquitted by Ontario Superior Court Judge Maria Carroccia following an eight-week sexual-assault trial that should never have seen the inside of a courtroom. In Canada, the trial rapidly became a prurient media circus, so all Canadians—including those, like me, who felt only fremdschämen for all concerned—have been privy to the lurid details of a consensual group-sex session in a hotel room back in 2018. And how do we know that the sex was was consensual? Because the young female complainant, known only as E.M., recorded a video on the night she had sex with all five defendants, in which she laughed: “It was all consensual. Are you recording me? ’K, good. You are so paranoid. Holy. I enjoyed it. It was fine. I’m so sober—that’s why I can’t do this right now.”

So it was all a hoax. But this incident happened in 2018, and the boys got banned from hockey. Now 7 years later, they can try to resume normal lives.