Changing Concentration of Wealth

I found this on Twitter. I do not know how accurate it is. Common claims about wealth concentration may be wrong.

The Leftist Bias of Major AI LLM Chatbots

This is from a the Wash. Post, a leftist newspaper.

While this bias is real, it is mainly noticeable if you ask for it. Eg, you ask the bot for a political opinion.

A better strategy is ask for a neutral explanation of the arguments and issues. Then the bots are reasonably fair.

The Formula for Science YouTube Success

More and more, YouTube is filled with really good videos, along with garbage, clickbait, and AI slop. Popular channels, like Veritasium, have been sold to private equity firms for increased monetization.

Veritasium has revealed its formula for success:

V = (M + (Q -> E) x (A + B)

The founder, Derek Muller, uses a catchy title and starts telling you that you have been fooled by a misconcention. The he launches into style of questions followed by explanations. He is really good at keeping the viewer engaged.

The final trick is having an A plot interwoven with a B plot. This increases the chance that you will follow one of the plots.

As more and more videos are AI generated, I expect to see more following this formula. It works. I am not sure if I should be happy about getting more polished content, or sad that I am getting manipulated by bots. Regardless, this is the future.

Why Ambulances are so Expensive

Economist David Oks tries to figure out why American ambulances are so expensive:

He sent the bill to his insurance provider, which at first denied the claim, saying that AMR was out of network and that the ride hadn’t been pre-authorized. (Whitten, of course, hadn’t chosen the ambulance, or anything else about the trip.) On appeal, his insurance agreed to cover $9,967 of the charge — better than nothing, but it still left him on the hook for about $3,000. After several failed attempts to contest the bill with AMR, and not wanting it sent to collections to hurt his credit score, he paid the remaining $2,900 or so. The brief ambulance ride from one hospital to another had cost him far more than any other part of the experience.

What Whitten had received was a “surprise bill” — a charge that lands on a patient when they’re treated, without knowledge or consent, by a provider outside their insurer’s network. The insurer pays what they consider reasonable; the provider bills the patient for the difference; and the patient, despite having insurance that’s meant to pay for treatment, is left holding the balance. This is a terrible situation to be in.

It’s also the default way that ambulance billing in the United States works. Each year, roughly three million privately insured Americans take an emergency ambulance ride; about half of them get an out-of-network bill for it, a rate unmatched anywhere else in medicine. And the uninsured have it worse still: with no insurer to absorb any of the charge, they face the full, undiscounted bill on their own.

This has proven quite difficult to fix. When Congress banned surprise billing across virtually the entire healthcare system in 2020, ground ambulances were the great exception. If you’re privately insured and need an emergency ambulance, you’re entering a lottery whose ticket price you’ll learn weeks or months later.

I wonder why anyone pays these bills. As I understand American law, people are not obligated to pay a bill for services that were never negotiated.

Not paying the bill could hurt a credit score, but you say that about any refusal to pay a scammer. Any scammer can send you a bill, and report you for not paying it. The credit bureaus are supposed to remove such items on request, unless there is a court judgment.

French Soccer Pretends to be French

Sports have long tolerated, and even encouraged, trash talk, where fans badmouth the opposition players. Not anymore, I guess.

Politico reports:

Amarilla, a senator with the centrist Authentic Radical Liberal Party (PLRA), published the posts a day after Paraguay’s elimination to France in a tense round-of-16 World Cup match. She referred to Mbappé as a “brute,” mocked his intelligence and questioned his French identity, describing him as a “colonized Cameroonian pretending to be French.” ...

The French Football Federation announced Monday it would file a criminal complaint. “The racist comments made by Paraguayan senator Celeste Amarilla toward Kylian Mbappé are utterly vile and unacceptable,” the federation said in a statement. “These statements are criminal and condemnable. They must be prosecuted here and everywhere.”

Criminal prosecution against a foreign politician rooting for the losing team?

France use to be proud of its national identity. Now it staffs its national soccer team with African immigrants.

The Foolish Opinion on Birthright Citizenship

Pres. Trump wants the Supreme Court to reconsider its birthright citizenship opinion.

I would say that the Roberts interpretation of jurisdiction does not make any sense in the light of:

1. USA claims jurisdiction over the Venezuela head of state.

2. the Consitution uses "within the Jurisdiction" and "subject to the jurisdiction" to mean different things.

Also, no one ever determined that the 14A entitles the kids of sojourners and illegals to be citizens. We had opinions saying that domicile was required, but lazy bureaucrats accepted birth certificates as proof of citizenship.

Even if comments of Reconstruction Senators imply a broad citizenship rule, we now have millions of kids of sojourners and illegals. The Constitution is not a suicide pact. It is crazy to say that a 1868 sentence cannot have any common sense exceptions. This decision cripples USA sovereignty.

If this decision stands, the President may be forced to deny all visas to women of child-bearing age in order to control sovereignty. Then the Roberts decision will be considered terrible.

Stockholm Syndrome affects Women

Here is a new video on Stockholm syndrome:

Stockholm syndrome, psychological response wherein a captive begins to identify closely with his or her captors, as well as with their agenda and demands.

The name of the syndrome is derived from a botched bank robbery in Stockholm, Sweden. In August 1973 four employees of Sveriges Kreditbank were held hostage in the bank’s vault for six days. During the standoff, a seemingly incongruous bond developed between captive and captor. One hostage, during a telephone call with Swedish Prime Minister Olof Palme, stated that she fully trusted her captors but feared that she would die in a police assault on the building.

The most infamous example of Stockholm syndrome may be that involving kidnapped newspaper heiress Patricia Hearst.

The syndrome mainly affects women.

I wonder about those who defend criminals and foreign invaders. Maybe some of them are suffering from Stockholm syndrome.

In another new video:

In this episode of Based Camp, Simone and Malcolm Collins dive into one of the strangest social phenomena of our time: why does public sympathy for aggressors often increase after horrific attacks? From 9/11 to Charlie Hebdo to October 7th, they examine the shocking data showing spikes in pro-Muslim and pro-Palestine sentiment right after major acts of violence.

They have data to back up the Moslem sympathies. They have a theory about "victim blaming".

They say that public opinion shift against Israel after the October 7 attacks in 2023, and before the Israel retatliation against Gaza. So it appears that acts of terrorism generate sympathies for the terrorists.

Stockholm itself is famous for being run by feminists, and for sympathizing with Moslem invaders.

I am not sure about the explanations, but I do think that we need to account for large numbers of women sympathizing with civization-destroying criminals.

Related book:

The Sweden Syndrome: How Elites Commit National Self-Destruction
by Karl-Olov Arnstberg (Author) Format: Hardcover
4.5 4.5 out of 5 stars (9)

The present work is a thorough, clinical description of the symptoms and etiology of what the author calls ‘the Sweden syndrome’. Arnstberg traces the historical process that converted Sweden from a nationalistic Folkhemmet which treated the country like a family into a multicultural administrative zone that perversely prides itself on privileging the foreigner over the native. The book is called The Sweden Syndrome, but the broad stokes of the disease that Arnstberg describes can be seen in practically every Western country. Arnstberg’s concise analysis of this complex mass psychosis is a service not only to the present, but to future generations. — John Carter

Sweden’s elite decided that national suicide in the name of multiculturalism is needed to atone for their percieved sins. Sweden will no longer exist as we know it within a few decades unless radical action is taken. Arnstberg lays out how devastating the self-destruction has become.

Democrat Oyster Farmer in Big Trouble

Graham Platner is being forced out of the Maine race for the US Senate, but I am wondering how his misbehavior is possible if he is 100% disabled:

Platner is not required to disclose his disability benefits from the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs. But he told News Center Maine last month that he has a 100% disability rating for “a couple herniated discs,” injuries to his shoulders and knees, and post-traumatic stress disorder from his four deployments to Iraq and Afghanistan. He receives about $4,800 a month.

In response to questions from the Press Herald, a campaign spokesperson said Platner could take either “an owner’s draw” or a salary from the oyster business and it wouldn’t affect his disability benefits. Instead, he has chosen to reinvest that money back into the company.

Platner has now withdrawn.

America was a Product of a Religious Enlightenment

I asked the Grok AI LLM to comment on this:

American Revolution was a product of the religious enlightenment that occurred 20 years earlier.

The comment is a partial truth that's oversimplified and imprecise, but it gestures at a real historical dynamic. The American Revolution (1775–1783) drew on both Enlightenment rationalism and vibrant Protestant religious energies, which had been stirring in the colonies for decades. Calling it a "product of the religious enlightenment" 20 years earlier (roughly the 1750s–early 1760s) isn't standard terminology, but it captures something important about how religious revivalism and moderate Enlightenment ideas reinforced each other in America.

Was There a "Religious Enlightenment"?

Yes, in a broader sense. Historians like David Sorkin describe a "Religious Enlightenment" across Europe (and influencing America) in the 18th century: a moderate strand of Enlightenment thought that sought to reconcile reason, science, and religious faith rather than rejecting religion outright (as more radical French Enlightenment figures like Voltaire sometimes did). It emphasized "reasonable belief," religious tolerance, moral philosophy grounded in natural law, and personal piety over rigid dogma or hierarchy.

In the American colonies, this overlapped with (and was amplified by) the First Great Awakening (peaking 1730s–1740s, with effects continuing into the 1750s–1760s). Key figures included Jonathan Edwards and George Whitefield, who promoted emotional, personal conversion experiences, direct access to God (bypassing established clergy), and the idea that ordinary people could challenge authority. This wasn't purely "Enlightenment" (which stressed cool reason), but it shared themes of individualism, anti-hierarchical thinking, and questioning tradition.

The timing in the comment is off by a bit—the Awakening's height was 20–40 years before the Revolution—but its cultural ripples (new denominations, inter-colonial networks, empowered laity) were still fresh in the 1760s–1770s. The Stamp Act crisis (1765) and later events occurred against this backdrop.

Did It Make People More or Less Religious? Or a New View?

• More religious in practice, with a new emphasis on personal experience: The Great Awakening was a revival that countered the perceived "deadness" of established churches. It increased church attendance in many areas, split congregations (Old Lights vs. New Lights), boosted evangelical groups like Baptists and Methodists, and fostered a more democratic, emotional style of faith. It made religion feel immediate and accessible rather than formal or inherited.

• Not less religious overall: Unlike the more secular strains of the European Enlightenment, America's version didn't broadly erode faith. Many colonists blended Awakening-style piety with Enlightenment ideas. Religion remained central to daily life and politics.

• A new view of religion: It promoted individualism ("priesthood of all believers" on steroids), skepticism of religious (and by extension political) authority, and the notion that liberty and virtue were divinely ordained. This "new view" was Protestant, often Calvinist-inflected, but open to reason and moral philosophy. Many Founding-era Americans saw rights as coming from God (or "Nature's God"), not kings or parliaments.

How Did This Influence the American Founding?

The Revolution and founding weren't purely secular or purely religious—they were a unique synthesis:

• Religious fuel for resistance: Clergy (the "black-robed regiment") preached that resisting tyranny was a Christian duty, framing taxes and British policies as moral and providential issues. Biblical language (e.g., Exodus, liberty as God's gift) was everywhere in sermons and pamphlets. The Awakening built inter-colonial networks and a sense of shared identity that made coordinated rebellion easier.

• Enlightenment ideas translated through religion: Thinkers like John Locke (natural rights, social contract) were filtered through a Protestant lens. Ideas of consent, equality before God/law, and republican virtue resonated because of the Awakening's democratizing effects. Many Founders (e.g., John Witherspoon, a Presbyterian minister and signer) embodied this blend.

• Founders' own beliefs: Varied widely. Many were conventional Christians (e.g., Patrick Henry, Samuel Adams); others were Deists or liberal Christians influenced by Enlightenment reason (Franklin, Jefferson, Paine). Deism posited a distant Creator who endowed rights via reason/nature, without much emphasis on miracles or dogma. The founding documents reflect this: "endowed by their Creator" (Declaration) alongside no established national church and religious liberty (Constitution/First Amendment). This was pragmatic—avoiding Europe's religious wars while assuming a moral, religious citizenry.

• Long-term impact: The synthesis supported religious disestablishment, tolerance, and the view that a free republic required virtuous (often religiously informed) citizens. It wasn't secularism as we might think of it today, nor theocracy.

Critique of the comment: It's insightful in rejecting a purely secular "Enlightenment = Revolution" narrative (a common oversimplification). Edmund Burke and others noted America's energetic Protestantism as key to its "free spirit." However, it overstates by calling it "the product" of a specific "religious enlightenment" 20 years prior—ignoring economic grievances, classical republicanism, English common law traditions, and the broader, ongoing interplay. The Awakening was more revivalist than "Enlightenment," and the causal link is contributory, not deterministic. Historians still debate the exact weight.

In short, the American founding succeeded partly because religious energies and Enlightenment reason mutually reinforced each other in a way that was distinctively colonial American. The comment gets the fusion right but simplifies the timeline and causality.

How Foreigners Drove Up Housing Costs

News:

A new Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas working paper estimates the record surge in illegal immigration during the Biden administration boosted employment while driving up home prices by as much as 30% and rent by 20%.

The paper combined immigration court records with government administrative data to create the first ever calculation of how a wave of 7 million illegal immigrants from 2021 through 2024 affected local labor and housing markets.

"From early 2021 to early 2024, the U.S. experienced an unprecedented boom in unauthorized immigration, followed by a rapid slowdown beginning in mid-2024. We provide the first systematic empirical assessment of the labor- and housing-market effects of this episode," the working paper said.

Isn't this obvious? We imported millions of migrants, and did not build housing for them. Supply and demand. More demand and the same supply, and all Americans had to pay increased housing costs.

Some Americans owned rental units and profited from this, but overall it is bad to have to pay much more for housing.

One Battle After Another

I see a lot of online complaints about Citizen Vigilante, particularly from Mohammedans who disavow the responsibility for the damage they are doing to Europe.

Last year's movie One Battle After Another is now on streaming services, and I tried to watch it. It was widely praised:

One Battle After Another received widespread critical acclaim and numerous accolades. At the 98th Academy Awards, it won six out of the thirteen awards it was nominated for: Best Picture, Best Director, Best Supporting Actor (Penn), Best Adapted Screenplay, Best Film Editing, and Best Casting, becoming the inaugural recipient for the latter. It also received one win from a record seven nominations at the 32nd Actor Awards; three wins at the 31st Critics' Choice Awards, including Best Picture; four wins at the 83rd Golden Globes, including Best Motion Picture – Musical or Comedy; and six wins at the 79th British Academy Film Awards, including Best Film. The film was listed by the American Film Institute as one of the top ten films of 2025 and won five awards from the National Board of Review, including Best Film.

There is a whole Wikipedia article on its List of accolades, and there are about 100.

No, this movie is much more offensive. The whole movie is about terrorism and interracial sexual manipulation. While the critics eat up this garbage, the public not so much.

The film ended up being a box-office disappointment, falling short of its estimated $300 million break-even point. ...

Author, podcaster, and screenwriter Bret Easton Ellis alleged, "It's kind of shocking to see these kind [sic] of accolades for – I'm sorry, it's not a very good movie – because of its political ideology, and it's so obvious that's what they're responding to [...] Why it's considered a masterpiece, the greatest film of the decade, the greatest film ever made [is] because it really aligns with this kind of leftist sensibility."

I was not able to watch very much of it.

Jefferson did not Father Kids with a Slave

A good new video explains:

"I really thought that Thomas Jefferson having children with Sally Hemings was a settled fact. I was wrong." –Ken

That's right, it is not a settled fact, and probably wrong.

Just today, a NY Times podcast said:

In the late '90s, we get a truly explosive book about Sally Hemings, one of Jefferson's slaves, by the historian Annette Gordon-Reed, and elevates all these accounts that have been lost that Jefferson in fact fathered children with Hemings. And then a year later, there's even DNA testing to prove that she's completely right.

This, uh, 200-year-old sex scandal returned to the headlines last week with news of scientific proof now.— that has confirmed Jefferson's sexual liaison with a woman named Sally Hemings. ...

Jefferson is being depicted variously as a rapist, a hypocrite, and a dirty old man.

No, this is not true. You can read the details on Wikipedia, or follow a court case that might resolve it. In short, DNA shows that some descendants of Hemings are also descendant from someone in Jefferson's family, but there is good reason to think it was a brother.

Celebrate the Fourth, not Slavery

Josh Blackman writes:

I recently took my young children to the public library for an early celebration of America's 250th Birthday. Perhaps naively, I expected a patriotic gathering that would help my kids feel proud of America. No such luck. During story time, the librarian could have selected any children's book about American history, independence, or what made America exceptional. Instead, she chose a book that spent every page talking about immigrants coming to America. The second page depicted Africans in chains being transported against their will on boats to the United States. Then every subsequent page repeated that maxim that people were allowed to come to America without regard to their race, gender, or religion. One page showed political refugees from the war-torn Middle East. Another page showed migrant workers from Mexico. And so on. I doubt any of the young children had the slightest clue what the book was trying to convey. But the kindly librarian thought this book was not only appropriate for an America 250 celebration but was important for toddlers to learn from.

Libraries today often have flags and signs promoting homosexuality, transgenderism, illegal migrants, and White hatred.

Immigrants were never more than 15% of the USA population, until recently. Slavery was not something that affected most people.

I am not against telling about slavery in history books, but they should get the story in perspective, and tell the truth. Those slave were enslaved in Africa by African, and the USA Constitution abolished the slave trade in 1808. Most slaves were better off in the USA, and very few went back to Africa when they were freed.

Most Charity is Wasted

People keep complaining that a small part of the fortunes of Elon Musk and other billionaires could solve a lot of human problems. I doubt it.

News:

MacKenzie Scott has become one of the most active philanthropists of our time. After all, she's given away more than $26 billion during the past few years to thousands of organizations through her foundation Yield Giving.

While many of her recipients had never received a donation of that size and many have called them life-changing gifts, not everyone sees her work in the same way. Take Elon Musk, who recently became the world's first trillionaire, who thinks Scott's giving is actually making the world "worse off." ...

Melinda French Gates has also been openly frustrated with her fellow billionaire class, saying those who previously signed the Giving Pledge—a promise for the ultrawealthy to give away the majority of their wealth—could be doing more.

So we have an experiments. Large portions of the fortunes of Bill Gates and Jeff Bezos went to their wives in divorce settlements, and then given to charity.

How are we better off? What problems have been solved?

The California billionaire tax has now qualified for the ballot, and the governor is running for President on a promise for a nationwide billionaire tax. An economist says confiscating the wealth will not enrich other Americans.