“Trump slammed with $83M verdict for repeatedly defaming advice columnist E. Jean Carroll” (New York Post): The jury verdict was broken down into $65 million meant to punish Trump, $11 million to help Carroll rebuild her reputation and another $7.3 million to compensate her for h … | Continue reading
From one of the nation’s most progressive cities… “Newton[, Maskachusetts] schools closed Tuesday as teacher strike continues” (NBC): Students in Newton, Massachusetts, will be home for another day on Tuesday as the public school district’s teachers remained on strike. The New … | Continue reading
If you ask Google about “Australian open tennis”, the noble software defaults to showing “women’s singles”: Note that uber-hater Margaret Court is highlighted at the bottom. From the Daily Mail: In 2017, Court – a Christian pastor – shocked countless tennis identities and su … | Continue reading
A friend is relaxing now after writing more than 20 college admissions essays. “For rich families,” he explained. “It’s normally a competition among the professional essay writers who’ve been hired, but we decided to do it ourselves.” (“do it ourselves” means the parents, both Ha … | Continue reading
“She Was the World’s Best Player. Now She Won’t Play Soccer Again.” (WSJ, January 19, 2024): The Wall Street Journal reporter and editors determined that this player was, prior to the unfortunate injury, a better player than Lionel Messi or Cristiano Ronaldo. Here’s the report … | Continue reading
“The problem with socialism is that you eventually run out of other people’s money,” said Margaret Thatcher. She didn’t count on the U.S. Congress and Federal Reserve being willing to print however much was deemed necessary to achieve the ruling party’s goals. One thing that the … | Continue reading
Although I thought that he needed a more optimistic and unrealistic message for Americans if he were to have any hope of prevailing in a general election, I am shocked that Ron DeSantis is now out: Republicans are objectively terrible human beings and even the best Republican … | Continue reading
It’s a good thing that Claudine Gay has a paycheck-for-life from Harvard…. “Florida’s State Board of Education passes rule to ‘permanently prohibit’ DEI at public colleges” (WPTV): The board said the rule prohibits Florida College System institutions from using state or federal … | Continue reading
It’s the third anniversary of the Greatest Administration in American history. From a conservative point of view, a defining feature of the Biden administration has been rapid acceleration of population growth via low-skill immigration (native-born Americans aren’t being replaced … | Continue reading
Iowa Republicans love Donald Trump, it seems, slightly more than two seemingly far more plausible candidates combined (Nikki Haley and Ron DeSantis). Who can explain to me why this incredibly old guy is more successful with voters than Haley and DeSantis? In some poll data from … | Continue reading
When they’re not plagiarizing from mediocrities, what do the world’s smartest people read? A few recent snapshots from the Harvard Bookstore… Featured for youngsters, stories by trans and nonbinary authors: For those preparing for the next pro-Hamas rally in Harvard Squa … | Continue reading
My dream was to come back from a week in the Land of Science with pictures of all of the “Free Palestine” signs covering the Harvard and MIT campuses. Sadly, however, what I mostly got from the masked followers of Science was a horrible cough/flu. Below are a few photos from the … | Continue reading
From “Houthis Vow to Respond After U.S. Leads Strikes in Yemen” (NYT): What stops everyone in the above photo from coming across the southern border and delivering their response to U.S. aggression here on American soil? They should immediately qualify for asylum merely by say … | Continue reading
In October 2022, the James Bond 007 LE pinball machine from Stern sold out in about 45 seconds. Let’s take the pulse of the economy by looking at Stern’s latest release: Jaws. Just after 1:00 pm on January 4, 2024: By 1:05 pm: It’s possible that it sold out prior to 1:05 b … | Continue reading
A Christmas tale from the Washington Post… “Young U.S. Muslims are rising up against Israel in unlikely places”: As she watched the conflict in Israel and Gaza unfold this fall, 17-year-old Asmmaa Zaitar finally had enough. She decided to organize a protest in support of the Pa … | Continue reading
If we look at a representative Black Studies department at a university, such as the one chaired by Prof. Dr. Dr. Maulana Karenga, Ph.D., Ph.D. at California State University, Long Beach, there is no evidence of any person identifying as “white” or “Asian” among the faculty. Here … | Continue reading
A statement from the president of MIT, who recently made the news for sharing Claudine Gay’s and the Penn president’s enthusiasm from suppressing all hate speech except against the Jews: We will soon announce a new Vice President for Equity and Inclusion (VPEI). With this new r … | Continue reading
We are informed that the typical Gazan has no relationship with the Islamic Resistance Movement (“Hamas”) and Palestinian Islamic Jihad. It is an accident that Hamas governs Gaza, which is otherwise populated by entirely peaceful humans. At the same time, anyone in Gaza who is ki … | Continue reading
Loyal readers are aware of my interests in the effect of low-skill immigration on American society and the passion of government bureaucrats for closing public schools in favor of an online school fraud. These intersected today in the Sanctuary City of New York. “NYC students for … | Continue reading
I was chatting with a software engineer who has been at Facebook (“Meta”) for about 10 years. His wife works an Excel-oriented analytics job for a company on the Peninsula. After their employers went 100-percent remote, they began spending more and more time in Hawaii. They grew … | Continue reading
Our current central planners love electric vehicles. “Slow Rollout of National Charging System Could Hinder E.V. Adoption” (New York Times): More than two years ago, lawmakers approved billions of dollars [at least $5 billion] to build out a national electric vehicle charging n … | Continue reading
Elon Musk simultaneously believes that (1) civilization will collapse because of a declining birth rate in the West, and (2) we’re entering a glorious age of humanoid robots. Example: From the Elon Musk biography: In early 2021, Musk began mentioning at his executive meetin … | Continue reading
I didn’t notice this until last summer, but the Biden administration created a medal to commemorate the victory of truth and goodness over deplorability and evil: Congress, especially the Democrats therein, actually authorized the medal, but the design specifics were left to … | Continue reading
We last encountered Andrew Stephens, superintendent of a high school in a suburb of Boston assuming that all Muslims affiliated with the school supported the October 7 attacks on civilians in Israel. See The recent flare-up in Israel, explained by Massachusetts public school prin … | Continue reading
A society’s resources are finite. What is spent on military activities cannot be spent on food, health care, education, etc. Arabs declared war on Israel 75 years ago, rejecting the UN Partition Plan and vowing to kill or expel all of the Jews. Palestinians are able to keep this … | Continue reading
Back in July 2023, I remarked on the Stanford president’s “resignation” in which he would get a paycheck for the rest of his life: The last part is my favorite. Involvement with academic fraud is intolerable in an administrator, but acceptable for an active researcher and teach … | Continue reading
From a chat group with some of my friends who are still up in the Boston suburbs: [9th grader] lost points on a grammar test today because she capitalized Black and also White when referring to groups of people. Her teacher said that only Black should be capitalized, as that is … | Continue reading
Loyal readers may recall that one of my pet obsessions is why the manufacturing techniques that have made cars and widgets cheaper can’t be applied to housing. Why can’t, at least, the house have plug-in bathrooms, kitchens, and utility rooms so that all of these items can be ref … | Continue reading
If an enemy fires a rocket at you it should be reasonably easy with radar analysis to figure out the approximate launch location. ,The Gazans have been trying to kill civilians in Israel for 22 years (partial list) so the Israelis have had plenty of time to tune the software and … | Continue reading
Happy New Year to all readers and I hope that 2024 is when all of your dreams will come true. Stolen from Facebook: Separately, today we say goodbye to Kwanzaa, a holiday invented by a guy who was convicted of imprisoning women. The women said that they were hit on the head wi … | Continue reading
As we say goodbye to 2023, let’s also say goodbye to a loyal reader of and commenter on this blog: Alex Kowalski (July 15, 1970-July 6, 2023). If you think of yourself as just one in seven billion It can make you want to die But if you think of yourself as an irreplaceable one … | Continue reading
This one goes into the Department of Important, but Depressing… I had been wondering why most of Israel’s attack helicopters, at least, weren’t on the scene on October 7 within an hour or two. (Though Wikipedia reminds us that an attack helicopter isn’t the best tool for an ambig … | Continue reading
A recent Wall Street Journal article (non-paywall link): The article sheds no light on how exactly this elite guy became elite, made money, etc. A guy goes from being the son of a gardener (Wikipedia) to being rich enough to operate a Gulfstream and nobody has any explanation … | Continue reading
One popular fraud technique on Facebook: copy some public elements from a profile, e.g., Mahmud Mohammed Ahmed’s create a fake account with the same name and profile image make friend requests of the people who are friends with the real Mahmud Mohammed Ahmed Quite a few peo … | Continue reading
“In Bid to Slow Migrant Surge, Adams Restricts Bus Arrivals Into New York” (NYT): Mayor Eric Adams placed limits for the first time on Wednesday on how migrants arrive in New York, pushing back against continuing efforts by the governor of Texas to send tens of thousands of asy … | Continue reading
2015, Journal of the Royal Society of Medicine, “Unmasking the surgeons: the evidence base behind the use of facemasks in surgery”: overall there is a lack of substantial evidence to support claims that facemasks protect either patient or surgeon from infectious contamination … | Continue reading
Our celebration of Kwanzaa and the work of Professor Dr. Dr. Maulana Karenga, Ph.D., Ph.D., with and without toasters, begins today… A Libs of Tiktok Tweet includes the following photo of a poster in a public school in Nashville, Tennessee: Note the hierarchy of victimhood: T … | Continue reading
Merry Christmas to all readers who celebrate and, for those who don’t, inspiration to get started celebrating… This is “The Golden Retriever Family Christmas Tree” from the Danbury Mint. It is unclear when these were made, but the “mint” was in China according to this eBay ad. … | Continue reading
Merry Christmas Eve! If you want to feel better about your economic situation, here is a crew stringing lights at a neighbor’s house: “Is that the same company that strung lights for the HOA’s clubhouse?” I asked. “They told me that their minimum fee is $5,000.” The owner … | Continue reading
Vinay Prasad, the UCSF heretic against Faucism, recently posted the following on Twitter: Heading back to SF from Wash U St LouisIt was great to give 4 talks over 2 days. I hope to make at least 2 available on YouTube, & 3 on plenary session. It was heartening to talk to so m … | Continue reading
Some science professor friends were discussing “Surge in number of ‘extremely productive’ authors concerns scientists” (Nature Magazine): Up to four times more researchers pump out more than 60 papers a year than less than a decade ago. Saudi Arabia and Thailand saw the sharpes … | Continue reading
Regarding the person my academic friends are starting to call “Claudine GPT”… a guy on Twitter: Plagiarism if a student does it. ‘Duplicative language’ if a university president. Please someone make it make sense I asked ChatGPT to sort out the Twitter user’s conundrum. The … | Continue reading
A friend has a powerful new-ish desktop PC with an AMD Threadripper CPU and a moderately powerful GPU. He installed LM Studio and found that running LLama2 used 40 GB of RAM and was able to generate only 1 word per second. ChatGPT is faster than that and there are millions of us … | Continue reading
It’s the two-year anniversary of the Boston Covidcrats ordering 5-year-olds to be injected with a non-FDA-approved vaccine if they wanted to enter a restaurant, do an after-school sport, see a movie, or visit a museum. The Science-informed order says “vaccinated individuals are l … | Continue reading
The Colorado Supreme Court, all of whose members “were appointed by Democratic governors”, has voted for protect our democracy by restricting the group of candidates from which Coloradans can choose in the 2024 Presidential elections. Although I’m sure that this was well-intenti … | Continue reading
Harvard’s Widener Library has been locked down for more than 100 years–longer than lockdowns were deemed necessary by Science. The titanic building was opened in 1915, just three years after the sinking of the RMS Titanic activated Harry Elkins Widener’s will. Most of the library … | Continue reading
It’s been four years since Adolfo Martinez was locked away for stealing a rainbow flag from a church and burning it in the street outside a strip club. “Iowa man sentenced to 16 years for setting LGBTQ flag on fire” (USA Today). Here’s a photo of the church back then: Here’s … | Continue reading
New York Times notes that the U.S. working class is suffering from having to pay “record rent”: Unaffordable rents are changing low-income life, blighting the prospects of not only the poor but also growing shares of the lower middle class after decades in which rent increases … | Continue reading