Some Thoughts in the Eye of the Iranian Storm

On this day:

1820
The Venus de Milo is discovered on the Aegean island of Melos.
1832
Black Hawk War: Around three hundred United States 6th Infantry troops leave St. Louis, Missouri to fight the Sauk Native Americans.
1904
British mystic Aleister Crowley transcribes the first chapter of The Book of the Law.

1942
World War II: The Japanese take Bataan in the Philippines.
1952
U.S. President Harry Truman calls for the seizure of all domestic steel mills to prevent a nationwide strike.

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Long-run political policies are almost a contradiction in terms in societies where politicians are elected in the short run.--sowell

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Is the AI detecting software, AI?

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With birthright citizenship, will a two-tier system of citizenship develop?

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The attack on Markwayne Mullin is a fascinating and unashamed revelation of his critics. He left school to take over his father's business after his sudden death. Mullin built that business into the larhest of it kind in the state. But his critics were not ideological; they objected to the business being a plumbing business. Their objection was social. It was, in their minds, class.

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Aleister Crowley was a British mystic and goofball whose philosophy was “Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the law.” The French author François Rabelais had expressed this more than 300 years earlier in Gargantua and Pantagruel—but Crowley made it the basis of a new religion he called Thelema, thelēma being the Greek word for “will.” He went through a large inheritance with travel and excess. He was a great chess player and mountaineer. He attracted a lot of interesting young people early in their lives, including J.F.C. Fuller, later a well-known military strategist and historian. He was an opponent of the poet William Butler Yeats within the London Golden Dawn occultist group. The Beatles put his picture on the Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band album cover.

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Some Thoughts in the Eye of the Iranian Storm

Trump is fascinated with himself as the center of attention. One wonders if this obsession will influence policy.

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Trump's understandable anger with those opponents who seemed to have publicly and secretively lied and manipulated in efforts to undermine him is total. One wonders if this obsession will influence policy.

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One wonders if changing monikers like Operation Epic Fury to something like Operation Mad as Hell or Operation Pretty Damn Angry would lead to different results.

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Trump's support of Orbán in Hungary is peculiar, especially since the only other leader who has supported him is Putin.

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The atmosphere of Europe is despair. Things are simply beyond them: economic decline, immigration, loss of identity, public bullying by people and events, and, especially, the understanding that it is all self-imposed.

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The great problems of the West are the direct result of inaction in the face of obvious threats. The National Debt and the Iranian Holy War are 

predictable problems rising and flowering exponentially in our lives that will eventually dissolve into a chaotic resolution or be solved in the U.S. by desperate, unconstitutional acts. That action will not be chosen but imposed upon a wide-eyed leader, like the final moments of musical chairs.

It could be horrible. But the real question is, what does it say about representative democracy?

Three Questions

Trailer of a well-reviewed horror movie:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OpThntO9ixc

Three Questions

A few years ago, a poll found that whereas 63 percent of voters said they viewed the Founding Fathers as heroes, among those under thirty, that figure shrank to 39 percent. Meanwhile, fully 31 percent of U.S. voters under 30 said they saw the Founders as “villains.”

"Villains."

Can a culture that does not hold itself in high regard, survive?

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Fossil fuels are cheap, available, and efficient. Their substitutes are less so. Fossil fuel substitution suggests energy decline, an inevitable energy contraction. There will be a general and widespread self-sacrifice, all for the greater good.

 

Shutting down the world's energy will create circumstances considerably deeper and more serious than can be borne by a stiff upper lip. Production will decline. Living standards will decline. Economies will implode. Agricultural and industrial production will be reduced, sometimes to nothing. People will die. Some cultures will suffer disproportionately.  

What if some resist? Or, worse, what if they see their energy-less neighbors as an opportunity for exploitation? Or revenge? What if some see it to their advantage?

What if some nations see a sliding scale of 'self-sacrifice'?

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What is more of a threat to the Republic, the Jan. 6 riot, or Packing the Supreme Court?

Notes

Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D., N.Y.) on the Senate floor today: “Day by day, Americans are getting more alarmed by the slash-and-burn approach DOGE is taking to basic government programs.” But just in case anyone who was listening actually likes the idea of slashing and burning government programs, Mr. Schumer hastened to argue that the savings that may result from Mr. Musk’s recommendations are far smaller than the tax restraints included in the pending reconciliation bill in Congress. Perhaps Sen. Schumer intended his remarks as an homage to one of his most famous constituents. “Trump’s spending reductions are terrible—and such small portions,” a character might say if Woody Allen ever makes a film set in Washington. What’s New, Bureaucrat?

Separate stories from the NYT portray the Musk efficiency work as a disturbing threat to society and also a largely meaningless public relations exercise.--wsj

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Data centers have been touted as big job creators. But after they are built, they need very few workers.

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Notes

If men create intelligent machines, or fantasize about them, it is either because they secretly despair of their own intelligence or because they are in danger of succumbing to the weight of a monstrous and useless intelligence which they seek to exorcize by transferring it to machines, where they can play with it and make fun of it. By entrusting this burdensome intelligence to machines we are released from any responsibility to knowledge, much as entrusting power to politicians allows us to disdain any aspiration of our own to power.

If men dream of machines that are unique, that are endowed with genius, it is because they despair of their own uniqueness, or because they prefer to do without it – to enjoy it by proxy, so to speak, thanks to machines. What such machines offer is the spectacle of thought, and in manipulating them people devote themselves more to the spectacle of thought than to thought itself.

Jean Baudrillard – The Transparency of Evil_ Essays on Extreme Phenomena (Radical Thinkers)-Verso.

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And so Zelensky’s latest poll, he’s at 57%,” noted Mark Levin, the conservative commentator, just one day after Trump claimed that Zelensky’s approval rating sat at 4%. “The parliament — with all parties in the parliament — support what he’s doing. They’re trying to survive. Ukraine did not invade Russia. Russia invaded Ukraine.”

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Bryght Labs' ChessUp 2 is a smart chess board that combines the tactility of an in-person game with the ability to play with anyone, anywhere in the world.

When you pick up a piece, the board will show you via lighting where that piece can move, and when it's your opponent's turn (either computer-based or remote), the lights show you where to move their piece. If you've turned on the AI Assist tool, the colors of the lights correspond to how good the board thinks the move is. You can even use this tool to balance a two-player live game, giving less experienced players a helping hand.

Immediately after a game you play on Chess.com, the app lets you review your performance so that you can learn from your mistakes.

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Just before Trump’s inauguration, Panama’s government signed a $2.5 million contract with Washington lobbying firm BGR Government Affairs to represent its interests for the first year of the Trump administration with “U.S. officials and decision-makers,” according to Justice Department filings.

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Inflation did make the median voter poorer during Biden’s term. In no part of the income distribution did wages grow faster while Biden was President than they did 2012-2020. This is true in the raw data, and even more stark after compositional adjustment.
In particular, the change in median incomes was well below its 2012-20 run-rate.
But, the change in median wages is not what matters; it is the median change in wages that does. And this metric was even weaker under Biden: lower than any period in the last 30 years other than the Great Recession.
People do not feel wages, they feel total income. And median growth in total income — post taxes and transfers — was not just historically low: it collapsed and was deeply negative from 2021 onwards. Much of this decline is due to timing of pandemic stimulus and even less the “fault of Biden” than other things.-- Mazlish

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7.5 million undocumented immigrants are working in the U.S., or about 4.6% of the employed labor force, according to an analysis last year of 2022 Census Bureau data by the American Immigration Council. In construction, they make up 14% of workers, in farming 1%.

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The United States is the largest contributor of military personnel to NATO, with almost 1.33 million troops in 2024. Turkey, Poland, and France maintain the next largest armies, each with more than 200,000 troops. In total, NATO has more than 3 million active troops.
In 2024, the United States provided the largest share of the NATO common funding, at 15.9%, approximately $567 million. This is one of the largest shares, alongside Germany and the UK.

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Amazon MGM Studios is set to take creative control of the James Bond franchise.
Long-time producers and custodians of 007, Michael G. Wilson and Barbara Broccoli, would be stepping back.

Questions

Questions

 The administration's almost hysterical efforts to get their name on a peace plan in the Middle East have achieved a compromise 60-day 'ceasefire.' However, reading it reveals the main countries are Israel and Lebanon. Indeed, Israel's retired ambassador said as much yesterday. So, the frantic peace agreement to shore up the American administration's reputation and legacy is a sixty-day cease-fire between Israel and a non-combattant?

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"If we want to stop the hot phase of the war, we need to take under the Nato umbrella the territory of Ukraine that we have under our control. We need to do it fast. And then on the [occupied] territory of Ukraine, Ukraine can get them back in a diplomatic way." 

This appeared in a news article. Could it be true?

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Pro-Hamas demonstrators are following a long tradition of importing outside problems to the U.S. and making them domestic. They disrupted the Macy's Parade.  And, as they are never officially arrested, we don't get a chance to know them, their numbers, or their sponsors.

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If a demonstrator is on a student visa, why not deport him?

Of course, we'd have to identify them.

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Travis Hunter has a 4.0 GPA?

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A story from Duquesne. A tenured professor finished her class and said, "see you next week, guys." Several students complained to the administration about 'guys' and she was reprimanded. Apparently, there were no blind students present.

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Britain and France are in talks to send troops to Ukraine to deter Vladimir Putin, it has emerged.
Is this in response to the fear Trump will withdraw funding? Or is Putin seen as an inevitable threat?

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Megyn Kelly, who is tough on sexual transgressions, does not believe Hegseth's accuser. But it looks like his mom does.

Notes and Notable 8

Roughly 14% of US travelers reported a bed bug encounter in the past year,

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The press reports Iran is having an 'election.' The Ayatolla has appointed a 'reform candidate.'

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NYTimes: Treasury officials say that they fear that elevated Chinese production targets are causing its firms to produce far more electric vehicles, batteries and solar panels than global markets can absorb, driving prices lower and disrupting production around the world. They fear that these spillovers will hurt businesses that are planning investments in the United States with tax credits and subsidies that were created through the Inflation Reduction Act of 2022, a law that is pumping more than $2 trillion into clean energy infrastructure.

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Notes and Notable 8

Illegal Chinese immigration count update, in battalions: 60.

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Why is the debate over Biden's appropriateness as a presidential candidate seen as what is good for his party rather than what is good for the country?

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Will Hunter's appeal rest upon his right--even an addict or felon--to own a weapon under the Second Amendment?

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The press has reported the EU votes as a shift to the right. Is that true? The most astonishing breakdown of the European vote is the reversal of Green support. For example, in Germany, the Green vote dropped from 21% in 2012 to 12%. Among voters under 30, it dropped from 31% to 12%. Those are astonishing numbers.
(As an aside, what will the press say when the Conservatives get trounced in Britain in July?)

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Seven ISIS terrorists, who crossed the southern border, have been arrested. That is an example of the phrase, 'The other shoe dropped.'

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Note to government re: Hamas: They do not believe protecting citizens is in their interest. 'No means no.'

SatStats

Honig, a legal commentator, wrote an article in New York that says 1. the judge should have recused himself, 2. there is no state jurisdiction over Federal election laws, 3. Trump and the defense did not know what he was charged and convicted of. As an aside, he thinks he will get jail time.

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SatStats


The total surface area of Earth is about 197 million square miles, of which roughly:
71% is covered by water. 
3% is glacier-covered land.
8% is desert or dry areas.
6% is mountains.
4% is cropland.
4% is pastureland.
2% is used for wood production.
5% (10 million square miles) is fit for human habitation and not used for the purposes above.


* If people were evenly distributed across the 10 million square miles of land available for human habitation, there would be 808 people per square mile, or 0.8 acres per person.


* People are not distributed evenly but tend to live in areas that are warm, have fertile soil, and are accessible to oceans.




The state of Texas contains 0.46% of the world’s total land area and has a population density of about 117 people per square mile. If everyone in the world moved to Texas, the population density would be 31,079 people per square mile. This is 3% below the population density of Brooklyn, New York (31,982 people per square mile)

[23]

* In 1998, the Census Bureau reported that 96% of the world’s population increase was occurring in Africa, Asia, and Latin America. In 2022, the United Nations projected that Africa would account for most population increases through 2050.

Notes and Notable 7

Pittsburgh Skilled Nursing and Rehabilitation Center on South Negley Avenue notified residents and staff that they will close on Aug. 12.
In a letter to patients, residents, and responsible parties, the center said “Recent inflation in the cost of goods and wages, combined with millions of dollars owed to us from the local Medicaid office, operating the building is no longer financially sustainable.”

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Notes and Notable 7

The instructions to the jury in the Trump case included that the jurors need not agree on the basic charges to find Trump guilty.

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Goldman Sachs estimates that U.S. private investment in AI will total $82 billion next year—more than twice as much as in China. Big tech was late to catch the AI wave. But businesses of all sizes are now using AI to develop medical treatments, improve productivity and logistics, assist customers, and more.

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The great body of economic and political literature since World War II – both academic and popular – has presented a misleading picture of the performance of private enterprise and of the State in the economies of the free world. This literature exaggerates the defects of the one and the merits of the other. Freedom will remain in jeopardy unless the public gains a clearer picture of the workings of the free market and comes to realize that its greatest virtue is not its extraordinary capacity to produce widely diffused material benefits, important as this merit is, but its unique capacity to protect the great immaterial values of our Western Heritage.--Haberler

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According to new research from economists at the University of Oregon and the University of St. Gallen in Switzerland, new low-skilled immigrants to the US are a net fiscal plus — each adding an estimated $750 a year to government coffers at the federal, state, and local levels. And their contribution to the entire economy is likely larger still.

These new measures do not deny the standard assessments of the potential fiscal costs of immigrants. Rather, they consider an additional positive factor: namely, that low-skilled immigrants enable native workers to move into higher-wage jobs, and in some cases to work more hours.

Strangely, any of the complex downsides of the cultural and legal disruptions are ignored.

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A curiosity in the N.Y. Trump case is the apparent unawareness by the prosecution and the co-conspirator judge that this case will likely tarnish those involved forever in history. One would think they would be devoting all their time to figuring out how to rescue themselves.

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O'Leary was on television talking about the Trump trial. He was in Europe selling his data collection idea and he said this trial was murdering the "American brand." These people are transients, he said, the American idea is not.

O'Leary says the first thing that Biden should do when Trump is convicted is magnanimously pardon him.

 

Notes and Notable 6

Nothing – nothing – is unthinkable, and political institutions by themselves provide no permanent safety from barbarism, which permanently lurks beneath civilization’s thin, brittle crust.--will

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Notes and Notable 6

In 2021, SciAm published an opinion essay, “Why the Term ‘JEDI’ Is Problematic for Describing Programs That Promote Justice, Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion.” The article’s five authors took issue with the effort by some social-justice advocates to create a cute new label while expanding the DEI acronym to include “Justice.” The Jedi knights of the Star Wars movies are “inappropriate mascots for social justice,” the authors argued, because they are “prone to (white) saviorism and toxically masculine approaches to conflict resolution (violent duels with phallic light sabers, gaslighting by means of ‘Jedi mind tricks,’ etc.).” What all this had to do with science was anyone’s guess.--from City Journal

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No technology exists today to enable railroads to comply with California’s diktat, rendering the whole exercise fanciful at best.

The Wall Street Journal‘s editorial board explained last November that while Wabtec Corp. has introduced a pioneering advance in rail technology with the launch of the world’s first battery-powered locomotive, the dream of a freight train fully powered by batteries remains elusive. The challenges of substituting diesel with batteries—primarily due to batteries’ substantial weight and volume—make it an impractical solution for long-haul trains. Additionally, the risk of battery overheating and potential explosions, which can emit harmful gases, is a significant safety concern. As the editorial noted, “Even if the technology for zero-emission locomotives eventually arrives, railroads will have to test them over many years to guarantee their safety.”--deRugy

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History teaches that while unions can improve wages and working conditions for those working in the mills, they can’t make the mills economically sustainable. --sracic

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The latest evidence of actual clinical incompetence is its 100% tariff on Chinese electric vehicles, announced Tuesday. If the goal is to get Americans to use EVs, how does it make sense to raise their cost to consumers? It doesn’t. The real explanation is the familiar process by which bad policy begets bad policy—in this case, the disaster unfolding in Detroit saddled with billions in losses for EVs the public won’t buy at anything resembling the cost of building them.--wsj

Notes and Notable 5

 

Notes and Notable 5


U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken made an unannounced visit to Kyiv on Tuesday to show support for Ukraine amid the ongoing war.

During his trip, Blinken rocked out on stage at a local bar with a band from Kyiv.

“I know this is a really, really difficult time. Your soldiers, your citizens, particularly in the northeast in Kharkiv, are suffering tremendously,” Blinken said on stage. “They need to know, you need to know, the United States is with you, so much of the world is with you and they’re fighting, not just for Ukraine, but for the free world.”

Blinken then performed “Rockin’ in the Free World” by Neil Young, strumming along on the electric guitar and even singing the chorus.--Connel

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Of the richest 10 congressional districts in the country, all are represented by Democrats.

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Future historians, if there are any, will be dumbfounded. Today, uncountable dollars and unquantifiable hysteria are devoted to the distant threat of climate change milder than some changes Earth has experienced. A recent peer-reviewed study of scientific estimates concludes that the average annual cost of what the excitable U.N. secretary-general calls “global boiling” might reach 2 percent of global gross domestic product by 2100. Meanwhile, negligible public anxiety accompanies the intensifying danger of global incineration from nuclear war.--will

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"My dissertation is on fantasies of limitless energy in the transatlantic Romantic imagination from 1760-1860. My goal is to write a prehistory of metabolic rift, Marx’s term for the disruption of energy circuits caused by industrialization under capitalism. I am particularly interested in theories of the imagination and poetry as interpreted through a Marxian lens in order to update and propose an alternative to historicist ideological critiques of the Romantic imagination. Prior to joining Columbia, I worked as a political strategist for leftist and progressive causes and remain active in the higher education labor movement."--from the bio page of Columbia demonstrator Johannah King-Slutzky, Ph.D. candidate in the English and Comparative Literature Department at Columbia.

Notes and Notable 4

Notes and Notable 4

A  personal injury attorney has died after being shot outside a McDonald's while trying to de-escalate an incident with a customer over his order.

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“I have one partner now with three kids. He is transmasc, and he’s radical about the way he raises them. They’re radically home-schooled. They’re 17 and nonbinary, 6 and 5. They know everything in age-appropriate ways. They’ve seen their mommy undergo the transmasc experience, seen their mom become who they really are.”-NYT interview

Putting homeschooling in a new light.


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Portugal

A least half of a population of ten million depend on the state in some way—35% are retirees, 10% government workers, and another 5% receive either unemployment benefits or integration benefits. They would see a country with less youth than they once saw; they would see what is in fact, after Italy, the second-oldest country in Europe, with 23% of the population being older than 65. And they would further see that like so many other democratic and less democratic countries, Portugal is having elections and that this election will, once again, pit the country’s aging population against its young people.

So-called “seniors” are reliable voters, while young people aren’t, and so this perverse incentive ensures that seniors vote, effectively, to extract rent for themselves from young people through the state. This is reflected in voting intentions: people over 54 are disproportionately likely to vote for the Socialist Party, while those who are under 25 are disproportionately unlikely to vote for it.

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Recent social movements stand out by their spontaneous nature and lack of stable leadership, raising doubts on their ability to generate political change. This article provides systematic evidence on the effects of protests on public opinion and political attitudes. Drawing on a database covering the quasi-universe of protests held in the United States, we identify 14 social movements that took place from 2017 to 2022, covering topics related to environmental protection, gender equality, gun control, immigration, national and international politics, and racial issues. We use Twitter data, Google search volumes, and high-frequency surveys to track the evolution of online interest, policy views, and vote intentions before and after the outset of each movement. Combining national-level event studies with difference-in-differences designs exploiting variation in local protest intensity, we find that protests generate substantial internet activity but have limited effects on political attitudes. Except for the Black Lives Matter protests following the death of George Floyd, which shifted views on racial discrimination and increased votes for the Democrats, we estimate precise null effects of protests on public opinion and electoral behavior.

That is from a new NBER working paper by Amory Gethin and Vincent Pons.

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Homicides in American cities are falling at the fastest pace in decades, bringing them close to levels they were at before a pandemic-era jump.--nyt

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When it launched its fully automated stores four years ago, Germany’s regional supermarket chain Tegut billed the experiment as a window into the future of shopping. But the Fulda-based retailer has since been embroiled in a legal fight over a centuries-old principle enshrined in the German constitution: Sunday rest. Be they robotic or staffed by humans, most shops in Germany are not allowed to open on the last day of the week — and courts have upheld that ban.

Questions

Questions

When Amazon announced plans in 2017 to open a second headquarters (“HQ2”), it encouraged “local and state government leaders” to compete for the project. After receiving several multibillion-dollar offers, Amazon chose Arlington—directly adjacent to Washington, D.C. The state offered as much as $750 million in conditional grants for Amazon to build its campus in Virginia, and in April 2023, the company requested its first tranche of taxpayer funds—over $152 million. While phase one of the project was completed in May 2023, construction is paused indefinitely on phase two.--Lancaster

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Anthony Fauci – who wielded tremendous power over many decades – funded dangerous research, lied to Congress and the American people, flip-flopped on many of his prognostications, issued edicts that defied science, and attacked and smeared his scientific critics. His reprehensible behavior reminded me of nothing so much as C.S. Lewis’s description of the moral busybody: “Of all tyrannies, a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. . . . [T]hose who torment us for our own good will torment us without end for they do so with the approval of their own conscience.”--Paul

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Economic illiteracy, mixed with foggy nostalgia and unseemly xenophobia, is a familiar populist cocktail served by demagogues to the gullible. Do you remember the 1989 angst when Mitsubishi’s purchase of Rockefeller Center supposedly somehow signaled Japan’s ascendancy over a declining America?In 2000, a U.S. company bought Rockefeller Center. So, politicians manning the nation’s ramparts to fend off foreign investors can breathe a bit easier.--Will, on the 'threat' of Japan buying U.S. Steel

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Norway in the late 1800s:
Women doing laundry through a hole in the ice. Painting by Jahn Ekenæs, 1891.
Before capitalism and technology destroyed the beautiful simplicity of indigenous life. 😎 (Hicks)

Question 90

 Question 90

Half of the harm that is done in this world is due to people who want to feel important. They don't mean to do harm but the harm does not interest them. -T.S. Eliot

Biden said Friday that the price of gas was under three dollars.

FedEx reported horrible numbers, as if we are already in a huge slowdown.

The BBC says that Trump-endorsed candidates have won 92% of the time this year.

Food is up 14% this year. Biden said it was 'zero.' Is anyone responsible for anything they do or say? Or are we to see and hear difficult problems 'in context?'

Biden is impaired. Fetterman is impaired. Is that unimportant?

Mistrust stains everything. Was the January 6th event a significant threat to the country? Or is it being managed like The Reichstag Fire?

Kaiser Permanente Oakland, carried out 70 'top surgeries' in 2019 on teenagers aged 13 to 18, up from five in 2013, according to researchers who led a recent study.

Russian President Vladimir Putin granted citizenship on Monday to Edward Snowden. By their fruits...

Stuff

Stuff

On Friday night, in the third inning of a scoreless game, the Mets had Eduardo Escobar at first base with one out. Tomas Nido dropped a hit-and-run single into right field. Third-base coach Joey Cora began to put up a stop sign, but Escobar, 33, a 12-year veteran, kept going.
Escobar scored with a head-first slide, but his belly flop wasn’t even necessary. The throw from right fielder Ben Gamel was about 30 feet up the line and had to be tracked down in foul ground by pitcher Mitch Keller.
Watching the replay, SNY Mets analyst Todd Zeile noticed something shocking. As Escobar rounded third, Hayes was standing with his mitt off and reaching into his back pocket for some seeds — seemingly uninterested in the play.
“That’s September baseball when you’re in the Pittsburgh Pirates organization right now,” Zeile said. (Atlantic)

Hayes, when asked about this embarrassing event--something that would embarrass a Little Leager--responded like a modern man: he dismissed its importance and refused to discuss it.

Hayes is a talented defensive player and this will always remain in his resume. But one wonders how much damage a disinterested and incompetent organization has on its employees, regardless of their talent.

Three of the largest recipients of China’s rescue lending have been Pakistan, Sri Lanka and Argentina, which together have received as much as $32.83bn since 2017, according to data compiled by AidData, a research lab at William & Mary, a university in the US.
Other countries receiving rescue lending from Chinese state institutions included Kenya, Venezuela, Ecuador, Angola, Laos, Suriname, Belarus, Egypt, Mongolia and Ukraine, according to AidData, which did not provide details for these countries.--ft

If you know, for example, that real income per head has risen in Europe since 1800 by a factor of about thirty, then your political impulse to condemn “capitalism” as impoverishing or riddled with “imperfections” is at least disciplined. You may continue to be a socialist or a regulator, but you will need to sharpen your argument in some other way than going on and on using the same alternative false facts and fake science of impoverishment and imperfection.--mcclosky

The rise in food prices—buoyed by increased fertilizer, energy and transport costs—amid the conflict in Ukraine has exposed inherent flaws in the argument for organic farming. Because organic agriculture shirks many of the scientific advancements that have allowed farmers to increase crop yields, it’s inherently less efficient than conventional farming. Research has conclusively shown that organic farming produces less food per acre than conventional agriculture. Moreover, organic farming rotates fields in and out of use more often than conventional farming, which can rely on synthetic fertilizer and pesticides to maintain fertility and keep away pests.--lomborg

Stuff 1

Stuff 1

Suddenly the Pirates have two pitchers with ERA in the mid-threes and last night introduced a new kid who threw a one-hitter for six innings and was spotting a 100 mph fastball.


Although one person’s income may be a hundred or a thousand times greater than another’s, it is of course very doubtful that one person is a hundred or a thousand times more intelligent or works a hundred or a thousand times as hard. But, again, input is not the measure of value. Results are. --Sowell


Talib, arguing that the preservation of mystery is essential to religion and Vatican 11's switch to English was damaging, writes: 'The fastest growing religion today is Sunni Islam, with one and a half billion followers, all praying in Arabic, a foreign language to nine tenth of them, and in an ancient version (fusha) never, never spoken in conversation by Arabs –when a Moroccan wants to converse with a Lebanese, they do so in French or English, not classical Arabic. Judaism survived with its prayers only in Hebrew (and some Aramaic as in the book of Daniel).'

Did the subsidies to the airline industries during the suicidal shutdown go to buyouts and early retirement? Did that lead to shortages of workers?

Stuff

Stuff

The Russians have lost 3000 square miles of Ukraine territory.

Harris's interview with Todd was so bad I found myself longing for the days of better political liars.

If the Press had an understanding of history, an argument could be made that their dislike of Trump stems from his resemblance to Kaiser Wilhelm.

An editorial in the Seattle Times tells us, “We are all socialized in whiteness as a by-product of living here. The primary purpose of whiteness is to consolidate power through the value, protection and reinforcement of white western ways of knowing and being at the expense of non-white racial and ethnic identities via structural racism.” If whites are being told they are the enemy of Blacks, does this make Blacks the enemy of whites?"

So, what will be the result of people being constantly told they are natural enemies?

Question 89

Question 89

New Orleans Mayor Latoya Cantrell insisted she had to fly first class on recent taxpayer-funded junkets to France and Switzerland because economy class is not safe for a black woman and because she has a child.

343 firefighters died in NY on 9/11. '60 Minutes' had a very moving story about it last night.

'…I was shocked to discover that many social policy interventions, including some of the most touted, don’t help boys and men. The one that first caught my eye was a free college program in Kalamazoo, Michigan. According to its evaluation team, “women experienced large gains,” in terms of college completion (increasing by 50%), “while men seem to experience zero benefit.” This is an astonishing finding. Making college free had no impact on men…So not only are many boys and men struggling, they are less likely to be helped by policy interventions.'
And:
'In the U.S. for example, the 2020 decline in college enrollment was seven times greater for male than for female students.'
And:
'The bottom line is that Finland’s internationally acclaimed educational performance is entirely explained by the stunning performance of Finnish girls.'
That is from the forthcoming Richard V. Reeves book.

 Anna Kasprzak is a Danish dressage rider who has represented Denmark in the Summer Olympics in 2012 and 2016. Kasprzak is considered to be one of the best dressage riders in the world and she has won multiple medals throughout her career.
As of August 2022, Anna Kasprzak’s net worth is estimated to be $1 billion.

A survey found that 43 percent in the 19-30 age group had used cannabis 20 or more times over the previous month, up from 34 percent.

Question 88

Question 88

Jackson Mississippi still has no water.

Less than 1.2 percent of bachelor of arts degrees were awarded to history majors in 2019, the lowest percentage since records began being kept in 1949.

There are eight main advantages of rationing by price over political rationing: it is neutral, informative, cautionary, pacific, humane, non-authoritarian, the essential missing link between supply and demand, and in any event indestructible.--seldon

In 2020, Ireland overtook South Africa as having the latest marrying couples worldwide.
The average age for a groom is 37.8 and for a bride is 35.7, for opposite-sex couples. This is the fairer comparison because same-sex marriages obviously aren’t allowed everywhere and are less relevant to reproduction.

If you consider first-time marriages only, the average age of grooms marrying for the first time was 35.7 years and for brides the average age was 34.2 years. By comparison, for first-time marriages the United States is 30.5 for males and 28.6 for females.

Developers in west London face a potential ban on new housing projects until 2035 because the electricity grid has run out of capacity to support new homes, jeopardizing housebuilding targets in the capital.
The Greater London Authority wrote to developers this week warning them that it might take more than a decade to bulk up grid capacity and get developments underway again in three west London boroughs

 

Question 87

Question 87

In the Penguin Random House/S&S antitrust trial it was revealed that out of 58,000 trade titles published per year, half of those titles sell fewer than one dozen books. 

90 percent of titles sell fewer than 2,000 units. 

NYT: "about 98 percent of the books that publishers released in 2020 sold fewer than 5,000 copies."

On Sept. 13, 2001, the Met reopened two days after the attack on the World Trade Center. The next day the New York Times reported that by 4 p.m., 8,270 visitors had passed through its doors, “more than normal for this time of year.” 

At a time of fear and despair, people sought out art.

Trouble at NASA? Former NASA Deputy Administrator Lori Garver writes in her new book, “Escaping Gravity,” that the agency is paying the manufacturing company Aerojet Rocketdyne $150 million apiece to refurbish the outdated RS-25 outdated engines—$600 million a flight. It is no wonder that taxpayers so far have put nearly $30 billion into the Artemis moon-launch program before its first launch: $12 billion for the first SLS, $14 billion for two Orion crew capsules and $3.6 billion for new SLS launch facilities at Cape Canaveral.

Is the current rewriting of history just another effort to deprive Black Americans of the revolutionary American experience?

Britain’s German mercenaries noted that “you do not see a regiment” in the Continental Army “in which there is not a large number of blacks”? Africans did not contradict American ideas of freedom; they embraced them and enlarged them alongside other Americans “by linking those ideas to a larger spirit of equality and humanity.”

So Batgirl has been canceled, post-production?

Question 86

Question 86

This looks fun. Poland’s top politician said Thursday that the government will seek the equivalent of some $1.3 trillion in reparations from Germany for the Nazis’ World War II invasion and occupation of his country…
“We will turn to Germany to open negotiations on the reparations,” Kaczynski said, adding it will be a “long and not an easy path” but “one day will bring success.”
He insisted the move would serve “true Polish-German reconciliation” that would be based on “truth.”

Days after releasing a plan to phase out new gas-powered cars, Ben Zeisloft of the Daily Wire reports that California officials are “asking residents to avoid charging their electric vehicles in the interest of not overwhelming the power grid.”

In the starkest way possible, it is important to remember that while [Adam] Smith identified the human propensity to truck, barter and exchange, Hobbes and others had also identified the human propensity to rape, pillage and plunder unless constrained. Whether men are Smithian or Hobbesian in their behavioral propensities is a function of the rules of the game under which they operate. If the costs of raping, pillaging and plundering are less than the benefits, then the ‘society’ under examination will indeed resemble the Hobbesian jungle. If the costs of predation are raised, and the benefits of cooperation are greater, then Smithian wealth creation through realizing the mutual gains from trade will be the foundation of the social order.--a scary idea by Boettke.
Is it true?

China’s carbon emissions fell almost 8 percent in the April-to-June quarter compared with the same period last year, the sharpest decline in the past decade, according to climate research service Carbon Brief.
The fall in emissions reflects a dramatic slowing in Chinese economic growth caused by large-scale coronavirus lockdowns and a crisis in the heavily indebted property sector. It was the fourth consecutive quarter in which emissions have fallen in China, the world’s biggest emitter.
Lauri Myllyvirta, an analyst at the Helsinki-based Centre for Research on Energy and Clean Air, which compiled the data for Carbon Brief, said there had been a drop of 44 percent in the number of construction projects started and a 33 percent fall in those completed during the second quarter.

There is an explosion of referrals for gender-dysphoria services for children and young people in the U.K., which have gone from 50 in 2009 to 2,500 annually by 2020. The spike first started in 2014-2015, according to an interim report National Health Service gender services made public in March; the backlog now totals 4,600 people, who can expect about two years on the waitlist.

Question 85

Question 85

President Joe Biden charged in a prime-time address Thursday that the “extreme ideology” of Donald Trump and his adherents “threatens the very foundation of our republic,” as he summoned Americans of all stripes to help counter what he sketched as dark forces within the Republican Party trying to subvert democracy.
Wait. Trump has an ideology?

[I]t is not right to talk, as often happens, about the tyranny of capital, since even in the most extreme an cases its presence can never be more damaging than its absence to the situation of the worker.--Bastiat

Transgender women report bottom surgery at rates between 5–13%
Chest surgery is generally reported at about twice the rate of genital GCS. In studies that assessed transgender men and women as an aggregate, chest surgery has been reported at rates between 8–25%, and genital surgery at 4–13%

Is the problem on the border serious enough to use land mines?
Why not?

30% of people think that Biden has done a good job. How is that possible? Does one standard deviation being 68.27% help?

A study of Russian publications in the 1990s found that some 39 percent of all nonfiction published in Russia in that decade had something to do with the occult.

One of the most consequential statistics passed by without much noise. India's total fertility rate fell below the population replacement rate to 2.0, with many states far below that level, thanks to effective campaigns around family planning & contraception.