The News

 

The News

Some observations on the news of the last day:


--Biden has a Hollywood agency contract. What possible value does this inept and physically destroyed man bring to the table of any enterprise? Who would want to reward this man in any way? Or maybe it's just the reward of white privilege and male hierarchy.

--Several wild-eyed demonstrators have criticized Musk, crying out "I did not vote for him!" This is true, but what has he done so far? He is only an adviser. But it inconveniently--for them--raises the big question he is investigating, that of unsupervised government legislation by unelected bureaucrats. So their unhappiness with Musk should be generalized to all unbridled bureaucrats.

And...who voted for Jill Biden?


--The USAID kerfluffle has wisely avoided the content of the USAID actions (many quite outlandish and peripheral) and centers on the process of attacking it. How, the critics say, can the program be interfered with by executive action? It should be monitored and shaped by the only lawgiver, Congress. They are concerned over the assumption of executive action outside its purview. This is a lovely meal, rare and delicious, because the USAIDS program was not created by the legislature but rather by JFK's executive order. I am no fan of Trump's assumption of executive orders but I am opposed to all assumptions of power. The controlling of USAID by executive order is almost poetic in its symmetry.


--Gaza. I am unsure what Trump is offering with his grand suggestion the U.S. take over the Gaza Strip. But it is heart-stopping in its clear implication. He is saying, I think, that the current state of management of the Gaza Strip is humanitarianly intolerable. More, a military solution threatens the world and is inconceivable. Israel will not suffer terrorism any longer. And they will not suffer a knockout or take a standing eight-count. Israel will punctuate any defeat that compromises the country with nuclear retaliation. That will mean the end of the Middle East as a functioning entity.

So the current endgame in the Gaza dispute cannot be military. Period. Military positions will not be enhanced through negotiations. Intrangecence is homicidal and suicidal. There is no interest in this country to police crazies anymore. Being the only grownup at the table costs us too much--especially since everyone else at the table has no vision larger than their own provincial myopia. (What is the intent of the madmen in Yemen other than death and destruction and commercial disruption?)

Gender Surgery

Just for my personal pride, I would like to state that the father of my children was the first American druid in Diablo to clear the abattoir of zir and ended that season as best in the USA. He was also ranking in Polytopia, and beat Felix himself at the game. I did observe these things with my own eyes. There are other witnesses who can verify this. That is all.--Elon Musk’s ex-wife and Canadian musician Claire Grimes Boucher on Twitter

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President Trump said he wants to “clean out” the Gaza Strip and urged Jordan and Egypt to take in refugees either temporarily or for the long term, a move that has been rejected by Arab countries since the war began.

Sometimes talking off the top of your head is not charming.

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I heard an interview with Iran's 'vice president' He was very reasonable and persuasive. The Middle East problem, however, is beyond reason and persuasion.

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China prides itself on having invented paper, gunpowder, printing and the compass, but hasn’t been known for making gigantic innovative breakthroughs since then. Yet, the Middle Kingdom has time and again managed to awe the world with its latest creations.

It’s because the Chinese are masters of a strategy that aims to achieve practical results rather than striving for perfection. DeepSeek is the latest example of the “good-enough” strategy.--Wei

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Gender Surgery

There is little to no evidence that experimental gender procedures improve the mental health of gender-dysphoric children and teens.

The lead researcher of a government-funded study that began in 2015 admitted this week in an interview with the Times that the study did not support the claims of gender activists and explained that she had not released the data out of fear that opponents of gender medicalization would “weaponize” it.

The study, led by Johanna Olson-Kennedy, the medical director of the Center for Transyouth Health and Development at the Children’s Hospital of Los Angeles, is now under investigation by congressional Republicans, National Review reported. Not by Republicans and Democrats. Republicans. So we respond to bias with bias.

Science does not start with understanding, with an assumption to prove; it starts with ignorance and offers a speculation to disprove. One can see the limits here. Aristotle said that, with the right tools, he could cut anything in half. How, for example, can one evaluate a concept that cannot be measured objectively? 

Science is a process, not a belief system. It is incompatible with activism.  

Social Security in the Wild

DeepSeek’s latest AI models showed that shared research allowed a Chinese company to leapfrog better-resourced U.S. teams, writes Christopher Mims. The situation has intensified discussions about AI development: Some U.S. investors argue the technology should be developed in secret for national security purposes, while most engineers who build AI reject that

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Almost half of Americans, and 65% of Gen Zers, said they plan to drink less alcohol in 2025, according to a survey by research firm NCSolutions.

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Large firms like Amazon and Microsoft could spend up to $3 trillion by 2030 to build and operate data centers for their businesses, according to BlackRock Investment Institute.

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Auto stocks suffered notable premarket declines, with GM falling more than 6% premarket. Tesla shares dropped 3% ahead of the open. The auto industry is potentially the most vulnerable sector to the 25% tariffs on Mexican and Canadian imports. Global auto stocks slid from Frankfurt to Tokyo.
Constellation Brands fell about 6% premarket.
"The postwar bipartisan consensus that the U.S. prospers by fostering cooperation and integration with allies and neighbors is gone." (wsj)

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Social Security in the Wild

Social Security is and always has been an unworkable scheme rapidly approaching collapse. Economists point out that something has to give if the program is to avoid catastrophe, and so do the trustees who run Social Security.

This month, Pew Research found "large majorities of Trump (77%) and Harris supporters (83%) opposed any reductions in the Social Security program." In February, a Redfield & Wilton Strategies survey revealed that 66 percent of Americans agree Social Security needs reforming, but "69 percent of respondents across all age groups opposed cutting benefits to those on Social Security, while 52 percent were against raising the retirement age and 44 percent opposed raising taxes on workers' income."

The victims of the scheme are not acting like victims but rather like co-conspirators.

"Thirty-seven percent of nonretirees between the ages of 30 and 49 believe they will get Social Security benefits, while 61% do not," Gallup noted last year.

Until 2010, Americans paid more in Social Security taxes than the program paid out in benefits. The extra money wasn't saved but passed on to be spent by the rest of the federal government in return for IOUs.

That is, there is no "trust fund."

That point passed as the ratio of workers to retirees dropped and seems unlikely to shift back given the country's declining birth rate and aging population. That means the difference between revenues and expenditures is now made up, as it is across the rest of the federal government, by borrowing. As Social Security cashes in those IOUs, the Treasury will borrow an estimated $4.1 trillion plus interest to fund the program between now and 2033. "It's like borrowing money to pay off credit cards," Cato's Boccia notes.

The mendacity and incompetence of the last four years are not enough to explain this. Rather, this is a long-term project. It's as if three blind men and an elephant are piloting the ship of state.

Sunday/Simeon

Ran, an advanced autonomous underwater vehicle (AUV) equipped with cutting-edge sensors and technology designed to gather and analyze data in extreme underwater environments, has disappeared while exploring the huge Thwaites Glacier in Antarctica and is presumed lost.

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Vogue has not had a Republican First Lady on its cover in 130 years.

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                              Sunday/Simeon

The Feast of the Presentation is one of the oldest feasts of the Christian church. Also known as Candlemas, it is a Christian Holy Day commemorating the presentation of Jesus at the Temple. It is based upon the account in Luke 2:22–40, true to an old Mosaic law where the mother is "purified" 40 days after the birth of a boy, 80 days after a girl, and returns to society after seclusion. Following Leviticus 12: a woman was to be purified by presenting lamb as a burnt offering, and either a young pigeon or dove as a sin offering, 33 days after a boy's circumcision. At the same time, a boy was "bought back" from God, "ransomed," a reference to the deaths of the firstborns in the escape from Egypt.

While it is customary for Christians in some countries to remove their Christmas decorations on Twelfth Night (Epiphany Eve), those in other Christian countries historically remove them on Candlemas.

I traditionally remove my Christmas decorations around the 4th of July

The blessed candles symbolize Jesus Christ, who refers to Himself as the Light of the World. It is interesting--and usually ignored by the rabbis--that Isiah, who references this "light of the world" image earlier, does it in terms of the Gentiles.

The family encounters a prophet, Simeon, who has been waiting his whole life for this moment.

Simeon offers a prophecy, said to be the first since Malachi in 420 B.C. (There is an argument that Elizabeth, Mary's cousin, prophesied first.) At any rate, it is a historic event. Part of what he says is often overlooked: "...for my eyes have seen the salvation which you have made ready in the sight of the nations; a light of revelation for the gentiles and glory for your people Israel." This is a startling line that includes the Gentiles in Christ's plan long before Paul.

But it is even older. Isaiah 60:1-3 says:
Arise, shine; for thy light is come, and the glory of the Lord is risen upon thee.
2 For, behold, the darkness shall cover the earth, and gross darkness the people: but the Lord shall arise upon thee, and his glory shall be seen upon thee.
3 And the Gentiles shall come to thy light, and kings to the brightness of thy rising.

This scene is the source of the T.S. Eliot poem, "The Song of Simeon," a poem surprisingly sad and ominous compared to the source's jubilation.

A Song for Simeon

Lord, the Roman hyacinths are blooming in bowls and
The winter sun creeps by the snow hills;
The stubborn season has made stand.
My life is light, waiting for the death wind,
Like a feather on the back of my hand.
Dust in sunlight and memory in corners
Wait for the wind that chills towards the dead land.

Grant us thy peace.
I have walked many years in this city,
Kept faith and fast, provided for the poor,
Have taken and given honour and ease.
There went never any rejected from my door.
Who shall remember my house, where shall live my children’s children
When the time of sorrow is come?
They will take to the goat’s path, and the fox’s home,
Fleeing from the foreign faces and the foreign swords.

Before the time of cords and scourges and lamentation
Grant us thy peace.
Before the stations of the mountain of desolation,
Before the certain hour of maternal sorrow,
Now at this birth season of decease,
Let the Infant, the still unspeaking and unspoken Word,
Grant Israel’s consolation
To one who has eighty years and no tomorrow.

According to thy word,
They shall praise Thee and suffer in every generation
With glory and derision,
Light upon light, mounting the saints’ stair.
Not for me the martyrdom, the ecstasy of thought and prayer,
Not for me the ultimate vision.
Grant me thy peace.
(And a sword shall pierce thy heart,
Thine also).
I am tired with my own life and the lives of those after me,
I am dying in my own death and the deaths of those after me.
Let thy servant depart,
Having seen thy salvation.

Sat Stats

This week a Reuters/Ipsos poll finds that 61% of U.S. adults support “downsizing the federal government,” while just 35% oppose it.
In the latest Economist/YouGov poll, respondents who favor “requiring all federal workers to work in person rather than remotely” outnumber those who oppose the idea by 11 percentage points—48% to 37%.

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Ryan Michael English was arrested at the Capitol on Monday. English, who surrendered to officers, told them he had traveled to Washington intending to kill Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent or Speaker Mike Johnson—or burn down the Heritage Foundation. He was armed with Molotov cocktails.


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William Stanley Jevons was a 19th century economist who observed that as steam engines became more efficient, overall coal use increased. His name comes up whenever improved efficiency drives resource consumption higher.
“As AI gets more efficient and accessible, we will see its use skyrocket,” Microsoft's Nadella said as DeepSeek's efficiency revealed.


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Six more current or former tennis players linked to a match-fixing syndicate in Belgium were given suspensions of varying lengths — one was barred for 15 years — and fined, the International Tennis Integrity Agency said Friday.
That brings the total to about 30 players punished for their connections to the syndicate run by Grigor Sargsyan, who was previously given a five-year custodial sentence.

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A British-Israeli woman who was held hostage by Hamas in Gaza for 15 months says she was detained for some time at United Nations facilities.

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Sat Stats

 

“The climate system is a coupled non-linear chaotic system, and therefore the long-term prediction of future climate states is not possible.”--The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), the United Nations body for assessing the science related to climate change.

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The TSA intercepted on average 18.2 firearms per day at security checkpoints in 2024. 94% were loaded.


***.

The pay gap between a typical college-educated man ($95,000) and male teachers ($65,000) in 2023 was $30,000, according to a WSJ analysis of census data stored at the University of Minnesota. The comparable gap for women was $12,000. Teachers say pay is one of the reasons for men’s limited interest in teaching, leaving boys with few male role models in the classroom.

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O'Leary says regulations are 40% of the cost of house building.

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64,000 girls participated in high-school wrestling last year, up from less than 10,000 in 2014.

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The Department of the Interior manages roughly one-fifth of the United States' lands and waters. 20% of the nation.

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As of recent data, to be considered among the top 1% of wealthy Americans, you would need a net worth of approximately $11.6 million. This figure starkly contrasts with the national average, highlighting the significant wealth disparity in the United States.

Moving down the percentiles, the top 2% threshold is about $2.7 million, while the top 5% begins at $1.17 million. The top 10% of wealthy Americans have a net worth starting at $970,900.

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Median vs. mean:
As of 2022, the median net worth of all families in the United States was $192,900. This figure represents the “middle” point, where half of all families have a higher net worth and half have a lower net worth. It starkly contrasts the wealth thresholds discussed earlier, highlighting the significant wealth gap in the country.

The mean (average) net worth, on the other hand, was much higher at $1,063,700. The substantial difference between the median and mean net worth underscores the impact of high-net-worth individuals on the overall average, pulling it significantly higher than the median.

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Nvidia shares tumbled 17% Monday, the biggest drop since March 2020, erasing $589 billion from the company’s market capitalization. That eclipsed the previous record — a 9% drop in September that wiped out about $279 billion in value — and was the biggest in US stock-market history.

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Fully electric vehicles accounted for 96% of all new cars sold in Norway in the first few weeks of 2025, according to the Norwegian Public Roads Administration.

Last year, nine out of ten new cars sold were fully electric,

Many gasoline and diesel cars are still on Norway's roads. At the national level, about 28% of owned cars are fully electric, and in Oslo, the figure is over 40%.

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The reading skills of American students are deteriorating further, according to new national test scores that show no improvement in a yearslong slide.

Subsidizing Error

Anthropic CEO Amodei said he was relatively confident that AI technology would surpass human intelligence in the next two or three years.

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Gabbard, Trump’s national intelligence pick, was raised in a religious group tied to a firm suspected of running an international scam. A lot of smear/counter-smear at work in the hearings yesterday.

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The CIA has concluded that the Covid-19 pandemic most likely arose from a laboratory leak, joining the FBI and Energy Department in identifying a mishap in Wuhan, China, as the virus’s probable source.

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Subsidizing Error

Some numbers from the alternative energy distortion dance.

For decades, the federal government has propped up energy sources and technologies through subsidies and tax credits. From 2010 to 2023, the cumulative cost of these policies was $76 billion and $65 billion for solar and wind power, respectively, and $33 billion for oil and gas. Nuclear energy, meanwhile, received about $26 billion.

Not only have these subsidies been costly for taxpayers, but they have also proven ineffective in changing the energy landscape. Despite receiving more than twice the amount of money as fossil fuels and nuclear power since 2010, wind and solar only generated 10.2 percent and 3.9 percent of the country's electricity in 2023, respectively.

The Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) supercharged subsidies for wind and solar energy while introducing new technology-specific tax credits for green hydrogen, nuclear power, sustainable aviation fuel, and more. Additionally, it established a $7,500 tax credit for electric vehicles (E.V.s) assembled in North America. Households earning less than $300,000 and individuals earning less than $150,000 are also eligible for the one-time clean vehicle credit.

Initially projected at $369 billion over the next 10 years, these subsidies are now expected to add over $1 trillion to the federal deficit through 2032. And, with some provisions lacking an expiration date, this figure could feasibly reach $3 trillion.

Billions of dollars worth of solar and wind provisions have gone to companies like NextEra Energy—the world's largest utility company—and Chinese solar manufacturers.

Tax credits for EVs have been mostly cashed in by wealthy consumers who would have bought an electric vehicle without the credit anyway. A study by the National Bureau of Economic Research estimates that every E.V. sold because of the IRA's credit costs taxpayers $32,000. $32,000.

Subsidies for wind and solar energy can cost up to $260 and $2,100, respectively, for every ton of carbon dioxide (CO2) reduced. For context, reforestation and tree planting cost about $10 per ton of CO2 reduced.

Just because a project is heartfelt and expensive does not mean it has value.

Questions

Questions

Netflix has a bio of Andy Warhol, very creepy but with a couple of interesting observations. Warhol seemed to be in a constant state of remaking, refashioning himself and what he saw. And his Greek Orthodox art background might explain his preoccupation with two-dimensional paintings.

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Doug Burgum will be head of the Department of Interior and is Trump's proposed head of the newly created National Energy Council — a body that will oversee regulatory processes across government agencies where he'd have considerable power to push fossil fuel extraction.

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Re Drones on the East Coast: Was anyone reassured by Mayorkis' reassurances? Is there any reason why Trump's simple and benign explanation was not issued earlier? Is alarming the electorate an objective?

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The Thompson murder wasn't followed by a clamor for gun control. Rare.

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17 states in the U.S. require physician participation in euthanasia, and 18 allow it.
Is it a good idea to have physicians involved? Should they participate in executions?

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The COP29 climate change meeting debated giving 2.4.trillion dollars to undeveloped nations over 6 years as a sort of mea culpa tax because the developed countries had an accelerated growth out of poverty over the last 200 years fueled by petroleum and the poor nations, strangled by corruption and tyranny and locked in charcoal power, did not.

Would the U.S. with its 36 trillion dollar debt qualify for assistance?

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The European tax rate is 34%. It is 17% in Africa.

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There are 3.5 million Muslims in Europe. If 10% are radicalized, they would outnumber the entire European military.

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When did illegal immigrants become "workers?"
What does their occupation have to do with their illegal entrance to the country?

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On Thursday, Karoline Leavitt’s failed congressional campaign amended every FEC filing it had ever made to reveal that she failed to disclose hundreds of thousands of dollars in excessive contributions that she never paid back, in violation of the law.