The president entered office with a 1.4% inflation rate and spiked it to 7%. 30-year mortgages of 2.7% soared to 6.5% in less than two years. Eggs are $7 a dozen. A thin steak is $15 a pound. A sheet of plywood is $95. Gas averaged $2.39 a gallon when the president took office and even after draining the Strategic Petroleum Reserve it is still $3.50 a gallon. In my state, California, gas has recently been over $5 a gallon. The price of natural gas has tripled in less than a year. In two years over 5 million foreign nationals poured into the United States—all illegally across a nonexistent border. The president said that he “lowered” inflation, energy prices and interest rates after sending them to astronomical levels and then seeing them momentarily taper off a bit. Like Nero bragging about rebuilding Circus Maximus after burning it down. He omitted… Read more →
Go Down, Moses
I read yesterday that Moses Hall became the fifth building at UC Berkeley to lose its name( because of the allegedly racist views of its namesake, Bernard Moses, a prominent faculty member from 1875 to 1911. All of the buildings have been unnamed since 2020. “Disappearing” people is straight out of the Joseph Stalin playbook and I’ve never learned to see Stalin as a role model. According to the Berkeley news article that I read, Niko Kolodny, former chair of the philosophy department, said he became aware via email that Moses’ name “had been deeply disturbing to several people of color.” The University of California established a Bernard Moses Memorial Lecture in 1937, and Moses Hall was named in 1965. The fact that it took more than 80 years since Moses was first recognized for the university to familiarize itself with his views (via an email!) and deem them inappropriate… Read more →
Lock up your libraries if you like; but there is no gate, no lock, no bolt that you can set upon the freedom of my mind. — Virginia Woolf
The Problem With Education
The problem with education today is too much emphasis on academics and not enough emphasis on transitioning 13-year-old girls into boys without telling the parents. Read more →
A Parkland Parent on Permitless Carry
Hey Gavin, my daughter Alaina was killed at Parkland and I support permit-less carry in Florida. If my daughter were alive she’d be carrying, because she would be defenseless in a gun free zone. Sit this one out. https://t.co/htDcUnVK73 — Ryan Petty (@rpetty) February 1, 2023 Mr. Petty went on to make some cogent points in a subsequent interview: “California has suffered some horrific tragedies over the last couple weeks in mass shootings and gun control advocates promise that if we just implement their preferred policies, we’ll be safer as a nation. “California has enacted what you could only call ‘the dream’ for gun-control advocates, and it is not proving to make Californians any safer. The reason is simple. “Criminals don’t obey gun laws. “The only thing Gavin Newsom and the California legislature have accomplished is curtailing the rights of law-abiding Californians, and in doing so they have made no… Read more →
Shell and Apple
Shell recorded a record profit in 2022 of $40,000,000,000.That’s 40 billion. That’s double their $20,000,000,000 in 2021. Aren’t you happy for them? Because your life is great too. — Phil Hendrie (@realphilhendrie) February 2, 2023 How much should they make? Apple made $120 billion selling gadgets. Shell sells a product people need. Read more →
I Broke ChatGPT
Black Queer History in APAAS
Pritzker Demands Black Queer History in AP African-American Studies — nationalreview.com In case you don’t know who “Pritzker” is, which I didn’t, J.B. Pritzker is the governor of Illinois. The College Board is putting together a new AP African-American Studies (APAAS) course. Florida governor Ron DeSantis, whom you probably do know, recently rejected the APAAS course, said he would not allow it to be taught in Florida, because the curriculum includes topics that seem to be included for political purposes rather than their relevance to African-American studies. Like “queer history.” I’m not aware of any state ever previously vetoing an AP course. Pritzker sent a letter to the College Board in which he attacked what he called “Florida’s racist and homophobic laws” and pledged that Illinois would “reject any curriculum modifications designed to appease extremists like the Florida Governor and his allies.” I don’t think until fairly recently, it would… Read more →
Pfizer Employee Flips Out on Video
As I write this, YouTube has taken down the video, I assume because it shows a Pfizer employee acting like an out-of-control cartoon character and damages the vaccine narrative. The video is still up on Twitter. WATCH: Pfizer Official ‘Physically Assaults’ James O’Keefe, ‘Destroys iPad Showing Undercover Recordings’ https://t.co/OviQpYh2Ol — Paul Epps (@paulepps) January 28, 2023 Read more →
Is Diversity Training Doing More Harm Than Good?
From the New York Times: Diversity trainings have been around for decades, long before the country’s latest round of racial reckoning. But after George Floyd’s murder — as companies faced pressure to demonstrate a commitment to racial justice — interest in the diversity, equity and inclusion (D.E.I.) industry exploded. The American market reached an estimated $3.4 billion in 2020. Though diversity trainings have been around in one form or another since at least the 1960s, few of them are ever subjected to rigorous evaluation, and those that are mostly appear to have little or no positive long-term effects. The lack of evidence is “disappointing,” wrote Elizabeth Levy Paluck of Princeton and her co-authors in a 2021 Annual Review of Psychology article, “considering the frequency with which calls for diversity training emerge in the wake of widely publicized instances of discriminatory conduct.” But there’s a darker possibility: Some diversity initiatives might… Read more →
California Teacher Helps Change Students’ Gender Identity Without Parents Knowing
California teacher helps change students’ gender identity without parents knowing — torontosun.com The biggest problem in education is too much emphasis on academics and not enough emphasis on teachers changing students’ gender identity without parents knowing. Read more →
Strict California Gun Laws
Gavin Newsom swats down CBS reporter’s Second Amendment question — msn.com That’s not really the way I saw it. Gavin Newsom is not a smart man. He’s not going to win too many forensic scrimmages against another adult. The reason the CBS reporter was talking to Newsom about guns and the Second Amendment is that we had 3 mass shootings in 3 days in California. I’ve heard that California has the strictest gun control laws of any state in the country, whatever that means, but we still had 3 mass shootings in 3 days. What Newsom was responding to was not even a question. He had just finished calling the Second Amendment a “suicide pact” when the reporter pointed out that many people in the U.S. support the Second Amendment. This was Newsom’s swat-down reply: “Yeah, I have great respect. I have no ideological opposition with someone reasonably and responsibly… Read more →
Median Income by Ethnicity
It would be nice if modesty prevented me from saying that my household income is much higher than the median Indian household income. A lot of you white people out there are pulling down the average. Read more →
Trump Back on Facebook
Here's an alternative: We could consolidate government and corporate power to crush dissent. It worked for Mussolini! Well … for a while it did. https://t.co/n3MOYo7HLg — Paul Epps (@paulepps) January 26, 2023 Read more →
A Ukrainian Question
In what conceivable way are American citizens benefited or having their lives improved or increasingly secured by escalating the U.S. role in the war in Ukraine? Or conversely, in what conceivable way would your life or the lives of most Americans be harmed by changes in the governance of various provinces in Eastern Ukraine? How would your life be affected if the citizens of the Donbas region decided, as Kosovo decided 20 years ago, that they preferred to be independent or be governed by Moscow rather than by Kyiv? Why would that matter to your life? Why is the U.S. government willing to provoke so much danger to the globe, so much risk of escalation, and a practically direct proxy war now with the world’s largest nuclear power? Over what? Over who rules various provinces in eastern Ukraine. — Glenn Greenwald Read more →
Accountability Without Consequences
‘I was too ambitious’: Spotify CEO announces layoffs among 6% of employees as tech job cuts continue — msn.com Spotify CEO Daniel Ek said that the decision to restructure Spotify is an “effort to drive more efficiency, control costs, and speed up decision-making,” adding that he takes “full accountability for the moves that got us here today.” I love it — and when I say I love it, I mean I don’t love it — when someone says they take “full accountability” for some disaster, knowing perfectly well that there won’t be any personal consequences. There’s no accountability without consequences. Had he said “I’m forfeiting my salary for the year and donating it to the employees who lost their jobs,” now that’s something I could respect. Popular Bookstores, Including Barnes & Noble, Are Closing Locations, Starting Feb. 11 — bestlifeonline.com JCPenney Is Closing Even More Locations, Starting Next Month —… Read more →
There Were Earthquakes Before Climate Change?
The 1556 Shaanxi earthquake occurred in the early morning of Jan. 23, 1556 in Huaxian, Shaanxi during the Ming dynasty. Modern estimates put the direct deaths from the earthquake at over 100,000, while over 700,000 migrated away or died from famine and plagues, which summed up to a total loss of 830,000 people in Imperial records. It is one of the most fatal earthquakes in China, in turn making it one of the top disasters in China by death toll. Call me Nostradamus, but if this event happened on Jan. 23, 2023, it would be almost universally blamed on “climate change.” Read more →
California Just Quit Flavored Tobacco
According to a flyer I picked up in a local convenience store, “a new California law makes it illegal to sell most flavored tobacco products, including vapes and menthol cigarettes — protecting our kids from a lifetime of deadly addiction.” If a kid wants to smoke and vapes are not available, won’t the kid just smoke regular cigarettes like we did as kids? Vapes are probably not good for your health but I have heard that they’re not as unhealthy as cigarettes. I’d rather see kids smoke cigarettes than vape anyway. Not my kid, but your kids and other people’s kids. Smoking is cool. Think Steve McQueen, Humphrey Bogart, James Dean, etc. Vaping is, pardon the expression, gay. Still I’m appalled at the idea that individual rights can be violated by the state using its coercive apparatus in order to prohibit activities to people for their own good or protection.… Read more →
If California Slides Into the Ocean
And if California slides into the ocean Like the mystics and statistics say it will I predict this motel will be standing Until I pay my bill. — Warren Zevon, “Desperadoes Under the Eaves” Read more →
People sleep peaceably in their beds at night only because rough men stand ready to do violence on their behalf. — Orwell