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.
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 have occurred to J.B. Pritzker to demand that queer history be included in an AP curriculum.
Here’s a full list of AP courses:
It seems like if you think queer history is an essential component in an AP course, you could demand its inclusion in all of these courses.
There are queer people in China, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, Spain. There have been queer artists, biologists, computer scientists, musicians, politicians. I could go on and on.
Why does J.B. Pritzker think that queer history is an essential component of one and only one AP course? I would like to ask him that. Or see a reporter ask him that. Reporters rarely ask interesting or provocative questions unfortunately.
I’d like to ask him where he would rank his own knowledge of Black queer history on a scale of 0 to 10. I’d like to know how is it possible that anyone in America is leading a productive life in the absence of a dedicated study of Black queer history.
Spoiler Alert: It appears that the final version of the APAAS course will be closer to the DeSantis vision than the Pritzker vision, although the linked article sounds disingenuous to me.
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
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 actually worsen the D.E.I. climates of the organizations that pay for them.
I can’t remember ever having any doubt about this.
There’s a model for marginalized groups (Asians, Jews) being successful in America and the model doesn’t include a focus on other people being responsible for everything that’s wrong with your life.
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.
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 owning firearms and getting background checks and being trained and making sure they’re locked [up] so their kid doesn’t accidentally shoot themselves or a loved one. Absolutely not. Never suggested that. That’s what they immediately do. ‘He wants to take away your guns.’ I just want to take away weapons of war that are illegal on the streets of California and should be illegal across the United States.”
I think what he’s missing here is that two of the shootings were carried out with guns that are legal to own in California. Whether or not they were legally obtained I do not know, but I do know that only a small percentage of gun crimes are committed with legally obtained weapons.
The third shooter had a gun that is not legal to own in California. It was an old gun so he may have acquired it before it was banned or he may have bought it in another state.
But so what? The shooter is no longer alive but if he were, he’d be charged with what? — 11 counts of murder and one count of possessing an illegal firearm? That’s a deterrent?
Good luck reducing gun violence with more laws and more laws and more laws. It’s not going to work.
I saw this interview on the news. Not noted in the article cited above is that Newsom and the reporter were walking along a sidewalk, closely followed by Newsom’s bodyguards, all of whom it’s safe to assume were carrying guns.
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.
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
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.
‘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 — bestlifeonline.com
JCPenney already filed for bankruptcy and closed 200 stores in 2020.
Another day, another round of layoffs and closures. That must mean it’s time for another sunshine up the butthole economic report from the Biden administration.
With unemployment at a record low and the two strongest years of job creation in our history, there are reasons for economic optimism all across our country.
— Joe Biden (@JoeBiden) January 25, 2023
This reminds me of papers I wrote in high school and got them back with “Evidence?” scrawled all over them.
Any “job creation” news over the last two years should come with an asterisk, given that we lost 20 million jobs due to COVID shutdowns, so a large number of the jobs being “created” are jobs that we already had, then lost, then we got them back.
And creating jobs is easy, if all you want to do is put people to work. You can give them a job digging holes then filling them in again. The question to be answered is are we creating productive jobs.
I’m leaning toward an answer of no, given that CNBC says that 63 percent of Americans are living paycheck to paycheck (I’ve heard higher numbers but “paycheck to paycheck” is not a well-defined metric) and that many people have found that they can make more money from unemployment and other subsidies than they can from working.
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.”
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.
And as far as protecting kids, is there really someone who, searching for a group of wise and sensitive persons to protect their kids, would choose the members of their state or federal government?
Menthol cigarettes . . . if smoking menthol cigarettes helps someone get through the day, why is that anyone else’s business? No one is coming up to you, jamming a menthol cigarette in your mouth and making you smoke it, are they? If not, mind your own business.
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.
People sleep peaceably in their beds at night only because rough men stand ready to do violence on their behalf. — Orwell
Microsoft to Lay Off 10,000 Workers as It Looks to Trim Costs — msn.com
Google to lay off 12,000 employees, the latest tech giant to cut thousands of jobs — usatoday.com
Regal Cinemas is closing 39 more movie theaters. See the list — cnn.com
Another day, another round of layoffs and closures, another sunshine up the butthole economic report from the Biden administration: We’re not in a recession! Employment numbers are great!
Someone is lying to me and I don’t think it’s Microsoft, Google and Regal Cinemas.
The recent rainstorms here in California are “proof that the climate crisis is real and we have to take it seriously,” according to our governor, Gavin Newsom.
Because we never in history had rainstorms until very recently.
He’s not very smart. If we got no rain this winter, he would have blamed that on “climate change” too.
How robots are helping address the fast-food labor shortage https://t.co/xh8Ghv9rZX
— Paul Epps (@paulepps) January 21, 2023
There’s not really a fast food labor shortage. It’s created by the fact that unemployment benefits and ObamaCare subsidies can total up to $120,000 per year for a family of four.
Not bad! If you can make six figures for doing nothing, you wanna go be a fry cook?
The robots address the fact that the absurdly high numbers that people want to make for minimum-wage work is well beyond the value that minimum-wage workers add to the bottom line.
The real minimum wage is always zero.
Red vs. Blue, us vs. them … it's the political prism of a simpleton. Who do you think funds Democrats? https://t.co/m6FJ0jorl9
— Paul Epps (@paulepps) January 18, 2023
Black Lives Matter wants LAPD to stop responding to minor traffic incidents https://t.co/zHvBVAJnDI
— O.C. Register (@ocregister) January 17, 2023
Well, the Law of Unintended Consequences has already kicked in on this one. I feel like if I know this, someone at BLM should know it.
In the aftermath of George Floyd and Defund the Police, cops — the ones who were still funded — didn’t engage with Black citizens because, you know, if that’s the way you feel about cops, go ahead and do whatever you want.
One result, as you can see in the chart, is a spike in traffic fatalities for both Black men and women.
The same unintended consequence affected the murder rate:
