CORN, POPPED: New York Times Scrambles After Babylon Bee Sics Its Lawyers on Them.
FASTER, PLEASE: The U.S. Military Could Have A Working Hypersonic Missile In Record Time. “Both the Navy’s CPS and the Army’s LRHW programs aim to field a boost-glide hypersonic weapon, a type of hypersonic missile that like intercontinental ballistic missiles, requires a rocket booster to reach altitude, at which point the rocket payload — a glide body — would release and glide down to Earth. Gliding is a bit of a misnomer, however, as hypersonic glide bodies achieve blisteringly high terminal velocities in excess of Mach 5.”
WHEN BLACK LIVES MATTER, AND WHEN THEY DON’T: A Year After George Floyd’s Murder, It’s ‘Open Season’ in Minneapolis: Homicides have more than doubled in a year. Three children have been shot in the past month.
Al Sharpton and civil-rights attorney Benjamin Crump led a march in downtown Minneapolis Sunday in advance of the first anniversary of George Floyd’s death on May 25. Former Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin was convicted of Floyd’s murder last month.
Messrs. Sharpton and Crump didn’t visit North Memorial Health Hospital, where two recent victims of a yearlong explosion of violence in Minneapolis are on life support. On April 30 Ladavionne Garrett Jr. , 10, was riding in a car with his parents when a gunman opened fire. A bullet pierced Ladavionne’s head; doctors put him in a medically induced coma and removed part of his skull to relieve swelling on the brain. On May 15, 9-year-old Trinity Ottoson-Smith was jumping on a trampoline at a friend’s house when bullets fired from a passing car struck her in the head. She is also in critical condition at North Memorial, in the room next to Ladavionne’s.
Nineteen children in Minneapolis have been shot this year, an increase of 171% over the same period in 2020. Their relatives wonder where the protesters are. “Why ain’t nobody mad about a 10-year-old, my grandson, fighting for his life?” asked Sharrie Jennings, Ladavionne’s grandmother, at a May 17 mayoral event. “Because a cop didn’t shoot him, is that why?” Ms. Jennings warned of “a deadly summer” for kids if the mayor and police chief don’t “step up.” Later that day, Aniya Allen, 6, was caught in a shootout between rival gangs while in her mother’s car. Aniya died on May 19.
Minneapolis homicides between Jan. 1 and last week were up 108% compared with the same period in 2020; shootings were up 153%, and carjackings 222%. The crime increase began after Floyd’s death and has never let up. Nor has the assault on law enforcement that began with the arson destruction of the Third Precinct building on May 28, 2020. Officers are routinely punched, kicked and hit with projectiles. There was a near-riot in downtown Minneapolis in the early hours of May 22 following a shootout among club patrons. Two people were killed in that shootout and eight wounded. Responding officers called for backup across the Twin Cities at what the department called an “exceptionally chaotic scene.” The previous weekend, officers were maced, and pelted with rocks and debris while trying to disperse disorderly crowds. . . .
Of the at least 100 homicide victims in Minneapolis since May 25, 2020, only one was killed by a cop. The victim was a suspected gunrunner who had tried to run over officers before shooting at them through his car window, causing them to return fire. There is little evidence that the Minneapolis Police Department systemically violates blacks’ civil rights, but Attorney General Merrick Garland has opened a civil-rights investigation into the Minneapolis Police Department anyway. If history is any guide, the resulting consent decree will cause crime to increase in the city as officers back off further from proactive policing.
Related: When Black Lives Matter to Democrats — And When They Don’t.
VODKAPUNDIT PRESENTS YOUR DAILY INSANITY WRAP: Sweden Was Right, Lockdowns Were Wrong.
Also:
- ‘Come on, baby, light my fire’ is the new ‘Fill’er up!’
- White House stands by their disgraced man
- A reptilian twist on ‘stand your ground’ laws
So much more at the link, you’d have to be crazy to miss it.
CORRECTION: EMBARRASSMENT REQUIRES A SENSE OF SHAME. Reuters Embarrasses Self, Fact Checks Babylon Bee Satire. “In the Fact Checkers’ defense, the Bee’s satire often hits very close to home. That’s what the best satire does. Still, we’re not seeing similar fact checks for The Onion, the liberal fake news site which offers a similar brand of humor.”
ROUTINE BUT FAR FROM BORING: SpaceX launches new solar arrays to space station, nails rocket landing at sea. “SpaceX launched its 17th rocket of the year today (June 3), sending a robotic Dragon cargo capsule toward the International Space Station before nailing a landing at sea.”
This is only the 22nd week of the year, putting SpaceX on a launch cadence of one every nine days.
SHAVING SOAP UPDATE: Old Post Road shaving soap is now in stock but for those who want to purchase directly from the website–go here.
Glenn just tried the aftershave oil and declared it amazing! It is here.
SEGREGATION NOW, SEGREGATION TOMORROW, SEGREGATION FOREVER: Beloit College creates blacks-only space for students to hang out.
DR. FAUCI ASSURES ME THAT IT’S PROBABLY NOTHING: China Reports First Bird Flu Case in Human, Says Transmission Risk is Low.
MITT ROMNEY WOULD NEVER DO THIS: Sen. Cruz uses Monty Python movie clip to needle Harris on failing to visit the border.
THIS IS CNN: CNN’s Take on the Fauci Emails Is REALLY Disturbing. “While many federal government staffers prefer the phone to email, this correspondence offers a rare glimpse into Fauci’s frantic schedule and polite, to-the-point demeanor during the time he emerged as a rare source of frank honesty within the Trump administration’s Covid-19 task force.”
I REMEMBER WHEN HIGHER EDUCATION WAS JUSTIFIED AS PROMOTING CRITICAL THINKING AND RATIONALITY: University calls for removal of construction equipment some deemed a racist symbol. “An American flag was flown at a Central Connecticut State University construction site from a crane using a steel cable with a loop at the bottom. The university president demanded the flag be removed and promised to send employees to monitor its removal on Saturday.”
Our institutions are controlled by people who are basically crazy.
MY NEW YORK POST COLUMN: Yale’s move to rig board elections reveals the bankruptcy of US elites. “As the pandemic especially underscored, the people who run our institutions look with disdain at those they are supposed to serve. They think that they’re so much smarter and better than everyone else, which entitles them to have their way, without interference from the unwashed masses. (Yale, apparently, regards even its own graduates as unwashed.)”
You may think this is inside baseball, but as we’ve seen, what happens on campuses spreads to society as a whole.
IT’S A FLOOR WAX AND A DESSERT TOPPING: Meet the Daymak Spiritus, the World’s First EV That Mines Cryptocurrency.
BIDEN ADMINISTRATION ADVICE TO JEWS: If you don’t want to be victims of violence, don’t look so Jewish.
FIGHT THE POWER, STICK IT TO THE MAN: Former University of Oklahoma volleyball player sues over exclusion from team because of political views.
IT’S EASY TO TELL WHO’S ON THE PAYROLL, OR AT LEAST ON THE TEAM: Pompeo Confirms Intense Opposition to Wuhan Lab Probe From State Department, Intelligence Bureaucracies.
We need a domestic probe into Chinese influence, but where would we find anyone not Chinese-influenced to run it?
KRUISER’S MORNING BRIEF: Kill Your Facebook. “Facebook was a primary driver of the nonsense that Fauci was spouting. Maybe the primary driver. The platform has almost three billion users and wields a kind of power we’ve not witnessed in media before.”
A CONSERVATIVE STUDENT WHO MOCKED THE BLACK LAW STUDENTS ASSOCIATION WOULD PROBABLY GET STIFFER PUNISHMENT: Stanford 3L Who Mocked Federalist Society Will Be Allowed To Graduate.
SILICON VALLEY CONTINUING TO WIN FRIENDS AND INFLUENCE PEOPLE: Survey: Do you trust Big Tech? 86% of Americans say ‘No.’
ALL BUBBLES POP: The NFT Market Has Officially Crashed. “On may May 3, the NFT market reached a peak with $102 million USD worth of Non-Fungible Tokens sold just that day. But looking at sales data from the last week of May, only $19.4 million USD in NFT sales was processed. Compared to the $170 million USD in NFTs transacted the week of the peak, the market saw a 90 percent drop.”
SO FAR: The Five Biggest Bombshells (So Far) From Fauci’s Emails.
Here’s one: “Fauci knew of the NIH’s ties to gain-of-function research abroad. . . . Fauci had publicly denied the NIH was funding gain-of-function research at the Wuhan Institute of Virology.”
THE MORE THE ESTABLISHMENT TRIED TO CRUSH THIS IDEA, THE MORE CURRENCY IT GAINED: Most now believe China made virus and 24% say it was ‘released on purpose’.
China produced the Wuhan virus. Hundreds of thousands of Americans died. Our ruling class — politicians, tech oligarchs, news media — is in China’s pocket, and has been covering for them, while using the pandemic as an excuse to extend its own power.
What price will our ruling class pay for adhering to the Chinese government?
Related, from a friend:
Also:
LANNY DAVIS: A Darkness At Yale: The university offers little explanation for changing a 90-year-old governance policy.
Yale’s Latin motto is “Lux et Veritas”: “Light and Truth.” Yet the Yale Board of Trustees has acted in a way contradicting these two important values. The board’s May 24 decision to eliminate trustee nominations by alumni petition outside the board’s own processes is contrary to good corporate-governance principles, which aim to give all stakeholders a voice. And the process by which the trustees reversed the practice of allowing alumni petitions, which dates back to 1929—without notice, abruptly, without any input from alumni—is indefensible.
Trustee Catharine Bond Hill, a 1985 Yale graduate and former president of Vassar College, made matters worse when she announced the decision. She stated that the alumni petition process created divisive “issue-based candidates” and “cause-based elections.” But she presented no facts to support that conclusion.
Making matters worse, the letter was borderline insulting. It offered no justification for the secretive, abrupt process of announcing a reversal of a policy that had stood for nearly 100 years. Why? Shouldn’t the trustees have explained the reasons why this decision had to be made hastily, without open debate, immediately ahead of the next annual round of trustee nominations?
They don’t think they owe anything to anyone.
FINALLY: The Military-Industrial Complex Is Atoning For Its White Privilege. “The idea that what these merchants of death really need is another Ibram Kendi-inspired seminar should underscore yet again the reality here: critical race theory is post-Christian religious absolution for elites. Ultimately, though, we do need a military and we do need weapons contractors. And right now, those institutions are dysfunctional, overpriced, bureaucratic, unaccountable, and saddled in inefficiencies. Does anyone seriously think a little wokeness is going to make that better? The entire point of CRT is to diminish excellence and personal responsibility in the name of ‘equity’ by way of useless consultants. That’s about the last thing our military-industrial complex needs right now.”
NOW THAT THE TRUTH ABOUT FAUCI IS COMING OUT: Issues & Insights provides a handy roundup of the recent revelations that both demonstrate the federal government’s highest paid employee has a tenuous relationship with truth-telling and that his former commander-in-chief was right-on about him.
STAY ON TARGET: Steve Scalise Is Gunning for Dr. Fauci. “Americans deserve answers from the doctor whose every utterance was treated as that of an Olympian deity by the left and much of the media, and who benefited from social media censorship against anyone questioning him.”
FASTER? PLEASE! United Airlines is buying 15 supersonic aircraft from Boom Supersonic.
United Airlines has agreed to purchase 15 supersonic aircraft from Boom Supersonic, with an option to increase that order to 50 jets, the companies announced Thursday. That agreement, though, is still subject to change depending on the outcome of United’s safety testing and also Boom’s ability to deliver on its promises despite never having built or flown a full-scale supersonic jet before.
If Boom’s Overture jets pass inspection, the plan is for them to be rolled out in 2025, fly in 2026, and expected to carry passengers by 2029.
That’s a lot of ifs, depends, and expectations, but it will be at least interesting to watch how it pans out.
REALCLEARINVESTIGATIONS: How Biden’s Favored Unions Could Get Jammed in His Infrastructure Traffic. “President Biden repeatedly insists that his infrastructure plan will create millions of jobs and labor unions will be the big winners. But interviews with economists, union leaders, government officials and trade groups as well as basic math suggest otherwise.”
Biden: “It was my understanding that there would be no math.”
NEW CIVILITY WATCH: Journalist Andy Ngo Speaks About Being Attacked in Portland.
I inserted the J-word deliberately into the above headline:
THAT 70S SHOW: Under Biden, Brace Yourselves For ‘Shrinkflation.’ “Consumers are paying more for a growing range of household staples in ways that don’t show up on receipts — thinner rolls, lighter bags, smaller cans — as companies look to offset rising labor and materials costs without scaring off customers.”
That only works for so long.
JOEL KOTKIN: A Middle Class Rebellion Against Progressives Is Gaining Steam.
This new middle-class rebellion isn’t rejecting everything that progressives stand for; the Left’s critique of neo-liberal excess is resonating, as is the need for improved access to health care. But the current focus on “systemic racism,” coupled with a newfound and heavily enforced cultural conformism and the obsessive focus on a never-ending litany of impending “climate emergences” are less likely to pass muster with most of the middle class, no matter how popular they are with the media, academics, and others in the progressive corner.
And this new middle-class rebellion is being bolstered by a wide-ranging intellectual rebellion by traditional liberals against the Left’s dogmatism and intolerance. Indeed, what we’re about to see has the potential to reprise the great shift among old liberals that had them embracing Reagan in reaction to the Left’s excesses of that generation.
In a way, this should not be surprising. After all, the progressive base is limited: According to a survey conducted by the non-partisan group More in Common, progressives constitute barely eight percent of the electorate. The report also found that fully 80 percent of all Americans believe that “political correctness is a problem,” including large majorities of millennials and racial minorities. Our tech overlords at Google, Facebook, Amazon and the rest likewise regard their customers with contempt. And the people who run our news organizations are deeply impressed with themselves, though their brilliance is rarely in evidence.
The left knows it’s outnumbered, which is why its #1 priority is making sure, via its control of the media, tech, etc., that its opponents can’t get together and get organized.
BARI WEISS: What Happens When Doctors Can’t Tell the Truth? Whole areas of research are off-limits. Top physicians treat patients based on their race. An ideological ‘purge’ is underway in American medicine. “I’ve heard from doctors who’ve been reported to their departments for criticizing residents for being late. (It was seen by their trainees as an act of racism.) I’ve heard from doctors who’ve stopped giving trainees honest feedback for fear of retaliation. I’ve spoken to those who have seen clinicians and residents refuse to treat patients based on their race or their perceived conservative politics.”
FROM PATRICK CHILES: Frontier.
Marshall Hunter only wanted to fly: the faster, the higher, the better. But a life of rescuing wayward spacefarers and derelict satellites in the cislunar cruiser U.S.S. Borman is far from the adventure he’d imagined. But his fortunes change when a billionaire couple goes missing on their way to a near-Earth asteroid. Out of contact and on a course that will eventually send them crashing into Mars, the nuclear-powered Borman is dispatched on an audacious, high-speed interplanetary run to bring the couple home. As they approach the asteroid, however, the Borman itself becomes hopelessly disabled.
With the Borman suddenly out of commission and far beyond reach, cislunar space begins falling into chaos as critical satellites fail and valuable lunar mineral shipments begin disappearing in transit. Nothing is as it seems, and Marshall Hunter and the rest of the crew suspect none of it is by coincidence.
UP, UP & AWAY: On this day in 1783, the Montgolfier brothers publicly demonstrated their new invention—the hot-air balloon.
Joseph-Michel and Jacques-Étienne were the sons of a prosperous French paper manufacturer. Of the two, Joseph-Michel is thought to have been the “obsessed inventor” type, while Jacque-Étienne was the steady businessman.
Not surprisingly, it was Joseph-Michel who first became intensely interested in aeronautics. Among other things, he was fascinated by the way laundry drying over a fire would billow upwards. He began experimenting with directing heated air into a paper or fabric bag, thus causing the bag to rise. He wrote to his brother, “Get in a supply of taffeta and of cordage, quickly, and you will see one of the most astonishing sights in the world.”
By June 4, 1783, they were ready to demonstrate their invention to a crowd of dignitaries in the town of Annonay. The 10-minute flight was unmanned and undirected, but it was said to have achieved an altitude of about 5200 feet. That’s not bad, especially when compared to the 12-second, 120 feet in distance achieved by the Wright Brothers on their second effort at heavier-than-air flight.
In order to really grab the public’s attention, Jacques-Étienne wanted their balloons to be beautiful. He collaborated with wallpaper manufacturer Jean-Baptiste Réveillon to produce a sky blue one with golden representations of suns and zodiac signs. On September 19, 1783, this balloon was launched from Versailles with Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette in attendance. It had passengers of sorts—a sheep, a duck and a rooster. Continue reading ‘UP, UP & AWAY: On this day in 1783, the Montgolfier brothers publicly demonstrated their new inv…’ »
GO, REAL AMERICA’S PAPER OF RECORD. SHOW THE DINGY LADY WHERE SHE GETS OFF: Lawyered-up Babylon Bee accuses New York Times of defamation, demands retraction.
OKAY, GUYS, I HAVE THIS AMAZING SERIES IN MY HEAD: Italian artist sells invisible sculpture for $18,000 that “only exists in his mind”.
It’s ten books, and it’s amazing. Who wants to buy it for 18k?
I wonder what the Remodern Review will think of that?
IT’S ALL A HORROR SHOW: Yet another official hobgoblin to frighten the citizenry.
JOINING CUOMO: Fauci Book Disappears From Online Pre-Sales.
WILL IT BE ENGLISH: Robert Mueller to Teach Class on Mueller Investigation.
THE POLICE ARE DEFUNDED AND SOROS-SPONSORED D.A. CHESA BOUDIN WON’T CHARGE: Shocking video shows teen set woman’s hair on fire on San Francisco bus.
THE LOCAL AMERICAN LEGION HAS SOME ‘SPLAINING TO DO: Vet’s mic cut off as he spoke of role freed slaves played in Memorial Day origins.
HE’S RIGHT, YOU KNOW? Compulsory Charity Isn’t Charity.
THOSE ANCESTORS ARE DEAD, SWEETHEART – JUSTICE IS NO LONGER OURS TO DELIVER THEM: California task force holds first meeting to study reparations for slave descendants.
June 3, 2021
PREDICTION: IT WILL BE AT LEAST 10 YEARS. Study: COVID-19 risk for reinfection low 10 months after first infection.
MY NEW YORK POST COLUMN: Yale’s move to rig board elections reveals the bankruptcy of US elites. “As the pandemic especially underscored, the people who run our institutions look with disdain at those they are supposed to serve. They think that they’re so much smarter and better than everyone else, which entitles them to have their way, without interference from the unwashed masses. (Yale, apparently, regards even its own graduates as unwashed.)”
Plus: “Our elites’ eagerness to escape accountability reveals a bitter truth.”
Flashback: The Fall of the American Establishment and Its Consequences.
OUT ON A LIMB: No, Ellie Kemper Is Not a ‘KKK Queen.’
Once somebody decides to go after you on social media, there’s nothing you can do to defend yourself. Defying the mob is framed in the press as “doubling down,” and groveling for forgiveness just emboldens your tormentors. Kafka was an amateur, man.
There’s an entire media ecosystem devoted to whipping up these fake outrages for clicks. Why go after Ellie Kemper? Why not go after Ellie Kemper. Or you, or me, or anybody. We can be cancelled at any moment, for any reason or no reason at all.
If you’ve got enough money, all you can do is hide out until the mob moves on to another target. But if you can’t afford to just disappear for days or weeks or months… shrug emoji!
That trending topic description about Republican Rep. María Elvira Salazar was simply wrong. As CNN noted later in a fact-check, “Salazar did not take credit for any part of the American Rescue Plan.”
Hand-selected. Curated. False.
“We aim to uphold high standards of accuracy, impartiality and fairness in our curation,” Twitter says of their various curation efforts, to include the contextualized and mysteriously monitored trending topics.
In practice, the impartiality is rare, the fairness is rarer, and the accuracy, which should be as close to 100% as possible, can seem like an afterthought.
It is not me or Josh Hawley or Elizabeth Warren or anyone else that put Twitter in the business of deciding to allow certain racism to remain on the platform, certain presidents to not remain, or certain presidential offspring to be protected to the point of suspending entire newspapers. It’s not any of us who told Twitter they should decide what is and is not scientifically sound information about Covid, or to decide what is and is not the best takeaway from thousands of tweets accusing an actor of being a “KKK Queen.”
Twitter decided to do that. It seems like expecting them to live up to the standards they set forth for this task they set themselves to isn’t so very much to expect.
As Treacher writes, “This sort of crap generates traffic for Twitter, which is why they amplify it. They know there’s a mob with torches and pitchforks at the ready, just waiting to be pointed toward the next victim. And Jack Dorsey sits on his billions and watches what he’s done. With great power comes great irresponsibility.”
ONE BIZARRE DETAIL FROM BIDEN’S $6+ TRILLION BUDGET PROPOSAL WAS JUST EXPOSED:
As reported by the Journal, Biden’s budget projects that growth will surge to 5.2 percent in 2021 and 4.3 percent in 2022. Those numbers are strong. But then, by the White House’s own admission, growth will fall to 2.2 percent in 2023 and slump to around 1.9 percent for the rest of the decade. These levels are bleak, not the roaring revival Biden has promised.
“The White House is essentially conceding that all of its unprecedented monetary and fiscal stimulus really is living for today with little regard for the future,” the Journal’s editorial board writes. “It implicitly concedes that the growth it spurs now will have to be paid back later in the form of higher taxes or tighter monetary policy, which might reduce growth. This is the definition of a ‘sugar high.’”
“This contrasts with genuinely pro-growth policies, which seek to create the circumstances for long-term prosperity,” they conclude. “They create better permanent incentives to work and invest.”
Those are awfully anemic numbers for what could be the presidential run of Kamala Harris. If indeed, she’ll even be running: The Abuse of Kamala Harris.
Harris’s visibility on issues that Democrats believe are central concerns for the communities of color on whom they depend for electoral successes is no accident. But setting the vice president up for failure after failure at the expense of her viability within the Democratic Party would seem to trade short-term gain for long-term misfortune. That is, if Harris really is the heir apparent that so many presume her to be.
But then economic growth and stability don’t seem high on the list of goals for the current president –cough — Ron Klain –cough –: As Biden fights US fuel production, American workers and consumers will suffer.
Of course, it’s not like Biden himself believed in a strong stable economy, even when (more of) his gears were working: Milton Friedman’s Revenge.
BEN SMITH BENSMITHS HIMSELF: New York Times’ Ben Smith finds it ‘really amazing’ how the media mostly looked away from the lab-leak theory.
As the Urban Dictionary noted in 2012:
Evergreen:
UNEXPECTED BACKBONE: Biden Orders Ban on 59 Chinese Defense and Tech Firms.
Flashback: Will Joe Biden take on our alarming China problem?
But maybe Biden is under pressure: Trump Says Fauci Exposed, China Should Pay $10 Trillion in Damages.
FLASHBACK: CDC Study: Use of Firearms for Self-Defense is ‘Important Crime Deterrent.’ Hey, they have to get something right occasionally.
BAH, BIG DEAL. WE’RE MAKING ADVANCES IN CRITICAL RACE THEORY. China edges closer to fusion power.
NOW OUT FROM ANDREW WAREHAM: No Peace Beyond The Line.
ROGER SIMON: For Many of America’s Elites, China and Communism Have Already Won.
So many parts of our society are guilty of this it’s almost impossible to enumerate.
But we could start with the corporate world that is turning toward “wokeness” in droves—not that their CEOs are giving up a penny of their $15m plus salaries or have stopped profiting as much as possible from the despotic CCP.
In reality, that hypocrisy is the point for these globalists.
Globalism, as I wrote in an earlier piece, is in reality China-ism. That’s how it works.
A perfect example is giant Apple whose most recent quarterly China revenue came in at a record-breaking $21 billion+. At the same time we got all sorts of “social justicey” talk from CEO Tim Cook.
What Cook is doing, cashing in big on one side while mouthing “liberal” pieties on the other, suits the Chinese communists perfectly well, essentially enabling them. Apple then becomes a linchpin of American communism much in the way Huawei is a linchpin of Chinese communism. (Not inconsequentially, Apple’s top five executives, including Cook, earned a total of almost exactly $120 million in 2020, up 13 percent during the pandemic.)
Almost our entire corporate world is trotting eagerly behind, the majority acting in the same manner. And now, scariest of all, the military has gone “woke.” Who benefits from that?
The Bill of Rights, “liberty and justice for all,” what we knew to be America or, for that matter, any truths “we h[e]ld to be self-evident” are being left in the dust in this alacrity to exploit the Chinese market.
At least when Nixon and Kissinger went to meet with Mao and Chou, they had excuses—that they could triangulate with the USSR and that, possibly, opening up Communist China might induce them to be like us. That was proven wrong, and then some, when China joined the World Trade Association.
With what we now know about concentration camps holding a million or Uighurs, not to mention the Wuhan Institute of Virology, Robert Harris’s thinly disguised version of detente with the Soviet Union and China in Fatherland was more spot-on than he could have possibly imagined in 1992.
NEWS YOU CAN USE: FDA: Don’t eat cicadas if you have seafood allergies.
THE AMERICA THAT WORKS: SpaceX launches new solar arrays to space station, nails rocket landing at sea.
AT HELEN’S PAGE: DreamFlower Works art. I like that you can build your own art piece.
SAD: I’m Not Scared to Reenter Society. I’m Just Not Sure I Want To. “I’ve always loved weekends and summers, those officially sanctioned respites from productivity. This year was like one long Sunday afternoon: society suspended, life on hiatus. It felt like being offstage, or hanging out in the kitchen at a party. My circadian cycle ran amok; I stayed up long after midnight, when the world wasn’t watching, and tried to sleep through the mornings, when I used to write. I liked listening to the warm, amniotic thrum of the dishwasher, like the sound of the car engine when you were a kid, nodding off in the back seat, knowing the grownups would get you safely home. I was grateful for debilitating blizzards and cold snaps, when no sane person would venture outdoors. Recently it was oppressively nice out, 75 and sunny, and I never left my apartment. I’ve come to love the darkness, snug in my cocoon.”
Virtue-signaling for the proudly despondent.
ALL THE FAKE NEWS FIT TO PRINT: Hans Bader: New York Times spreads propaganda from terrorist group Hamas.
SPACE: Virgin Galactic announces another human-tended science flight. “We’re going to finish our test flight program this year.”
YOU KNOW YOU’RE OVER THE TARGET WHEN YOU START RECEIVING FLAK: “Dr. Robert Redfield, former director of the CDC, said he received death threats from fellow scientists after telling CNN he thought the virus likely escaped from a lab. ‘I expected it from politicians. I didn’t expect it from science,’ he said.”
And speaking of death threats: Chinese State Media Warns of Nuclear War with US In Wake of Covid-Origins Investigation.
Flashback from November of 2019: How to Conduct Business with Chinese Companies That See a Dark Future.
VOX BEING VOX: Zach Beauchamp credulously quotes a far-left source: “Palestinian leaders have condemned antisemitism publicly and repeatedly.”
The Palestinians have two actual, elected (albeit in 2006) governments, Hamas and the Palestinian Authority. Hamas is literally a genocidal antisemitic organization. The head of the Palestinian Authority, Mahmoud Abbas, is a long-time Holocaust denier, who more lately focuses on denying Jewish history in Jerusalem. The most popular Palestinian leader currently out of power, Marwan Barghouti, is in an Israeli jail for directing several terrorist murders of Israeli civilians–after Israel had offered the Palestinians independence in 2000. The Palestinian public in the Territories is among the most antisemitic in the world. The idea that the tie between antisemitism and Palestinian nationalism has been invented by Jewish organizations to “reinforce lurking anxieties that advocacy for Palestinian rights is inherently antisemitic” is maybe, along with the claim that Palestinian leaders routinely condemn antisemitism, perhaps the most gaslighty thing I’ve read all year. Beauchamp reports it, though, without comment. Of course, Beauchamp also once thought there was a bridge between the West Bank and Gaza.
Even if we are extremely generous, and assume that the source only meant prominent American Palestinians, the claim is still extremely dubious, and it’s also very unlikely that, say, Rashida Tlaib has more influence on pro-Palestinian rhetoric and actions than the actual Palestinian leadership, especially given that the perpetrators of recent antisemitic violence seem primarily to be immigrants.
RAPID PROGRESS: Brain-Computer Interface Smashes Previous Record for Typing Speed.
Well, this is the 21st Century, you know.
CHANGE: COVID-19 cases hit lowest point in U.S. since pandemic began. “Nearly every week for the past 56 weeks, Axios has tracked the change — more often than not, the increase — in new COVID-19 infections. Those case counts are now so low, the virus is so well contained, that this will be our final weekly map.”
SPACEX LAUNCHES new Dragon Cargo mission.
READER BOOK PLUG: Reader Konrad Miller teaches distillation chemistry at UC Davis — you may recall I linked his online lectures a while back — and now he’s got a textbook coming out: Unit Operations in Winery, Brewery, and Distillery Design.
IT’S GOOD TO BE THE NOMENKLATURA: New York Taxpayers Paying Andrew Cuomo’s $2.5 Million Legal Fees For Sexual Misconduct Allegations, Pandemic Probe.
AMERICA’S NEWSPAPER OF RECORD IN LEGAL FEUD WITH SCRAPPY NEW YORK UPSTART: Lawyered-up Babylon Bee accuses New York Times of defamation, demands retraction.
(Classical allusion in headline.)
FIRST SPACESHIP ON VENUS . . . SINCE 1989: NASA will launch first U.S. missions to Venus since 1989.
IS THE NEW YORK TIMES A LIBERAL NEWSPAPER? OF COURSE IT IS: Donald McNeil described Americans as ‘selfish pigs’ in email to Fauci. The then-New York Times science writer compared us unfavorably to the average Chinese who ‘behaved incredibly heroically.’
(Classical reference in headline.)
UPDATE (FROM GLENN): This makes me feel somewhat less bad about his later-cancellation at the hands of woke newsroom garbage babies.
MAKE IT A SUMMER OF FREEDOM NO MATTER WHAT SLOW JOE SAYS: Joe Biden calls for ‘summer of freedom’ in June vaccination push.
AT HELEN’S PAGE: Professor Carol’s Why Freshmen Fail: and How to Avoid It.
COLORADO: Boulder shooting victim’s husband wants audit of non-profits collecting funds. “Mackenzie started a group called Stand Up Bolder that advocates for the state to audit non-profits, create a specific fund for victims and appoint a special administrator to determine how to expeditiously and properly distribute the money.”
FLASHBACK: Angelo Codevilla: Scamocracy in America. “At its core, the ruling class politics of Covid-19 is now no more about public health than environmentalism is about the environment, or Feminism is about doing good to women, or BLM is about saving black lives, or the education establishment is about cognition, or the national security establishment is about public safety. None of these causes are about their purported objective than communism was about equality or the proletariat. Lenin made clear in ‘What Is To Be Done?’ (1902) that the revolution is all about power for ‘the vanguard of the proletariat.’ The Party. Like communism, each of today’s revolutionary movements is based on its own lie, and all are all scams—the purpose of which is to transfer ever more power to the ruling class.”
THE SUICIDE OF EXPERTISE: ‘Too Long for Me to Read’: Fauci Dismissed Expert’s Email About Chinese Disinformation on COVID-19.
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