IMPRESSIVE: High School Student Discovers 1.5 Million Potential New Astronomical Objects by Developing an A.I. Algorithm. “Matteo Paz from Pasadena, California, recently won the first place prize of $250,000 in the 2025 Regeneron Science Talent Search for combining machine learning with astronomy. Self-described as the nation’s ‘oldest and most prestigious science and math competition for high school seniors,’ the contest recognized Paz for developing his A.I. algorithm. The young scientist’s tool processed 200 billion data entries from NASA’s now-retired Near-Earth Object Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer (NEOWISE) telescope. His model revealed 1.5 million previously unknown potential celestial bodies.”
April 17, 2025
CHANGE? Meet the Man Who Murdered the Democratic Party. “A pair of earthshattering, history-altering, Chris Christie-sized stories broke this week, but they’ve (mostly) skated beneath the political periphery. That’s because you can’t grasp the sheer enormity of the consequences until you connect them together.”
WASN’T THIS A SAM PECKINPAH MOVIE? Everything the Democrats Don’t Want You to Know About Abrego Garcia.
READER FAVORITE: First Aid Beauty – KP Bump Eraser Body Scrub. #CommissionEarned
I’VE HAD SIMILAR THOUGHTS: Is It August 1941 Again? If So Is There A Chinese Operation Z In The Works?
For many years before the United States entered World War II, tensions between the United States and Japan escalated. In the months prior to December 7, 1941, those tensions reached the breaking point. Responding to the Japanese occupation of airfields in French Indochina, the U.S. froze all Japanese assets on July 26, 1941. On August 1st, it imposed an embargo on oil and gasoline exports to Japan. Without those exports, the Japanese economy and military would grind to a halt.
The Japanese were faced with a clear choice. The sanctions imposed by the United States were a fatal blow to Japan’s economy. Tokyo could knuckle under, or it could strike first.
That didn’t work out very well.
21st CENTURY HEADLINES: James May reviews a fully driverless car (video).
The video goes on quite a bit too long, but for longtime Top Gear viewers, the punchline is a hoot.
It does make me slightly less apprehensive about riding in a self-driving car though: Lyft plans to launch robotaxi service in Dallas in 2026. “The ride-sharing company Lyft said Monday it plans to roll out a full self-driving robotaxi service in Dallas next year. The announcement comes as rival Uber plans to launch its self-driving taxi service with Google’s Waymo cars in Austin, Texas, next month.”
STANDING UP TO BIGOTRY: DOJ probes four California colleges for race-based admissions.
EITHER THE NUKES HAVE TO GO OR THE REGIME DOES: Netanyahu Says Iran’s Nuclear Program ‘Must Be Eliminated’ As U.S. Set to Meet With Iran Again.
GEORGETOWN’S SCHOOL OF FOREIGN SERVICE’S REPUTATION IS LIKELY TO PLUMMET: Georgetown Eyes Vote on Israeli Divestment Resolution Sponsored by School of Foreign Service Student: School’s student government postponed the vote, originally set to be held during Passover, after pushback from Jewish groups.
THE DEMOCRATS’ APPEAL IS BECOMING MORE SELECTIVE: Politico: Guess Where Voters Are Getting Tired of La Résistance? “Voters, on the other hand, have had enough … even in California. According to Politico’s new poll, Golden State voters have no real interest in going to war with Donald Trump. Instead, they seem less enthused than ever about the state’s one-party rule and the fruits it has borne.”
Fruits of a poisonous tree.
JOYLESS GUARDIAN WRITER SAYS: The Blue Origin flight showcased the utter defeat of American feminism.
This lede is just too precious for writer Moira Donegan’s utter lack of self-awareness while decrying our lack of self-awareness: “There are some spectacles of US decadence and decline that almost seem too on the nose – the sort of orgies of vulgar provocation or fantastic lack of self-awareness that exceed the limits of parody, so that if they were in a novel, you’d think the writer was laying it on a little thick.”
Say what you will about the merits of Blue Origin’s all-female passenger flight but those women touched the edge of space on an American-built joyride that you can’t get in Britain at any price.
If that’s decadence and decline, then what do you call Britain’s ongoing dewesternization?
KRUISER’S MORNING BRIEFING: Loading Up on Popcorn to Watch Trump Break Harvard. “No one on the Right has even taken a brief, easy run at the grifters in Academia before. President Trump is going after them and their money hard. There’s a lot at stake here. The rot in Academia is so deep that getting rid of it without burning it all down (a guy can dream) can’t be done with halfhearted measures.”
BECAUSE THEY’RE GARBAGE PEOPLE WITH MENTAL PROBLEMS? Why Progressives Increasingly Support Violence: A new survey finds more than half of left-wing respondents believe assassinating Donald Trump could be justified.
UNEXPECTEDLY! David Hogg Turning Out to Be a Terrific Pick for DNC Vice Chair.
It has been a busy spring since winning a Democratic National Committee Vice Chair post [Beege adds: 1 of 5 VCs], an event I can only attribute to the current state of Democratic Party upheaval and disarray, and, evidently, the overwhelming lack of a single, sane member.
Hogg’s ascension was the lunatic cherry on top of the DNC Crazy Town sundae – we all know who’s in charge of the asylum now.
It didn’t take the twee lad long to exercise his tremendous powers of persuasion. Two weeks after winning, DNC members were already being persuaded that this attention Hogg was a big mistake.
…
Some were questioning the wisdom of elevating a media-made creature of so little accomplishment, particularly at a time when the party was being held in so little regard.
When you’re considered too young and callow for the party currently going all-in on AOC as the party’s future…
21st CENTURY HEADLINES: Don’t like a columnist’s opinion? Los Angeles Times offers an AI-generated opposing viewpoint.
OH, HE REALLY SHOULD: Will Trump Do a Bob Jones on Haahvaahd?
They keep making rules they never expected to live by. https://t.co/LLaPVhjirw
— Randy Barnett (@RandyEBarnett) April 16, 2025
The results of the vast majority of all government-funded scientific studies can't be reproduced.
For every $1 of government scientific research funding cut, private industry raises $3.
There's no correlation between government-funded scientific research and economic growth.
— Tim Starr (@timstarr2001) April 16, 2025
New York Post: Harvard may be free to target Jews — but not on the taxpayers’ dime.
MASK DROPPED: CNN and Taylor Lorenz Exposed Their Motivation.
Earier in her CNN interview, [Lorenz] justified her appreciation for [Luigi] Mangione:
It’s hilarious to see these millionaire media pundits on TV clutching their pearls about someone standing a murderer when this is the United States of America, as if we don’t lionize criminals, as if we don’t have, you know, we don’t stand murderers of all sorts, and we give them Netflix shows. There’s a huge disconnect between the narratives and angles of mainstream media pushes and what the American public feels. And you see that in moments like this.
Lorenz loves that Mangione allegedly murdered the United Healthcare CEO. She lit up with joy when discussing it. Her elation over it — and her statement that he was a “morally good man” exposes her motivation behind doxxing anonymous conservatives on social media — she wants certain people with opposing viewpoints dead.
It isn’t a stretch to connect the dots here — a national left-leaning journalist felt it necessary to expose the identity of an anonymous conservative video aggregator who was gaining traction by exposing the far-left’s insanity. That same journalist considers the alleged murderer of a healthcare CEO “revolutionary, famous, handsome, smart, and a morally good man.”
She was doing it all because she can justify murder and violence against those she disagrees with — she wouldn’t necessarily personally do it, but if she could expose the identities of people she doesn’t like and where they live — she’d be OK with, “a morally good man” taking it from there.
CNN not denouncing her actions or this interview implicates their motives as well. After all, it doesn’t seem like that long ago since the network sent reporters to ambush random elderly women at their homes for sharing pro-Trump memes.
Unlike CNN’s gushing Donie O’Sullivan, Fox News’ Sean Hannity tried a more aggressive approach to get Lorenz to put the breaks on her pro-assassination rhetoric, but not surprisingly, Lorenz is sticking to her guns:
HANNITY: "Do you condemn people that call for assassination?"
LORENZ: "Gosh, you're gonna ask me if I condemn Hamas next, this is crazy!" pic.twitter.com/DP8FsGowfV
— Daily Caller (@DailyCaller) April 17, 2025
No, I think we already know the answer to that based on her actions last year: “Washington Post reporter Taylor Lorenz on Monday pushed a false claim that a Los Angeles synagogue was auctioning off Palestinian land this week—a conspiracy theory that led to violent, anti-Semitic protests outside the Jewish house of worship on Sunday.”
Not to mention calling then-President Joe Biden a “War Criminal:”
And I think we all know the answer to this dilemma as well, based purely on aesthetics:
I'm trying as hard as I can, and I just can't figure out why Taylor Lorenz is so into Luigi Mangione but not Cody Balmer. If anything, Cody Balmer's motive is much more related to Taylor's own causes and passions.
Help me out here. pic.twitter.com/w9qvgYU57C
— Alan Cole (@AlanMCole) April 16, 2025
ICYMI: You’ll Never Believe What Slow Learners the Democrats Are. “Democrats want their party to become more progressive than what, exactly? Sorry, I didn’t mean to mislead you, but this actually raises a whole host of questions about current progressive policies and proposals — and I don’t even need to drink my lunch before asking them all.”
STANDING UP FOR THE ENVIRONMENT: Trump Admin Halts New York Offshore Wind Project, Orders Review of All Existing Biden-Era Wind Permits.
COVID FIVE YEARS AGO TODAY: Coronavirus: San Clemente Fills Skatepark With 37 Tons Of Sand After Skaters Ignore ‘No Trespassing’ Signs.
A popular skatepark in San Clemente was filled with sand to discourage skaters from using it during the coronavirus pandemic and to promote social distancing.
San Clemente had shut down all its parks and facilities on April 1 under the state’s stay-at-home orders, but skaters ignored signs warning against trespassing at the Ralphs Skate Court, 241 Avenida La Pata.
Since park facilities have been closed city officials say they routinely saw people visit the skatepark, even by some children accompanied with their parents, according to the San Clemente Times.
Later in April of 2020, Mark Judge explored: Skateboarding with Jordan Peterson—and Nietzsche.
“Do Not Bother Children When They Are Skateboarding.”
That is Rule 11 in Jordan Peterson’s bestseller 12 Rules for Life: An Antidote to Chaos. Peterson explores how skateboarding is a way for boys to test danger and learn to deal with risk and pain, and as such is a valuable source of socialization and psychic health. To Peterson, the buzzkills who clamp down on skateboard riders suffer from acute resentment; they are bitter at the freedom, bravery, and style of the riders: “Beneath the production of rules stopping the skateboarders from doing highly skilled, courageous and dangerous things, I see the operation of an insidious and profoundly anti-human spirit.”
To drive the point home, Peterson offers this humdinger of a quote from Nietzsche:
For that man be delivered from revenge, that is for me the bridge to the highest hope, and a rainbow after long storms. The tarantulas, of course, would have it otherwise. “What justice means to us is precisely that the world be filled with the storms of our revenge”—thus they speak to each other. “We shall wreak vengeance and abuse on all whose equals we are not”—thus do the tarantula-hearts vow. “And ‘will to equality’ shall henceforth be the name for virtue; and against all that has power we want to raise our clamor!” You preachers of equality, the tyrannomania of impotence clamors thus out of you for equality: your most secret ambitions to be tyrants thus shroud themselves in words of virtue. (Thus Spoke Zarathustra, 1883)
I would adapt Peterson’s rule only slightly: “Do Not Bother Children or Adults When They Are Skateboarding.”
Along with jazz, movies, modern dance, and comic books, skateboarding is one of America’s great original art forms. A $5 billion industry with 16 million members in the United States, skateboarding fosters entrepreneurship, independence, physical grace and toughness, community, creativity, and freedom. The sport has been a friend to me for almost fifty years, reappearing at various times over the decades to thrill and re-enchant. When it was recently reported that a California skate park was filled with sand to prevent skating and promote social distancing during the coronavirus pandemic, it felt to me like someone had spray-painted on the Lincoln Memorial.
No one knew in April of 2020 that defacing – and toppling — major cultural artifacts was right around the corner. In the meantime, there were endless quantities of what Roger Kimball dubbed “reverse gaslighting” last year to go around: “Ordinary gaslighting — the term was popularized by the 1944 movie Gaslight — describes a process of psychological manipulation whose goal is to make ordinary people question their sanity. Reverse gaslighting, by contrast, aims to convince us that insane realities are perfectly normal:”
Imagine: practically the entire population quarantines itself because a couple of government bureaucrats tell them to. Everyone starts wearing little paper masks as patents of their capitulation and, secondarily, as badges of their virtue. Out in the world, they obediently stand six feet away from one another because the same bureaucrats tell them such behavior will “slow the spread” of a seasonal respiratory virus that is dangerous to a minuscule part of the population. This insanity is deemed normal.
So is the insanity of censoring, firing or even imprisoning people who question this insane orthodoxy. In a repellent effort to capitalize on the moral authority of the Holocaust, such dissenters are repudiated as “Covid deniers.” They are ostracized by polite society and subject to all manner of sanctions. All this was insane behavior, but our addiction to reverse gaslighting requires that we regard it, or at least say we regard it, as normal.
Suddenly, certain people are empowered to decide whose businesses are “essential” and whose are expendable. If you own a liquor store, congratulations! Your business is essential. Schools, churches, most restaurants, your aunt’s corner shop: sorry! They must be shuttered. This insanity is accepted, if grudgingly, as normal in the age of reverse gaslighting. You cannot visit your dying grandmother in her nursing home: that interdiction is said to be normal, not cruelly insane.
Thus just two days apart five years ago this week, headlines announcing “Exercise May Protect Against Deadly COVID-19 Complication, Research Suggests,” and news of skateboard parks filled with sand to prevent young people from doing just that. As Kimball wrote in the passage above, “This was insane behavior, but our addiction to reverse gaslighting requires that we regard it, or at least say we regard it, as normal.”
(Fortunately, those who use the San Clemente skatepark were immediately able to see through the charade: A California city filled its skate park with sand to deter skateboarders. Then the dirt bikes showed up.)
LIGHTNING DEAL: Bonsaii Paper Shredder for Home Use. #CommissionEarned
COMMIES LIE ABOUT EVERYTHING: China’s Defense Budget Is Bigger than You Think.
During the Cold War, the United States never trusted its adversaries’ claims about their capabilities. Instead, it always sought to verify them through intelligence analysis. Today, China’s impressive and aggressive military expansion, allegedly achieved on a shoestring budget, should raise eyebrows, even from typically credulous consumers of official CCP reports. Specifically, China reported at the National People’s Congress (NPC) earlier this month that its defense budget included total expenditures of only $245 billion.
Historically, these reports are intentionally vague and conveniently oversimplified. This year’s announcement is no different. It’s hard to know what the real numbers are. Still, it’s even harder to believe China’s officially reported military budget of $245 billion, which would equate to an implausibly low 1.5 percent of GDP.
The U.S. Defense Department’s 2024 China Military Power Report estimated that China’s 2024 military budget was publicly understated by at least 40–90 percent. The DOD has not yet released its 2025 China Military Power Report, but we can infer from perennial experience that the same is true again this year; China’s real military expenditure, accounting for all (or at least some) “off-budget spending,” probably amounts to between $330 and $450 billion. Senator Dan Sullivan (R-AK) has estimated the real Chinese defense budget is as high as $700 billion—and that was last year.
The CCP has expanded its military budget by at least 7.2 percent for two consecutive years. However, that figure itself also comes from official CCP reports and should be regarded with skepticism.
One thing is certain. China isn’t indulging in the fastest peacetime naval expansion in history on a $245 billion budget.
