Read it.

At present, disorder is progressives’ most vexing governance challenge. This is illustrated just as plainly by the Jazmine Headley incident Barron describes as the street crisis in San Francisco’s Tenderloin neighborhood. The Jazmine Headley incident centered around a “victimless crime.” Those are some of the hardest crimes to fight. When public safety authorities concern themselves with “victimless” crimes, that seems to violate John Stuart Mill’s “harm principle”: why should behavior that directly harms no one be a punishable offense?

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Let’s start with a more basic question. What is automation? Machines have replicated and augmented human work processes for centuries, and that is often the colloquial use of “automation” in our current moment. But “automation” was not used to describe this process until 1947, when Delmar Harder, vice president of manufacturing at Ford Motor Company, created its Automation Department. The department’s engineers redesigned automobile production so that materials were automatically conveyed from one process to another, obviating the need for laborers to load and unload machines. Further, the process was itself increasingly machine-controlled, through a system of timers, switches, and relays—what technology historian David Hounsell calls the “electromechanical brain.”

Most of the technologies involved in automation had been developed and implemented in other industries years before their incorporation into Ford’s production process. What made automation new was its centrality to Ford’s manufacturing strategy, coming at a time of historic unrest among autoworkers, and in particular, on the heels of a costly twenty-four-day strike at Ford’s massive River Rouge plant in May of 1949. Not only would the new technologies dramatically reduce an unruly labor force, but they allowed Ford to decentralize its production away from the roiling unrest of Detroit as the company opened new automated factories, with new less militant employees, in Cleveland and Buffalo. Workers immediately perceived the threat, and automation was, from its inception, a deeply politicized issue. The history of automation reveals it as a political tool to subvert worker power, not simply an economic one to increase productivity.

…

Investigating grocery store self-checkout, researchers found that Luddite customers hated and avoided the technology. In response, management cut staff to make lines so unbearable that customers gave up and used the machines instead. Even then, cashiers were still required to assist and monitor transactions; rather than reduce workload, the technologies were “intensifying the work of customer service and creating new challenges.”

…

“There is NO MORAL ISSUE with stealing from a store that forces you to use self checkout, period. THEY ARE CHARGING YOU TO WORK AT THEIR STORE.”

Read it.

Last time we took a look at the social place of people involved in war. We found that, far from there being a universal combatant, distinctions between soldiers and warriors are both significant for the present and important for understanding the past. Moreover, beyond that simple dichotomy, the idea of a universal war experience in turn conceals the basic fact that many people who were neither warriors nor soldiers, not properly combatants of any kind, experienced war in unique ways, be they victims of warfare, homefront supporters, or economically invested in the enterprise. Already we have seen that there’s far more than just one sort of person with a war experience.

Read it.

If, of course, that’s what you want to do.

Read it.

The EU is an American creation, as much as a European one. In the middle of the 20th century, there were more European federalists in Washington than in Brussels. Senators bashed out resolutions declaring: “Congress favours the creation of a United States of Europe.” The Marshall Plan, a torrent of post-war funding for the crippled continent, came on the condition that European countries meld themselves together. George Kennan, an American diplomat, summed up American policy: “We hoped to force the Europeans to think like Europeans, and not like nationalists.” Forget Jean Monnet. When it comes to naming founding fathers for the EU, the list should start with President Harry Truman.

One could as accurately say that it is the creation of the old Soviet Union, which isn’t round to blame any more.

Read it.

The Rapid Response Team of the Portland Police Bureau has endured over 150 nights of rioting. Not protests, riots. Riots that have not only destroyed the city’s reputation but have physically destroyed different neighborhoods in the city. Almost every member of the team has sustained injuries. Channel 2 News released a 14-point memo sent to the PPB Chief:

At the top of the list, Clark said nearly every team member had been injured during the protests last year.

“The injuries received ranged from multiple members with broken bones, torn ligaments and cartilage, traumatic brain injuries, hearing damage, damaged eye sight, lacerations, and burns,” he wrote.

He said members felt that bureau directives were being interpreted retroactively, leading to members being disciplined for policy changes that had not been in place when the officer acted during a protest.

Who has the George Soros prosecutor in Multnomah County started to prosecute? He’s searching for police officers to prosecute. He’s contacting attorneys whose rioting clients are suing the city. Some PPB officers allege he’s investigating police officers in hidden backdoor investigations. He does appear to be involving outside attorneys in the investigation of PPB officers.

Read it.

The wealthy have been fleeing the city all pandemic long, to lower-tax, lower-cost-of-living and lower-crime alternatives. That means big trouble ahead for those left behind, as the top 2 percent of earners supply 51 percent of New York’s income tax take.

Add in middle-class flight, and all the young upstaters leaving for lack of job opportunities, and you see why New York is one of just seven states to lose a House seat after the 2020 Census.

UPDATE: Young NYC homeless people to get $1,250 each month in city-backed study

Ben Thompson’s newsletter Stratechery is a must-read for followers of the tech sector.

Here he does a deep dive into the proposed tech legislation currently before Congress.

Read it.

Three people have been found dead and two remain missing after a group of tubers floating along the Dan River in North Carolina went over a dam, local authorities said on Thursday.

Think of it as evolution in action.

Read it.

Amazon has just introduced its “Just Walk Out” technology into a full-size 25,000 square foot Amazon Fresh grocery store. The system uses overhead cameras, pressure sensitive-shelves, and biometric data to determine what customers put in their carts. The new store will be open on June 17 in Bellevue, Washington.

“Bringing Just Walk Out technology to a full-size grocery space with the Amazon Fresh store in Bellevue showcases the technology’s continued ability to scale and adapt to new environments and selection. I’m thrilled it’ll help even more customers enjoy an easier and faster way to shop and can’t wait to get their feedback on this latest Just Walk Out offering,” Amazon’s vice president of Physical Retail and Technology, Dilip Kumar, said, according to The Verge.

ZMan lays it out.

The renewed interest in the origins of the Covid virus is a good reminder of several threads running through the modern political discourse. The most obvious being the reactionary nature of the establishment Left. Trump pinned the blame on China, so the establishment Left made it their mission to defend China. This fit in well with their corporate paymasters, who are happy to wash the feet of the Chinese government in exchange for access to Chinese consumers.

Of course, that leads into another subplot to the modern age. The willingness to submit everything to the marketplace, real and imagined. This is a root cause of the current crisis in America. Just because it is good for the economy in the short term to do business with China does not mean it is good to do business with China, but in the hyper-marketized world of today, no one questions it. Like everything else, right and wrong is left to the market to decide.

…

China is like a kid in a toy shop these days, as everything in the West is for sale at discount prices. Everything must go and no offer will be refused. Need a member of Congress who sits on the Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence? Short on cash? No problem! How about someone to run cover for letting a deadly virus loose on the world? You are in luck, as they are in stock and priced to sell! Everything must go!

 

Read it.

The people at Gr?v Technologies think farmers can produce wheatgrass for their herds with less land and water using the method.

Read it.

Noise as a solution makes sense, in theory: No thief wants attention, so make something that’ll draw lots of it. Problem is, we (police included) have become desensitized. We know how easy it is to accidentally trigger the those horrific whines and screeches —a heavy truck rumbling by, a motorcycle that’s had the baffles removed (another issue on its own), or just someone accidentally brushing against the side of the car while walking by. Even if the alarm is triggered during an honest-to-God break-in, what exactly are good Samaritans supposed to do? If anyone has ever rushed into the street at the sound of every car alarm, ready to go full vigilante on some ne’er-do-well shattering a window, I want to meet that person. In the city, a guy conspicuously stealing a bicycle doesn’t even get a second glance—how is a someone quickly smashing a window and running off supposed to rate?

 

Freeberg nails it.

For the past several years I have occasionally read “psychological profiles” and the like, struggling to triage a borderline mental illness that is Trump support. It’s actually Trump hatred that is more mystifying and more baffling. I’m sure history will ultimately record it that way. It is the #NeverTrump types who more closely resemble the witch hunters in Salem. And those witch hunters are the ones on the wrong side of history, whose wounded consciences and mental enfeeblements continue to fascinate us. Isn’t that obvious? If we could time travel back to 1692 and put one faction, or the other, in straight-jackets and padded cells, it would be the hunters, not the witches or their defenders. We relate to the hunters, but we think the worse of ourselves when we do, and that’s what makes The Crucible a dark story. It makes us wonder what’s wrong with us. That correlates to the Trump-phobes, not the Trump-philes.

Read it.

From taxpayer-funded abortion to suing the Little Sisters of the Poor, the dogma lives loudly in our very Catholic president. So, Tuesday morning, he’s popping into the Vatican to meet with Pope Francis. Never wanting to miss a photo-op, Team Biden asked that the president attend mass with the Pontifex Maximus. Maybe Joe could make intercessory prayers to St. Margaret Sanger and Pachamama.

“A dead enemy is the next best thing to a friend.”

— M.A.R. Barker, Prince of Skulls

ZMan waxes philosophical.

One of the underappreciated aspects of liberal democracy is that it always pits morality versus objective facts, always creating a false choice. Every public debate is between one camp that demand we do “the right thing” and another camp that insist on doing “the correct thing”. The right thing is defined as the moral thing while the correct thing is the factually accurate or effective thing. The choice is failure while on the moral high ground or succeed and be seen and inhumane or indifferent.

We see this in the perennial proglodyte push for ‘soak the rich’. The premise (never stated, always just assumed) is that income/wealth inequality is somehow immoral, so we are morally obliged to rob productive people of their property, however gotten, in order to ensure a Right Moral Order. (If that means that you can distribute the swag among your Underclass followers and thereby ensure your own power, well, that’s an added bonus – who deserves it more than the Paragons of Virtue?)

John C. Dvorak.

Over time national elections in the USA have evolved into serving two distinct functions. The first is obvious, it’s to re-elect representatives. The other, less obvious, is to finance mass media with infusions of advertising dollars. The second, less apparent function, is why campaign finance reform will never get very far. And it’s why the Electoral College will be eliminated in the years ahead.

Read it.

HR is not your friend. HR is there to support the company. If you are not the company, they are not going to be there to support you.

HR boils down to paid witnesses in some cases. It changes it from a “you said, the boss said” thing to two-on-one (or worse). They just pay attention and maybe give a sworn statement down the road if things turn truly nasty.

Who else operates like that? Mall cops and security guards. They don’t have guns. They have phones and notepads. So, it’s really mall cops, security guards… and HR.

Want to make an HR person wet his/her pants? Ask: “Who is the company’s agent for service of process?”

Read it.

Note-taking is fast, uses the original author’s language, and generally feels easier. The issue is the content is often poorly assimilated and easily forgotten. In contrast, note-making is slower, more involved, and uses our own language. As a result, the content is easier to understand and remember.

The generation effect is the underlying process which supports note-making. It’s the phenomenon where information is better remembered if it is actively created from your own mind rather than simply read in a passive way. By taking the time and making the effort to rephrase the content you are consuming, you are more likely to commit the information to your long-term memory.

Useful advice.

Severian is delightfully dyspeptic today.

Hollywood doesn’t care what you want. I doubt if Hollywood has ever cared what you want, but if they ever did, that time probably ended in tandem with Clara Bow’s career. Hollywood wants what they want, and so will you, because whaddaya gonna do, not watch it? The reason they made all those “classic literature” films in the 1990s, then, wasn’t because they thought we wanted (or needed) some cultural uplift.

Indeed they don’t.

Read it.

Although fires can happen anywhere, they become critical and dangerous when e-vehicles are involved. An affected battery acts as a powerful fire accelerant due to a chain reaction and must also burn out completely, which can take as long as two days. In February, Kulmbach in Bavaria became the first German city to close underground garages to e-cars as a result.

Severian has a few.

Contrast this to the Current Year, where, much like breakfast food, what seems to be a bewildering variety of lunacy can be boiled down to just a few basic types. “Wokeness” is a madlib with just two variables: ____ is either racist or sexist, pick one. (I suppose you can combine them, but you’ll notice that doesn’t happen nearly as often as you’d predict, because the blacks hate the gays and the feminists hate everyone, so going full retard ends up getting you in a lot of trouble with your coreligionists).

…

If you still think you can design a historical system, well, have you ever met a shrink’s kid? How about a minister’s daughter, or the son of a preacher man? Those folks think they know exactlyhow to raise kids, get it?

Read it.

students, took Tyler Dixon by surprise.

Along with wearing masks and social distancing, students living on campus would be expected to wear a coin-size “BioButton” attached to their chests with medical adhesive. It would continuously measure their temperature, respiratory rate, and heart rate, and tell them whether they’d been in close contact with a button wearer who’d tested positive for Covid-19. In conjunction with a series of daily screening questions, the button would let them know if they were cleared for class.

We have the technology.

Read it.

Rapid City, South Dakota held elections for its school board this week. The result? Two incumbents, including the school board president, went down to defeat. Insurgent candidates won all four contested seats

Read it.

Arizona entered the union as the 48th state on Valentine’s Day, 1912, which completed the American jigsaw puzzle that spans the continent. Almost 50 years later, in 1959, Congress admitted Alaska and Hawaii as the final two states. And as when the Apostle John wrote the Book of Revelation from the Isle of Patmos, the canon was closed. The union was complete.

Now Democrats are champing at the bit to replay the 1850s and have a fight over admitting two more states to the union. Democrats wrap themselves in the lofty-sounding rhetoric of liberalism when talking about statehood for the District of Columbia and Puerto Rico, but they are motivated by the same destructive political calculus of the antebellum era: admit the territories as states that will give you control of the senate so that you can dominate your political enemies. It’s a high-stakes gambit that didn’t end well last time.

The proper thing to do with D.C. is to give it back to Maryland, as the Virginia portion was back in the day. This would answer all of the legitimate grievances of D.C. residents. But that’s not what Democrats want. (I think the capital ought to be moved back to Philadelphia.)

The proper thing to do with Puerto Rico is independence, whether they want it or not. They have never been American in any meaningful sense of the word. (Or maybe give them to Mexico. Or even Cuba.)

One of the most frustrating aspects of the Democrat push to create new states is that it’s backwards looking. They have no ideas for how to make America better—they just want to play the greatest hit from a bygone era, to get the last squeeze out of the lemon. That’s evidence of political and cultural decay.

Yup. If you want new real states, cut California, Oregon, and Washington in half north-to-south. Or New York horizontally right above Duchess County.

Michael Anton at The American Mind.

To recap briefly (but read the whole thing!), the book explains how every prominent and powerful American institution, including the federal government, has been taken over by a hostile elite who use their vast powers to attack, despoil, and insult about half the nation. In the sixth chapter (excerpted here), I outline what I think America will look like if the present ruling class refuses to moderate, cannot be forced to share power, and has the wherewithal to keep its regime going. In the seventh chapter, I sketch several possibilities—from secession to Caesarism to collapse—that might result if it turns out that our overlords are a lot less competent than they think. And in the final chapter (excerpted here), I offer policy and other ideas that might enable America to avoid those fates….

Just think of it as ‘self-gerrymandering’.

UPDATE: Meet Greater Idaho

Tanner Greer of THE SCHOLAR’S STAGE continues his observations. Recommended.

Let me restate my central thesis sans these ideologically charged terms: The New Right vision of politics is unapologetically elitist, hierarchical, and communitarian. The right-wing base, in contrast, is rebellious, egalitarian, and individualist. The New Right and the right base are united in their hatred for the meritocratic striver culture of America’s bicoastal elites. But their attitudes towards elite politics are fundamentally different.

The New Right wants to replace America’s failed leadership class with something better (e.g. themselves). The right base does not want a new elite, but less elite. New Right intellectuals deeply care about what is being taught at Yale; the right-wing base wants to live in a world where they never have to care about what is being taught at Yale. The New Right wants to restore or revitalize an “American way of life;” the Trumpy base wants to ban all outsiders from telling them how to live their lives. The New Right smiles on phrases like “we live in a society” and “politics of the common good.” The right-wing base is attracted to slogans like “don’t tread on me” and “I will not be masked, tracked, or tested.”

Read it.

Inflation isn’t observable in technological fields – anything attached to the internet becomes deflationary over time through Moore’s law. Yet, inflation’s nightmarish effects exist and its worrisome presence is seen in commodities, namely through the price of food. Even though agricultural technology has reshaped the way farms work, the nominal price of food has exploded at a machine-gun clip, making subsistence living soon-impossible for much the world.

 

Read it.

Gee, I wonder why.

Victor Davis Hanson.

Under the reductionist malady of Trump Derangement Syndrome, facts and logic did not matter. Instead, anything not said or done in opposition to Trump empowered the supposed existential Trump threat. Ironically, some of the most deductive and reductionist Trump haters were supposedly professionals, the highly educated, and the self-proclaimed devotees of the Enlightenment. And yet in their uncontrolled aversion and detestation, they suspended all the rules of empiricism, logic, and rationality—and people died as a result.

Steve Sailer.

Perhaps the 1993 sci-fi satire film Demolition Man with Sylvester Stallone, Wesley Snipes, Sandra Bullock, and Rob Schneider?

Read it.

Doing work Americans won’t do.

John Derbyshire.

Earlier this year I read Christopher Caldwell’s very striking book The Age of Entitlement: America Since the Sixties. Caldwell argued that the reforms of the 1960s, which seemed necessary and humane at the time to correct obvious injustices, had serious negative consequences, leading eventually to many of the issues that so divide and anger us today. A powerful and brilliant essay by political scientist Richard Hanania has just followed up on this insight.