YouTube.

Chapelle characterizes Trump as “an honest liar”.

Read it.

Many American, British, European and other foreign-born men and women have long served in the Israel Defense Forces (IDF), and often they are dual citizens. As an example, earlier this week Israel announced the death of 19-year old Sgt. Itay Chen, a dual US-Israeli citizen who had been serving in the IDF, at the hands of Hamas.

But South Africa, which brought an International Criminal Court (ICC) case against Israel over allegations of genocide against Palestinians, has issued a new declaration forbidding its citizens from joining or assisting in any way with the Israeli military.

Me, too.

Quilette.

The concept of race, we are often told, is a social construct with no basis in biological reality. Some have argued that it was invented by white Europeans for the express purpose of constructing a racial hierarchy in order to justify slavery. According to cultural critic Kenan Malik, “Racism gave birth to race. The ancestors of today’s African Americans were not enslaved because they were black. They became classified as a distinct, and inferior, race as a means of justifying their enslavement.” This view is even espoused by some scientific institutions.

And yet, by analysing your genome, companies like 23andMe can describe your ancestry, and their reports match people’s own accounts of their racial ancestry to a high degree of accuracy. As humans spread across the globe, they tended to breed within ancestral groups, such that gene flow within groups became greater than gene flow between groups. This led to a pattern of “shared-ancestry clustering” that is still apparent across the world—as a result, we can usually differentiate at a glance between people whose ancestry can be traced back multiple generations in, say, Japan, from those whose ancestors came from Ethiopia or Norway. It is these clusterings that we refer to by the term “race”—a common-language term that predates Enlightenment science.

Despite the fact that there is obviously some biological underpinning to what we call “race,” many people claim that “races” are purely sociological. They argue that races could only be real if they were clearly demarcated, discrete categories and thus countable, or that for races to be real, they must be essentialist categories: i.e., there must be at least one trait shared by all the people of Race A and by no one who is not of Race A.

In support of this, leading geneticist Richard Lewontin pointed out that genes vary just as much within a race as between races. While this is true, it does not negate the reality of races. Our ancestry is manifest in correlated patterns of genetic variation, and these correlated patterns are both real and meaningful and reveal our ancestral groupings. Furthermore, while many dismiss race as only skin deep, AI software can discern a patient’s race just by analysing medical X-rays. The AI cannot just be reflecting human bias when it does so, since it is discerning patterns of which human experts are unaware.

Read it.

“Effective immediately, I have been removed (banned) from the next 3 NXXT tournaments that I already signed up for and been approved to play,” wrote transgender golfer Hailey Davidson last week.

The message came after he/she was removed from the NXXT Women’s Pro Tour, who has now announced that participants must be “a biological female at birth” to participate in its events, according to Fox News and the NY Post.

Davidson expressed his/her discontent because he/she was already crushing the woman’s field: “They changed their policy mid season, after me signing up already and being 2nd in Player of the Year race.”

ZMan peeks behind the curtain.

One of the things the paleos missed when they began to flesh out managerialism in the last century is how it assumes the qualities of democracy. This is something Robert Dahl picked up in his analysis of American government against the standard of democracy he developed. While the institutions of America were not democratic and could never be democratic, the people in these institutions were motivated by a democratic sense in that they wanted to act according to public will.

This explains, in part, how our institutions have grown increasingly authoritarian over the last three decades, while the people running them have become obsessed with defending what they call “our democracy.” They do not view democracy as a process, but rather as a goal. The truly democratic society is open, and the people freely exchange the right ideas. Defending democracy in this sense means dragging the people to this place, by force if necessary.

This democratic sensibility within democracy is important in understanding the reckless behavior of the people running the institutions. If one were to pick a single word to describe the cause of the current crisis it would be “reckless”. Whether it is reckless foreign policy adventures or poorly conceived domestic fads, the ruling class seems to take pleasure in reckless projects. They operate like gamblers with unlimited credit that they assume will be repaid by others.

It’s often more trouble than it’s worth.

Read it.

The Irish electorate looks like having solidly rejected two constitutional amendments that would have erased the word “woman” from the Irish constitution and altered the legal definition of family in what is shaping up to be a 70-30 shock victory for tradition over the nation’s well-financed NGO lobby.

Read it.

Western leaders are experiencing two stunning events: defeat in Ukraine, genocide in Palestine. The first is humiliating, the other shameful. Yet, they feel no humiliation or shame. Their actions show vividly that those sentiments are alien to them – unable to penetrate the entrenched barriers of dogma, arrogance and deep-seated insecurities. The last are personal as well as political. Therein lies a puzzle. For, as a consequence, the West has set itself on a path of collective suicide. Moral suicide in Gaza; diplomatic suicide – the foundations laid in Europe, the Middle East and across Eurasia; economic suicide – the dollar-based global financial system jeopardized, Europe deindustrializing. It is not a pretty picture. Astoundingly, this self-destruction is occurring in the absence of any major trauma – external or internal. Therein lies another, related puzzle.

Read it.

Sir Roger Scruton suggested that “conservatism is more of an instinct than an idea.” Apparently, what he meant was that conservatism was not primarily a construct of intellectuals, but something that comes from our natural human dispositions.

Scruton’s insight seems to be corroborated by research on the connection between human personality and political ideology. Psychologists have identified correlations between certain personality traits and ideological and political preferences. These findings suggest that there is a lot in the conservatism-progressivism divide that results from differences in personality traits.

A leading approach to the study of human personality today, called The Big Five, identifies five dimensions of the human personality: extraversion, agreeableness, conscientiousness, openness to experience, and emotional stability (or, conversely, neuroticism). Researchers interested in assessing the extent to which differences in personality affect ideological inclinations and political choices seek to identify possible associations of these five personality traits with specific political ideologies.

ZMan’s weekly podcast. Highly recommended.

Anyway, that is the show this week. It is about how the decline in intelligence will impact our live and society. The people who think AI will solve it or that robots will pick up the slack have not thought about the problem hard enough. All of those things will make the decline worse for the people with anything on the ball. Imagine Idiocracy by terminators are in charge instead of morons.

Read it.

An earthquake has shaken Republican politics in Texas. Sixteen GOP state representatives who previously voted against school choice were on the ballot for the March 5 primary. Six won, six lost, and four now face runoffs. Given the advantages of incumbency, this outcome is staggering. The results are clear: Texas Republicans want school choice, and they’re happy to vote out politicians who don’t.

Some of the biggest opponents to school choice in the Texas House won’t return to the legislature in 2025. These include Steve Allison, Ernest Bailes, Travis Clardy, Glenn Rogers, Hugh Shine, and Reggie Smith. Also, Reps. DeWayne Burns, Justin Holland, John Kuempel, and Gary VanDeavers face highly competitive runoffs—and it’s entirely possible the incumbents lose each one.

School choice indeed was on the ballot. Corey DeAngelis, an education researcher and well-known “school choice evangelist,” calls the results a clear “mandate for school choice in Texas.” Unseating or forcing a runoff for 77 percent of sitting state representatives is astounding. Republicans who backed the government school monopoly—and they really ought to have known better—now face the likely end of their political careers.

“If you’re the smartest person in the room, you’re in the wrong room.” — various anonymous clever people

Read it.

The Texas House of Representatives last year failed to pass a school choice bill even after Gov. Greg Abbott, a Republican, repeatedly called the lawmakers back into special session. Twenty-one Texas House Republicans joined with all House Democrats to defeat the school choice proposal.

In response, Abbott took a page out of Iowa Gov. Kim Reynolds’ book. If the Legislature wouldn’t support school choice—which had the support of 88% of Texas Republican voters—then he would find a new Legislature.

When the Iowa Legislature voted down Reynolds’ education savings account proposal in 2022, she endorsed nine pro-school choice candidates who were challenging anti-school choice incumbents. Eight of them won.

The American Mind.

If only ideologies worked. It’s easy to see why they tempt us: they promise to absolve us from having to think about complex practical decisions. They hold out the hope of black and white absolutes. We reach for theory when we sense our prudence coming up short.

But it’s best not to be an ideologue if you can help it. Falling for ideology means inviting dogmatists and snake oil salesmen to make your decisions for you. This is never more true than when it comes to education. The sad fact is that public school isn’t always and everywhere a bad option. Even worse—homeschooling isn’t always a good idea. It depends. You have to figure it out for yourself.

As long as ‘traditionalists’ keep denying the realities pointed out to us by evolutionary psychology, they will flounder around like crabs in a bucket and make no progress.

Read it.

San Francisco residents on Tuesday voted to let police conduct more vehicle chases and deploy drones and surveillance cameras to fight crime. They also ordered mandatory drug screening for childless adults who receive welfare and housing assistance—benefits that will now be yanked from those who refuse testing.

Both measures passed by wide margins. The police initiative, which voters approved by nearly 20 points, would give law enforcement more leeway in when and why they can chase down suspects fleeing in vehicles. Officers are currently barred from chasing suspected thieves and can only go after those who they believe have committed a violent felony or pose immediate danger to the public. Police would also be able to deploy drones, facial recognition, and other surveillance technology to fight crime.

The welfare measure, which passed by 26 points, would require poor and homeless adults under 65 and without dependent children to be tested for drug use, and if they don’t pass their screening they would have to enter treatment to receive San Francisco’s cash payments and housing assistance. Those who fail a drug test and refuse to receive treatment will not be eligible for benefits.

Steve Sailer.

One of the stranger aspects of the long-running American affirmative action debate is that both supporters and critics of racial quotas seldom admit in public how scarce blacks would be in cognitively elite institutions without the now traditional massive thumb on the scale in their favor.

Liberal racial preference advocates tend to argue as if black representation in prestige positions in percentages close to their share of the population (12 percent or 14 percent, depending on whether or not you count individuals who identify as black and another race) merely requires tie-breakers favoring African-Americans among extremely equal applicants. They present an image of affirmative action as resembling the baseball rule that “a tie goes to the runner”: In the rare instances when the baserunner (black applicant in this analogy) and baseball (nonblack applicant) arrive exactly simultaneously, the umpire is obliged to declare the runner safe.

Who could object to something so trivial?

Racists, that’s who!

Wikipedia.

My favorites:

Richard Epstein.

Now that the efforts to keep Donald Trump off the ballot were soundly rejected in the Supreme Court in Trump v. Anderson, the largest cloud over the former president’s re-election campaign is Jack Smith’s four-count indictment, which makes no reference to insurrection but alleges only “a conspiracy to corruptly obstruct and impede the January 6 [2021] congressional proceeding” to certify the election of the next president.

Good advice.

ZMan’s weekly podcast. Highly recommended. (Also available on Apple Podcasts.)

Since I liked yesterday’s post so much, I decided to do a show on the topic, but from a historical perspective. Since the end of the Cold War our ruling class has gone off the rails and it is not a coincidence. We have the combination of two factors that are at the heart of this sudden shift into madness. One is the generational changeover and the other is the end of the Cold War moral order.

The show is about that last bit. It turns out that “winning” the Cold War was the worst thing for the West. The Russians and to a lesser extent the Chinese came out of the experience of losing the great ideological war better than they would otherwise have been if not for the collapse of communism. China is the biggest economy on earth and Russia is a fully modern country of the 21st century.

Meanwhile, the post-Cold War experience for the West, especially America, has been a descent into madness. The inflection point is the 1992 election when the Boomers officially took over and began to shape the post-Cold War world. The trouble is they had no idea what they were doing. They did not understand why the West won the Cold War and lacked the historical understanding to see their own folly.

NBC News.

Yeah, we really need more of these kinds of people in our country. Yup. Sure.

Read it.

Note the unexplored assumptions: Changemaker is a compliment; change (not improvement) is what counts, not the effect of the change; ‘transforming’ is the important thing, not whether the result is positive. This demonstrates how the rot of progressivism has penetrated even so ‘moderate’ a venue as CNBC, nominally devoted to business–all change is good because it inevitably leads to ‘progress’, so y’all need to get out there and start changing things and you too may be celebrated as a ‘changemaker’.

What you will never see from a Narrative media component is a list of ‘The 2024 Improvers’.

BBC.

When Yejin decided to live alone in her mid-20s, she defied social norms – in Korea, single living is largely considered a temporary phase in one’s life.
Then five years ago, she decided not to get married, and not to have children.
“It’s hard to find a dateable man in Korea – one who will share the chores and the childcare equally,” she tells me, “And women who have babies alone are not judged kindly.” [emphasis added]

Think of it as evolution in action. Feminism is a self-correcting problem over the long term.

Read it.

Yeah, I understand, California has nice weather, but … damn. That certainly never happens in Texas.

Read it.

“I support Trump in many ways and thought it was awesome that he was releasing such a rare collection of shoes,” the Pennsylvania resident told The Epoch Times.

But Mr. Hardy almost passed on buying the exclusive sneakers that some say sold out within hours of being launched. At first, the price seemed steep for a pair of shoes he intended to keep only as a collector’s piece, but as the minutes ticked by, he finally pulled the trigger.

Now, after seeing their potential resale value—with some sellers listing them online for as much as $45,000—Mr. Hardy wishes he had purchased three pairs instead of one.

Read it.

Russia was unable to recruit, mobilize or conscript enough Russians to fight in Ukraine. Even before the end of 2023, Russia sought ways to deal with this problem. One solution was recruiting 15,000 Nepalese men to fight in Ukraine. The Nepalese Russia recruited were not from the Gurkha region. Gurkha soldiers are much in demand as mercenaries and battalions of them serve in the British and Indian armies. Gurkhas were not interested in fighting for the Russians in Ukraine, so the Russians turned to non- Gurkha Nepalese who needed a job, any job, even if it was a dangerous one. The Nepal recruits were given little training when they entered Russian service in mid-2023. The Nepal troops were soon in Ukraine where they suffered casualties. At least ten were known to have died and there are probably more dead. Four Nepalese soldiers were captured by Ukrainian forces and held as prisoners of war. Families back in Nepal have appealed to Nepalese politicians to find a way they can contact their men in Ukraine. Russia does not provide any way for their Nepal mercenaries to send or receive mail to anyone in Nepal. That led Nepal to ban any more Russian recruiting in Nepal. Earlier Cuba did the same when Russian tried to recruit Cuban men to fight as mercenaries in Ukraine.

Read it.

Indian farmer protests restarted in early 2024 as talks on the producers’ demands to set more legally binding minimum support prices for agricultural products have broken down.

The borders of city state and capital Delhi have been fortified but farmers from surrounding areas seem determined to push past the barricades this week armed with heavy equipment, supplies and masks to fend off tear gas deployed by police. Ahead of the presidential elections in April and May, farmers once again want to make their grievances heard. Similar protests rocked India previously in 2020 and 2021 as farmers vehemently opposed opening up the system of government-controlled wholesale markets – so-called mandis – and limiting minimum support prices. They eventually succeeded in having laws withdrawn.

However, as Statista’s Katharina Buchholz reports, while guaranteed minimum prices provide security for farmers to at least sell some of their harvest at a profit, few farmers have actually been able to take advantage of the system in the past. This is tied to the fact that the government’s ability to buy and redistribute agricultural products is limited.

Read it.

“Rocky” star and filmmaker Sylvester Stallone says he and his wife of 26 years, Jennifer Flavin, are relocating to Florida and “permanently” ditching the state of California.

Read it.

When someone emerges from a challenging childhood to become a successful adult and writes a memoir about the experience, one of two narratives usually emerges: The first, and most lucrative in today’s market, is what might be called the “wallowing” narrative. Such books settle personal and familial scores; recount excessive drug use, promiscuity, and other poor life choices; and leave readers with a voyeurism hangover.

The second approach tells a tale of plucky courage and upward mobility, with the memoirist expressing gratitude for having been one of the “lucky ones,” who rose from chaos into order and is now eager to impart practical life lessons to others. This is the “inspirational bootstraps” narrative.

In Troubled: A Memoir of Foster Care, Family, and Social Class, Rob Henderson does neither. Instead, he makes a crucial contribution not only to the modern art of memoir-writing, but to ongoing debates about class, merit, and success in the United States.

Whining and playing the victim is very profitable these days.

Read it.

The Great Sort is under way, as normal people move to red states and liberals move to blue states. (That last is hypothetical and hasn’t actually been observed.) When massive numbers began leaving blue states like California and New York for red states like Texas and Florida, many conservatives worried that those blue staters might bring their bad voting habits with them. Happily, that doesn’t seem to have happened.

UnHerd.

For decades now, an axiom of middle-class feminism has decreed that there are no important inbuilt differences between male and female brains. In fact, so the favoured story goes, there are no male and female brains at all, except in the trivial sense that there are a variety of human brains, each lodged within male and female bodies and shaped by external “gendered” circumstances that vary from culture to culture. A second axiom tends to follow swiftly: anyone who says otherwise is probably a sexist pig. This week, however, both of these foundational assumptions were dealt a blow by new research emerging from Stanford University.

Neurobiologists there have discovered that a specially designed “deep neural network”— that is, an AI presumably devoid of the misogynist prejudices of ordinary mortals — can reliably sort brains into male and female categories based on the detection of “hotspot” activity patterns. Worse, it seems that the AI can also use these differences to reliably predict different cognitive performances in men and women on certain tasks, suggesting that functional brain variations have behavioural implications. Though it’s a bit early to say, perhaps we can now look forward to a more harmonious future, where a woman can be proudly unapologetic for her inability to reverse park, and a man gets to blame his brain for repeated failures to notice that his wife is crying. Meanwhile, for the many thinkers who have staked their professional identities to the non-existence of two kinds of brain, now might seem like a good time to move some eggs into a different career basket.

Steve Sailer.

Yale became the second Ivy League college, after Dartmouth, after four years of test-optional admissions during the covid/George Floyd eras, to go back to making it mandatory for applicants to submit test scores. Why? Because the anti-test conventional wisdom is stupid.

Read it.

In a significant departure for the powerful organized labor group, the Teamsters’ PAC has given $45,000 to the Republican National Committee for the first time in 20 years, The Washington Post reported.

Steve Sailer.

Last week’s Super Bowl parade shooting in Kansas City in which one was killed and 22 wounded was another validation of both Coulter’s and Sailer’s Laws of Mass Shootings.

Ann devised her insight back in 2015 after two Muslim terrorists of Pakistani origin murdered fourteen at a government office in San Bernardino:

The longer we go without being told the race of the shooters, the less likely it is to be white men.

…

Of course, the arrestees are black, according to a photo in the Daily Mail. The Super Bowl parade mass shooting was the usual knuckleheaded dispute that could, at worst, be resolved with fists if African Americans didn’t feel the cultural imperative to start banging away with pistols. But the ruling caste and media work hard to cover up the size of America’s black gun violence problem.