Ross Douthat sums it up.

At the same time, there was a sense in which Damore had to be fired, precisely because of the intertwined realities that he described. Silicon Valley is a very male environment, a land of nerd kings and brogrammers whose deepest beliefs tend to be the sort that men come up with when they don’t have very many women around — arch-libertarian, irreligious, utopian in a mechanistic style.

But the internet industry is also part of a wider elite culture that is trending in the opposite direction, becoming more feminized and feminist, and inclined to view male-dominated enclaves with great suspicion. So Silicon Valley’s leaders use corporate wokeness, diversity initiatives and progressive virtue signaling as a kind of self-protection, a way of promising that they’re mostly men but they’re the good kind of men, so that discrimination lawsuits and antitrust actions and other forms of regulation are less attractive to their critics.

I strongly suspect that more than a few Silicon Valley higher-ups agreed with the broad themes of Damore’s memo. But just as tech titans accept some censorship and oppression as the price of doing business in China, they accept performative progressivism as the price of having nice campuses in the most liberal state in the union and recruiting their employees from its most elite and liberal schools. And for questioning that political performance while defending the disproportionate maleness that makes it necessary, the Google memo-writer simply had to go.

Debra Soh points out some inconvenient truth.

Titled Google’s Ideological Echo Chamber, Mr. Damore called out the current PC culture, saying the gender gap in Google’s diversity was not due to discrimination, but inherent differences in what men and women find interesting. Danielle Brown, Google’s newly appointed vice-president for diversity, integrity and governance, accused the memo of advancing “incorrect assumptions about gender,” and Mr. Damore confirmed last night he was fired for “perpetuating gender stereotypes.”

Despite how it’s been portrayed, the memo was fair and factually accurate. Scientific studies have confirmed sex differences in the brain that lead to differences in our interests and behaviour.

…

Many people, including a former Google employee, have attempted to refute the memo’s points, alleging that they contradict the latest research.

I’d love to know what “research done […] for decades” he’s referring to, because thousands of studies would suggest otherwise. A single study, published in 2015, did claim that male and female brains existed along a “mosaic” and that it isn’t possible to differentiate them by sex, but this has been refuted by four – yes, four – academic studies since.

This includes a study that analyzed the exact same brain data from the original study and found that the sex of a given brain could be correctly identified with 69-per-cent to 77-per-cent accuracy.

Of course, differences exist at the individual level, and this doesn’t mean environment plays no role in shaping us. But to claim that there are no differences between the sexes when looking at group averages, or that culture has greater influence than biology, simply isn’t true.

Read it.

I won’t be blogging about most of the discussion of this situation because of its tedious repetition, but I found the following reaction interesting:

The Register understands that Pichai’s memo mentions section 1.5.II of the company’s code of conduct, which states “We are committed to a supportive work environment, where employees have the opportunity to reach their fullest potential. Googlers are expected to do their utmost to create a workplace culture that is free of harassment, intimidation, bias, and unlawful discrimination.”

Google’s alleged decision to fire Damore has sparked wide debate about freedom of speech. It’s not hard to see why, as section 1.5 of Google’s code of conduct says “Any time you feel our users aren’t being well-served, don’t be bashful – let someone in the company know about it. Continually improving our products and services takes all of us, and we’re proud that Googlers champion our users and take the initiative to step forward when the interests of our users are at stake.”

At the core of Damore’s document is his belief that Google’s diversity programs are hurting users. Yet Pichai seems to be pointing out that Google has limits on the diversity of opinions it is willing to tolerate.

Grab some popcorn. This one’s far from over.

This is actually one of the few times I’ve seen somebody connect the dots between the supposed policy that Google’s management is allegedly enforcing and the actual case to be made that they are, in fact, violating that policy. ‘All animals are equal, but some are more equal than others.’

Read it.

Apparently, euthanasia is Just Another Instance of White Privilege.

My take is, that people who want to kill themselves ought to be encouraged to do so, since they are predominantly people whom we could well do without. But that’s me.

Read it.

Let that be a lesson to us all.

Read it.

Inquiring minds want to know.

Read it.

Now if they can just find a way to get AlGore to STFU….

Read it.

I’m sure you’ve seen advertisements from Blue Apron and Hello Fresh and other such ‘meal kit’ companies.

Here’s an inside look at perhaps the most prominent one.

Hello Fresh meal kits can also be purchased ad-hoc from my local Yuppie Hipster Food Mart, SPROUTS. So there is that.

Joel Kotkin breaks it out.

With President Donald Trump’s Dr. Demento impersonation undermining his own party, the road should be open for Democrats to sweep the next election cycle. And, for the first time since their horrific defeat of 2016, not only nationally but also in the states, the Democrats are slowly waking up to the reality that they need to go beyond the ritual Trump-bashing.

No one will compare the recently released “A Better Deal: Better Skills, Better Jobs, Better Wages” slogan to Franklin D. Roosevelt’s New Deal, or even Newt Gingrich’s “Contract for America.” One Bernie Sanders supporter called it “anodyne, focus-grouped, consultant-generated pablum.” Yet, at least it attempted to identify the party with something other than Trump hatred, which is all most Americans think the Democrats are all about.

Lileks.

Because I’m always eager to fill up the yawning void of existential dread with a new gadget, I got one of those video doorbells. The picture is crisp and clear. My doorbell broadcasts a better image than CBS circa 2001. At night it shows stars; it’s like I bolted the Hubble to my house.

I can’t wait to use it with a visitor, but no one’s shown up yet. For once in my life, I actually want someone coming around the house to sell me magazines so I can get rid of them remotely, from my phone, wherever I am.

I, too, purchased such a doorbell. I am looking forward to using it to castigate anyone so unfortunate as to land on my doorstep without bearing a box from Amazon.

Read it.

The fact that it’s characterized as a ‘screed’, when it appears to be an earnest and thoughtful presentation of the writer’s argument, demonstrates what sort of bias he’s up against.

The fact that it is publicly available, on the other hand, offers us hope that the rot isn’t too bad yet.

Read it.

I’ll bet that put her panties in a wad.

Bee is a rather prominent Voice of the Crust.

Read it.

On the bicentenary of her death, Jane Austen is still everywhere, often where one least expects to find her. Most of her devotees will have their own story; mine occurred in a Manhattan courthouse, with its stale-coffee smell and atmosphere of anxious boredom, in the midst of jury selection for a criminal trial involving a double homicide. Upon learning that I taught British literature, the defendant’s attorney—a woman who spoke with intimidating speed and streetwise bluntness—skipped the usual questions (how much did I trust police testimony, had I ever been a victim of a violent crime) and asked instead whether I taught Jane Austen. Puzzled by her indirection, I answered yes. A theatrical flash of disgust crossed her face: I was, evidently, one of those people. At which point the presiding judge interrupted to say: “Careful, counsel. Some of us here like Jane Austen.”

A Child of the Crust writes for others of the same ilk. The concern with ‘first female to X’ and ritual denunciations of ‘supremacists’ are signature.

Dinesh D’Souza explains it all to you.

Why does this purported antifascism on the part of progressives so closely resemble the fascism that it claims to be opposing? More profoundly, what is “antifascism” as the term is now used on the American left?

To answer these questions, we turn to the founders of the so-called antifascist movement on the progressive left, the sociologist Herbert Marcuse of the Institute for Social Research in Frankfurt am Main, Germany.

Read it.

Canada operates under a medicare system that is understood as single-payer. Not only does the federal government use money from its general revenue to finance this taxpayer-funded health care system, individual provinces also contribute by raising money through special levies that are deducted when Canadians pay their income tax.

…

“Health care in Canada isn’t free—Canadians actually pay a substantial amount for health care through their taxes, even if they don’t pay directly for medical services,” said Bacchus Barua, senior economist with the Fraser Institute’s Centre for Health Policy Studies, in a statement. He is the co-author of the institute’s report: The Price of Public Health Care Insurance, 2017.

For all those tax dollars, there is still a long waiting list for a host of operations, both routine and urgent. Another Fraser Institute study recently revealed that 63,000 Canadians left the country in 2016 to seek medical assistance elsewhere — usually the U.S.

If the U.S. gets a ‘free health care’ system, there won’t be any U.S. for us to escape to.

Read it.

We assume that if Harvard stopped discriminating against Asians, the student body would very quickly become 40% Asian. U.C. Berkeley is 42% Asian.

Harvard obviously thinks this would be a bad thing for Harvard, otherwise they wouldn’t discriminate against Asians.

Couldn’t hurt.

Read it.

Good luck wading through the article to find the three supplements in question. I couldn’t.

Read it.

Years ago, someone made a documentary – “A Private Universe” – in which they talked to to a gaggle of Harvard students at commencement & asked them what caused the seasons. Almost all said that summer happened when we were close to the Sun in our elliptical orbit, winter when we were farther away. Which isn’t true – not of Earth, anyhow.

Now you might think they were just jackasses, but they make up a key fraction of our intellectual/governing elite. It can’t be that simple – they can’t just be a bunch of ignorami – there has to be a deeper, more subtle explanation.

Well, Harvard. Children of the Crust, being indoctrinated into the Narrative. There is little room for education in that scenario.

David Cole has some advice for us.

Trannies remind me of libertarians. To be more precise, the thing I find most objectionable about trannies is also the thing I find most objectionable about the hardcore, uncompromising “no government” anarcho-voluntaryist libertarian types. These “get rid of government” crusaders spend every moment of their lives hectoring nonbelievers like me, trying to make us acquiesce to their vision of a world without the state. What cheeses me off is, if you want to be free, if you want to live “off grid” without government, if you want to grow your own food and barter hens and nanny goats for potatoes and butter, go do it. What’s stopping you? It’s a big world and easy to get lost in. Sure, there’s never any guarantee that you’ll be safe from the long arm of the state—Randy Weaver found that out the hard way when he and his wife made the logical decision to drop out of society rather than try to change it to suit their beliefs—but still, living off grid (which I’ve done several times in my life) is way easier than getting 300 million people to agree in unison, “We’re going to dismantle government and live as medieval farmers and tradesmen.”

The anti-government ideologues act like they can’t go and “be free” until they’ve persuaded the rest of us to follow suit. Essentially, they’ve made their freedom quest dependent upon me coming along for the ride, even though it’s a trip they could easily take solo.

He’s got a point. Cf. Harry Browne’s book How I Found Freedom in an Unfree World.

Read it.

We hold in our mouths the legacy of our evolution. We rarely consider just how amazing our teeth are. They break food without themselves being broken, up to millions of times over the course of a lifetime; and they do it built from the very same raw materials as the foods they are breaking. Nature is truly an inspired engineer.

But our teeth are, at the same time, really messed up. Think about it. Do you have impacted wisdom teeth? Are your lower front teeth crooked or out of line? Do your uppers jut out over your lowers? Nearly all of us have to say ‘yes’ to at least one of these questions, unless we’ve had dental work. It’s as if our teeth are too big to fit properly in our jaws, and there isn’t enough room in the back or front for them all. It just doesn’t make sense that such an otherwise well-designed system would be so ill-fitting.

Read it.

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

Theodore Dalrymple lays it out.

Mr. McDonnell, deputy leader of the British Labour Party, which for the time being is in opposition, recently objected to the presence of hereditary peers in the “upper” house of Britain’s Parliament, using the crude and vulgar language typical of populist politicians anxious to demonstrate their identity with the people or the masses. (It is strange, by the way, how rarely leftists who are in favor of confiscatory economic policies are condemned as populist, when they appeal mainly to envy, spite, and resentment, those most delightful of all human emotions.)

Speaking for myself—the only person for whom I am fully entitled to speak—I would rather be ruled (at least in the modern world) by the Duke of Northumberland than by Mr. McDonnell; and this is for perfectly rational reasons and not, as might be supposed, from any feeling of nostalgia for a world we have lost.

I’d pick the Duke of Northumberland — or any Duke, come to think of it — than John McCain.

The average citizen, therefore, has much more to fear (again, I speak of the present time, not of the Middle Ages) from a politician who imagines he has attained power because of his own virtues than from an aristocrat who knows that he owes his position to an accident of birth. Of course, aristocrats can be arrogant, disdainful of the commonalty, and so forth, though in modern circumstances they are not likely to be such; however, human character is unpredictable—anything is possible and perfection not to be looked for.

But successful politicians are arrogant ex officio, almost; arrogance is a precondition of their success, at least in any large-scale polity. The promise to do nothing much, to be but a modest continuator of his country’s life, work, and tradition, is not likely to appeal to an electorate that demand the sun, the moon, and the stars from politicians, and will vote for him who bribes it best. The modern politician’s sense of entitlement and moral authority makes the average modern aristocrat seem humility itself.

Barack Obama, Jesse Jackson, and Al Sharpton exhibit more arrogance than any hereditary lord in the last hundred years.

Read it.

A Marxist student group at the pricey Swarthmore College has disbanded following some introspective efforts that led its members to learn that they were precisely what they were fighting against—both affluent and white. It’s no surprise given that Swarthmore’s students tend to be both those things.

A sudden attack of reality. How often does that happen at a college?

Read it.

In 1956, geologist M. King Hubbert famously predicted, in a presentation to the American Petroleum Institute, that oil production in the U.S. would peak no later than 1970. To make his estimates, Hubbert added up all the plausible extrapolations of domestic crude oil reserves. His more conservative calculation assumed the ultimate production of 150 billion barrels, in which case production would peak in 1965. But if ultimate production could rise to 200 billion barrels, the peak would be delayed until 1970.

Must be in the same box with the rising sea levels due to Global Warming.

Read it.

A Canadian writer in a Canadian publication gives us the truth.

Canada’s public service unions gleefully embraced a recent international ranking by Oxford University and the Institute for Government that placed us number one in the world for “civil service effectiveness.” Perhaps understandably intoxicated with this success, those same unions were curiously silent when the prestigious Commonwealth Fund in the U.S. released its most recent update comparing health-care systems in the rich industrialized world. This showed our health-care system, run virtually in its entirety by these effective Canadian public servants, not just below average, but at the bottom of the heap, barely outperforming France and our health-care system’s arch-enemy, the U.S.

On measure after measure the data belie the boasts that medicare apologists tout as proof we have the best system in the world. When measuring the equity of our system against the others, we come a pitiful ninth out of 11, despite the fact that “fairness” is the argument most frequently trotted out to defend the status quo. Turns out Canadian health care isn’t all that fair.

Ditto for health-care outcomes. Despite being a fairly high spender, we are not able to turn that money into better outcomes for Canadians. Again, we rank ninth out of 11.

Read it.

Trump’s announcement that it would not be feasible to open the military to personnel who identify as transgender returns the military to the policy it had always observed, before the Obama administration’s 12th-hour, politically driven imposition of a transgender agenda.

As I explain in my forthcoming book “When Harry Became Sally: Responding to the Transgender Moment,” the best biology, psychology, and philosophy conclude that sex is a biological reality and that gender is the social expression of that reality.

The most helpful therapies for gender dysphoria focus not on achieving the impossible—changing bodies to conform to thoughts and feelings—but on helping people accept and even embrace the truth about their bodies and reality.

“Transgender” is a mental disorder. Your sex is determined by your hardware. If your software doesn’t agree, then your software needs to be fixed, not the hardware. A man who thinks he ought to be a women is as mentally disordered as a man who thinks he ought to be Spiderman, and ought to receive medical care in the same fashion.

Read it.

I guess the writer thinks of this as some kind of victory — and it is, in the diversity-check-boxing sweepstakes.

Will it lead to more, or less, successful graduates? I guess we’ll see.

Read it.

New York charter schools may soon be able to hire and certify its own teachers instead of having to go through the state, according to state regulations announced Wednesday.

Good. Put control of schools as locally as possible. That’s where it belongs.

The new rules also reflects a battle between Democrat control of New York state schools and a push to expand charter schools from Republicans.

Democrats, party of the totalitarian future.

Teachers’ unions and education experts criticize the proposal, saying that candidates can qualify too easily. “We would be skeptical of people who say we should have more flexible pathways into medicine, or into becoming an airplane pilot, these are activities on which other people’s lives depend,” said Columbia University professor. “I think it’s a terrible disservice to children to act as if their teachers don’t have to be prepared,” he added.

Note the unspoken assumption: People who aren’t prepared Our Way aren’t prepared — as if the current failing schools are good advertisements for the Our Way of preparation. Their problem is that, without a lock on the teacher credentialing process, they have no way of imposing their diversity box-checking and Fashionable Victim way-greasing at the students’ expense.

Read it.

I have a simple system.

1. Open mouth.
2. Shove it in.
3. Repeat.

ZMan looks to the core.

Cultural movements, like identity or race movements, are closed and exclusive. They certainly seek to grow their numbers, but only on their own terms. They place narrow rules on members and never accept divided loyalties. You are either in the thing or outside the thing. There is no in between. This is why the American Left has been so persistent and able to re-spawn after each collapse. It’s not a list of agenda items. It’s a lifestyle with a moral code and a wide array of symbols for the members to accept and display.

Read it.

Feh. I knew it all the time.

Those who claim that money can’t buy happiness are shopping in the wrong places.

Scott Adams explains it all to you on Periscope.

Read it.

Tourists affect me much the same way.

Watch it.

Sounds like a Republican.

Read it.

I see that India is well on its way to becoming a First World country.

We’ll know they’ve made it when they organize a Democratic party that encourages having government running everything.