“The only people who care about Lynne Cheney are the people related to Lynne Cheney and the people who plan to vote against Lynne Cheney. Nobody else gives a shit.”  — ZMan

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Technology’s default mode is to constantly call for my attention. Attention is engagement, engagement is profit.

And thus a big chunk of the economy devotes itself to grabbing my attention by increasingly coercive means. It took considerable effort to get technology to just shut the fuck up.

This is what this post is about; making technology quieter, and building a healthier relationship with it.

Hear, hear.

Interesting Engineering.

I’ll bet you didn’t know that.

Andy Matuschak.

Picture some serious non-fiction tomes. The Selfish Gene; Thinking, Fast and Slow; Guns, Germs, and Steel; etc. Have you ever had a book like this—one you’d read—come up in conversation, only to discover that you’d absorbed what amounts to a few sentences? I’ll be honest: it happens to me regularly. Often things go well at first. I’ll feel I can sketch the basic claims, paint the surface; but when someone asks a basic probing question, the edifice instantly collapses. Sometimes it’s a memory issue: I simply can’t recall the relevant details. But just as often, as I grasp about, I’ll realize I had never really understood the idea in question, though I’d certainly thought I understood when I read the book. Indeed, I’ll realize that I had barely noticed how little I’d absorbed until that very moment.

…

Books don’t work for the same reason that lectures don’t work: neither medium has any explicit theory of how people actually learn things, and as a result, both mediums accidentally (and mostly invisibly) evolved around a theory that’s plainly false.

UPDATE: Why Books Don’t Work: Constructivism Over Transmissionism

Very useful response to the above article. The concept of ‘generative learning strategies’ is especially attractive.

UN nuclear chief: Ukraine nuclear plant is `out of control’ (Associated Press)

Ukraine Intelligence Chief Accuses Russians of Using Putin Body Double

Russia’s Shortfalls Create an Opportunity for Ukraine, Western Officials Say (N. Y. Times)

‘Realists’ have it wrong: Putin, not Zelensky, is the one who can end the war. (Washington Post)

Ukrainian fighting tactics endanger civilians (Amnesty International)

Why The West Is Easing Its Sanctions On Russia

NATO Chief: Russia Must Not Win Its War In Ukraine

Social Media Post: Ukraine Strike Killed 6 Russian Commanders

U.S. readies new $1 billion Ukraine weapons package (Reuters)

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George Will almost sounded like a conservative columnist again in Thursday’s Washington Post. The headline was “How the economics of news altered the news itself.” Will was promoting as “newsworthy” an article titled “How the Media Polarized Us” by Andrey Mir in the Manhattan Institute’s City Journal.

In his article, Mir blames the rise of the internet for depriving newspapers of advertising revenue. Classified advertising collapsed. Corporate advertisers realized Google was much better at targeting their potential customers. In 2000, advertisers gave newspapers $19.6 billion — about a third of papers’ revenue. In 2013, Google’s $51 billion in ad revenues eclipsed American newspapers’ total ad revenues of $23 billion. By 2018, revenue from the classifieds was just $2.2 billion.

So their business model shifted to rely on readers rather than advertisers. Mir asserts they went from journalism to “post-journalism,” by which the media elite supply not news but “news validation.”

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The first busload of illegal migrants from Texas has been dropped off in New York City.

Roughly 50 migrants arrived at a Port Authority in New York City on Friday. They were greeted and brought into the custody of non-governmental charity workers and volunteers.

The bus of illegal migrants was sent by Texas Gov. Greg Abbott, who has been shipping border-crossers into liberal cities to bring attention to the issue of illegal immigration in his own state.

UPDATE: Texas Begins Busing Migrants to New York City

The ZMan’s weekly podcast. Highly recommended.

The big news this week was the primaries in key states. The amusing bit was how the crazies went nuts over the Kansas abortion referendum. They do not have much to celebrate so it makes sense to make a huge deal over one small win, but it was amusing to see the deluge of stories in the media. Sprinkled in were some reassuring tales of obscure MAGA candidates losing local elections.

That is the real story. Trump endorsed candidates seem to be doing very well, despite general Trump fatigue and the efforts of his party. Many of these candidates are fakers and liars, but some are genuinely ticked off people. The woman running for governor in Arizona appears to a polished up Marjorie Taylor Green. Blake Masters, also running in Arizona, is as close to one of us as you can get.

That is what does not show up in these news stories. People are probably more angry and restless right now than during the leadup to the 2016 election. The antiwhite pogroms have radically changed attitudes. Normie seeing ads featuring everyone but white people, unless it is a white woman with a black man, has had reality jammed in his face for a couple of years now and he does not like it.

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Think of Taiwan as China’s Ireland. Even the timelines are similar. In the late seventeenth century, just a couple of decades after Oliver Cromwell brutally suppressed the Irish Catholic Confederation, the Qing Empire invaded Taiwan, bringing part of it under colonial rule for the first time. Even after its partial annexation in 1684, the Qing treated the island as a dangerous frontier, notable mainly for its wild “aborigines” and deadly diseases.

Some parts of the island were never conquered; upland areas with difficult terrain were left alone, so long as they did not interrupt the peace of the lowlands. The Qing regarded these areas in much the same way as British India regarded its Northwest Frontier: places of savagery in need of management and occasional punitive expeditions.

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Three of the 10 Republican lawmakers who voted to impeach former President Donald Trump were up for reelection in Tuesday’s primaries, with one losing his bid to a Trump-backed candidate and the other two appearing to hold leads in their races, which have not yet been called.

Typically such tricks are pulled by people who are almost Democrats and live in almost Democrat districts, and so are warded from retaliation. Few are as stupid as Lynne Chaney.

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The entire global financial system is now essentially a technocommunist black ops money laundering crime scene.

Some people are addicted to cozy mysteries; I’m addicted to conspiracy theories.

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In a recent interview in New York Times Magazine, energy expert and polymath Vaclav Smil found himself being pressured by his interviewer to acknowledge that climate change was either a catastrophe or not a problem. The famously cantankerous Smil bristled at the framing: “I cannot tell you that we don’t have a problem because we do have a problem. But I cannot tell you it’s the end of the world by next Monday because it is not the end of the world by next Monday. What’s the point of you pressing me to belong to one of these groups?”

Because proglodytes are binary people. You are either with the program or a Denier; you are either good or bad.

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As the virus pandemic upended office life in big Northeast cities, people reconsidered working arrangements and where they lived. Many folks migrated from New York City to South Florida for relaxed health restrictions, a friendly business environment, low crime, and fantastic weather. The influx of new people presents challenges for South Florida, including new property development.

South Florida Sun-Sentinel reported skyscrapers as high as 500 feet could start popping up across Fort Lauderdale (not just in the downtown district) if a new proposal gets approved that raises the height cap on buildings that get special zoning.

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Every two years or so, the Spectator World issues a takedown of New York Times columnist and “expert” economist Paul Krugman, who has a notable history of being wrong about absolutely everything. Well, it seems it’s that time of year again. The Australians are getting in on the Krugman-dunking game so why shouldn’t we?

For somebody who’s a Princeton Professor and Nobel Laureate in Economics, he seems invincibly stupid, especially in his own field: I can’t think of one prediction he’s ever made that was even close to being right.

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The normally innocuous workplace comic strip is arguably trying to get itself cancelled after three decades in syndication. But why?

…

Considering the prolonged the death spiral of the newspaper industry as a whole, you might suspect that now would be as good a time as any for Adams to fade into obscurity to enjoy a quiet retirement funded by his Dilbert-generated fortune. Instead, he’s been landing himself as the internet’s villain du jour at a shocking rate.

The Woke have awakened to the fact that Scott Adams is quite possibly not their friend.

Those of us who follow his daily podcast Coffee With Scott Adams already knew that, of course.

Read it.

What goes around, comes around….

First Ukraine grain ship since start of war leaves Odesa (Reuters)

Ukrainian grain tycoon killed in Mykolaiv shelling as Putin threatens ‘lightning speed’ response to interference (CNN) Well, at least he’s only a ‘tycoon’, not an ‘oligarch’.

Vladimir Putin targets US in new Russian navy doctrine, warns of using hypersonic weapons

Europe has lost the energy war

Iran says it will ‘build nuclear warheads’ and turn NY into ‘hellish ruins’ (Jerusalem Post) Too late….

Iran Threatens New York City?

China To Pelosi: You Will ‘Perish’ Over Taiwan  If only that were true….

Europe Hypnotized Into War Economy

UN Chief & Putin In Rare Moment Of Agreement: World Is “One Miscalculation Away” From Nuclear Annihilation

North Korea Preparing 1st Nuclear Test In 5 Years, Blinken Informs UN  Gee, this never happened under Trunp.

EU, UK Fold? Delay Cutting Off Russia From Oil Insurance Market

Remember when Democrat meant somebody in favor of democracy?

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For many conservatives who for years looked forward to the arrival of William Kristol’s Weekly Standard, expecting to devour cover-to-cover the excellent articles, analysis, and commentary, Kristol’s descent into near-fatal Trump Derangement Syndrome has been distressing, to say the least.

The rabid anti-Trump posture adopted by the Weekly Standard proved to be its undoing (I cancelled my subscription in December, 2016), but the cadre of NeverTrumpers doubled-down on their failure. Some still pretended to be conservatives, wanting to “save” the Republican Party and conservatism from Trump; others, like Kristol, aligned themselves clearly with the left in opposition not only to Trump but to any conservative so misguided and corrupt as to continue to support Trump populism or the Republican Party Trump dominates.

Kristol nowadays calls himself a well-wisher of the Democratic Party despite the “sub-optimal performances of it leaders,” writes a wistful column in the laughable, “no tribal prejudices” Bulwark. The Democratic Party faces challenges: the party needs to defend (urgently!) democracy, moderation, and the rule of law; and the party needs to advance (urgently!) major reforms in our broken or damaged institutions.

Putin Wants to ‘Destroy’ Ukraine, War to Last ‘Long Time’: Exiled Oligarch (Newsweek) It’s all about the ‘oligarchs’.

How the Kremlin Is Forcing Ukrainians to Adopt Russian Life (New York Times)

The rouble is soaring and Putin is stronger than ever – our sanctions have backfired (The Guardian)

Europe Is Faking Solidarity, and Putin Knows It (Washington Post)

‘Shoot Them Down’: CCP-Tied Twitter Account Threatens US Planes, Nancy Pelosi

Russia is plundering gold in Sudan to boost Putin’s war effort in Ukraine (CNN)

Kherson

Part III: The Military Situation as it Stands Now

What’s Missing from Mearsheimer’s Analysis of the Ukraine War

Ukraine Situation Report: Russians Cede Bridgehead Into Occupied Kherson

Is Russia Using Its New Advanced Anti-Armor Missile In Ukraine?

How Russia spread a secret web of agents across Ukraine (Reuters)

Xi and Biden exchange warnings on Taiwan (BBC)

Russia attacks Kyiv area for the first time in weeks (Associated Press)

INTELLIGENCE: A Ukrainian Victory In The Shadows

Russia Is Making Heaps of Money From Oil, but There Is a Way to Stop That (N. Y. Times) Yeah, increase U.S. production.

Air Support in a Backpack: The Switchblade

The Ukrainian Verdun

China Warns: Pelosi Trip Marks ‘Invasion’ and Military Has Right to Fire on Her Plane We should be so lucky.

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There’s a weightlifting joke made famous by eight-time Mr. Olympia Ronnie Coleman: “Everybody wants to be a bodybuilder, but nobody wants to lift no heavy-*ss weights.”

I thought of that while reading Yoram Hazony’s “Escaping Liberal Democracy,” which is full of amateur gym-bro wisdom about how America should get back in shape. But he seems to have skipped the hard work of lifting (and reading) the most important heavy books. Now, I don’t mean to suggest that one has to be an intellectual to see how our country has grown increasingly decrepit; nor am I defending credentialism. One should, however, at least be familiar with the key historical developments and major arguments about the founding and its critics before presuming to tell Americans how we should regain our political vigor.

ZMan’s weekly podcast. Highly recommended.

No one can know what the robot historians will call this age, but a fairly good guess is they will call it the age of outrage. Everything is driven by outrage. Either it is mentally unstable people outraged over the normal operation of the world or it the mentally unstable trying to get attention by outraging normal people. Outrage is the fuel that drives public discourse and politics in this age.

Outage is like crystal meth for some people. Once they get a hit, they can think of nothing else but the next hit. Before long they are in one of the many intensely on-line subcultures, getting outraged with the other addicts. They cultivate their own outrage and share outrage with others. Who they are is entirely defined within the outrage culture of their new lifestyle. They are outrage junkies.

If I didn’t already live in the Great Red State of Texas, I’d think about moving.

ZMan does the economy.

We may be seeing one of the terrible side effects of narrative politics. This is the belief that a good story often repeated can change reality. Elites have come to believe that saying it makes it real. This is why they invest so heavily in creating narratives and having them repeated by their media organs. Everything is about messaging rather than objective measures. Team Biden is now selling the story that gas prices are falling at historic rates, despite record high gas prices.

In a world where the people in charge are sure that all they have to do is create a really good story and that story will become true, there is no reason for them to ever reconsider the narrative. Once they commit, they are committed. This means anyone questioning the narrative is an enemy. Public policy ceases to be about trade-offs and is instead about the friend-enemy distinction. Friends repeat the narrative and enemies question the narrative.

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Rather an unusual story for a publication called WIRED.

Although the European bison belongs to the same family as the domestic cow, you’d never mistake one for the other. Weighing in at up to a tonne, the bison is one beefy bovine. It has its own mannerisms, too: It scratches against tree trunks, rolls on the ground to take dust baths, and wraps its tongue around almost any vegetation—grass, leaves, branches—to feed.

These traits make the bison a dominating force on its surroundings. It can reshape ecosystems, refurbishing existing habitats and laying foundations for new ones. One rewilding project in Kent hopes to harness the bison’s natural engineering abilities in order to better manage the local woodland and increase its biodiversity, by bringing the herbivorous megafauna to the UK for the first time in thousands of years (and possibly ever).

I love the concept of “Iron Age pigs”.

His name isn’t Bob, it’s Dick.

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A grand research project created our origin myth that early human societies were all egalitarian, mobile and small-scale

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Marx’s idea that societies were naturally egalitarian and communal before farming is widely influential and quite wrong

The No Apologies Tour.

ZMan is apparently waiting for the rapture.

Many commenters have noted that American political discourse is much coarser and nastier today than it was a generation ago. The change can be dated to the arrival of the Clintons on the national stage in the 1990’s. They brought with them a crudeness that has become the norm in national politics. The great interregnum that lasted from the 1980’s into the 1990’s was replaced with an ugly and vulgar brand of politics that eventually led to the nasty and censorious present.

The question that never gets asked is why has public discourse become so nasty and unforgiving over the last three decades? The time for intolerance was the Cold War when mistakes could mean nuclear war with Russia. Instead, it was a time of relative tolerance compared to the present. Technological and material advances have made the margin for error extremely broad, yet the people seeking to shape public discourse carry on like one misused pronoun will end the world.

…

The funny thing is, the Left should be riding high, given that they control all of the high ground of American society. If the new fad on the Left is for “birthing people” to wear flowerpots on their heads, every news anchor will either have the flowerpot on her head or state in advance that they are not a person of uterus so they are respecting the culture of the birthing people. The Left has never had more power in American society, yet they have never been angrier.

 

Freeberg nails it.

Something weird is going on with Democrats and ice cream.

I’m guessing someone has made a discovery somewhere, that if you want to convince the hoi polloi that you’re one of them, you should make it known you like ice cream because of course all the riff raff like ice cream. Someone forgot to include in their little research project or whatever, that the humble classes like ice cream because everybody likes ice cream — it doesn’t distinguish you in any way. It doesn’t make you look like a normal when you go around bragging about how much you like ice cream.

Outrage as Russian missiles strike Odesa port one day after grain export deal agreed (CNN)

‘He simply cannot be trusted:’ World leaders slam Putin’s attack on Odesa following sea corridor deal (CNBC)

The Desperate Lives Inside Ukraine’s “Dead Cities” (New Yorker)

Biden Approves 16th Weapons Transfer To Ukraine – Total Security Aid Now Over $8BN

LEADERSHIP: Updating Army Officer Training

Russia Boasts It’s Already Taken Out 4 US-Supplied Long Range Rocket Systems

Amusing Tales Of A Coal Bottleneck In Germany & The Failure To Plan

Russia Belatedly Admits Strike On Odessa Port – Says Warship With US Missiles “Destroyed”

Ex-CIA Ray McGovern: Media Miss Major Moves On Russia-Ukraine

US Fighter Jets Now Under Consideration For Ukraine: Air Force Chief

Biden administration preps Taiwan for Chinese attack after Ukraine invasion

Escalation is Inevitable

Russian missiles strike Odessa port day after grain deal, Ukraine says

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You can tell a bit about someone based on their preconceptions about Peter Thiel. Whether the reflexive response to the name is “malign far-Right plutocrat”, “philanthropic saviour of all that is good” or “who?” is a reasonably reliable guide to where that person otherwise sits in the great online psychodrama we now call “the culture wars”.

Steven Hayward at Power Line.

“Lucretia” joins in the fun of my absence with a dunk on the latest instance of soi-disant conservatives pining for the “strange new respect” award from liberals for abandoning a conservative position. My biography of M. Stanton Evans recounts that Stan disliked George Will starting back in the 1970s because “George is always coming up with ‘conservative’ reasons to do some liberal thing.” As usual, Stan was ahead of his time. In recent years this defect has become a pandemic on the right. And it doesn’t even bother to mask itself any more! My train ride from London to Edinburgh today prompts me to propose an American conservative variation of the “no true Scotsman” fallacy, which in this case comes out as the “no true French-man” (as in David French-man) fallacy, which manifests itself in the seemingly endless series of “The Conservative Case for” some kind of conservative defeat.

Former Chinese state media editor suggests Nancy Pelosi be ‘restrained,’ ‘punished’ by CCP for visiting Taiwan

Russia’s Ukraine war effort running ‘out of steam’ as Putin’s ability to spy in Europe cut in half, MI6 chief says (CNN)

British intelligence retools to meet the growing challenge of China

AP Highlights ‘Ukraine’s History Of Rampant Corruption’ After US Lawmaker Slams Zelensky

Vladimir Putin’s fascist fetish

IEA Chief: Europe Must Cut Gas Usage 20% To Survive Winter  Take that, nose!

Still Cute? Dystopian Robot Dogs Now Sporting Guns And Russian Insignia

German Government Bails Out Uniper From Energy Crisis

French Nuclear Outages Risk Making Europe’s Gas Crisis Worse

4 questions the US and NATO need to ask, and answer, about their Ukraine strategy

Russia and Ukraine agree to release blockaded grain exports

Russia tests U.S. air defenses in midst of Ukraine war

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Last night Congressman and Republican candidate for Governor of New York Lee Zeldin was on stage, giving a speech at a campaign stop in upstate New York, when a man climbed onto the stage and attacked Zeldin with some kind of bladed weapon. Zeldin defended himself and bystanders wrestled the attacker to the ground. Zeldin was unhurt and later resumed his speech.

The assailant was identified as 43-year-old David Jakubonis. Not much is known about Jakubonis at this point. He has been described as an Iraq war veteran, but that may be only because of the hat he was wearing. It seems reasonable to assume that he is a Democrat, although he might just be a nut, and some observers said he looked as though he could be intoxicated.

UPDATE: Why New York Police Released the Man Who Tried To Stab Jewish Republican