Read it.

The In-N-Out Burger chain was begun in California in 1948 in the Baldwin Park area of Los Angeles and has expanded to more than 400 eateries in eight states and 287 cities. Until March 24, the company had never closed a restaurant.

However, on that day, the location in East Oakland shuttered because of “ongoing issues with crime,” according to Denny Warnick, the chief operating officer of In-N-Out.

Employees at the now-closed burger joint had to deal with “car break-ins, property damage, and armed robberies.”

ZMan is fed up.

An aspect of modern politics that does not get discussed is that it is less about the practical things politics is supposed to address and mostly about esoteric and abstract ideas that have meaning only because we pretend so. Look at the current crop of campaign ads and the candidates may as well be running against the bogeyman or in favor of the good juju. Without the party labels, it would be impossible to know anything about the candidates.

This was not always the case. The old joke about politics was that every candidate ran around promising two cars in every garage and a chicken in every pot. The point was they all had plans about how to increase material prosperity. Even though no politician speaks to anything specific these days, the economy remains the top issue with voters because the prevailing assumption inherited from the past is that politics is supposed to be about practical things like fixing potholes.

One reason for the shift in political rhetoric is that the public square has become the domain of clever midwits playing word games with one another. Public discourse is now controlled by credentialed experts who have no idea how anything works, other than the complex game of relationships that defines the managerial class. That means they are good at constructing complicated intellectual structures that are useful in rhetorical jousting but have no connection to reality.

Concur.

Watch it.

Pearl Davis points out the inconvenient truth.

Read it.

In March, Joe Biden declared Easter Sunday to be “Transgender Day of Visibility” in a move which outraged many and was received as an assault on the holiest day of the year. In one sense, this was of course deeply shocking. Yet it is not as shocking as one might initially presume and is actually somewhat consistent with the fact that transgenderism, as a political and ideological movement, is profoundly religious in its orientation, particularly in its contrast with Christianity. Amidst the noise about the death of God and the decline of faith, the political climate of the West has become charged with religious ideas and impulses masquerading under the supposed secularism of the social movements gripping our culture which, properly explored and unearthed, will aid us in better addressing this descent into heresy.

Transgenderism is a false view of anthropology, based upon a series of premises contrary to reason and reliant upon distinctly religious ideas that happen to be false and should not be accepted as true, good, or beautiful. Its power as an ideological force—observable in its dramatic capture of the political debate in recent years—can, to some degree, be attributed to the religious nature of its presuppositions, which also demonstrates the importance of decisively rejecting its religious conclusions and proscriptions. But first, let us recap just a few of the quite astonishing consequences of this movement and the effects it has had on our society—all of which a mere decade ago would have been considered unthinkably absurd.

StrategyPage.

Chinese leader Xi Jinping has decided to seize or try to seize Taiwan before the end of the decade. Xi realizes Taiwan has a say in this matter and wants to mobilize sufficient forces and create the right psychological conditions in China and Taiwan. This includes having Chinese naval and air forces operating near Taiwan on a regular basis so the Taiwanese military is not alarmed every time Chinese forces operate near the island.

Some of these forces that regularly appear off the Taiwanese cast are those that would be used if China were seeking to blockade Taiwan. Chinese military forces will eventually blockade Taiwan and prevent any ships from getting in or out.

UnHerd.

Cokes, pilsners and passion-fruit-flavoured vapes. Many smoke rollies, some do ket and cocaine. Eyes rarely widen at the mention of such things; bring up the Pill, however, and you elicit a flurry of disdain and lively debate.

Once seen as a tool of sexual liberation, the Pill is now often spoken of as a pharmaceutical menace, wreaking havoc with female moods and increasing the risk of cancer. It was first rolled out on the NHS in 1961 — for married women, of course. And though still the most popular method of birth-control, its use is plummeting — data published in June last year showed that community pharmacies dispensed 7.2 million items of progestogen and combined contraceptives in 2022-3. In 2014/15, the number was 8.5 million.

A world away from the groans associated with the Pill, there is an enticing optimism to the chatter around the contraception app of the moment, Natural Cycles. To look at testimonies online is to find yourself in the lexical world of the farmers market — words like “harmony” and “rhythms” crop up just as a wrinkling of the nose, an eye roll, follow any mention of the Pill. How good might it be, I think between big rips of a vape, to be free of chemicals?

Read it.

Chinese students pursuing an education at western universities are faced with intimidation by Chinese authorities and their proxies—fellow Chinese students.

This is the conclusion of an Amnesty International report that draws on dozens of testimonials from students in Europe as well as the U.S.

While students feel quietly intimidated by their more ‘patriotic’ peers, such tactics can be also applied to their family members.

Read it.

The Liberal Democrats, sometimes viewed as Britain’s third largest political party, have tolerated a “hostile environment” for Christians and deselected a parliamentary candidate because of his Christian faith, in breach of equality law, some of its members have claimed.

David Campanale, who is an award-winning former BBC journalist and, crucially, an Anglican, is set to be replaced as a prospective MP candidate for Sutton and Cheam after what The Daily Telegraph described as “a two-year campaign against him by members of his local party and a number of LGBT activists.”

Human rights campaigner Benedict Rogers said the action against Campanale amounted to “persecution.” It is reminiscent of Tim Farron’s time as leader of the Lib Dems, which came to an end in 2017 after just two years when he concluded that “remaining faithful to Christ” was incompatible with leading the party.

Read it.

Whose side will Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson be on if protesters become lawbreakers at the August Democratic National Convention in Chicago, and how will he direct police to respond?

Concerns that Johnson will side with lawbreakers already are common, and Johnson’s interview published Sunday by the Chicago Tribune should increase those concerns.

The American Mind.

I don’t feel responsible for the sins of my father and grandfather. I feel responsible for what the situation is today for sins of my own generation, and I’ll be damned if I feel responsible to pay for what happened 300 years ago.” – Senator Joe Biden, 1975

Major political and social phenomena do not spring up fully armored and ready for battle, like Athena from Zeus’s head. They have powerful motivations that drive them and gestate for years before they can come into being—they also have powerful interests that they serve. I believe that many of the fundamental trends in anti-white politics and rhetoric serve a common ideological purpose. That purpose is to create an intellectual and cultural environment to justify the expropriation of land, property, and other wealth from whites while instituting a permanent regime of anti-white employment and legal discrimination.

While this statement may seem alarmist, in fact, this expropriation is already ongoing. In many cases, it is still on the margins of our popular politics, but like so many other leftist political movements of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, what was marginal will soon become mainstream.

Read it.

As Stacy McCain likes to say, crazy people are dangerous.

David Freer.

Some bloke posted on X that the ambitions and hobbies of all men are chosen to improve their chances of finding a mate. Now, I am sure this is true for him, and like so many people he does assume all others at least of his sex are absolutely identical to him. His theory, for what it is worth, was that desire to reproduce is primal and dominates all other things. Tell that to a man who is cold and wet to the point of hypothermia, or hungry, or even thirsty. Deal with the actual survival primaries, and yes, once you’re warm and comfortable enough, if you don’t breed you can think of it, long-term, as evolution in action.

David Freer is one of my Recommended Writers. (See sidebar on the right.)

Read it.

The U.K.’s cumulative net migration in the 25 years up to 1997 was just 68,000. In the 25 years to follow, cumulative net migration was at least 5.8 million,” a damning new report co-authored by Britain’s former immigration minister Robert Jenrick finds, exposing the myths perpetuated by the Western liberal mainstream.

Read it.

A new analysis suggests that school-based mindfulness programs, widely implemented in recent years, do not significantly benefit adolescents’ mental health or well-being.

Imagine that.

Read it.

The 66-year-old star of “Fargo” and “Boardwalk Empire” was assaulted late Wednesday morning in Manhattan and taken to a nearby hospital with bruising, swelling, and bleeding of his left eye.

“Steve Buscemi was assaulted in Mid-Town Manhattan, another victim of a random act of violence in the city,” according to a statement Sunday from his publicist. “He is ok and appreciates everyone’s well wishes.”

‘Random act of violence’ about sums up Blue State life.

UPDATE: Actor Steve Buscemi Assaulted in New York. Here’s How the Big Apple Became Sucker Punch City.

The Atlantic.

Last month, the Pomona College economist Gary N. Smith calculated that the number of tenured and tenure-track professors at his school declined from 1990 to 2022, while the number of administrators nearly sextupled in that period. “Happily, there is a simple solution,” Smith wrote in a droll Washington Post column. In the tradition of Jonathan Swift, his modest proposal called to get rid of all faculty and students at Pomona so that the college could fulfill its destiny as an institution run by and for nonteaching bureaucrats. At the very least, he said, “the elimination of professors and students would greatly improve most colleges’ financial position.”

Read it.

A paralegal from Manhattan Attorney General Alvin Bragg’s office testified on Friday during former President Donald Trump’s “hush money” trial that some phone call records between Michael Cohen and Stephanie Clifford’s (a.k.a. Stormy Daniels) lawyer were deleted, raising questions about evidentiary integrity.

In a bid to challenge some of the evidence being put forward in President Trump’s business records falsification trial in Manhattan, Trump attorney Emil Bove asked paralegal Jaden Jarmel-Schneider in court on May 10 about roughly three pages worth of records that the attorney claimed Mr. Bragg’s office had deleted.

Mr. Jarmel-Schneider confirmed some deletions. He acknowledged that some phone call records from 2018 between Mr. Cohen and Keith Davidson (Ms. Clifford’s lawyer) had been deleted, along with some records of conversations between Ms. Clifford’s manager Gina Rodriguez and then-National Enquirer editor Dylan Howard about Ms. Clifford’s claim that she had an affair with President Trump.

Read it.

According to new research, 23 percent of bachelor’s degree programs and 43 percent of master’s degree programs have a negative ROI.

The number of jobs for Grievance Studies majors is very limited.

Read it.

A group of fifteen Republican Senators want the IRS to investigate whether groups involved in recent anti-Israel protests on college campuses violated their tax-exempt status by supporting Hamas, a designated terrorist group.

This ought to be a no-brainer but in these degenerate modern times it probably won’t happen.

Read it.

When people gripe about paying taxes and the government being a poor the absolute worst possible capital allocation, this is what they are talking about: $7.5 billion in investments for electric vehicles has – in two years – produced just 7 charging stations across four states.

The Bipartisan Infrastructure Law, signed by Biden in November 2021, allocated $7.5 billion for EV charging, the Washington Post writes. Of this amount, $5 billion went to states as “formula funding” for the National Electric Vehicle Infrastructure program to establish a network of fast chargers along major highways.

Today, there’s seven chargers with a total of just 38 parking spots. And, come on: when the Post is calling it out, you know the results have been horrible.

Read it.

The machine has been built and put into action over nearly a decade but largely in secret. Its way of doing business has been via surreptitious contacts with media and tech companies, intelligence carve-outs in “fact-checking” organizations, payoffs, and various other clever strategies, all directed toward boosting some sources of information and suppressing others. The goal has always been to advance regime narratives and curate the public mind.

And yet, based on its operations and insofar as we can tell, it had every intention of remaining secret. This is for a reason. A systematic effort by government to bully private sector companies into a particular narrative while suppressing dissent contradicts American law and tradition. It also violates human rights as understood since the Enlightenment. It was a consensus, until very recently, that free speech was essential to the functioning of the good society.

Four years ago, many of us suspected censorship was going on, that the throttling and banning was not merely a mistake or the result of zealous employees stepping out of line. Three years ago, the proof started to arrive. Two years ago, it became a flood. With the Twitter files from a year ago, we had all the proof we needed that the censorship was systematic, directed, and highly effective. But even then, we only knew a fraction of it.

Vox.

Maybe you know the routine. Every so often, I go through my refrigerator, check labels on the items, and throw out anything that’s a month, or a week, or maybe a few days past the date on the label. I might stop to sniff, but for my whole adult life, I’ve figured that the problem was obvious — my jam or almond milk or package of shredded Italian cheese blend had “expired” — and the fix was simple: Into the garbage it goes.

This habit is so ingrained that when I think about eating food that’s gone past its date, I get a little queasy. I’ve only had food poisoning once or twice in my life, always from restaurants, but the idea is still there in my head: past the date, food will make me sick. You’ll probably never catch me dumpster-diving.

I know, on some intellectual level, that throwing away food is probably wrong. The statistics are damning. Forty percent of food produced in America heads to the landfill or is otherwise wasted. That adds up. Every year, the average American family throws out somewhere between $1,365 and $2,275, according to a landmark 2013 study co-authored by the Harvard Food Law and Policy Clinic and the Natural Resources Defense Council. It’s a huge economic loss for food growers and retailers, who often have to ditch weirdly shaped produce or overstocked food that didn’t sell.

Read it.

Sometimes places ban or restrict animals. For example, an apartment building might not allow dogs. Or an airline might charge you money to transport your cat. But the law requires them to allow service animals, for example guide dogs for the blind. A newer law also requires some of these places to allow emotional support animals, ie animals that help people with mental health problems like depression or anxiety. So for example, if you’re depressed, but having your dog nearby makes you feel better, then a landlord has to let you keep your dog in the apartment. Or if you’re anxious, but petting your cat calms you down, then an airline has to take your cat free of charge.

Clinically and scientifically, this is great. Many studies show that pets help people with mental health problems. Depressed people really do benefit from a dog who loves them. Anxious people really do feel calmer when they hold a cute kitten.

Legally, it’s a racket. In order to benefit from these rules, you need for a psychiatrist to write you an “emotional support animal letter”, saying that your pet is actually an emotional support animal. In theory, the psychiatrist should evaluate you carefully, using their vast expertise to distinguish between an emotional support animal and a normal pet. In practice, nobody has a rubric for this evaluation that makes sense. I’m not saying there aren’t long, scholarly-sounding papers with twenty-seven authors from the psychiatry departments of top medical schools called things like A Rubric For The Emotional Support Animal Evaluation That Makes Sense. I’m saying that when you take out all the legalese, the executive summary is “think really hard about whether this animal really helps this person, then think really hard about whether it will cause trouble, and if it helps the person and won’t cause trouble, sign the letter”.

Read it.

Time to leave.

Read it.

If you are in the hospital emergency room, and that’s where most people without insurance go, then you get treated. Otherwise, many hospitals are turning to pay in advance for services.

…

It’s interesting to note that hospitals want payment in advance for births. Most illegals just walk in and never pay for anything.

Nonpayment is one of the reasons costs are soaring for everyone who does pay. Medicare for all is not the answer. When consumers have no skin in the game, no one is interested in reducing costs.

Newsbusters.

In a May 9 blog post, YouTube detailed its plans to target and censor certain election-related content ahead of the European Union (EU) elections this June. This includes removing content and terminating channels that YouTube considers to be spreading “disinformation” online. “Our global team of reviewers combine with machine learning technology to apply these policies at scale, 24/7,” the platform boasted. YouTube’s blog came soon after the Meta Oversight Board urged all tech companies to engage in election censorship.

Read it.

Here’s the 7,325,793,257th reason I plan to homeschool my children.

Rebecca Joynes, a math teacher in Manchester, UK, just had a baby with a teenager she slept with. She did so while out on bail for sex with a different one of her students.

I guess raping one kid just wasn’t enough for Miss Joynes.

Read it.

I quit buying from Target when they started allowing biological males into their women’s bathrooms.

UPDATE: Heritage Economist on Target Pride: DOJ Should be ‘Suing Them Into Oblivion’

Newsbusters.

On Thursday, UnHerd released an interview featuring the three men, who discussed the complex web of NGOs and state agencies that make up the “Censorship Industrial Complex,” the origins of the industry and the techniques it uses, as well as the underlying ideology driving the players behind it.

Shellenberger did not hold back in his criticism of these entities, describing their mission as driven primarily by a sense of bigotry and religious zeal.

Read it.

U.S. Border Patrol agents arrested nearly 500 migrants in one sector along the Canadian border, a one-week total that eclipsed all of Fiscal Year 2021.

Read it.

I guess they really don’t want electric cars after all.

Read it.

Safety concerns around electric vehicles continue to mount with Australian fire and rescue services in New South Wales stating they might have to make a “tactical disengagement” of a trapped car accident victim if the battery is likely to explode.

Read it.

More than two years later, the Community Reparations Commission in Asheville, North Carolina, has released a list of recommendations, calling for a guaranteed income program for people with “low-incomes and assets,” as well as a reparations accountability council.

And socialism enters on little cat feet…. (with apologies to Carl Sandburg)

Read it.

An illegal immigrant mother arrested on charges of attempting to pay a hit man to kill witnesses involved in her son’s murder trial was previously detained by federal authorities, but later released, immigration officials confirmed to the Daily Caller News Foundation.

Josefina Cardona-Cardona, an illegal migrant from Guatemala, was arrested on Monday after allegedly agreeing to pay an undercover agent to kill two cooperating witnesses in her son’s fatal stabbing case in Palm Beach County, Florida. Immigration and Customs Enforcement confirmed to the Daily Caller News Foundation that Cardona-Cardona entered the U.S. unlawfully and was taken into the agency’s custody in 2019, but was later released and referred to a program intended to monitor migrants waiting for their court dates.

Read it.

I guess he’s really a Democrat after all.

Armstrong Williams.

American college campuses are permeated with corrupted professors who themselves corrupt students. Without a doubt, college professors are the most dangerous people in America.

They’re not dangerous because they challenge the status quo or encourage their students to think critically. On the contrary, they are dangerous because they encourage impressionable young college students to adhere to the doctrines of the professors they choose without giving them the chance to meaningfully challenge those doctrines.

During the recent pro-Palestinian and pro-Hamas protests on elite college campuses, thousands of students put up tents on private property, commandeered university-owned buildings, defaced private property, and chanted disturbing, antisemitic rhetoric. But while we constantly talk about the actions of the students, we fail to recognize that these students aren’t alone but instead are educated and cheered on by their college professors.

Read it.

The Transport Workers Union said it’s considering suing Columbia University, saying the school failed to keep employees safe during anti-Israel protests in the past month.

Play stupid games, win stupid prizes.

Read it.

The public schools in the state of New York doled out $29,284 per pupil in “current expenditures” in fiscal year 2022, according to a report published this week by the Department of Education’s National Center for Education Statistics.

“Current expenditures comprise expenditures for the day-to-day operation of schools and school districts for public elementary and secondary education, including expenditures for staff salaries and benefits, supplies, and purchased services,” the National Center for Education Statistics says.

“General administration expenditures and school administration expenditures are also included in current expenditures,” it says.

The $29,284 that New York spent per pupil on these items was more than any other state. So, what did taxpayers get in return for this investment?

Not much.

That’s about what it cost me for a year at Yale back in the ’70s.

Read it.

The myocardial injury seen in these postvaccine hearts is different from typical myocarditis and has an appearance most closely resembling a catecholamine-mediated stress (toxic) cardiomyopathy. Understanding that these instances are different from typical myocarditis and that cytokine storm has a known feedback loop with catecholamines may help guide screening and therapy.

Read it.

Just over one year following Bud Light’s terrible decision to hire transgender influencer and professional toddler Dylan Mulvaney to promote its once pro-America beer, the company’s sales are plummeting.

Again.

Read it.

Britain is refusing to sign the World Health Organization’s (WHO) pandemic accord because the country says it would have to give away a fifth of its vaccines, the Telegraph reported Wednesday.

Read it.

Fascism became a swear word in the US and UK during the Second World War. It has been ever since, to the point that the content of the term has been drained away completely. It is not a system of political economy but an insult.

If we go back a decade before the war, you find a completely different situation. Read any writings from polite society from 1932 to 1940 or so, and you find a consensus that freedom and democracy, along with Enlightenment-style liberalism of the 18th century, were completely doomed. They should be replaced by some version of what was called the planned society, of which fascism was one option.

A book by that name appeared in 1937 as published by the prestigious Prentice-Hall, and it included contributions by top academics and high-profile influencers. It was highly praised by all respectable outlets at the time.

Read it.

In solidarity with their student activists, professors at The New School in New York City on Wednesday erected the first faculty-led pro-Palestinian encampment in the United States.

Read it.

Philadelphia’s new mayor Cherelle Parker may be succeeding with what seems like a relatively simple task that her predecessors were wholly incapable of performing: cleaning out the city’s open air drug markets in its Kensington section.

Pay attention, Democrats. There’s a chance it actually can be done.

During Monday’s Committee of the Whole meeting, City Council members pressed Managing Director Adam Thiel and other officials for details on the planned “encampment resolution” in Kensington and budget concerns at the Office of Homeless Services.

Read it.

Clinical psychologist and podcast host Jordan B. Peterson and X owner Elon Musk were flabbergasted by Canada’s latest infringement on civil liberties, anti-hate speech bill C-63.

Dennis Prager.

When one observes Jews who defend those whose raison d’etre is the annihilation of the one Jewish country on Earth, you have to ask: Why are there no others like them? Were there blacks who defended slavery? Were there Armenians who defended the Turkish mass murder of fellow Armenians during World War I?

It is true that every nation has produced people who work against their nation—particularly during time of war. Vidkun Quisling, the Norwegian leader who collaborated with the Nazi occupiers of Norway, is perhaps the best known: The very name “Quisling” is widely used as a synonym for traitor. But even Quisling identified more with fellow Norwegians than Israel-hating Jews identify with fellow Jews.

It turns out that the Jews who side with those who wish to eradicate the one Jewish state and slaughter as many Jews as possible are truly unique.

Read it.

New York City Mayor Eric Adams has contributed $5,000 of his own money to a reward offered for information leading to the arrest and conviction of those responsible for vandalizing a World War I memorial.

The 107th United States Infantry monument, situated in Central Park on the Upper East Side, was vandalized during a protest on Monday. Social media footage shows anti-Israel protesters spray-painting the word “Gaza” on the base of the statue and burning an American flag.

Read it.

According to a study from New Jersey Assemblyman Paul Kanitra, illegal immigration costs the state $7.3 billion per year.

Nature.

Every argument against limiting individual wealth boils down to ‘people get upset when some people have a lot more than other people’, i.e. envy. That’s all it is. Such envy is directly contrary to the Tenth Commandment that God delivered to the Jews, but nowadays most Jews (and most Christians), if they’ve even heard about the Ten Commandments, don’t give a shit.

Read it.

First, a quick rehash. We identified evidence of fabricated data in four studies co-authored by Francesca Gino. We asked her employer, Harvard University, to look into it. They spent a year and a half doing that, and determined that we were right. So they contacted the relevant journals with requests for retractions and put Gino on unpaid administrative leave. Then we wrote some blog posts about it. Then Francesca Gino filed a $25M defamation lawsuit against us and Harvard. Legal wackiness ensued.

It is clearly not our particular bailiwick, but this post is about that wackiness.