The Antiplanner peeks behind the curtain.

Now that the war in Ukraine has revealed that Europe is even more dependent on foreign oil than the United States, Americans can smugly sit back and say, “If only those Europeans acted more like, you know, Europeans, they wouldn’t be in this fix.” Because, as everyone knows, Europeans travel mostly by electric public transit and high-speed trains, so they aren’t dependent on oil to get around by car or airplane.

Read it.

Joe Biden took questions from the press today, most of which focused on his foreign policy blunders of the last few days. He chose to brazen it out, denying that his comments had been walked back on multiple occasions and denying specifically that he had called for Vladimir Putin to be ousted. Under the circumstances, there is not much else he can do, and he is far past the point where he and his aides have the luxury of caring whether what he says makes any sense.

Ginni Thomas’ West Wing contacts raise new questions for another Trump ally: John Eastman (Politico)

Trump turns Michigan into MAGA proving ground (Politico)

Trump Rally in Georgia Helps Stacey Abrams With Fundraising Appeal (Newsweek)

Kinzinger Wants Tucker Carlson ‘Held to Account’ for Taking ‘Putin’s Side’ (Newsweek) But who’s going to hold Kinzinger accountable for taking Democrats’ side?

Biden’s budget to boost military, raise taxes on billionaires (Reuters)

International Condemnation of Joe Biden

It’s Been 259 Days Since the Network Newscasts Said the Words ‘Hunter Biden’

How Low Can Biden Fall?

Biden’s Regulatory Blitz a Massive Tax, Especially Harming Seniors and Low-Income Americans

Biden administration kills Trump-era nuclear cruise missile program

Reporters Hammer Biden Over Russian ‘Regime Change’ Comment At Budget Press Briefing

WOW: Nets Hammer Biden’s ‘Shocking,’ ‘Horrendous Gaffe’ as ‘Backlash’ Grows

Biden DOJ Kills Trump-Era Program To Catch Chinese Spies

If every judge is an originalist, originalism is meaningless (Washington Post)

Jackson, Thomas, and the end of the Supreme Court’s ‘Black seat’ (MSNBC)

Montgomery County schools’ anti-racist audit to examine its curriculums (Washington Post)

Washington schools adopt race-based discipline

What Is Black America?

The Racial Reckoning Doesn’t Seem to Have Gotten Black People to Behave Better Toward Each Other

Pants on Fire: Washington Post Editor Pretends Kavanaugh Was Never Smeared

Southern Poverty Law Center Is Racist, Employees Say  Not really news.

Jon Stewart: ‘The Problem With White People,’ All Like Klansmen  Including Joh Stewart, presumably.

Insurers could have been climate heroes. Instead, they have risked a crisis to dwarf 2008

A heat wave and snowfall: Why researchers are puzzled by Antarctica’s recent weather (BBC) When reality doesn’t follow the Narrative.

L.A.’s asphalt-covered schoolyards are an environmental injustice (L.A. Times) There’s that fashionable buzz-phrase ‘environmental justice’ again.

Reducing Our Reliance on Oil Will Increase Our Quality of Life (The New Republic)

Conserve oil — a little sacrifice won’t kill us (The Hill)

Complex Models Now Gauge the Impact of Climate Change on Global Food Production. The Results Are ‘Alarming’ (Inside Climate News) As they are carefully crafted to be.

Why geothermal energy is being viewed as a viable alternative to fossil fuels (PBS NewsHour)

Biden’s most effective climate warrior faces potential doom in the Senate (Politico)

Next arriving at Amtrak’s 30th Street Station: A PGW natural gas controversy

Tens of billions of dollars’ worth of property facing climate and erosion risk, analysis shows (ABC News)

Cities need to be redesigned for the climate crisis. Can they make us happy, too? (The Guardian)

How to save the Amazon? Brazil company says NFTs are the answer (CNN) I am not making this up.

Saving America from Planet-Threatening Fossil Fuels

Covid Pandemic and Climate Change Facts: Fact Checking the Fact Checkers

A Bold Idea to Stall the Climate Crisis—by Building Better Trees  (Wired ‘Science’)

Comprehensive European Study Finds Warmer Climate Periods Do Not Lead to More Conflict, War

Our soil is dying We and our governments need to act  Mostly our governments.

Newsom’s Energy Regulations Have Oil Tankers Emitting More Than Twice What All of California’s Vehicle Fleet Do

Yet another California city becomes unaffordable

People’s Convoy Gives Up, Will Leave Washington, D.C., Area After Three Weeks of Doing Nothing (Daily Beast)

Law enforcement focus on quality-of-life offenses renews old debate over ‘broken windows’ policing (CNN)

Trump backers push election change that would make counting slower, costlier and less accurate (Politico)

Disney has been outspoken on DeSantis’ parental rights bill but silent on Uyghur genocide

The Guardian view on public interest: democracy rests on a free press (The Guardian)  Too bad they encourage censorship.

#OscarSoWoke: Hosts Attack ‘Unbearable White Women’ and ‘Toxic Masculinity’

Without Notifying Parents, New Jersey Middle School Forces Students To Learn About Transgender Hormone Therapy

Analysis: Fact-Checkers Fail to React to New Facts on Hunter Biden Emails

Republicans Investigate VOA for Biased Coverage of Iran, Advocacy for Biden

‘Political Weapon’: NYT Warns Rumble Helping Right Dodge Censorship  Well, yeah, that’s kinda the point.

Read it.

Miranda Devine zooms in on the story of Devon Archer in the New York Post column “Biden’s silent as son’s former friend and business partner faces jail, financial ruin.” Devine updates us on the story: “Archer has less than five weeks left before he has to go to jail to serve a one-year, one-month sentence over a fraud he says he had no knowledge his then-partners were committing, and which cost him his life’s savings.”

Devine’s February 7 column anticipated Archer’s sentencing. Her previous column seems somewhat more cynical about Archer than her column today. In any event, her column today contrasts with it. In the February column Devine exhumes interesting material from Hunter’s laptop. Both columns are worth reading.

It has been left to the reporters and columnists of the New York Post to tell the Hunter Biden story. Archer is a chapter in the story. Archer and several of his business colleagues have been convicted of fraud in the case brought by Southern District of New York prosecutors.

The Antiplanner makes an obvious suggestion.

The recent earthquake off the coast of Japan derailed a high-speed train and forced East Japan Railway to shut down the rail line. Fixing the line, the company admitted, may take “a considerable amount of time.”

Joel Kotkin.

As the centers of media and political discourse, large cities, notably New York, have a unique ability to promote themselves, asserting that dense, core urban areas own the future. Yet in reality, even during good times, and well before the pandemic, Americans have been headed, in increasing numbers, to suburbs, exurbs and to smaller cities. Romantic illusions to past urban recoveries may make people feel better, but they ignore both long-lasting trends and new realities.

Steve Sailer.

College admission notifications are going out this week, and there are rumors that the University of California public colleges are actually taking seriously all their Racial Reckoning rhetoric, at the expense of the white and Asian applicants who keep their prestige up.

Read it.

PhD dissertation.

Time To End The Grievance-Industrial Complex

What Quantum Mechanics Can Teach Us about Abortion (“Scientific” American)

Court Rules Democrats Engaged In “Extreme Partisan Gerrymander” In Maryland

‘A Huge Red Flag’: Chuck Todd Panics Over GOP Lead in NBC Midterm Poll

Utah Lawmakers Enact Ban On Transgender Youth In Girls’ Sports, Overriding Governor’s Veto

NY Times Mad at GOP Senators ‘Angrily Lecturing and Interrupting…Jurist’ Jackson

Capehart, Brooks: Republicans Put Jackson ‘Through Hell’ To Get on Fox

New York Times Systemic Racism Used To Attack Jackson Critics

AP Mocked for Saying GOP Thinks Ketanji ‘Brings Too Much Empathy’

Ketanji Brown Jackson’s Favorite Critical Race Theory Book Rejects the Constitution

Aspiring Rapper Update: ‘Baby Cino’ Gets Out of Jail, Immediately Gets Shot Dead

ABC’s Karl: GOP’s Questioning of Judge Jackson ‘A Message to QAnon’

NYT Notes ‘Pain and Disgust’ Toward GOP After KBJ Hearings; ‘Appeals to Racism’

CNN Lets Race-Baiter Guest Accuse GOP of ‘Race-Baiting’ on Jackson

Rescued Victorian Rainfall Data Smashes Former Records

“Its a Disaster”: Aussie Noise Nuisance Court Defeat Panicking Renewable Energy Investors

Senate unanimously supports Vermont’s 1st environmental justice policy There’s that ‘environmental justice’ slogan again.

There’s a 1 in 5 chance of a future dangerous COVID-19 variant, expert says (Deseret News)

New York Climate Act: Cost Estimate Sleight of Hand

Leading Environmental Group NABU Now Vigorously Opposes Wind Parks In German Forests

“Save The Children” Chooses Climate Virtue Signalling Over Feeding Hungry Kids

Who Are The Russian Oligarchs  Under the Alinsky Rules, any Enemy of the People has to be personalized, which is why the Narrative Media are so tightly focused on Putin and Oligarchs.

Ethics experts see Ginni Thomas’s texts as a problem for Supreme Court (Washington Post)

Democrats rip Justice Clarence Thomas over his wife’s ‘deranged’ push to overturn election (N.Y. Daily News)

‘I get a chill’: Bertie Carvel on exploring the human side of Donald Trump (The Guardian)

Four GOP senators who should go back to law school (The Hill)

White House Unveils 20% “Billionaire Minimum Tax” Proposal In 2023 Budget

The Shaming-Industrial Complex

Italian Authorities Seek To Seize Megayacht Allegedly Belonging To Vladimir Putin  We don’t know for sure so we’ll steal it just in case.

Read it.

A new process introduced by the Rice University lab of chemist James Tour can turn bulk quantities of just about any carbon source into valuable graphene flakes. The process is quick and cheap; Tour said the “flash graphene” technique can convert a ton of coal, food waste or plastic into graphene for a fraction of the cost used by other bulk graphene-producing methods.

“This is a big deal,” Tour said. “The world throws out 30% to 40% of all food, because it goes bad, and plastic waste is of worldwide concern. We’ve already proven that any solid carbon-based matter, including mixed plastic waste and rubber tires, can be turned into graphene.”

Read it.

Traditional weights and measures emerged organically as responses to the requirements of human life. Just as scientific hypotheses are proposed to answer intellectual questions, so too are forms of life developed to answer the needs of life. In a reverse Gresham’s law, the good drive out the bad.

The foot, the mile and the pint are all human measures, emerging either from a human reference or for an understood human need. Unlike decimal systems, which can only be divided by 2 & 5, the old shilling — being 12 pennies — could be divided by 2, 3, 4 or 6. Such measures exist at the scale of daily life, and in a world increasingly alienated and atomised they help to bind us to the notion of place and dwelling. The pint is not simply an abstraction of fluid quantity: it’s a social activity, an anticipation and a pleasure.

One of the joys of being an American is that you don’t need to use the fucking metric system unless you choose to do so.

I think he was right the first time.

COVID symptoms or allergies? 3 major reasons to get a COVID-19 test (Deseret News)

NYC Mayor Eric Adams is slammed by fired city workers and unions after he grants vaccination exemptions for rockstars, actors and players for the Yankees, Nets and Mets – but not for regular New Yorkers

Yale epidemiologist: ‘The pandemic is not over’

We’ve found one factor that predicts which countries best survive Covid

CDC updates Covid-19 guidance to allow patients wear N95s

Mask Mandates Forever?

Legal correspondent doubles down on claim US Constitution is ‘actually trash’

Did Tipping Come from Slavery? The 1619 Project Lies Again

Questions remain as resentencing initiative championed by Kim Foxx is slow out of the gate in Cook County

50 years after Watergate, the president of the United States still flies above the law

Big population drops in Los Angeles, San Francisco transforming urban California

Pittsburgh metro area loses population, leads nation in natural population decline

Democrats propose bills to send gas payments to Americans, some funded by taxing oil companies  Buying votes with other people’s money – it’s what Democrats do best.

Virginia Thomas urged White House chief to pursue unrelenting efforts to overturn the 2020 election, texts show (Washington Post) Guess she didn’t believe the Narrative.

Toobin: Why Ginni Thomas’ texts around 1/6 are problematic (CNN) Thoughts from the Narrative’s official wanker.

‘They are the ones paying the consequences’: Jan. 6 rioters mimic Trump’s misinformation playbook but see different results (CNN) They’re not billionaires and so the Deep State can crush them.

After crippling rounds of sanctions, these are the oligarchs who are (and aren’t) speaking out against Russia’s war (CNN) All oligarchs, all the time.

The Purges in Putin’s Shrinking Inner Circle (The New Yorker)

That was then, this is now, again Russia/Ukraine edition

Russian Superyachts ‘Go Dark’ To Avoid Tracking

Ice shelf as big as New York City collapses in previously stable East Antarctica (Boston Globe)

Antarctic ice shelf nearly the size of Los Angeles collapsed as temperatures soared to 40 above normal (CNN)

Climate action has been ‘a calamity’, says Senate Democrat Sheldon Whitehouse (The Guardian)

Fridays for Future school climate strikes resume across the world (The Guardian)

Young Australians take climate protest to prime minister’s residence (Reuters)

Birds are laying eggs earlier, a new study shows. Scientists blame the climate crisis (CNN)

ABC Ignores Biden Backtracking on Effectiveness of Russian Sanctions

Joe Biden, Liar

Biden Still Doesn’t Get Deterrence

MLB’s Machado Wears ‘Let’s Go Brandon’ Shirt To Interviews

Wow: CBS Calls Out Biden Flip Flops on Sanctions (ABC Still Spinning)

Joe’s Little Big Guy

Biden Administration Has a ‘Momflation’ Problem

Biden Bid To Waive Sanctions on Iranian Terrorists Could Derail Nuclear Deal

Doddering on the World Stage

Who Said It: Vice President Kamala Harris Or Elmo?  Babylon Bee.

YouTube Removed CPAC Videos About 2020 Election

NYPD revives ‘broken windows’ policies as Adams fumes over weekend shootings

DOJ Accused Of Assault On Free Speech And Press In Project Veritas Case

Hayes: GOP ‘Over Inflated’ Al-Qaeda Threat, Should Fight Trump Instead

Disney’s Sex-Ed-for-Kindergarteners Crusade

Big Oil Is No Longer “Unbankable” Good news for a change.

PBS Runs Puff Piece on Cori Bush’s ‘Activism,’ Radical Agenda

MSNBC Piece Claims ‘Health & Fitness’ Is New Gateway Drug To The Far-Right

The View Fantasizes About Secretly Drugging Men With Infertility Pills

USA Today: There Is ‘No Simple Answer’ for Defining What Is a Woman There is if you’re not a left-wing nutter.

Trump Sues the Russia Hoaxers

Not Gonna Happen! Scarborough Sputters With Rage That Trump Won’t Be Prosecuted

No, School Boards Are Not ‘Banning Books’

Sally Fields Is So Mad at Pro-Lifers, She Might Physically Assault Them  Somebody ought to encourage Sally Fields to get an abortion. From the neck up would work, after all, it’s just a clump of cells.

Caitlyn Jenner Bashes Swimmer Lia Thomas

Men to the left of us, men to the right of us

2021 emissions surge leaves less than 10 years to avoid 1.5 degree warming: study (The Hill)

Satellite data shows entire Conger ice shelf has collapsed in Antarctica (The Guardian)

Ice Shelf Twenty Times the Size of Manhattan Collapes in Antarctic Heat Wave (Daily Beast)

SEC proposes far-reaching climate disclosure rules for companies – here’s where the rules may be vulnerable to legal challenges

Big Three Evening Networks Ignore SEC’s Green Tyranny

NATO Doubles Battlegroups In ‘Eastern Flank’ States: Bulgaria, Hungary, Romania & Slovakia

US DoJ reveals Russian supply chain attack targeting energy sector

Visualizing The EU’s Energy Dependency

Russia’s Top Space Official Says No More Launching European Satellites

Oil Prices Tumble After EU Fails To Agree On Russian Import Ban

Russia Signals It Will Limit Scope To “Complete Liberation Of Donbas” – Says “No Progress” In Talks

Stinger, Javelin production can be increased, with congressional support: Army official

That was then, this is now: Russia/Ukraine edition

10 Unintended Consequences Of A Protracted Russia/Ukraine War According To JPMorgan

Ukraine: Fighting in Nemishaeve?

Read it.

Imagine, therefore, how surprised I have been this past couple of decades to see more and more men fighting on behalf of “women”. Trans-women that is. Let’s call him Nigel — this man is a type you will recognise. White, bearded, and whether gay or straight he somehow manages to shoehorn himself onto the LGBTQQIAP+ community, and is absolutely, without question, more oppressed than females. He gets himself out of bed, dragging himself away from Insta, Twitter and Pornhub (he has donated to some bird making ethical porn, but he prefers the real stuff) and cycles down to where are the feminists are speaking about rape and domestic violence and other bourgeoise rubbish.

His pronouns intact, fluctuating between he/him and they/them, depending entirely on his mood and what he chooses to wear that day, Nigel drops his washing off at his mums, gets his girlfriend (they are a queer couple though) to clean out the hamster cage, slips on his £150 trainers and joins the baying mob shouting “TERFS out” and “bigots”, etc.

Nigel may identify as a citizen journalist, so keen is he to alert the online world to the danger lurking behind any gathering of witches banging on about single sex spaces. Or perhaps he is working for a “progressive” media outlet, and makes it his business to contact feminist event organisers asking probing, intelligent, open-ended questions such as “how many trans women have you killed today” or “when did you become a fascist/bigot?” He writes headlines such as, “Transphobes secretly campaigning to remove the right to free cervical smear tests for trans women.”

Joel Kotkin.

Perhaps nowhere is the gap between America’s cognitive elite and its populace larger than in their preferred urban forms. For nearly a century—interrupted only by the Depression and the Second World War—Americans have been heading further from the urban core, seeking affordable and safe communities with good schools, parks, and a generally more tranquil lifestyle. We keep pushing out despite the contrary desires of planners, academic experts, and some real estate interests. In 1950, the core cities accounted for nearly 24 percent of the U.S. population; today, the share is under 15 percent, according to demographer Wendell Cox. Between 2010 and 2020, the suburbs and exurbs of the major metropolitan areas gained 2.0 million net domestic migrants, while the urban core counties lost 2.7 million.

This is less a growth in “bedroom suburbs,” supplying workers to the urban core, but one that serves multiple employment centers and commercial development. The latest edition of Commuting in America estimates that almost 70 percent of metropolitan-area workers now live and work in the suburbs; trips within suburbs or suburb-to-suburb commutes constitute more than double the commutes with a central business district as the final destination.

Saudi Arabia’s rebuke, big oil’s reluctance to pump puts Biden in a bind on gas prices

Harris team angry over Vogue cover, lack of respect: book

Biden’s policy ‘mistake’ will ‘hit’ every American, economics professor Brian Brenberg warns

Protecting Biden is a Full-Time Job for the Times

As Gas Prices Skyrocket, Nets Let Biden Escape Blame

Kamala Harris, Self-Help Guru

The madness of slow Joe, Iran edition (11)

Biden Approval Rating Plummets in Deep-Blue State He Won by 29 Points

Scarborough Skips Biden’s Afghanistan Fiasco in Explaining Russia’s Ukraine Invasion

Biden Owes Border Patrol Belated Apology Over Phony Charges of ‘Whipping’ Illegal Aliens

Biden LOSES IT When CBS Points Out Sanctions Failed to Deter Putin

Congressman Seeks Facebook, Twitter Records Related to Suppression of Hunter Biden Laptop Story

Shifts in El Niño May Be Driving Climates Extremes in Both Hemispheres (Inside Climate News)

Arctic Sea Ice is More Modest than Maximal (NASA)

Climate Change Produces More Pollen – Driving Longer, More Intense Allergy Seasons  (SciTech Daily)

Extreme weather prompts UN early warnings push (Axios)

Climate change: Extreme weather warning systems for all ‘in five years’

Pressure grows for deal to save nature at crunch talks in Geneva (The Guardian)

‘We’re saving the last of the last’: what Florida’s endangered panthers need to survive (The Guardian)

The world’s forests do more than just store carbon, new research finds (The Guardian)

Australia’s carbon credit scheme ‘largely a sham’, says whistleblower who tried to rein it in (The Guardian)

Fuel price cuts in the UK will largely benefit the SUV-driving elite (The Guardian)

Climate change is causing Michigan dogsledders to shift gears from snow to dry land (Washington Post)

Greta Thunberg condemns ‘racist’ decision to let UK firm mine on Sami land (The Guardian)

President Trump Still Causing Heads to Explode on Climate Change

Can an Australian Billionaire Change the Face of Fossil Fuel Dependency? (Newsweek) Apparently not, since the company in question is resisting being bought.

6 Takeaways From Day 3 of Judge Jackson’s Confirmation Hearing

‘No Spark’; CBS Pans ‘Debunked’ GOP Claims About Jackson, Sneers Over ‘Grandstanding’

Analyst reacts to Sen. Hawley’s questioning of Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson (CNN)

Nikole Hannah-Jones: ‘Badge of honor’ Ted Cruz cited 1619 Project in SCOTUS confirmation hearing

Senators should ask Ketanji Brown Jackson whether she backs the Yale Law hecklers — or free speech

Outraged Republicans allege Democrats withheld Supreme Court nominee documents

NBC News: Ketanji Brown Jackson’s Dreadlocks Are Changing the Face of American Justice

Checking in on Pierre and Liz

ABC, CBS IGNORE Judge Jackson Not Knowing The Definition of ‘Woman’

AGAIN?! Reid MELTS DOWN Over GOP Confronting Biden SCOTUS Nominee

A Look at Judge Jackson’s Record on Unions

The Death of ‘Black Rabbit’

Kimmel Goes After ‘Slug’ Republicans For Asking Jackson To Define ‘Woman’

Blaze on Behar Calling Jackson ‘Perfect’…Like Obama

MSNBC Claims Home Fitness And MMA Leads To White Supremacy

CNN Sees ‘Racism,’ ‘Q-Anon,’ 2024 Ambitions in GOP Questioning of Jackson

Are You A Woman? 12 Signs To Look For  Babylon Bee.

CBS Whines It Was ‘Difficult,’ ‘Tough’ to See Jackson Be ‘Attacked’ by Republicans

Washington Post: Ketanji Brown Jackson Has Been Treated ‘Worse’ Than Kavanaugh

The View Defends Pedophile Judge Jackson Gifted Light Sentence To

Black Lady School Board President Beats Up White Lady Treasurer During Finance Meeting

5 Key Highlights From Day 4 of Judge Jackson’s Confirmation Hearing

Omicron BA.2 subvariant will soon dominate in U.S., but Fauci doesn’t expect another surge (CNBC)

Omicron’s ‘stealth’ subvariant BA.2 could go ‘wild’ in Europe before going global, top epidemiologist says (CNBC)

Moderna Covid vaccine for kids under 6 years old was up to 44% effective against omicron infection (CNBC)

Airlines ask Biden to drop mask mandate and testing requirements for travelers

Omicron’s rise, severe COVID and Antarctic ice minimum (Nature)

Seriously, the Pandemic Isn’t Over (New York Magazine)

Leaders Of 10 Major US Airlines Urge Biden To Drop Mask Mandates, Pre-Departure Testing Requirements

Fairfax Public Schools Shells Out Half a Million To Fill COVID Virtual Learning Gaps With More Virtual Learning

Babylon Bee Writers Trying To Slowly Tunnel Out Of Twitter Jail Behind Poster Of Gina Carano Babylon Bee.

11 People and Outlets Censored by Twitter for Questioning Gender Ideology

Trump aide Manafort removed from plane for revoked passport (Associated Press)

DNC launches ad hitting Republicans over Ron Johnson health care comments in key states (The Hill)

Marjorie Taylor Greene says she is ‘threatened’ by trans women (The Hill)

Pomerantz and Trump

Fact-Checking the Fact-Checkers

ABC’s ‘Home Economics’ Erases Amy Coney Barrett from Supreme Court

Trump Sues Hillary Clinton, Says She ‘Maliciously Conspired’ To Weave Collusion Conspiracy Theory  This ought to be amusing.

CNN’s Glasser Makes Biden’s Sanctions Flip-Flop About Trump

Read it.

I had always thought that if a left-wing revolution were to undo the American Experiment, it would be about some charismatic, competent leader taking advantage of a serious economic disaster; like an economic collapse followed by a movement led by an American version of Mao, Castro, Lenin, or Ho Chi Minh. It never occurred to me that we could be undone by grossly incompetent experts, third-rate journalists, self-satirizing academics, and by the deformed sensibilities of a majority wealthy enough to survive on Amazon, DoorDash, and Uber Eats for two years. Marx and Engels never contemplated a role for narcissism, intellectual lethargy, idle comforts, and an appetite for media-distorted fear.

In what bizarro world can a ridiculous cupcake like Justin Trudeau mutate into a lawless tyrant? How can milquetoast western governments suddenly, lawlessly arrest peaceful persons and even erect internment camps to enforce mandates that we know don’t work to combat a disease which presents a minuscule risk to all but a small, identifiable subset of the population?

Freeberg nails it.

Obama said the question of when life begins, is above His pay grade.

Judge Jackson said she can’t define the word “woman” because she’s “not a biologist.”

Weird that liberals know so much that the rest of us don’t know, until a question emerges with some clear practical ramifications to it. Then suddenly, they can’t answer the basics.

Read it.

fter receiving a medical treatment that included a round of antibiotics and an X-ray scan, Californian Will Osman thought he got stuck with a $69,000 hospital bill. Luckily, Osman’s insurance covered most of the bill, but that still left him on the hook for $2,500.

“I avoided surgery, but they still billed nearly $70,000,” Osman tells Popular Mechanics, adding that the bill included an abdominal CT scan, medication, and two nights in a hospital room. Annoyed with the exorbitant cost of hospital treatments and procedures, Osman, a YouTuber and engineer, decided to build his own fully-functional homemade X-ray machine.

We have the technology.

Read it.

The New York Times supports the efforts of the government to get James O’Keefe and Project Veritas in the case of Ashley Biden’s diary. Reporters including Michael Schmidt and Adam Goldman are working as the public relations arm of the Biden administration and the national security establishment to nail them.

It turns out that the FBI and SDNY prosecutors have been working the case for a long time. They have had Project Veritas under incredibly intrusive surveillance for over a year. No charges have yet emerged. If Project Veritas crossed over the line between lawful and unlawful activity in its work on the diary, the line must be a little blurry. The Times gleefully supports the national security establishment in its treatment of Project Veritas. I find the treatment chilling.

Read it.

Methanotrophic bacteria consume 30 million metric tons of methane per year and have captivated researchers for their natural ability to convert the potent greenhouse gas into usable fuel. Yet we know very little about how the complex reaction occurs, limiting our ability to use the double benefit to our advantage.

By studying the enzyme the bacteria use to catalyze the reaction, a team at Northwestern University now has discovered key structures that may drive the process.

Joel Kotkin.

The depression-era comedian Will Rogers once famously said he did not belong to an organised political party because he was a Democrat. Yet today the traditional factiousness of the Democratic coalition has been engulfed by an almost Stalinist attitude that brooks no dissent on its most treasured policies – even though these do not resonate well with the bulk of the electorate.

Read it.

It is no accident that virtually every claim that is consistently labelled as disinformation is one that threatens the policy agenda of the Democratic party (or parts of their agenda that they are too embarrassed to state publicly). “Disinformation” is no longer a concept used to separate truth from falsehood. In the past few years, it has been rhetorically intensified to circumvent the question of truth entirely. It is a means to annex the public’s role in assessing the validity of reporting, placing this authority solely in the hands of “experts” who have the exclusive right to say what is “true.” Understanding the differences between “misinformation” and “disinformation” and observing the ways these concepts are arbitrarily applied is crucial to grasping how our media and other institutions undermine genuine public deliberation—a prerequisite for any functioning democracy.

Read it.

Is it really too much to ask those who struggle to define the word “woman” to refrain from running for public office? Ketanji Brown Jackson, Joe’s Biden’s nominee for the Supreme Court, was asked to provide the dreaded definition during her confirmation hearing on Tuesday. “No I can’t,” she replied. “I’m not a biologist.”

Jackson hadn’t been asked to explain how blood is deoxygenated, or to offer an intricate overview of the molecular mechanisms by which protein function is regulated in cells. The question “what is a woman?” is hardly the riddle of the sphinx; a reasonably intelligent six-year-old would be able to give an adequate answer.

Well, when your primary qualifications are your gender and skin color….