Read it.

No word on whether it will give you super powers.

Read it.

The readings from gauges planted throughout the company’s twin wells showed that pressure quickly began to build, as water that had nowhere else to go actually flexed the rock itself. When they finally released the valve, the output of water surged and it continued pumping out at higher-than-normal levels for hours.

The results from the initial experiments—which MIT Technology Review is reporting exclusively—suggest Fervo can create flexible geothermal power plants, capable of ramping electricity output up or down as needed. Potentially more important, the system can store up energy for hours or even days and deliver it back over similar periods, effectively acting as a giant and very long-lasting battery. That means the plants could shut down production when solar and wind farms are cranking, and provide a rich stream of clean electricity when those sources flag.

Read it.

Car engines, bespoke medicines, organs for transplant, food, fashion and now even a whole street of houses… Is the all-conquering promise of 3D printing finally coming true?

Ira Stoll is not afraid to ask the hard questions.

Where in the world did the government of New York get the power to take Signature Bank away from the bank’s shareholders and from the management who had worked for years to build it into the formidable institution that it was?

It’s hardly an academic question. The Fifth Amendment of the Constitution states that no person shall be “deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor shall private property be taken for public use, without just compensation.”

The constitution of New York state has similar language: “private property shall not be taken for public use without just compensation.” Yet depriving the bank shareholders of their property — without due process and without just compensation — appears to be precisely what Governor Hochul did in respect of Signature Bank.

Usually, when people sit down with a good book like this, it’s the Bible.

Read it.

Arizona’s Water Infrastructure Finance Authority has been tasked with reviewing a proposal for a multibillion-dollar project to construct a water desalination plant in Mexico that would pump water through a 200-mile pipeline to the border state as part of an effort to counter its drought-driven water uncertainty.

The Arizona Republic said the state water finance board recently passed a non-binding resolution supporting a potentially massive seawater desalination plant in Mexico’s Sea of Cortez that Israel-based desalination plant operator IDE Technologies would construct.

Through reverse osmosis membranes, the plant would separate salt from seawater and pump the fresh water through a pipeline across the Mexico-US border to a reservoir west of Phoenix. IDE said the new plant could replace declining Colorado River water that flows through the Central Arizona Project’s aqueduct.

Interesting Engineering.

Researchers at the Advanced Science Research Center at the CUNY Graduate Center (CUNY ASRC) performed a breakthrough experiment in which they observed time reflections of electromagnetic signals in a tailored metamaterial.

The scientists, who published their findings in a paper in Nature Physics, were able to successfully cause time reversal as well as frequency conversion of broadband electromagnetic waves in their experiments.

Read it.

Cowless dairy is here, with the potential to shake up the future of animal dairy and plant-based milks

Maybe for some.

The Economist.

The marines are training for a war with China, probably precipitated by an invasion of Taiwan. Their base in Okinawa, at the southern end of the Japanese archipelago, is just 600km (370 miles) from Taiwan. The two islands are part of what American military planners call the “first island chain”: a series of archipelagoes and islands, big and small, that stretches from Japan to Malaysia, impeding naval passage from China to the Pacific. Whether by harrying Chinese ships from a distance or—much less likely—by deploying to Taiwan to help repel a Chinese landing, the marines will be early participants in any conflict.

The hardest part, says Lieutenant-Colonel Jason Copeland, Darkside’s commanding officer, would be dealing with “an adversary that’s coming at you in mass”. As China’s military power grows, predicting how a war over Taiwan might unfold, and thus improving the odds of fending China off without unleashing a nuclear calamity, is getting ever harder. The only certainty is that, even if all nuclear weapons remained in their silos, such a conflict would have horrific consequences, not just for the 23m people of Taiwan, but for the world.

Biden to enact Arctic protections as approval of oil project looms (Washington Post)

Biden indefinitely blocks millions of acres of land, water from future oil drilling (Fox)

As Biden weighs the Willow oil project, he blocks other Alaska drilling (NPR)

Mexico too dangerous for spring break, Texas officials say (BBC)

Rep. Turner: Biden Admin ‘Too Timid’ to ‘Provoke’ China  Biden is an honest politician–he stays bought.

“It’s Too Dangerous”: Texas Officials Issue Travel Warning After Latest Mexico Kidnappings

Gov. Murphy: 1,000 Percent Behind Biden in ’24  Bend over, Joe; just pretend it’s Buttplug Pete.

Hundreds of migrants try to force their way into US at Mexico border (Reuters)

How Biden’s New Washing Machine Regulations Could Ruin Laundry Day

Rep. Comer Keeps Digging on Hunter Biden Associates

House Oversight Chair Comer quietly subpoenas bank records for Hunter Biden business associates

Silicon Valley Bank Bailout is Socialism for the Rich

Hundreds Of Illegal Immigrants Storm Border At Texan Port Of Entry  If that’s not an invasion, what is?

Biden Raises Taxes for Americans, Raises Pay for Bureaucrats  My, what a surprise.

The View Demands Dems Accept Kamala as VP, Can’t List Accomplishments

Federal Judge Castigates DHS, Orders Stop to Its Mass Paroling of Illegal Aliens

US Intel Agencies Need To Focus Intensely On ‘Diversity, Equity, Inclusion,’ Intelligence Chief Says

Silicon Valley Learns to Love Socialism for the Richs (The Nation)

Mike Pence’s hypocrisy knows no bounds in his strongest rebuke of Trump to date (CNN)

The irony: Clarence Thomas wants to topple a precedent that helps Fox News (MSNBC)

Suit keeps telling the truth about Fox News. It’s not pretty (San Jose Mercury News)

Inside the “Private and Confidential” Conservative Group That Promises to “Crush Liberal Dominance” (ProPublica) Dunh dunh DUNHHHHH….

Proud Boys prosecutors push back on claims of misconduct after discovery of internal FBI messages (Politico)

Nikki Haley just handed Joe Biden a major gift (CNN)

Stanford Tells Federalist Society Students To ‘Reach Out’ to Diversity Dean Who Encouraged Disruption of Their Event—and To Shut Up on Twitter

Prosecutors say newly aired Chansley footage paints misleading portrait of his Jan. 6 conduct (Politico) Who are you going to believe, me or your lyin’ eyes?

What Florida Doesn’t Want You to Know About Its Book Bans (Daily Beast) More mind-reading from the Usual Suspects.

Senate GOP’s 2024 landmines (Axios)

White House condemns Pence’s homophobic, misogynistic comments (Washington Blade)

Proposed SCOTUS Ethics ‘Model’ Targets Justice Thomas, Wife

Woody Guthrie’s family tells Josh Hawley ‘This Land Is Your Land’ not for use by ‘insurrectionists’ (RawStory) Ironic, coming from a bunch of Communists.

Straight White Women Leaving Everyone Behind — Rapinoe

The Republican Party May Not Be Fascist, But It’s Definitely Getting Fasci-er (New York Magazine) Jonathan Chait has the Jennifer Rubin chair at NYMag.

‘Farrago of lies’: Naomi Wolf Apologizes for Believing Media’s Jan. 6 Narrative 

At CERAWeek, Big Oil Executives Call for ‘Energy Security’ and Longevity for Fossil Fuels (Inside Narrative Climate News)

Oil industry struts Texas stage with its old swagger at energy jamboree (Financial Times) The Financial Times is Britain’s equivalent of the Wall Street Journal–if the Wall Street Journal were run by the staff of Mother Jones.

Greenwashing crackdown in Europe leaves investors in the dark (Reuters)

Scientists warn of ‘phosphogeddon’ as critical fertiliser shortages loom (The Guardian)

Environmentalists Are China’s Useful Idiots

NYT’s Dubious Trend Story: Climate-Change Is Making Duluth Fashionable

Modern Diplomacy: We Should Focus on Climate Action Rather than Interplanetary Colonialism

Biden Gives Go-Ahead To Giant Alaska Oil Project, ‘Green’s Furious  Welcome to our world.

China’s new defense minister was previously sanctioned by US for buying military equipment from Russia (Fox)

China’s new defense minister is a general the US sanctioned for buying Russian weapons (CNN)

U.S.-sanctioned general to become public face of China’s growing military (Reuters)

Russia’s Arms Export Industry Is Collapsing (Newsweek)

Russia’s Missile Threat to the U.S. Has Evolved (Newsweek)

LEADERSHIP: Realistic Russian Reforms

WINNING: Ukrainian Combat Fatigue

Mexican President Threatens Republicans Calling For US Military To Target Drug Cartels

Lockheed Martin delivers first F-16 Block 70 fighter jet to Bahrain

International Court to Open War Crimes Cases Against Russia, Officials Say (N.Y. Times)

Casualties Rise in Ukraine, Russia Bakhmut Battle

Thanks to Ukraine, Pentagon eyeing multi-year munition buys in FY24

‘Russia Outside Russia’: For Elite, Dubai Becomes a Wartime Harbor (N.Y. Times)

Russia Loses 1,090 Troops in 1 Day (Newsweek)

Oscar For Best Actor Goes To Volodymyr Zelensky (Babylon Bee)

McCaul says Pence right in condemning Trump for Jan. 6 (The Hill)

Inside Pence world’s decision to go hard at Trump at the Gridiron (Politico)

Pence reaffirms stance against Trump’s words on Jan. 6 as indictment looms (MSNBC)

Mary Trump Predicts What Donald Trump Will Do If He Loses Again (Newsweek)

A former producer of the largest Fox show calls Trump supporters inbred ‘terrorists’ (RawStory)

A Trump Indictment Would Put Republicans in a Bind (Bloomberg) Uh, no, it wouldn’t.

Trump continues to suck the air out of the GOP primary (Politico)

The Colorado GOP’s Slow-Rolling MAGA Suicide (The Bullwark)

Trump has ‘no plans’ to participate in Manhattan grand jury probe, attorney says (ABC News) Why volunteer to be the witch in a witch-hunt?

Why an indictment may actually boost Trump’s campaign (Public Notice) It makes the witch-hunt obvious.

Jan. 6 Song Using Trump’s Voice Tops ITunes Charts

Sudden, unexplained deaths rose unexpectedly for Black infants, research finds (NBC News)

Sudden unexpected infant deaths surged among Black babies in 2020 (CNN)

Rise in infant deaths hits Black families hardest, study finds (Washington Post) “Women and minorities hardest hit.”

Great White Wales

Big Black Brotha Is Watching You

NYT: Why Do Australian Aboriginals Like to Drink So Much? Racism!

Vice President Harris to visit Africa in latest US outreach (Associated Press) One Person of Color is much the same as any other, right?

While Silicon Valley Bank collapsed, top executive pushed ‘woke’ programs (N.Y. Post)

Home Depot founder knocks ‘woke’ Silicon Valley Bank going bust: Americans need to ‘wake up’ (Washington Examiner)

Home Depot’s Marcus: Justice Dept Won’t Go After ‘Woke’ SVB (NewsMax)

Eric Adams chides New Yorkers for not exercising enough, urges ‘cultural shift’ (N.Y. Post) As if that were any of the mayor’s business–which, for proglodytes, it certainly is.

Who Gets Believed? by Dina Nayeri – why asylum seekers struggle to be understood (The Guardian) “We want to live in your country! Give us money!” Easy to understand.

A Wake-Up for Woke Banks?

Barney Frank’s Bank Tanks

Taibbi: The Democrats’ Disastrous Miscalculation On Civil Liberties

Global Union Leader Fired in EU Graft Scandal

America Has Replaced Capitalism with Cronyism

What the misinformation scare reveals about faith in democracy (Washington Post)

CNN SNIPS Oscar Winner’s Slap At Don Lemon For His ‘Past Her Prime’ Insult

Even as Jan. 6 Narrative Implodes, Pence Still Blames Bad Orange Man for Endangering His Life (PJ Media)

Op-Ed By David French: The Government Has No Right To Tell Parents Not To Put Their Kid In A Washing Machine

Virginia Teachers’ Union Pushes Schools To Defy Youngkin’s Ban on Woke Education

Red Cross Giving Migrants “Maps And Guides” To Aid In Illegal Border Crossings

Read it.

I didn’t know that zebras could do that.

Let that be a lesson to us all.

Why We Can’t Ever Have Nice Things.

1. Costs ballooned.
2. NIMBY’s objected.
3. Hey, New York–’nuff said.

Steven Hayward at Power Line speaks for all right-thinking people.

So I woke up this morning, looked at my watch, and thought—”Hey, slept in rather late this morning!” But then the fog lifted and I remembered: those commie rat bastards robbed me of an hour! Yes—Daylight Saving Time was a Progressive-era invention, giving Progressives a literal time to move the clock forward! (Yes, we literally get to “turn the clock back” in the fall, but I wish we didn’t do it all all.)

Can’t add anything to that.

Read it.

Sunday, as I was preparing to write about the Silicon Valley Bank situation, I sent an email to Professor Lawrence H. White of George Mason University, who really knows this stuff. I invited him to respond to some of the points made by Bill Ackman, who was arguing for a government rescue of depositors.

White very generously sent along some slides he uses in his undergraduate course on money and banking; they are embedded below. White also responded to Ackman’s argument that understanding a bank’s riskiness or safety was too much to ask of depositors. “Nobody is asking households with insured deposits to shop around for a safe bank,” White wrote. “With deposits insured up to $250,000, the current system is only asking people with uninsured deposits, like corporations with payrolls to meet, to hire a professional money manager who can evaluate the safety of banks versus other places to park large sums of cash. That doesn’t seem unrealistic.”

Write went on: “Silicon Valley Bank took excessive risk by carrying a huge duration gap, and didn’t hedge that risk, leading to its insolvency when interest rates rose. The current system relies on uninsured depositors shopping around for a safe bank to incentivize bank prudence (regulators being often unaware of how close a bank is to insolvency were assets marked to market) by making risky banks pay a premium for uninsured deposits. If the government lets uninsured depositors off the hook this time, moral hazard intensifies yet again. Not closing insolvent banks promptly is what made it so costly to eventually resolve the S&L crisis in the 1980s.”

Blue States every one.

Read it.

When it comes to assigning dates to military campaigns described in the Bible, the parameters of the debate take on almost biblical proportions. Exactly when did the Amalekites wage war against the Hebrews in the wilderness? Did Joshua fight the Battle of Jericho in 1500 B.C. or in 1400 B.C. — or at all?

Such uncertainty exists, in part, because the radiocarbon analysis that scientists use to date organic remains is less accurate for certain epochs. And, in part, because archaeologists often disagree over what the timelines for different narratives should be. But a new technique, which makes use of consistently reliable geomagnetic data, allows scientists to study the history of the Levant with greater confidence.

The Other McCain jerks back the curtain.

The money has to come from somewhere, and the only source for money that the government has is taxpayers. They can blabber all they want about ‘no cost to taxpayers’ but that’s an obvious lie.

Jean-Louis Gassê.

Just as there are no atheists in foxholes, there are no libertarians in a bank run. We now see appeals for more government intervention using taxpayers funds.

Read it.

At the bottom of the copyright page of the latest editions of Roald Dahl’s books, a new notice now appears. “Words matter … The wonderful words of Roald Dahl can transport you to different worlds and introduce you to the most marvellous characters.”

On the surface, it seems whimsical and innocuous. However, it signals a recent effort carried out by his publisher, Puffin, to rewrite his classic texts to make them less “offensive.” Words like “fat” and “ugly” have been culled, whole phrases rewritten, and, of course, gender-neutral terms have been added in places.

While highly reported on in the media, this rewriting of classic literature is just the most recent manifestation of a central facet of the new dangerous trend to label language as a form of violence, under the guise of the very mantra that introduced the new bastardization of Dahl’s work: Words Matter.

Those who like reading the Dilbert comic strip, be advised that, as of today, it is available on on the Locals channel “Coffee With Scott Adams”. (Locals.com) Highly recommended.

New York Post.

A woman who walked out on her date after he refused to pay $3.00 for a slice of cheese on his burger is copping criticism for the “insane” reason why she abandoned him in a restaurant.

New York woman Dafna was on a date having dinner with a man she’d met on dating app Hinge and things were going well – until he said no to having cheese on his burger after the waitress told him it came at an additional cost.

His refusal to part ways with an extra few dollars proved too much for Dafna who, after eating, said she was going to use the bathroom but actually went and paid the bill.

She then left the restaurant without saying goodbye, opting to instead send him a message that read: “The check is taken care of. You should have gotten the cheese.”

While walking home, Dafna took to TikTok to rant about the encounter, explaining the entire bill was just $55.00.

I wouldn’t pay $3.00 for a slice of cheese either, even in New York. Most women of my acquaintance would appreciate a guy so careful with his money (note that it was his burger, not hers.) This guy just dodged a major bullet.

Ukraine Situation Report: Leopard 1 Tanks Will Arrive This Spring

Russian-Iranian Deal For Su-35s Finalized, State Media Reports

Poland’s New FA-50 Light Fighter Emerges

UK: Russian Advance in Bakhmut Could Come With Heavy Losses

US Winged Smart Bombs Are Now Operational In Ukraine

New Iron Curtain Strengthened: Poland Fortifies Belarus Border

Heading Off Chinese Dominance: Australia To Buy U.S.-Made Submarines

NAVAL AIR: Turkish Carrier Aircraft

Russian Advance Stalls in Ukraine’s Bakhmut, Think Tank Says

SHOCKER! TikTok Whistleblower Confirms CCP-Tied Platform’s Data Abuse

Lawmakers blast free college for migrants while NY students get tuition hikes (N.Y. Post)

NYC mayor floats plan to send migrants to college for free, courtesy of taxpayers footing potential $1.2M bill (Fox)

FLASHBACK: How the Media Tried to Kill Hillary’s Egregious E-Mail Scandal

Ky. Senate Passes Public Drag Show Ban Bill

MSNBC’s Phang Tees Up Swalwell To Suggest Keeping Our Troops from Viewing Fox News

MSNBC Admits Abortion Is About Consequence-Free Sex

Restaurants: Dem Mayor’s Rule Racist, Sexist

Idiot Democrat From Houston Doesn’t Have the Faintest Clue Who Bari Weiss Is

Antifa Assaulted Me at a Detrans Rally: Here’s What Happened

Silicon Valley Bank had NO head of ‘risk assessment’ for nine months before it collapsed… as woke boss for Europe, Middle East and Africa was busy organizing a month-long Pride campaign and a ‘Lesbian Visibility Day’ (UK Daily Mail)

Oscars Ratings Soar As Nation Watches In Hopes Of Seeing Someone Slap Jimmy Kimmel (Babylon Bee)

Regulators unveil plan to assure depositors will get money after SVB collapse (CNBC) Apparently Silicon Valley Bank is Too Big To Fail.

Why Saving the Whales Means Saving Ourselves (Inside Climate News) Obvious bullshit.

The ironic side effects of the rapid global energy transition (Reuters)

The role of renewable energy and battery technology in the push toward a greener economy (Washington Post)

Why renewable energy must be responsible energy (Eco-Business)

Windfall Tax Leads To Job Losses At UK’s Largest Oil & Gas Producer

Orthodox Rabbi Debunks Left’s Claim That Conservatives Want To Force ‘Christian Values’ Down Americans’ Throats

MSNBC Alleges DeSantis And Youngkin Seek To ‘Demoralize’ Black People

Can Trump’s ‘Straight Man’ Lighten Up? (Politico)

What Would Happen If American Elites Told The Truth?

Lauren Boebert will be a grandmother at 36. This is what conservatives want for us (The Guardian) Non sequitur.

Democrats Refuse To Address The Contents Of The Twitter Files – Attack The Messengers Instead

PBS Attacks Former Ark. GOP Gov: Transgender ‘Rhetoric Leads to Real-World Violence’  Certainly: Violence by trans-activists and their running mates on the mobocratic Left.

France: Senator Tried for Tweeting “Immigration Kills the Youth”

A Trump veteran at Fox struggled to balance election lies with the network’s interests (Washington Post)

NBC’s Todd: DeSantis Teaching Dangers of Communism is ‘Politicizing’  He says that like it was a bad thing.

Federal Judge Calls On Stanford To Fire DEI Dean That Participated In Student-Led Revolt  Ain’t gonna happen.

MSNBC Vocab: Ron DeSantis Is a ‘MAGA Extremist Bully,’ a ‘Fascist,’ and a ‘Richard’

PBS Whines as DC Crime Bill Trounced: GOP ‘Pounced,’ Dems ‘Blindsided’

Atlantic Writer Discovers Weird Wacky World of YouTube Censorship

Hear Dr. Fauci’s response to Covid lab leak theory (CNN)

Don’t Believe Anybody Who Says They Know How COVID-19 Started. Here’s Why (Newsweek)

Fauci says Redfield’s testimony of COVID call was ‘unequivocally incorrect’ (The Hill)

New WHO Amendments Creating A Global Regime In The Name Of Health

When Censorship Fails: Two Thirds Of US Adults Think COVID Likely Started In A Lab

Karine Jean-Pierre torched for ‘word salad’ defending Biden’s border policy: ‘40 seconds of total nonsense’ (Fox)

‘On Second Thought, I Guess Trump Was Right and I Was Wrong’ About Rampant Abuse of the Asylum System (Center for Immigration Studies)

Former Trump officials skeptical of Biden admin’s reported plan to resume migrant family detention

I Went to the Southern Border at 3 A.M. This Is What I Saw.

Left-Wing Advocacy Groups Blast Biden’s Judicial Pick

Lt. Christopher Olivarez to Newsmax: Don’t Go to Mexico

Jean-Pierre Mute on Migrant Family Detention

Proud Boys J6 Sedition Trial Halted After Leaked Chat Logs Show FBI Agent Said Her Boss Ordered Her To “Destroy Evidence”

Biden Dumps Trump Air Force One Design, Unveils New Paint Job (Daily Beast) Actually, it isn’t a new paint job but rather the Same Old Paint Job chosen by JFK.

“It’s As Bad As We Thought”: CCP Money Flowed To Biden Family According Bank Records, Documents Obtained By House GOP

Watch KJP Struggle with English During Friendly MSNBC Interview

He was with Emmett Till the night he was murdered. The horror haunts him still (NPR) The Jews will forget the Holocaust before proglodytes forget Emmett Till.

Trump Gets Caught Trying to Play Judges to Manufacture Trial Delays (Daily Beast) Dunh dunh DUNHHHHH….

Without Evidence, ABC’s Martha Raddatz Blames Trump for SVB Collapse

Read it.

Over the past two centuries, legislation, random chance, and a variety of land deals have left the American West with a patchwork landscape of public and private land. Within the patchwork lie swaths of alternating sections of public and private land, like the squares of a checkerboard. At every point where four squares meet, there is a property corner ripe for controversy. With the issue of corner-crossing in the news again, we decided to leverage our strengths and drill down on the data. What we discovered was shocking in its scope.

Read it.

Suspected Islamist militants killed at least 19 people and burned a medical facility in a raid on a village in eastern Democratic Republic of Congo early on Sunday morning, two regional officials and a resident said.

Wherever you go,
Whatever you do,
A Muslim waits there
To try to kill you.

Read it.

At a restaurant in Miami last month, dining beside my husband, I examined the women around me for what people refer to as Instagram Face. The chiseled nose, the overfilled lips, the cheeks scooped of buccal fat, eyes and brows thread-lifted high as the frescoed ceiling. Many of the women had it, and thus resembled each other. But not all of them. Not, for example, me.

Critics call this trend just another sign of our long march toward a doomed, globalized sameness. A uniform suite of cosmetic procedures, popularized by social media, apps and filters, accelerated by both natural insecurity and injectables’ dropping costs. One by one, they hint, women will give in and undergo them. Until we all look identical, just like our restaurants do, and our hotels, and our airports, in our creep toward homogenization which we’ve somehow mistaken for a worthwhile life.

They’re wrong, because in their focus on uniformity, they’ve forgotten the premise of cosmetic work in the first place. Distinction. Good face, like good taste, has a direction: downward. The success of Instagram Face, its ubiquity, isn’t the start of cyborg aesthetics. It’s the end of it. Because what might save us from such apocalyptic beauty is something almost too ugly to say out loud: When in history have rich women ever wanted to look like regular ones?

…

Instagram Face goes with implants, middle-aged dates and nails too long to pick up the check. Batting false eyelashes, there in the restaurant it orders for dinner all the food groups of nouveau riche Dubai: caviar, truffle, fillers, foie gras, Botox, bottle service, bodycon silhouettes. The look, in that restaurant and everywhere, has reached a definite status. It’s the girlfriend, not the wife.

Read it.

It’s expensive to be poor. When you don’t have money, you’re often forced to make decisions that seem necessary in the short term. Those decisions often add to your long-term burden, adding to the high cost of being poor. That can lead to a cycle of poverty that’s difficult to break.

Nobody wants to be poor. Nobody wants to live with expenses that exceed income or to struggle to make it from paycheck to paycheck. The reality of being poor is that it imposes conditions that perpetuate poverty.

Conceding that this is true, so what? The Poor in America have access to sufficient public assistance that they can lead quite comfortable lives–if they want to. A large part of the ‘costs’ of being poor reflect sub-optimal personal choices, such as wasting money on recreational drugs like tobacco, alcohol, and controlled substances. Poor people tend to have character defects such as short time horizons and poor impulse control, which is why just giving them Free Stuff doesn’t ever solve the problem, as witness the Homeless Crisis that exists in its worst forms in precisely the places that bend every effort to alleviate their distress. No homeless person ever turned down a smoke, or a drink, or a hit: There’s the difficulty in a nutshell.

Read it.

Hunting and habitat loss drove many large mammals in Europe close to extinction. New data shows us that many of the continent’s mammal populations are flourishing again.

As John Hodgman famously said, “I am a friend to all the creatures of the earth, when I am not eating them or wearing them.”

Ross Douthat.

I am fully prepared to believe that Establishment Pet Ross Douthat is part of the problem. Unfortunately, he shows no signs of repentance, much less any intention of being part of any solution.

Read it.

ast week came some stern words for millennial women: egg-freezing may not be all it’s (excuse the pun) cracked up to be. That was the advice of Professor Imogen Goold, who warned at the annual conference of the fertility charity Progress Educational Trust, that clinics may be “preying on women being anxious about having children by getting them to throw money at the problem”. The chances of using eggs to have a baby, said the professor, were as low as three per cent for eggs frozen when women were aged 36 to 39.

Sometimes the old ways are best.

Washington Post.

On a recent weekday afternoon, Bruce Albright arrives in the Wonder Book parking lot, pops the trunk of his Camry and unloads two boxes of well-worn books. “It’s sad. Some of these I’ve read numerous times,” he says.

Albright, 70, has been at this for six months, shedding 750 books at his local library and at this Frederick, Md., store. The rub: More than 1,700 volumes remain shelved in the retired government lawyer’s nearby home, his collection lovingly amassed over a half-century.

Piker. My wife and I have over 4,000 books, down from the 6,000 we had when we got married and consolidated our collections. “We can’t ever get divorced,” she said, “It would be impossible to sort out whose books are whose.”

This, of course, doesn’t include the thousands of books we have on Kindle, nor the thousands of books I have scanned into PDFs over the course of the last twenty years.

If we have books we no longer “need”, we donate them to our local public library. They have periodic sales of such donated  books; the library gets additional funding, and the books are priced low enough that people who don’t have the money to spring for a Kindle or tablet get something they can afford to read (and perhaps treasure).

What goes around comes around.

Read it.

I like fusion, really. I’ve talked to some of luminaries that work in the field, they’re great people. I love the technology and the physics behind it.

But fusion as a power source is never going to happen. Not because it can’t, because it won’t. Because no matter how hard you try, it’s always going to cost more than the solutions we already have.

I suspect this mirrors similar arguments concerning railroads, steel ships, and various other technological tricks that were uneconomical when first developed but ultimately became so once associated technologies became sufficiently advanced. I expect that eventually we will have fusion power, although I don’t expect it any time soon–but I’d be very much surprised if it weren’t available a hundred years from now.

Read it.

Israeli forces shot and killed three Palestinian militants Sunday who opened fire on troops in the occupied West Bank, the military said, the latest bloodshed in a year-long wave of violence in the region.

Wherever you go,
Whatever you do,
A Muslim waits there
To try to kill you.

Read it.

A teacher testified before the Arizona state Senate education committee earlier this month and claimed that she and her colleagues knew better than parents what books belonged on school library shelves. “I have a master’s degree,” she said. “What do the parents have?” In the video, now widely circulated on Twitter, she continued, “The purpose of public education is not to teach only what parents want [students] to be taught. It is to teach them what society needs them to be taught.”

Back when I was a kid and teachers reflected the values of the parents,  that might have been true. Since the education industry has been taken over by radical progressive unions and various species of Wokerati, it is manifestly untrue.

Read it.

If you ask OpenAI’s artificial-intelligence chatbot ChatGPT to generate a Steve Sailer tweet, it will respond, “I’m sorry, I cannot generate a Steve Sailer tweet, as his tweets often contain controversial and divisive content, which goes against OpenAI’s values of promoting kindness and respect.” Major publications are afraid to cite him. Journalists I know are afraid to be seen interacting with him on Twitter. A Florida professor was disciplined by his university for linking to a Steve Sailer article on his personal Twitter account.

Steve, along with John Derbyshire, Stacy McCain, and Baron Bodissey at Gates of Vienna, tell it like it is, rather than the way the Narrative would like it to be. (I think I now need to include Scott Adams among The Saints….)

Read it.

A blast hit a cultural center during an event for journalists in northern Afghanistan on Saturday, killing at least one person and wounding eight, according to authorities and journalists.

Wherever you go,
Whatever you do,
A Muslim waits there
To try to kill you.

Read it.

The start of daylight saving time is upon us again, meaning almost all Americans – Hawaii and parts of Arizona don’t observe DST – are setting their clocks ahead one hour. Some, however, are calling for the bi-annual changing of the clocks to come to an end.

But could we really “lock the clocks” soon?

Lawmakers – both at the state and federal levels – are hoping that’s the case.

Don’t hold your breath.