“When you’re trying to shoot down $10,000 drones with million dollar missiles, you can see how the math works out.” — ZMan

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The best gun-control measure would be to forbid young black males from buying or carrying guns.

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Twelve news organizations on Sunday urged presumptive presidential nominees Joe Biden and Donald Trump to agree to debates, saying they were a “rich tradition” that have been part of every general election campaign since 1976.

Total bullshit. Nobody is going to be persuaded by listening to two politicians lie to the public for an hour or two. What the Narrative Merdia want is eyeballs, and that is why they want the debates, because their business model is based on getting eyeballs.

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Coming from Russia-allied Belarus, hundreds of “very aggressive” migrants carrying ladders and wielding rocks and tree branches stormed the border of Poland on Wednesday, but were repelled by security forces. Belarus has long been accused of “weaponizing” migrants by encouraging them to travel to Belarus only so they can be pushed into Poland and Lithuania.

According to a statement issued by the Polish Border Guard and reporting by Babel, the onslaught took place around 10 am in a marshy area in the dense Bia?owie?a forest, which is a popular but difficult avenue for attempted crossings by migrants from around the world.

Power Line.

very well-informed person knows that upper-income taxpayers shoulder a disproportionate share of the nation’s fiscal burden. The problem is that most people aren’t well-informed.

“To the best of your knowledge,” asked a new poll, “how much do you think the top 1% of taxpayers by income account for in terms of share of total federal income taxes paid: 1%, 12%, 42%, or 64%?”

The correct answer, as of 2020, is 42%. But less than a quarter of those surveyed guessed right. Twenty-two percent (including more than a third of Democrats) thought the top 1% of taxpayers paid only 1% of income taxes, which is wildly off the mark. Twenty-five percent suggested it was 12% of revenue. Nineteen percent shrugged and said they weren’t sure.

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The latest instance of the migrant invasion and escalating crime wave was a 20-year-old illegal alien from Venezuela who attempted to rob a bank in Sandusky, Ohio.

On April 4, Sandusky Police were called to the West Perkins Avenue bank for a ‘suspicious man loitering’, according to local media outlet Sandusky Register.

“While en route to the bank, officers received additional information that Yeixon Brito-Gonzalez, who only spoke Spanish, was asking tellers to put money in a white trash bag,” the paper said.

Video released of the attempted robbery shows the illegal alien using a translator app on a smartphone to instruct the teller to load a trash bag full of cash.

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Can Democrats take a hint? The answer is obviously no, but with millions of people flooding out of Democrat controlled places and relocating to more conservative regions one might think they would finally get the message.

Blue cities and states across the US have been experiencing a mass exodus of legal residents since before the pandemic event; many of them business owners taking their money (and job opportunities) with them. The hardest hit states in the country include New York, Illinois and California, with cities like NYC, LA, Chicago and San Francisco seeing some of the most aggressive population shift. In states like California the standard operating procedure has been to lie about the situation, using the surge of illegal immigrants to hide population loss in the census.

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An Afghan man and illegal immigrant who’s on the FBI terror watchlist has been twice apprehended in the United States only to be released by a federal apparatus that continues to make a mockery of the very notion of “border security.”

Mohammad Kharwin, 48, was first arrested in Southern California in March 2023 after he’d illegally entered the United States from Mexico, according to NBC News, which was first to report the story. Border police suspected Kharwin was on the watchlist, because one unspecified attribute matched his entry on the list.

However, for lack of additional corroborating data, he was processed and released, just like hordes of other illegal migrants before and since. He was instructed to periodically call an Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officer, but was free to apply for asylum and permission to work in the United States. He was also free to board domestic flights.

Politico.

The ‘White Rural Rage’ narrative gets the research wrong. I know, because some of it is mine.

The Guardian.

So what happened to the graphene revolution? Why has it not transformed our world? Sir Colin Humphreys, professor of materials science at Queen Mary University of London, has a straightforward answer: “Graphene is still a very promising material. The problem has been scaling up its production. That is why it has not made the impact that was predicted.”

…

Humphreys believes the market could soon be re-energised thanks to breakthroughs in the manufacture of graphene-based devices. A key development in this drive has been made by Humphreys and his colleagues, who realised the technology used to make gallium nitride electronic components could be exploited to make graphene on a large scale.

Astral Codex Ten.

Most studies cited by both sides use “time spent doing homework” as the independent variable, then correlate it with test scores or grades. If students who do more time on homework get better test scores, they conclude homework works; otherwise, that it doesn’t.

One minor complaint about this methodology is that we don’t really know if anyone is reporting time spent on homework accurately. Cooper cites some studies showing that student-reported time-spent-on-homework correlates with test scores at a respectable r = 0.25. But in the same sample, parent-reported time-spent-on-homework correlates at close to zero. Cooper speculates that the students’ estimates are better than the parents’, and I think this makes sense – it’s easier to reduce a correlation by adding noise than to increase it – but in the end we don’t know. According to a Washington Post article, students in two very similar datasets reported very different amounts of time spent on homework – maybe because of the way they asked the question? I don’t know, self-report from schoolchildren seems fraught.

But this is the least of our problems. This methodology assumes that time spent on homework is a safe proxy for amount of homework. It isn’t. Students may spend less time on homework because they’re smart, find it easy, and can finish it very quickly. Or they might spend more time on homework because they love learning and care about the subject matter a lot. Or they might spend more time because they’re second-generation Asian immigrants with taskmaster parents who insist on it being perfect. Or they might spend less time because they’re in some kind of horrible living environment not conducive to sitting at a desk quietly. All of these make “time spent doing homework” a poor proxy for “amount of homework that teacher assigned” in a way that directly confounds a homework-test scores correlation.

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Here is a paradox: a generation whose members get more psychological therapy than any generation before them is more stressed, more anxious, and more depressed than any age group since records began. How can this be? Abigail Shrier, an author and Wall Street Journal columnist, has a suggestion: perhaps there is no paradox. Perhaps it is all this therapy that is the problem.

Nothing will screw up your head like ‘therapy’.

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France’s Aquitaine-class FREMM frigate Alsace has turned tail from the Red Sea after running out of missiles and munitions repelling attacks from the Yemeni armed forces, according to its commander, Jerome Henry.

“We didn’t necessarily expect this level of threat. There was an uninhibited violence that was quite surprising and very significant. [The Yemenis] do not hesitate to use drones that fly at water level, to explode them on commercial ships, and to fire ballistic missiles,” Henry told French news outlet Le Figaro in an exclusive interview published on 11 April.

The Houthis have a shooting gallery, and the ducks are stuck in a row. If this were a real war, or the U.S. had a real government, they would have gone in with Marines and cruise missiles and cleaned them out thoroughly. But that was yesterday … and yesterday’s gone.

The American Mind.

The U.S. Navy recently released a photograph on social media showing a sailor firing his M-4 aboard a ship. No doubt some public relations officer thought the picture looked great—a fit and ready sailor shooting his rifle, with spent cartridges flying. A perfect picture for a recruitment catalog, except for one crucial detail: the rifle’s scope—which the sailor appears to be looking through—is mounted backwards, and its lens covers appear to be closed. A swift social media uproar arose over the bizarre and glaring error. Someone with actual military experience in the Navy evidently noticed what this photo said without words, because the picture was quickly deleted.

Too late, for this image of bastardized military training is already the allegory for the collapse of the military profession and America’s deployment of military force around the world. The glaring deficiencies in this photo go a long way towards understanding the U.S. military in 2024. Outkick has a hilariously tragic rundown of all that is wrong with the picture, but there is a lesson for those Americans concerned about the institutional integrity of a military on the precipice of war in different regions of the world.

Many veterans will recognize the notion and verbiage of a “box check exercise,” that being a colloquial phrase used to describe drills a military unit undergoes to fulfill a prescribed process. Box-check exercises are frequently unrelated to easier or more functional parts of a unit training calendar. From a veteran Army infantryman, one would think shooting rifles aboard a Navy destroyer epitomizes the notion of a “box-check exercise.”

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Eventually the only people playing women’s sports will be men pretending to be women.

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Privileged progressives, donning their white knight armor, are in the next phase of a plan to end Seattle Public Schools’ gifted students program — known locally as its Highly Capable Cohort (HCC). They complained the HCC was too white.

The Foundry.

No, she didn’t ‘lose her son to fentanyl’; fentanyl isn’t a random occurrence of nature, like a typhoon or an earthquake. Her son chose to take fentanyl and did so until he died. Part of the failure is on his parents, who didn’t arm him with the mental and spiritual tools to avoid that sort of destructive self-indulgence.

Evolution works whether one wants it to or not. Natural selection, like gravity, works automatically, and specializes in removing from the gene pool the weak and the stupid. Our technological has permitted the weak and stupid to survive and breed, and such a defective system merely prolongs the inevitable.

Unfortunately, evolution is not a speedy process, which means that many of us will live out our lives before the proper balance is restored. Sucks to be us.

Newsbusters.

Hint: No.

On Tuesday, National Public Radio business editor Uri Berliner blew the whistle on the station’s “assembly line” of liberally biased reporting, which he said was being cranked out “one story after another” framed with the leftist worldview. The expose put NPR under the microscope and put a serious blemish on the organization. But the question now is: will that blemish finally force media-scoring agency NewsGuard to downgrade NPR’s perfect 100/100 rating?

NewsMax.

The Supreme Court on Tuesday will hear oral arguments involving a federal obstruction law that has been used to prosecute hundreds of defendants involved in the events of Jan. 6, 2021, and the justices’ decision could affect former President Donald Trump.

The main charge that has sent so many 1/6 defendants to prison is one that had never before been prosecuted in such a context and (it is being argued) beyond the scope of what Congress intended with the law.

The New Neo.

The situation has the unintended effect of allowing terrorists to win wars by their tactic of putting civilians in harms’ way. The Palestinians’ entire war strategy rests on this, and most of the West cooperates. Thus, the unrealistic expectations held by so many modern Westerners about war end up enabling evil to flourish.

Definition: Propaganda organs of the ruling establishment masquerading as ‘jourlanists’ and ‘news’ organizations.

Source: Chris Rufo on the plagiarism accusations against black female professors

An apparent variant of ‘media’ based on the French word ‘merde’.

The Foundry.

Today’s standard-issue body shields leave officers exposed to perpetrators’ increasingly lethal weapons. But groundbreaking innovations like liquid armor and ultra-high-strength composites could revolutionize police protection, creating lightweight, flexible equipment that lets cops operate more securely.

AI-powered sensors and real-time data analysis could enhance authorities’ situational awareness and decision-making. On the horizon: lighter and more comfortable “smart long johns” that officers could slip beneath their uniforms.

Breakthroughs in smart helmets also could prevent deaths. Advanced composites of Kevlar, carbon fiber, and thermoplastics could help craft headgear that are more nimble, easier to wear, and far tougher on hostile fire.

Sorry–all our money is going for ‘reparations’ and into the pockets of politicians and their cronies.

Axios.

“Latine,” a gender-neutral way to describe or refer to people with Latino origins, is surging in popularity on university campuses, in museums, and among researchers and media.

You can’t tell the Woke jargon without a scorecard, and Voice of the Crust Axios is here to keep you up to date.

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Sen. Jacky Rosen says she’s committed to cracking down on the corporate landowners jacking up housing costs for her constituents. But the Nevada Democrat has no problem raking in campaign contributions from executives at America’s largest corporate landlord.

Rosen’s campaign and leadership PAC have accepted $83,250 in 2023 from executives of Blackstone, a leading corporate investor in the U.S. housing market, Federal Election Commission records show. Blackstone is the largest landlord in the country, with over 300,000 housing units in its portfolio, and is a direct contributor to the affordable housing crisis, according to a 2023 report by the Private Equity Stakeholder Project. Among Rosen’s donors is Frank Cohen, the chairman and CEO of Blackstone’s flagship real estate investment fund, which is heavily invested in Nevada. Cohen gave $13,200 to Rosen in August.

Now, Rosen says corporate landowners like Blackstone are responsible for driving up the cost of living for everyday Americans by monopolizing residential housing markets. Rosen introduced legislation in January that she said would limit the ability of companies like Blackstone to acquire an excessive amount of single-family residences in a single market and prohibit them from renting homes at an “unreasonable price.”

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on the U.S. Census, support for the measure could be growing in the backdrop of the border crisis and its potential impact on congressional reapportionment.

Heritage Action, a policy advocacy arm of The Heritage Foundation, announced Friday the Equal Representation Act would be scored as a key vote. The bill is S 3659 in the Senate and HR 7109 in the House. (The Daily Signal is the news outlet of The Heritage Foundation.)

Under current law, foreign citizens living in the United States are counted in the Census, and thus toward congressional apportionment. Rep. Yvette Clarke, D-N.Y., publicly admitted, “We have a diaspora that can absorb a significant number of these migrants. … I need more people in my district just for redistricting purposes.”

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I love the smell of conspiracy in the morning.

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Progressives are using legal loopholes and the power of the federal government to maximize Democrat votes in the 2024 election at taxpayers’ expense, RealClearInvestigations has found.

The methods include voter registration and mobilization campaigns by ostensibly nonpartisan charities that target Democrats using demographic data as proxies, and the Biden administration’s unprecedented demand that every federal agency “consider ways to expand citizens’ opportunities to register to vote and to obtain information about, and participate in, the electoral process.”

A dizzying array of overwhelmingly “democracy-focused” entities with ties to the Democratic Party operating as charities and funded with hundreds of millions of dollars from major liberal “dark money” vehicles are engaged in a sprawling campaign to register the voters, deliver them the ballots, and figuratively and sometimes literally harvest the votes necessary to defeat Donald Trump.

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An Afghan migrant, who is on the terrorist watchlist, was taken into custody crossing the southern border and released by authorities last year, NBC News reported.

The network, attributing the information to U.S. officials, said Mohammad Kharwin, 48, was taken into custody again in February and released last month by an immigration judge, who was not informed of the security risk.

Kharwin had been ordered free on bond pending a 2025 immigration hearing in Texas. No restrictions were placed on his movements inside the U.S.

The only thing that saves us is that we don’t get all the government we pay for.

OffGuardian.

We want to know why something is the way it is. It is in our nature. It is why, now presumably understanding the movement of celestial things, we can rest watching an eclipse with the quietened birds and the colours drifting to dark, saturated. Watching as it gradually returns to normal and not be afraid.

As if normal existed now.

ZMan’s weekly podcast. Highly recommended.

On the Sunday show I said I was swearing off any Trump news until the summer, as there is only so much screeching and squealing, I can take. I needed to take a break in order to train for the coming election. I plan to stick to that for the most part but looking at the clips of Trump stopping into a Chick-fil-A and the reaction to it, I thought it may be a good time to talk about the meaning of Trump.

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Four years have passed since the onset of COVID-19 and the global mishandling of its spread. Now, the same governments and international organizations that lied about the last pandemic are negotiating a new pandemic agreement and amendments to the International Health Regulations (IHR) at the World Health Organization (WHO).

RealClearPolitics.

Is National Public Radio fair and balanced? Do they care what you think?

NPR has a “public editor” to monitor listener complaints and concerns, but as we all know, the majority of their listeners are going to complain they’re not “progressive” enough. In 2021, Public Editor Kelly McBride appeared on Brian Stelter’s CNN podcast to praise NPR’s decision to allow their journalists to go to (leftist) public protests so they can “bring their full humanity to work with them.”

When Stelter asked about NPR’s critics, McBride dismissed any conservative complaints about a leftist tilt because they are not “genuinely interested in improving NPR.” McBride claimed her job was to coach NPR “to achieve its own internally stated goals. It doesn’t help to be magnifying disingenuous criticism.” To balance NPR is to harm NPR?

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Garret O’Boyle and Stephen Friend dedicated years of their lives to serving their country in the FBI. But when they began to question some of the decisions being made within the bureau, they were suspended.

After joining the FBI, O’Boyle says he “immediately saw that other agents [and] supervisors didn’t have a solid grasp of people’s civil rights.”

“Having sworn that oath to the Constitution multiple times—twice in the Army, once as a police officer, once as an FBI agent,” O’Boyle said, “it actually meant something to me—which, I think, it doesn’t to many, maybe even to most at this point. It’s just a job.”

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Japan’s unique keitora class of compact truck has proven a hit among American imported car fanatics, and thousands of the tiny little guys have been brought into the country. Unfortunately for fans of Liliputian work machines, the American Association of Motor Vehicle Administrators recommended states to ban non-FMVSS compliant cars, including everything keijid?sha, back in 2021. The Texas DMV has issued a ruling that these cars are now, and will remain, street legal for use on Texas roadways. Can I get a hell yeah?

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The use of ivermectin to treat COVID-19 is an ongoing debate. The central conflict is that while many doctors have reported success in using ivermectin, some studies published in major journals suggest it is in fact ineffective.

Even as the FDA recently has been removing misinformation it posted about ivermectin, the agency has maintained its original position regarding its effectiveness, namely that there isn’t evidence.

People who trust ivermectin claim the studies showing ineffectiveness are fraudulent, while people who are skeptical of its use for treating COVID-19 view it as an anti-science conspiracy theory.

The Foundry.

The Democrat-run city of Denver plans to defund its Police Department to pay for illegal immigrants.

Colorado’s capital, commonly referred to as a “sanctuary city,” announced Wednesday that it will spend $89.9 million on services for incoming illegal migrants, pulling some funding from roughly $45 million in public programs and services. The Denver Police Department will be hit with a reduction of $8.4 million— about 1.9% of its total operating budget, the city confirmed to the Daily Caller News Foundation.

UnHerd.

By now, you will surely have seen the video of actress Sydney Sweeney at the end of her Saturday Night Live hosting debut last month. She’s enthusiastically waving goodbye, her breasts barely contained by a dress that looks like it was designed to reveal as much of their surface area as possible, while also preventing them from floating away into space — which seems, in this case, a genuine risk. There was no reason why this moment should have been so remarkable, this being neither the first plunging neckline nor first set of boobs to grace the SNL stage, and yet, a consensus swiftly emerged that Sweeney’s physique was more than the sum of its perfectly spherical parts. Conservative writer Richard Hanania summed it up when he tweeted the video with a three-word caption: “Wokeness is dead.”

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My, what a surprise. Aren’t you surprised? I’m sure surprised.

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My, what a surprise. Aren’t you surprised? I’m sure surprised.

The Spectator.

Nor ought she to.

All is not well in the Harry Potter universe. Author of the hit wizarding novels and prominent women’s rights campaigner J.K. Rowling has revealed that, even if they apologize, she will not go easy on the lead actors of the Potter films for their stance on the trans debate. Less, er, expecto forgiveness and more expelliarmus…

Rowling’s comments come in the wake of the published report by top pediatrician Dr. Hilary Cass, which found that “remarkably weak evidence’ and a ‘lack of high-quality research” had allowed young people in the UK to change their gender. In a series of tweets, the acclaimed writer blasted supporters of gender-altering treatment in children and said they should apologize to “traumatized detransitioners and vulnerable women.” The writer continued: “Today’s not a triumph, it’s the laying bare of a tragedy.”

One social media user wrote that Daniel Radcliffe, who in the films played Potter, and Emma Watson, who played his best friend Hermione Granger, owe Rowling “a very public apology, safe in the knowledge that you will forgive them.” Rowling simply replied: “Not safe, I’m afraid.” Ouch.

Washington Poop.

Harvard College will require applicants to submit standardized test scores once again, becoming the latest Ivy League school to reinstate the requirement after making the choice optional during the pandemic.

The university had previously said it would remain test-optional through the 2025-2026 application cycle. But on Thursday, it said students applying to the college for fall 2025 admission — hoping to join the graduating class of 2029 — will now have to submit standardized test scores as part of their admissions package.

Harvard becomes the latest Ivy League school to reinstate the requirement after making the choice optional during the pandemic. Dartmouth College, Yale and Brown universities announced similar changes in recent weeks, after officials cited data suggesting that SAT and ACT scores were the best predictors of students’ academic performance at their schools — and that making the tests optional could further disadvantage applicants from more challenging backgrounds.

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Following a path blazed by the once and future Republic of Texas, Iowa Gov. Kim Reynolds on Wednesday signed into law a measure making it a state crime to enter the Hawkeye State after being deported or denied entry into the country. As an “aggravated misdemeanor,” it would subject illegal immigrants to imprisonment for up to two years.

Reynolds raced to sign the bill just one day after it cleared the state legislature. In a statement issued after the signing, she said President Biden’s neglect of border security made it imperative for Iowa to step up and fill the void.

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Oh so now in America we can’t even display the American flag without triggering people?

The Borderline Dance team was kicked out of a Seattle dance convention called the Emerald City Hoedown for wearing American flag-themed shirts, which reportedly made others feel “triggered and unsafe.”

Nope, this isn’t a joke.

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North Carolina’s highest court could determine whether election officials retain special legal privileges that allow them to defame individual voters and set a precedent for how voter fraud claims are pursued.

ZMan is fed up.

If you have paid any attention to British politics, you will note that what passes for the political right in Britain is more feckless and ridiculous than what passes for the political right in the United States. It is one of those things that should be impossible, but once you look at the recent string of Prime Ministers, you have to accept it is reality, which means things will inevitably get worse in America. No matter how much you hate the Republicans, you will have reason to hate them more.

The Tories are facing what many predict could be a party ending election this year, as current polling has them winning just a handful of seats. The Tories currently have a 35% approval number, an all-time low. As a result, there is a movement afoot to wipe out the party entirely. The “zero seats” campaign started as a joke but as is often the case, this joke could turn out to be reality. Italy’s Five Star movement started as a gag and eventually overturned the political establishment.