URLs du Jour

2021-11-24

  • Maybe the funniest thing you'll see today. Or this month. Or this year. From Twitter:

    This meme theme has been around since at least 2015 if not longer. I posted a few myself. It's rough, but also hilarious, that poor Salma's getting called out for misandry.


  • <voice imitation="professor_farnsworth">Good news, everyone!</voice> The Library at the University Near Here has released its Officially Approved List of Gender Identity Awareness Resources! It's in support of "UNH Gender Identity Awareness [GIA] Week". Which was last week, sorry you missed it.

    GIA is a week of events dedicated to promoting an understanding of transgender, transsexual and gender queer issues at UNH and beyond. Started in 2010 and principally sponsored by Transgender-UNH, the week features film screenings, workshops, speakers, open mikes, and other events to bring together UNH students, faculty, and staff and community members to have substantive discussions about gender identity/expression, gender diversity, social justice and cultural transformation. In addition to fostering dialogue and providing education, GIA hopes to stimulate positive changes on campus and in the community, promote activism and provide fun and social opportunities for Trans and allied people. All are welcome and all events are free and open to the public.

    For those interested in "substantive discussion" or "fostering dialogue"… well, you can click through and try to find any "resource" at the site that might provide the slightest hint that there's anything to discuss about Gender Identity at all. Ryan Anderson's When Harry Became Sally? Nope. Abigail Shrier's Irreversible Damage? Fuggedaboutit!

    Not even Deirdre McCloskey's Crossing, which the UNH Library actually owns. What, Deirdre's unacceptably supportive of free markets?

    Anyway, look for yourself, and please let me know if there's anything in the UNH list that even hints at controversy on this topic. Ditto for the equally one-sided UNH Officially Approved List of Racial Justice Resources.


  • A hedgehog knows one big thing. That's what some ancient Greek said, and 'twas popularized by Isaiah Berlin. And it's what leapt to mind when I read Eric Boehm's headline at Reason: Elizabeth Warren Is Trying To Blame Inflation on 'Price Gouging.' Don't Buy It.

    Looking for someone to blame for high and rising prices at the pump, Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D–Mass.) has found a familiar villain: big corporations.

    During an appearance on MSNBC's The ReidOut on Thursday, Warren said price gouging is to blame for the pain that Americans are feeling at the gas pump these days. Amid rising inflation, the average price for a gallon of regular unleaded gasoline sits at $3.40 nationally, up from about $2.11 at this same time last year and higher than at any time since 2014. This, Warren argued, is great news for oil companies and their shareholders.

    Eric points out that both ExxonMobil and Chevron have been underperforming the broad market of late.

    Someone a few days ago pointed out MSM's habit of appending the phrase "without evidence" to Donald Trump's occasional assertions. (Even the ones that turned out to be true, see the link.)

    Maybe it's time to demand that your favorite news source stick that on the pronouncements of Elizabeth Warren, Joe Biden, Bernie Sanders, AOC, …


  • Our Governor makes Hot Air! Specifically, makes it into an Allahpundit article, and here 'tis. GOP Gov. Sununu: Telling a private business that they can't fire unvaccinated workers is pure communism.

    Pure, mind you. (That apparently happened last month.)

    Here’s another reason why Trump shouldn’t run in 2024. It would clear the way for Chris Sununu to stand on a presidential primary debate stage and call Greg Abbott a communist to his face.

    Seriously, though, watching this gives you an insight into why, despite being arguably the GOP’s top Senate recruit for 2022, Sununu ultimately decided to pass. As governor of a small New England state, he can get away with saying stuff like this. As a senator, he’d be a national figure expected to do battle for his party in the great vaccine mandate culture war. And his party, unfortunately, has concluded that a business owner’s right to run his shop as he sees fit must bend to a worker’s right to maximize his or her risk from COVID. That’s what happens when your base decides that anti-vaxxism is the exciting new frontier in populism.

    Apparently, Governor Chris was not using the Communist label as an attempt to curry favor with the local progressives.


  • I think the right amount of socialism is zero. But I'm willing to change my mind, if a smart guy like Joel Kotkin makes a convincing argument. Here's his take on The socialism America needs.

    Clobbered from all sides by the pandemic, climate change and disruptions in virtually every industry by the rise of artificial intelligence, the capitalist dream is dying — and a new, mutant form of socialism is growing in its place. In the US, perhaps it’s no surprise that most Democrats have a better opinion of socialism than capitalism. Far more startling is the fact that they are not alone: the Republican party and the corporate establishment, which once paid lip service to competitive capitalism, are both starting to embrace the importance of massive deficit spending and state support.

    But unlike the social democracy movements that followed World War Two, the New Socialism focusses not on material aspirations but on climate change, gender, and race. While the old socialism sought to represent the ordinary labourer, many on the Left today seem to have little more than contempt for old working-class base and its often less than genteel views on issues such as Critical Race Theory.

    His bottom line: the "socialism we need" is "rooted in the needs of the working and middle classes — not one that seeks to keep them in their place."

    My translation: it would look a lot like free market capitalism, growth-oriented, and shorn of cronyism.

    "Socialists" will be unlikely to take Kotkin's advice.


  • News you can use. Edouard Mathieu and Max Roser at Our World in Data look at the burning question: How do death rates from COVID-19 differ between people who are vaccinated and those who are not? They explain their methodology, but here's their pretty picture for the past few months in the US:

    [Get Modernaed, OK?]

    I am pretty sure this speaks for itself. If you'd like, bounce over to the OWiD site to play with the data; it allows you to look at the age-range you might find most relevant.


Last Modified 2024-01-31 5:56 AM EDT