Weekly News Roundup – 22 March 2024
A Race to the Bottom, A Bloodbath, and In God We Trust, all others…
This Week’s News
Bar Exam No Longer a Require – In a what might be called a continuation of a race to the bottom in Blue States, the Washington Supreme Court has ruled that “he bar exam will no longer be a requirement to become a lawyer in the state” as it “blocks marginalized groups from becoming practicing attorneys and is ‘at best minimally effective’ for ensuring competency. One wonders how this affects the old legal saying “the man who is his own lawyer has a fool for his client.”
Cassandra or Chicken Little? Either way, it’s not good – A “heavily redacted” secret report from the RCMP to the federal government warns “that Canada may descend into civil unrest once citizens realize the hopelessness of their economic situation.” It predicts a long recession, a decline in the standard of living, continued housing unaffordability, and, of course, significant climate change. If we have any hope, it’s that our expert have shown themselves to be breaktakingly incompetent over the last several years and so the report may be
a heaping pile of garbagewrong. That said, if the truth is as bad as it’s made out to be there’s only one solution:
Metaphor or violence? – During a speech Ohio on Saturday, Trump presented a plan to levy high tariffs on Chinese cars manufactured in Mexico followed by the now famous “bloodbath” comment. Not surprisingly, journalists on the left took it literally as shown by this quote from a Salon article: "If I don't get elected, it's going to be a bloodbath." Journalists on the right, again not surprisingly, argued that it was metaphor or Trump’s “uniquely inarticulate way” of speaking. Given what I’ve included in my “What I’m Reading” section below you can probably guess what I think. Here’s the full quote, you can decide from yourselves what Trump meant:
“We’re going to put a 100 percent tariff on every single car that comes across the line, and you’re not going to be able to sell those guys if I get elected … Now, if I don’t get elected, it’s going to be a bloodbath for the whole — that’s going to be the least of it. It’s going to be a bloodbath for the country.”
Texas immigration law frozen – Legislation that would have permitted Texas to supersede federal powers and detain and prosecute anyone they think entered the country illegally, has been frozen at the request of the Biden Administration. Given the state of the border, the extent of illegal immigration, and the fact this has historically been the responsibility of the federal government, one wonders what the Biden Administration is up to.
What I’m Reading
The problems with Harvard are to a certain extent the problems of the “expert” and “elite” class in the West today. Specifically, these groups think they know best and are on morally sound ground when they enforce “their truth” and quash free speech. If you want to know why there’s been a decline in trust in our institutions, you need look no further than Harvard.
Harvard Tramples the Truth - Perhaps the best and most complete summary of why I have lost faith in government, medical experts, and sadly the broader scientific community. Perhaps I flatter myself, but I believe I’m a pretty good judge of risk, understand statistics, and am a logical thinker and so mask policies (you need them when you’re standing but not when you’re sitting) and universal vaccine mandates always struck me as…well, moronic. “Veritas” indeed.
Harvard gets worst free speech score ever – FIRE, the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education, conducts an annual “comprehensive comparison of the student experience of free speech on their campuses” and for the second year in a row Harvard scored a 0.00 out of a possible 100, coming last out of 248 schools, and in doing so earning itself the only “Abysmal” rating.
Google Gemini – This topic is alternatively hilarious and concerning. It is hilarious because Gemini, an Artificial Intelligence tool, so frequently presents results that anyone with half a brain would find moronic (black, female Pope for example). It’s concerning because it reveals the extent to which Google and other high-tech companies have gone overboard in their pursuit of “anti-racism” and DEI in their misguided and damaging efforts to make society and history “fair.” Truth matters, even when it’s not a comfortable truth. Similarly, merit is the only viable long-term approach to employment. If A.I. is an existential risk, our end will not come in the form of Terminator or The Matrix but because it made people so stupid that Idiocracy came true. Here are two articles on the intersection of high tech and DEI ideology:
Google Gemini & Revisiting James Damore – On Substack @therabbithole84 provides a broad overview of the rights that Google has trampled in its efforts to enforce DEI and political correctness.
Google’s Woke AI Wasn’t a Mistake - Francesca Block and Olivia Reingold over at The Free Press talked to former employees at Google who say corporate culture “prioritizes the ideology of diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) over excellence and good business sense” to the extent that employees “were discouraged from hiring white, male employees” and that engineers were required to perform a “DEI impact” for the tiniest of software fixes. Far from being a mistake, Google’s results are “just a reflection of the people who trained it” and reveal “how broken Google’s culture is.
My Podcast Recommendation(s) of the Week
I’m not just an ideological nutcase, I’m a philosophical nutcase as well and it’s the second one that leads to this week’s recommendation:
The Michael Shermer Show – The Weirdness of the World
This week Michael interviews philosopher Eric Schwitzgebel and asks such questions as: Do we live in a simulation? Is consciousness physical? What is it like to be a garden snail? These are difficult questions and all Schwitzgebel knows is “that the truth-whatever it is-is weird.”
lol Canada's a real hellhole.
•Suicide doctors who brag about increasing their customer count every year
•The veteran's line offers the suicide booth
•Life imprisonment for committing a racism
•Unaffordable housing
•Cheese shortages with cheese barons running the place with cheese bootleggers running around
•Owned by China