Bizarre photo showing giant Bidens beside miniature Jimmy and Rosalyn Carter keeps the Explainers busy.
Virtual graduation at Caltech
About 300 students will get to sit at the ceremony, while their families cheer them on virtually. According to the school’s ceremony plans, family members — even the parents who helped pay the tuition — will not be allowed to sit in the stands. …
While the students will be sitting about six feet apart for the ceremony, they will not be allowed to physically walk up to get their diploma.
School District Decides Asians Aren’t Students of Color – Reason.com
One school district in Washington state has evidently decided that Asians no longer qualify as persons of color.
https://reason.com/2020/11/16/equity-report-north-thurston-asian-students-of-color/
Why this ‘woke’ CIA recruitment video angered US conservatives | South China Morning Post
Will the electric guitar intro work?
A 36-year-old CIA employee also wants you to know how else she sees herself – that she is proudly a “woman of colour,” is “intersectional” and is a “cisgender millennial”.
Twitter cuts losses on report Elliott is buying post-earnings slide (NYSE:TWTR) | Seeking Alpha
Elliott is telling analysts that the sell-off is overdone – and comparing the decline to one following an advertiser pullback during Black Lives Matter protests last year – and when Twitter banned the account of former President Donald Trump, according to the report.
Why Rising Diversity Might Not Help Democrats as Much as They Hope
EU drug regulator evaluating Pfizer vaccine for youngsters
We’re now in chapter two of the story and we still don’t know how it started.
Retired French generals boost Marine Le Pen as Emmanuel Macron is warned of divided country | The National
Frederick Forsyth should write a book.
Far-Right French Leader Marine Le Pen Acquitted Over ISIS Tweets
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/05/04/world/europe/france-marine-le-pen-acquitted-isis.html
Ms. Le Pen, head of the National Rally, posted graphic pictures in 2015 to protest comparisons between the terrorist group and her party.
NYT
EXCLUSIVE: Classified study found COVID-19 could have originated in Chinese lab | WJLA
Nobody knows the virus’ origin for sure but it would be foolish to rule a lab accident out simply from political correctness.
Philippine Foreign Minister takes profanity-laced crack at Beijing over its lingering presence in the South China Sea – ABC News
Made in the Philippines words will bounce off Made in China armor plate.
China Is Totalitarian. Why Is That So Hard to Say?
Because you’ll be canceled for racism, even though the criticism is directed against Communism.
https://foreignpolicy.com/2021/04/10/china-xi-jinping-totalitarian-authoritarian-debate/
CNN: Biden Admin Wants to Outsource Spying on Americans to Private Firms to Bypass Fourth Amendment
The Frankenstein meme
The rise of Covid anxiety syndrome. Do you have it?
Continue reading “The Frankenstein meme”The anxiety syndrome is characterised by compulsively checking for symptoms of Covid, avoidance of public places, and obsessive cleaning, a pattern of “maladaptive behaviours” adopted when the pandemic started. Now researchers have raised the alarm that the obsessive worrying and threat avoidance, including being unwilling to take public transport or bleaching your home for hours, will not subside easily, even as Covid is controlled.
Guardian
Equity means quotas
The new numbers came out last week, and they are beyond harsh: Asians won 54 percent of this year’s freshman class seats; whites, 28 percent; Hispanics, 5 percent and African-Americans, 4 percent.
Whereupon Schools Chancellor Meisha Ross Porter demanded an end to test-based admissions — because “It’s far past time for our students to be fairly represented.”
It is also a way of covering up serious defects in the whole pedagogical model. It’s bureaucracy’s way of cheating on a performance test they’ve flunked.
Books: The Spy in Moscow Station: A Counterspy’s Hunt for a Deadly Cold War Threat. The thrilling, true story of the race to find a leak in the United States Embassy in Moscow―before more American assets are rounded up and killed.
Jordan’s Prince Hamzah bin Hussein ‘under house arrest’ – BBC News
Game of thrones
In a video passed to the BBC by his lawyer, Prince Hamzah bin Hussein, the half-brother of King Abdullah, accuses the country’s leaders of corruption, incompetence and harassment.
The secret garden
Someone asked me why so many polymaths were Eastern Europeans and seemed to thrive in conspiratorial environments, sometimes actual secret cities in the old USSR, the initiates of mysteries under hierophants.
Continue reading “The secret garden”The struggle for the GOP
Events in Texas raise the question of whether the alleged Biden strategy of being the stealth progressive hitman is really working. Maybe the voters can see through it and are flocking to the Trump banner in response. An antipathy to Biden will manifest itself as sympathy for Trump.
Continue reading “The struggle for the GOP”Voters in a Texas House district chose two Republicans to advance to a runoff election, dashing Democratic hopes of picking up a GOP-held seat — WSJ
The human birthright
New at the Belmont Club. The siren song of consensus science versus the urgency of finding a real solution.
Where is everyone?
There are two measures of a civilization. The first is the physical expanse of its possessions. The second is the vitality and robustness of its spirit. Sohrab Amari’s sense of desolation and depression in New York suggests a fragility at odds with the solid steel and stone.
Continue reading “Where is everyone?”