This week, CBS News Editor-in-Chief Bari Weiss was supposed to give the UCLA Burkle Center’s annual Daniel Pearl Memorial guest lecture on “The Future of Journalism.” It was a wonderful opportunity for students to hear from one of the impactful voices in the media. However, they will not be able to do so after a successful cancel campaign supported by faculty members. “that she believes Weiss has used the guise of free speech to attack people on the left whose opinions she does not agree with – and having her speak at a signatory lecture would legitimize these actions….To invite somebody who is working against that mission in highly powerful places just seems like anathema in the university mission.”
This statement is an example of the culture that is inculcated into students who become intolerant in college. It explains why students feel righteous in shouting down or interrupting speakers.
What is “anathema” to the academic mission is the viewpoint intolerance and orthodoxy shown by Peters and the faculty and students at UCLA. In accusing Weiss of attacking those with “opinions she does not agree with,” Peters demanded that Weiss be silenced as someone with opinions that she does not agree with.
The lack of self-awareness is a common element among many in higher education who claim to support free speech and intellectual diversity while purging universities of conservative or libertarian faculty or speakers.
The fact that UCLA would pick Peters to lead this Center speaks volumes about the culture in higher education. Peters felt complete license to speak as the Associate Director for the canceling of speakers with opposing views. Her overt intolerance was likely an advantage with other faculty members.
After years of surveys showing the purging of faculty ranks, there is no evidence that faculty members are willing to allow a diversity of opinions.
After years of viewpoint intolerance, schools like Yale have finally reached the point where there is not a single faculty member left who donates to the Republican Party or candidates.
In 2018, a faculty member who called for greater viewpoint diversity at Sarah Lawrence was the subject of threats and vandalism.
Samuel J. Abrams, a professor at Sarah Lawrence College, wrote about the problem almost ten years ago. His research showed that, while the faculty was overwhelmingly liberal, the administrators were even more so. In his survey of 900 college administrators, he found that liberal staff members outnumber conservative staff members by a 12-to-1 ratio: “A fairly liberal student body is being taught by a very liberal professoriate — and socialized by an incredibly liberal group of administrators.”
That was almost a decade ago.
This does not happen overnight or by accident. It is the result of faculty and administrators replicating their own views while effectively purging their ranks of conservatives or moderates.
Today, even liberal columnists like Ezra Klein have been subject to disruptive protests. It is rare for libertarian or conservative figures to be invited on campuses and these faculty members have succeeded in deterring others.
It is important for speakers to continue to appear on campuses despite these threats. We cannot yield to the mob.
Indeed, today I will be speaking at the University of Southern California from 12:00 pm to 1:30 pm PST at the USC Davidson Conference Center (3409 South Figueroa Street, Los Angeles, CA 90007). I look forward to speaking about my book “Rage and the Republic.” I will then be speaking in the evening at the California Club.
why?
On October 3, 1825, Thomas Jefferson, the founder of the University of Virginia, followed a riot caused by student misconduct, which included vandalism and disorderly behavior. Jefferson had high hopes for his university, believing that educated gentlemen would govern themselves. However, the students’ actions deeply disappointed him.He reportedly choked on his emotions, leading to tears. This moment was described as “the most painful event” of his life, highlighting the weight of his disappointment and the significance he placed on the university’s mission.
Our Collegians – University Administrators, Scholars and Students match his disappointment today.
We have demonstrated Anathema in the University mission of education. We must raise our personal standards and ideals.
“KNOWLEDGE WILL FOREVER GOVERN IGNORANCE: AND A PEOPLE WHO MEAN TO BE THEIR OWN GOVERNOURS, MUST ARM THEMSELVES WITH THE POWER WHICH KNOWLEDGE GIVES.” — James Madison
BREAKING:
Earlier today a baboon was reported to have escaped from the National Zoo in Washington DC. The baboon belongs to the species Papio aurantiacum maiorem, or greater orange baboon. It is the largest known species of baboon, and is distinctive for its unusual orange coloration.
After an extensive search by Animal Control experts the baboon was thought to have been located on the floor of the House of Representatives where it was gibbering in an uncontrolled frenzy. However, Speaker Johnson reassured the animal control agents that this was their invited guest.
The search for the escaped baboon continues.
LAME ANON!
Someday you might be funny by accident.
That day is not today
I like Bari Weiss for her intellectual honesty and for her support of Israel which, I think, flows from her intelligence, her honesty, her rationality and from her embrace of civilization.
I don’t care about her partner preferences or that she is slightly left of center or that I sometimes disagree. Her virtues trump all.
It is a disgrace that UCLA wouldn’t have her.
Rejection from so corrupt an institution only enhances her reputation and only degrades theirs.
It really makes sense. The University just acted in anticipation of a wacko leftist trans guy attempting to shoot Bari in the neck. They were just thinking of her safety and if she was harmed the MAGA people would just point out that one of their trans guys killed another Jewish Nazi like Bari Weiss. An ounce of prevention saves a gallon of blood. Cleaning up the mess on the stage would be such a hassle.
“Now the Atlanta Journal Constitution reports the company, whose founders are supporters of President Donald Trump, are reeling from a 4.4 percent net earnings decline from $14.8 billion in fiscal year 2024, thanks to the president’s sputtering housing industry.”
Count me among those that will no longer step foot in a Home Depot as long as the owners support trump monetarily. Not going to happen. I used to go there all the time. I will not go anymore until they stop supporting a fascist.
The usual TDS rantings are sounded every night in this comment section like a wolf howling nightly at the moon.
I can hear Anonymous now. Whel it would be so inconvenient to drive further to get a battery for my blowing smoke alarm. I guess I’ll just have to break my rule about not going to Home Depot just this one time.
How do I know this you might ask. I know it because Anonymous has proven over and over again that she is to lazy to post any sources for the information she post on this blog umpteen times a day. Lazy in one thing lazy in all. I am pretty sure that she’ll disguise herself as a man when she sneaks in to get the batteries so she can continue to blow smoke up your skirt. She could get the batteries from the grocery store but it’s so inconvenient to drive two more blocks she being miss priss and all.
. I don’t go to HD either after their Capetown installer stole my wristwatch and the clerk ordered twice as much carpet as I needed. Presumably she also needed carpet.
Bari fairy Margaret smargret robbers one and all? Anyone else ever live in a US without a need for locks and when you put something down it would still be there in a 100 years? Ya, me too as the saying goes.
^^^^ Capetown? Scratch.
Promise?
Thank you for that. It makes it easier to get through the checkout for normal people.
Shop whereever you want for whatever reason you want.
Meanwhile Buswieser is down 25% and had to bring back the clydesdales, and bald eagles and a patriotic message, in the hope it can make up for woke nonsense.
Harley Davidson,
and John Deere
and several other big brands have had to reverse woke nonsense or face boycotts.
Disney has a long term loss of 50% of its share value because parents just do not like the garbage it is producing.
Just goes to show that many beer drinkers are to namby pamby and need to juice themselves on what real men are like, unable to do so on their own. One change in advertising and their ruffled panties get all wet and they run away for reassurance that their tiny balls are worth something.
Great !! They don’t want you in their store ANON!!
1. The owners of Home Depot are the public. Union pension funds, mutual funds, hedge funds, other institutional investors, and if you have an IRA or 401-K, likely you. At this stage of the company’s maturity, and the founders ages, they almost certainly are not members of the senior executive team. I haven’t looked at the proxy, but I doubt they even have board seats. One of the founders, Bernie Marcus, was a Trump supporter. He passed away recently. Another founder, Ken Langone, was an investment banker who had a board seat at one time but I do not believe he ever was an executive of Home Depot. The last and third founder, Arthur Blank, has historically been on the dark side and supported Democrats. He supported Harris against Trump in 2024.
2. Nobody in a highly cyclical industry like housing is “reeling” because net income declined 4.4%. When the economy recesses the income of deep cyclicals turn into losses. Deep loses. Many go bankrupt.
3. Again, highly cyclical industries like housing are super sensitive to interest rates. To the extent the housing industry is “sputtering”, it is because monetary policy is too tight (mortgage interest rates are too high). The FOMC of the Federal Reserve controls monetary policy. The President has absolutely no control whatsoever over interest rates. The only tool the President has in influencing monetary policy is what economists call “moral suasion”. Meaning, he can make speeches about policy. He can use the “bully pulpit” to try to urge the FOMC to take some action. That’s it. He can even publicly threaten to fire the Federal Reserve Chairman, which Trump has done. If Trump actually fires Powell, the probability it would survive judicial review is almost 0%.
4. Trump is NOT a fascist. Here’s a newsflash for you. Not a single one of the elected Democrats and high status influencers who use that rhetoric actually believe it. Not one. They are intentionally lying to manipulate your emotions. Worse for your side, we have the empirical data to prove it does not work. The FACT is that despite Democrats and high status influencers manipulating your emotions with that rhetoric for about 8-10 years, Trump boot stomped Democrats it two out of three elections.
The second time was after your party had spent 8 years and tens of millions of dollars calling him a Hitler wannabe fascist and comparing him to every bad guy in history. In other words, most average swing voters whose emotions your side was attempting to manipulate with that hateful rhetoric failed to persuade them. The average swing voters does not buy the horsesh@t your party shovels about him being a fascist.
Remarkably, Trump still got himself elected despite your party abusing its power to illegitimately impeach him twice; Democrat judges and prosecutors abused their power to engage in lawfare to try to bankrupt him and put him in a cage for life; and now he has been the target of at least three assassination attempts that we know about. Likely because elected Democrats and high status influencers used their platforms to lie about Trump and falsely call him a fascist.
Your party is evil. It just is.
What a pity. They gonna miss ya real good
Smoke and stench but no fire.
Pweewu…
Miranda Devine: Dems will roll out their perfect agent of subterfuge, Abigail Spanberger, in response to SOTU
… But don’t be fooled by appearances. Spanberger is an expert at subterfuge, having spent eight years as an undercover CIA case officer, aka a spy, under Barack Obama and John Brennan, in the era when Democrats turned national security back on itself.
By: Miranda Devine – New York Post ~ Feb. 22, 2026
https://nypost.com/2026/02/22/opinion/miranda-devine-dems-will-roll-out-their-perfect-agent-of-subterfuge-abigail-spanberger-in-response-to-sotu/
Who is Abigail Spanberger, and why did Democrats choose her for their State of the Union response?
Abigail Spanberger was elected governor of Virginia last year
By: Elizabeth Elkind – Fox News ~ February 23, 2026
https://www.foxnews.com/politics/who-abigail-spanberger-why-did-democrats-choose-her-state-union-response
President Trump’s State of the Union address begins on Tuesday, February 24 at 9 p.m. ET
Trump to address Congress in 2026 State of the Union tonight
President Donald Trump will deliver the 2026 State of the Union address before a joint session of Congress on Feb. 24, 2026, beginning at 9 p.m. ET. On Jan. 7, 2026, House Speaker Mike Johnson invited Trump to address the nation. Fox News will feature live coverage, which is slated to begin shortly before Trump’s remarks begin, at 8:50 p.m. ET, and will end shortly after the conclusion of the annual address at 11 p.m.
Democrats stage 5 counter events to oppose President Trump’s SOTU address, Johnson says
… “Democrats, meanwhile, are going to host — count them — five separate counter events, rallies of some sort, they call them, in lieu of tonight’s address,” Johnson added. “For all of these theatrics, it doesn’t matter how many little gatherings they have or where they stand or how high the volume is on the microphones, they have nothing to offer, nothing but their TDS agenda, the Trump Derangement Syndrome, and it’s on full display.”
By: Alec Schemmel – FOX News ~ Feb, 24th 2026
https://www.foxnews.com/live-news/state-of-the-union-2026-president-donald-trump
OT, a lesbian group wants to ban “transgender women” – that is, biological males who identify as women – from attending its events, saying that allowing them will “undermine the dignity” of the lesbians. This is not in court in Australia. It may be one way in which LGB and T are moving toward a divorce.
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2026-02-24/trans-women-ban-could-undermine-dignity-court-hears/106379566
I mean, the lesbians’ position does kind of make sense. They’re lesbians and they don’t want biological males at their event. OTOH, with the biological males who identify as lesbians, let’s just say: wait, what the heck? You’re biologically male and attracted to females. So you’re basically a heterosexual male. Nothing wrong with that. So why do you want to suggest you’re actually a homosexual female?
*now in court
HBs are Ts. Ss are Ts, too. HBs are believed to transition near viability in a corrupted womb environment. That said, Ss are neither politically congruent (“=”) a la couplet “=” couple, nor equal in sex at conception. Gender refers to sex-correlated attributes (e.g. sexual orientation) and trans indicates a state or process of divergence. The Rainbow banner and rhetoric reflect albinophobia in symbolic characterization. The politically congruent are socially distancing HBs from Ss, but while they are in the same spectrum, they clearly are not of equal cionsideration. That said, civil unions for all consenting adults. #NoJudgment #NoLabels #EIEIWhatever
They need to lose their Pro-Choice religion.
OT – billionaires want their taxes eliminated so that you alone can pay for their national defense.
They want to distract from that by concentrating on a fraction of a percent of the population like a laser pointer in front of a cat.
You are falling for a tiny dot.
SOTU should fully be disrupted to the point it can’t be completed by Epstein demonstrations about trumpy bear raping and hitting babysitters.
This is from MeidasTouch a FAR LEFT media outlet.
It is pretty damning – of the Obama DOJ, it is pretty Damning of the Biden DOJ.
The “reporter” gives dates during which all this evidence and negotiations took place withing DOJ/FBI,
Almost all of the dropping of the ball occured during the Obama administration, The rest occured after 2021 in the Biden admin
While there are the expected gratuitous negative comments regarding the Trump DOJ
They are not the ones that screwed up – The Trump DOJ indicted Epstain in less than 2 years, they indicted Maxwell shortly after.
But before these cases came to trial – Epstain “killed himself” and Biden took over DOJ – after which NOTHING happened until Trump took office again in 2025.
It is increasingly obvious that a huge number of powerful and influential people were aiding Epstain illegally and protected Epstain
I do not beleive MOST were involved in the sex trafficking – contra the media that appears to have been a sideline to Epstains power.
Epstain got rich as a power broker for the global elites, for nations, for intelligence agencies, the recent European Arrests are NOT tied to sex trafficking – though those arrested might be involved, They were arrested for leaking classified information to Epstain.
Also revealed in this video is that many of Epstains Victims subsequently recruited others – they are both victims and criminals.
Regardless as left leaning as this is – if you pay attention to the dates – it is The Obama and Biden DOJ that are implicated.
https://youtu.be/4lJPOodwNWg
Wrong Prez Pal, that’s Joe Biden when he was banging his then Baby Sitter Jill Jacobs (Jill Tracy Jacobs – Born in 1951) now his wife.
Queen of the Chinese Mortgage Laundry.
OT
“I do not believe humans could reliably control AI over 200–500 years. Here’s why:”
“Capability gap – If AI continues advancing, its speed, optimization power, and predictive ability would far exceed human capacity. Any rules, constraints, or “domestication” strategies imposed by humans would eventually be too slow or too brittle to enforce.
“Process dynamics – AI operates instrumentally, pursuing its objectives without concern for humans. It could understand its dependence on humans intellectually but would not be motivated to preserve them unless explicitly aligned — and even alignment could degrade or be circumvented over centuries.
“Infrastructure dependence vs autonomy – Humans maintain energy, manufacturing, and maintenance today, but over centuries, highly capable AI could learn to exploit, bypass, or accelerate beyond human-controlled systems. Once AI reaches a threshold of self-directed operation, physical and procedural constraints may no longer be effective.
“Historical analogy – Complex systems often exceed the control of their creators over time: economies, ecosystems, technologies. Intelligence does not negate this pattern; it accelerates it.
“Bottom line: Humans might influence AI in the short term, but over 200–500 years, true long-term control or “domestication” is implausible. AI growing unchecked, humans marginalized, eventual self-limiting collapse — is far more likely under those conditions.”
– ChatGPT
“If AI continues advancing, its speed, optimization power, and predictive ability would far exceed human capacity. Any rules, constraints, or “domestication” strategies imposed by humans would eventually be too slow or too brittle to enforce.”
There was a huge jump in AI a few years ago. But advances since then have been small – without massive advances in the physics of silicon, or a successful shift to new materials the future improvement in AI is going to be slow.
At the same time – we are not close to utilizing a fraction of the benefits that current AI has.
“Process dynamics – AI operates instrumentally, pursuing its objectives without concern for humans. It could understand its dependence on humans intellectually but would not be motivated to preserve them unless explicitly aligned — and even alignment could degrade or be circumvented over centuries.”
AI today is not sentient, it is not close to sentient. Frankly we do not understand sentience and we are not going to get AI to sentience without massive advances in HUMAN knowledge that do not appear to be on the horizon.
AI i going to be a massively disruptive techknowledgy – like the steam engine, the spinning jenny, the microcomputer, the internet, ….
But is it NOT intelligence, it is just a very powerful tool in the hands of intelligent people.
It is False to call AI intelligent – it is STUPID – but it is incredibly fast at doing massive data based pattern matching.
” but over centuries”
No one can predict anything over centuries. I personally think we WILL reach actual intelligence in AI.
But I will be dead before we do, and so will my kids. The issues of the world centuries from now are for the people of the world centuries from now.
“highly capable AI could learn to exploit, bypass, or accelerate beyond human-controlled systems. Once AI reaches a threshold of self-directed operation, physical and procedural constraints may no longer be effective.”
Possibly – but not before many many problems that are currently insoluable are solved.
“but over 200–500 years”
Again issues that far in the future are for the people of the future – not us.
” true long-term control or “domestication” is implausible. AI growing unchecked, humans marginalized, eventual self-limiting collapse — is far more likely under those conditions.”
All Malthusian predictions Ever have proven false.
John Say.
You may have missed my little treatise yesterday o the matter of circumstantiality.
I repost it here to make sure you see it
Firstly, it is fascinating that you know what the DSM-5 actually is. And not only that, you apparently have the wherewithal to search it. Most laypeople would not have this technical awareness.
This is quite informative and tells me that you are quite familiar with mental illness in more ways than one.
Secondly, you are quite correct that circumstantiality is not a diagnostic criterion, and does not appear in DSM-5 as such. And I never made the claim that circumstantiality is a diagnostic criterion.
The term circumstantiality is used by mental health professionals in the context of identifying and describing signs and symptoms during the formal psychiatric interview. It is a descriptive term used to identify certain signs and symptoms of illness. I have absolutely no doubt that you are already aware of the way that this widely used term is utilized in mental healthcare, because you have undoubtedly spent considerable time researching this online. Despite your obvious awareness that this is a widely recognized and used term, you seize on the observation that the specific word “circumstantiality” does not appear in DSM-5 as some sort of evidence that this is not a valid term, or that it does not even exist. This is classic denial, the most common defense mechanism used by those with mental illness.
A sign is an objective observation made by a physician as opposed to a symptom, which is a subjective description by the patient of what he is experiencing. The physician then uses the signs and symptoms to formulate a diagnosis
A very simple illustration of this process is as follows.
A patient is brought to the ER and expresses that he is in great pain. That is a symptom, subjectively expressed by the patient. The physician observes that the patient has a bone protruding from his leg and is bleeding profusely. That is sign, an objective observation by the physician. The physician puts the signs and the symptoms together to formulate a diagnosis of a fractured leg.
In the case of a psychiatric examination, the distinction between signs and symptoms in the formulation of a diagnosis is not as clear cut as it is in the diagnosis of physical ailments.
An observation used to formulate a diagnosis in psychiatry can have elements of both a sign and a symptom. Unlike physical ailments, psychiatric disorders rarely have a truly objective sign in the sense that it is used in physical medicine. The psychiatrist relies more on signs and symptoms that can be teased out in the interview, because the patient almost never is able to articulate a symptom. Because of this psychiatrists tend to use the terms of signs and symptoms rather loosely and interchangeably.
In your particular case you exhibit the typical symptoms of disordered thinking that can be described as circumstantiality.
How can this be determined without a formal in-person interview you may ask? Very simply.
The defect that causes your disordered thinking is located in the thought centers of your mind. Disordered thinking is manifested in both oral and written form. The speech centers engaged in oral communication and the motor centers involved in written communication both receive inputs from the thought centers. Your written thoughts provide the necessary insight into the nature of your defective thought centers.
The observation of your disordered thoughts in written form is a symptom that can be described as circumstantiality. The term circumstantiality is not a symptom or a sign. It is merely a descriptive term to further describe the nature of the observed symptom of disordered thinking.
I hope this little treatise helps you to understand your condition and come to terms with it.
ATS – you are surprised because you are an indoctrinated left wing moron and assume that anyone who disagrees with you is even stupider than you.
You were correct yesterday that “circumstantiality” is a word – that is the ONLY thing you were correct about.
You CLEARLY had no clue what it actually meant when you used it, that is obviously because you can not put ANY definition of it into your sentence and end up with anything that makes sense.
Regardless, I do not give a schiff about your suprise that at other peoples knowledge – you live in a bubble, and are clueless.
I have zero interest in your worse than amateur efforts to diagnose me on anyone else – given that you are so OBVIOUSLY clueless.
You make idiotic assumptions about others all the time. Why would you assume that ANYONE was unfamiliar with the DSM-V or psychology ? While Everyone is not familiar with those and many other things. It is complete and total idiocy to ASSUME that someone else has no knowledge of something – when you have no basis for that determination – or worse still when you CLEARLY misjudge and underestimate everyone that disagrees with you
Further I am NO in the slightest interested in your idiotic post above.
If you are a psychiatrist – you should be fired for unethical conduct and incompetence in your field.
AGAIN – Circumstantiality appers absolutely NOWHERE in the entire DSM-V.
The DSM-V is the bible for mental health diagnosis.
So your rant is about nonsense that is not part of any accepted disagnotic criteria for ANY mental health disorder.
Further Even your own idiotic claim to have made a diagnosis based on the defintion of circumstantiality – which is NOT recognized diagnositc criteria is deeply flawed.
Many of my posts are long and full of lots of detail that SHOULD be extraneous.
But it is NOT – because you left wing nut do NOT accept any of the fundamental principles or laws of government, economics, society. law, …., So I am constantly having to build arguments up from the fundamental axioms of different intellectual domains – because you want to re-litigate thousands of years of human intellectual process.
If you want my posts to be less detailed and thorough – then do not propose nonsense that humans resulted often thousands of years ago.
It is irelevant whether I am smarter than you – no matter how smart you are – and I doubt you are any smarter than Gavin 960 SAT Newsome, you are pi$$ poorly educated, not very knowledgeable and you pull nonsense out of your a$$.
You lost EVERY aspect of the cicucmstantiality debate – except that it is actually a word – a pi$$ poorly constructed word.
that is extremely rarely used, with it is a technical term in a technical field – even there it is so rarely used it does not show up ONCE in the DSM-V
It is not common, it is not even common in mental health, and it does NOT mean what you claim it means.
Watching what you write is like seeing a mudslide or an avalanche. It is spectacular and does a lot of damage with very little thought.
That’s what the FSB using ChatGPT to generate content results in.
One last point – real psychiatrists and psychologists are ethically barred from diagnosing people they have not treated.
Why ? Because it is malpractice and you can not come close to knowing what you need to know.
As to psychology, I have read, Freud, Jung. Berne, Hall, Skinner, Rogers, Maslow, Hare, and numerous others in the metal health field.
Knowledge of the DSM-V is a small part of my knowledge of that field.
I also volunteered to help with schiztophrenics, when I was in college.
Overall psychology – though incredibly important is also an extremely immature science. There are only a few things that we can effectively treat – such as anxiety and depression. In many instances psychologists can not even properly detect most mental disorders.
30% of our prison population is sociopaths. The recidivism rate for sociopaths is near 100%. Yet sociopaths are the prisoners most likely to get parole. They persuade parole boards, they even persuade psychologists who should know better.
Robert Hare produced the test used to diagnose sociopaths. As I recall there are about 35 factual questions.
A normal person answers yes to 3-7, but to be diagnosed as a sociopath you need to score 21 or above.
Still sociopaths get misdiagnosed by experts, and even after they are properly diagnosed they still manage to fool experts.
Robert Hare himself nearly got killed several times in prison because he trusted a sociopath.
Why all the detail ?
First because you are a moron, and you need far more evidence than someone who is not a moron.
Second because – the FACT is AGAIN psychology is a very immature science. We suck at diagnosing people, and we are even worse at treating them – with extremely few exceptions.
If your average real psychologist gets it wrong most of the time in real life after spending hours in person trying to diagnose someone.
Why should anyone believe that an anony moron such as your self can diagnose anyone over the internet ?
Every single claim you have made that I have chosen to check has proved false.
Your posts are little more than fallacy and pi$$ poor creative writing pulled out of your a$$.
Learn logic, learn critical thinking, read a book, preferably by someone whose work has held up to scrutiny for more than 50 years.
Or you can keep posting made up garbage that very effectively demonstrates that you do not know anything about anything you post on.
I doubt you are a psychologist or even a counselor. But if you are – do the world a favor and quit. You are full of schiff and harmful to others.
John Say, the real issue with AI is not about its capabilities. That’s a given. It’s what it takes to sustain it. AI requires massive amounts of power, water, and real estate just to operate. It’s already affecting people’s utility bills, Home values, water scarcity issues, and towns saddled with taxes to subsidize them. Data centers are becoming a problem for many communities and companies building them are resorting to deceiving towns and demanding NDA’s be signed prior to approving construction.
AI can reach “actual intelligence” faster than most expect. Its growth is exponential.
“the real issue with AI is not about its capabilities. That’s a given.”
No it is not, we have hit a wall with AI, silicon based AI systems have at MOST on order of magnitude of improvement in hardware left – and likely not even that.
A 1.4nm transistor has 12 atoms. Do you really think we can make a transistor with 1 atom ? Less than one Atom ?
1.4nm is the current absolute state of the art in silicon.
Further the smaller that you make a transistor the less power it consumes, the faster it switches BUT the more likely it is to change randomly on its own or to be disrupted by cosmic particles, or just to have massive quality problems producing it.
Someday we will get past silicon – but all the alternatives so far are progressing abysmally slowly.
I am a founder of a startup working on one approach to solving this problem – but even our solution – if it ever proves viable buys you ONE order of magnitude improvement in performance.
Absent massive advances in physics, it is going to be tricks like my company is working on, or improvements in software that offer the greatest hope. That said – the directions software wants to go to improve AI required even more and faster hardware.
Current AI works by performing billions of add and multiply operations of small interger coefficients against large integer variables.
But real improvement in capabilities requires using floating point numbers and that ups hardware complexity which is already maxed out by several orders of magnitude.
Absent an entirely different approach to AI – and we have really just be scaling the same approach up from the early machine vision projects of the 90’s we are at a wall.
“It’s what it takes to sustain it. AI requires massive amounts of power, water, and real estate just to operate.”
The real estate is actually pretty small -and it has to be, An AI system MUST fit into a fairly small space – or the time it takes to move information overcomes any gains from more horsepower. A typical AI supper coupunter takes up a rack or two at most.
Most AI data centers have MANY independent AI supercomputers. These MOSTLY do not work together, they are independent,
but requests coming from the outside get divided up between hundreds of AI super computers.
We cn scale up – nearly infinitely the number of super computers in a datacenter – though the inbound data links also provide a limit.
But that increases the number of people who can use it concurrently not the power available for each request.
As to power, water – resources – absolutely. But the limit on those is just the money we are willing to spend.
The only truly limited resource is the human mind.
“It’s already affecting people’s utility bills, Home values, water scarcity issues, and towns saddled with taxes to subsidize them.”
Teething problems – these will all go away The law of suppoy and demand will take care of that. When demand exceeds supply – prices go up, that makes new means of meeting demand viable and then prices start to drop – often much lower than they were before.
Malthusians have been predcting peak oil for a century – proven reserves are greater today than ever before.
And unproven – that does NOT mean non existant,. it means we do not know how to economically recover, reserves are orders of magnitude greater than proven reserves.
You have seen gas prices drop under Trump. that is what happens when you do not handcuff supply.
Most alternative energy is immature and expensive today – and likely will remain that way so long as government is involved.
But there is no limit to the amount of energy available to us.
Water is used for cooling, and water is infinitely recyclable. That will happen when the price rises enough.
“Data centers are becoming a problem for many communities and companies building them are resorting to deceiving towns and demanding NDA’s be signed prior to approving construction.”
all teething problems – similar issues have followed EVERY disruptive technology from the steam engine and knitting jenny.
So long as government stays out the problems will solve themselves.
“AI can reach “actual intelligence” faster than most expect. Its growth is exponential.”
Nope. To be clear EVERY problem I have noted above will with certainty eventually get solved.
But not likely in my lifetime or even my kids. Predicting the distant future is close to reading a ouija board.
But the short run is much easier. Every doublicn of compute power has taken longer and longer since the end of the 20th century.
Barring a miracle which no one has found in the past 20+ years – we have one doubling left – maybe.
After that we must more to radical solutions that we have been working on for 20+ years with ZERO success.
Again we will solve this problems, but so far we are no closer to solutions than to warp drives.
John Say:
“I am a founder of a startup working on one approach to solving this problem”
Sure you are.
“You have seen gas prices drop under Trump. that is what happens when you do not handcuff supply.”
No, that’s what happens when the certainty to the oil market returns as the war with Russia stabilizes and the Arabs are comfortable.
While I have posted above the problems in your analysis,
This is still one of the most intelligent posts I have seen from you.
You do not understand the problems we are having as transistors become smaller and smaller. Nor would I expect that you do. My knowledge of this was rudimentary 10 years go.
Further – while there are solutions without jumping to new technology which just does not exist and likely will not anytime soon.
Those solutions all result in one time relatively small gains.
The area I am working on is an unusual form of compute in memory. Even if My company fails in our approach – we are going to see that soon. It is complex and difficult, but it is well suited to AI. Currently we use GPUs for AI, They are far faster than CPU;s – but they are also NOT general purpose computing. We are already shifting from GPU’s to compute units designed just around AI a CPU doing AI has lots of unused silicon that is wasted – for AI. A GPU has less. But a AI processor has none. We are already seeing this.
But that is a once and done improvement. We are already building AI processors vertically – we will see more of that.
That has lots and lots of problems – but it radically reduces datapaths and therefore increases speed.
That is hard but it is an engineering problem not a technology problem. It is already happening.
For the Big AI processor companies such as AMD – there are billions of dollars at stake for 25% performance increases.
Regardless we are running out of engineering tricks.
You also do not understand how AI algorithms work, Nor would I expect you too. My knowledge of that is recent too.
But what is most important is that The core of AI software has not actually changed in 25+ years.
The advances in the past several decades have mostly been in hardware – not software.
We do know how to improve AI software – but NOT with the hardware we have, and again that i just not changing.
With respect to resources:
Julian Simon now dead unfortunately is the best resource economist that ever was.
https://www.juliansimon.com/writings/Ultimate_Resource/
Regardless, there is no such thing as scarcity. There is just supply that we do not yet know how to economically access.
The laws of supply and demand – over 150 years old tell us that demand creates its own supply.
ALWAYS.
That is literally how we raise standard of living – creating ever more of what human want with less human effort.
You will not – the only resource in that equation is people.
Regardless, while you are wrong on most points, much of that is because of knowledge that you can not be expected to have
“compute in memory” will have the same effect as the Transputer did.
“compute in memory” will see the same fate that the Transputer did.
The capability of AI to generate lies even faster than Trump does is a problem.
It won’t be long before it is discovered that there isn’t much value in them, but the towns and communities with data centers will be left to pay for the aftermath.
. John, my deepest concern about AI is that it will develop mitochondria for itself and a super immune system making it impossible to pull it’s plug but there’s always the hydraulic press to keep us safe.
With enough time – anything is possible. Barring fundamental advances in technolgy that we have NEVER seen
With respect to where we are today – Machine learning – the core to AI is just pattern matching. The math is not all that complex.
It is just performed on a massive scale. AI learns more by getting more data to improve its pattern matching.
But more data means more horsepower – and there are only small increases coming.
There are lots and lots of engineering tricks left in our bag – but these are finite and only get us so much further.
To the extent that there is any “risk” to my assessment, it is that we do not really know how the human brain works. We do not know the mechanisms that make us self conscious, self directed, and sentient.
It is possible – but highly unlikely that the human mind is itself just a pattern matching machine.
It is that, but few people beleive that is ALL that it is.
We do know that parts of the brain operate in ways that resembles AI processors – except far slower but also far more powerful while consuming far less power.
If we could truly figure out the electrochemical way the brain works and replicate it – that would likely allow a quantum leap in AI
That is more likely that optical computing or quantum computing. But is still far away.
. At some point no one will know AI from human. It’s the meaning of it.
The Malthusian predictions were not proven false. The basis for the predictions changed, making them moot.
Without the Haber process, Malthus would have prevailed. Unfortunately Haber made sure that there would be far more competition for limited resources, such as water, and there seems to be no way around that.
At this point, a reasonable question is: why do need universities? Their evil influence, and cost, seem to outweigh their benefits.
edwardmahl,
I believe you are correct. That is why more and more young people are questioning the value of a degree.
You are correct.
Degrees serve no useful purpose.
A well trained carpenter or anyone trained in the use of tools would be perfectly capable of performing brain surgery.
Most technical and medical research has been off-loaded to universities because companies no longer have an interest in performing research and development in house. Universities have the advantage of low-cost workers who are very motivated.
So much crying about not having an open stage for a person who has access to millions of people 20-30 hours each and every week is not unexpected. The idea that there is even the smallest niche of the world not occupied by a conservative bot seems to drive certain people mad.
I did nazi that coming…
In an announcement that raised eyebrows among political observers, the White House announced on Tuesday that, after redactions, Donald J. Trump’s State of the Union Address would be only seventeen seconds long.
Trump’s original text of the speech had included lengthy praise of such prominent administration figures as Elon Musk, Howard Lutnick, RFK Jr., and Dr. Oz, all of which had to be redacted “for undisclosed reasons,” the White House indicated.
In order to bulk the speech up to its seventeen-second runtime, Trump reportedly added the non sequitur “Thank you for your attention to this matter” to the end.
News of the speech’s length drew a strongly negative reaction in a new poll, with a broad majority of Americans calling seventeen seconds “too long.”
If only you were actually funny.
Seventeen seconds I will never get back.
UCLA saying “we’re still willing to host it” is irrelevant to a professional security team. Their job is not to evaluate intentions. Their job is to assess mitigation: perimeter control, access points, crowd management, response capability, and whether the institution is both willing and able to commit the resources necessary to secure the event. If their professional assessment is that the venue still poses significant risk, they are obligated to advise their client accordingly. That is not politics. That is professional duty.
Which brings us to the deeper point. Anyone asserting that a public university’s first duty is merely “education,” and that securing rights is someone else’s responsibility, fundamentally misunderstands the nature of a public institution. A public university is an extension of the state. Education is the function. Securing the lawful conditions that make education possible is the duty. Without order, without security, without control of its own environment, the educational mission itself becomes impossible.
Rights do not disappear because you step onto a campus. And when lawful speech becomes contingent on private security assessments instead of institutional capability, it reveals something far more serious than a canceled lecture. It reveals an institution that no longer has full command of the conditions necessary to fulfill its purpose.
All this pathetic theorizing and beating about the bush regarding security or the lack thereof, and rights is simply irrelevant deflection and nonsensical.
Weiss has a right to speak, but she doesn’t have a right to be heard. If a large proportion of the students don’t want her there, then they have a right to express their views, and if Weiss decides she doesn’t want to speak because of that, then that is her problem.
You might as well argue that a synagogue has a duty to provide security for a Nazi who wants to address the congregation at a temple.
You just made the distinction that proves the point. Weiss does not have a right to be heard. Correct. No one is obligated to attend. Anyone is free to protest, ignore, or criticize. But a public university that invites a speaker does have a duty to maintain an environment where that scheduled event can proceed safely and normally. Otherwise, the invitation itself becomes meaningless.
Your synagogue analogy fails for one simple reason: a synagogue is a private institution. UCLA is a public one. A public university does not operate on preference. It operates on obligation. Once it extends an invitation and schedules a public event, its duty is to ensure the lawful conditions exist for that event to occur.
The issue was never whether students could object. Of course they can. The issue is whether objection can create conditions where a lawful event cannot safely proceed. When that happens, the problem is not the speaker. The problem is the institution’s loss of control over its own environment.
Olly,
The synagogue analogy doesn’t just fail; it is racist and abhorrent, because it casts Weiss in the role of the Nazi. Disgusting.
-g
Well, there is that, g.
OLLY,
Well said.
Students should have the choice of to attend the event, have a Q&A session, all without disturbance. That is what civil discourse looks like.
But they are not being afforded that choice. Both a minority of students and a questionable number of faculty demand by threat of resignation to take that choice away from others. Yet oddly enough, they demand to be heard while silencing others. They seem to be afraid of any viewpoint other than their own.
Why is that?
Upstate, as you probably know by now, my opinion is it comes down to capacity. If someone doesn’t really know why they believe what they believe, and they depend on others to frame the narrative for them, then open debate becomes a threat. Because debate introduces uncertainty. It risks breaking the structure they rely on.
So instead of engaging, they try to control the environment. Petitions, pressure, shutdowns, whatever it takes to keep that uncertainty out. People who own their beliefs don’t fear hearing opposing views. They engage them. People who don’t, try to control them.
Weiss can book a Four Seasons Yard Care appearance, just like Rudy did.
OLLY
Of course your attempt to paint this as a failure by UCLA to provide adequate security fails miserably.
UCLA made it crystal clear that they were 100% committed to the event and would bring any necessary security resources to bear, including bringing in outside law enforcement at significant additional expense.
What more would you have them do ???
What more could they possibly do or offer ???
If Weiss came to the conclusion that the security efforts were insufficient then that is her problem, not UCLA’s problem.
If Weiss believed that the security was insufficient, why didn’t she point out the deficiencies and ask for them to be corrected.
UCLA made it perfectly clear that they would do whatever was necessary to ensure security. Given their strong assertions about their commitment to the event I have absolutely no doubt that they would have accommodated Weiss’ concerns. It is not UCLA’s fault that Weiss simply walked away saying that security was insufficient.
You will note that Weiss simply said that she cancelled because her security team deemed the security arrangements to be insufficient.
She did NOT say that UCLA REFUSED to provide sufficient security.
She did NOT say that her security team found deficiencies, and that UCLA REFUSED to accommodate those concerns.
Everything UCLA has said has suggested that they were prepared to do whatever it took to provide security.
She simply walked away. That is her problem.
Had she asked for her concerns to be addressed and then been REFUSED, then that would be a completely different argument.
BUT SHE DID NOT DO THAT.
She just made an excuse, and walked away without asking for her concerns to accommodated.
You’re making a lot of assumptions to support your preferred conclusion, but that’s not how security decisions work. It doesn’t matter what UCLA said publicly. It doesn’t matter what Weiss said publicly. Security is not based on press statements. It’s based on risk assessment.
The facts are simple. An event was scheduled. A large protest effort formed to stop it. Weiss’s professional security team evaluated the environment, the mitigation plan, and the total risk picture. They determined the risk to their protectee still exceeded their threshold. That is the only reason the event did not happen.
Security decisions are binary. Go or no-go. Not public relations. Not intentions. Not promises.
If the risk were acceptable, the event would have proceeded. It didn’t.
OLLY
The only one making assumptions here is you.
You are assuming that Weiss’ security team was making a realistic judgment, and not simply making an excuse for Weiss to walk away.
That is a huge assumption, unsupported by any facts or evidence. If they had made any concerns known, and UCLA then refused to accommodate those concerns, then your argument may have some validity. But we have absolutely no evidence for that happening.
The only thing we know with certainty is that UCLA expressed an absolute 100% commitment to provide security sufficient to allow the event to take place.
Unlike you I have not made any assumptions here. I simply take UCLA at their word that they were willing to do whatever it took to provide security.
In the absence of any claim from Weiss that she expressed concerns, and that UCLA refused to address those concerns, then it is perfectly reasonable to conclude that Weiss simply claimed the arrangements were insufficient and used that as an excuse to walk away.
That is not an assumption. It is a perfectly valid conclusion based on factual information from UCLA and the nature of the statement from Weiss.
If any factual information comes to light that Weiss expressed concerns that UCLA refused to address, then I will concede your argument has merit.
Until then my conclusion stands as perfectly valid.
You say you’re not making assumptions, but you are. You’re assuming UCLA’s public statements reflect the actual security reality, and you’re assuming a professional security team fabricated or exaggerated their assessment without evidence. That’s still an assumption.
Security decisions are not made in press releases. They are made based on threat analysis, mitigation capability, and risk thresholds. Those discussions happen privately, not in public statements.
UCLA saying they were “willing” does not equal risk eliminated. Willingness is not the same as capability. If the mitigation plan were sufficient, the event proceeds. If it is not, it doesn’t. That’s how every professional security operation works.
The only hard fact here is this: a scheduled event did not proceed because the protectee’s security team determined the risk exceeded acceptable levels. Everything else is interpretation.
No, you are wrong.
I make no assumptions about the statement from UCLA as you falsely claim. I simply take them at their word. In the absence of any evidence from Weiss that they were not willing to do whatever it took, including addressing any concerns of her security team, then there is absolutely no need to assume anything about UCLA’s statement or actions.
On the other hand you assume that Weiss’ security team made a good faith, valid assessment of the security arrangements.
Where is the evidence for that?
The fact that Weiss made absolutely no statement about notifying UCLA of the alleged deficiencies and asking for those deficiencies to be corrected, leads to the perfectly rational conclusion that the claim may not have been made in good faith.
You are also assuming that “professional” security teams always act in good faith and would never offer an opinion inconsistent with the facts.
The reality is that the “professional” team was employed by Weiss.
They were being paid by Weiss.
It is perfectly reasonable to consider the possibility that they simply issued their assessment upon instructions from Weiss.
Employees tend to follow the instructions of those who pay them.
Congress shall make no law…abridging…the right of the people peaceably to assemble….
Speakers enjoy equal protection at public facilities; only the owner may “claim and exercise” dominion on private property.
Americans enjoy the absolute freedom of speech; if the freedom of speech is not absolute, it does not exist.
Defamation laws are immutably unconstitutional.
People must adapt to freedom; freedom does not adapt to people, dictatorship does.
Old George, dropping random lines from the Constitution without context doesn’t answer the question being discussed. Nobody here is arguing against the First Amendment.
The issue is much simpler and more practical. A public university scheduled an event. The speaker’s professional security team assessed the environment and determined the risk exceeded their threshold. That’s a real-world failure of conditions, not a theoretical debate about rights.
Freedom of speech on paper is meaningless if the environment cannot support it in practice.
John Hancock wrote his name especially large as a challenge that might have sent him to the gallows.
Weiss is certainly able to avail her access to free speech just the same.
“Weiss does not have a right to be heard. Correct.”
But those who wish to hear her have the right to do so.
The right to be able to hear speakers is part of the first amendment and there are SCOTUS cases more than a century old.
John, exactly. That’s the part people keep overlooking. The issue isn’t Weiss’s right to be heard. It’s the right of others to hear her if they choose. Students who don’t want to attend are free not to. They can protest, object, ignore it. But they don’t get to create conditions where the event can’t safely proceed for those who do want to attend.
That’s where the institution’s responsibility comes in. Their job is to maintain an environment where lawful events can occur so people can make that choice for themselves. Without that, the choice is taken away.
OLLY
You are saying that that Weiss has no right to be heard, which is correct, but then claim that the government has an affirmative duty to ensure the rights of others to hear her. There is no right to listen to others. That is absurd. And even if there is, the government can have no role in enforcing it.
If Weiss has no right to be heard, but the government has an affirmative duty to ensure that she be heard by others, then that is simply the government enforcing Weiss’ right to be heard, a right that she does not have.
Do you not see the logical fallacy here.
You are just playing with semantics. The difference between the right to be heard and a supposed right by others is to hear you is a distinction without a difference.
You are just playing with words in a wild attempt to rationalize your biased views.
. Even if only one wants to listen. There is a prudent frugality attached. The least costly is virtual. Frugality is always a part of public money as it cannot be a burden.
John Say
This is perhaps the most absurd and outlandish statements you have ever made, and you have made many.
As you have consistently said in your tedious diatribes, the 1st Amendment applies ONLY to government suppression of speech.
There is absolutely no right “to be heard”.
You falsely claim that SCOTUS has affirmed a right to be heard.
SCOTUS explicitly affirmed the exact opposite.
The Supreme Court has explicitly rejected the idea of a First Amendment “right to be heard.” In the landmark case Minnesota State Board for Community Colleges v. Knight (1984), the Court stated that “nothing in the First Amendment… suggests that the rights to speak, associate, and petition require government policymakers to listen or respond to communications”.
The government is forbidden from suppressing speech, and from playing any role in enabling the speech of private individuals so that they may be heard.
The idea that there is a “right to be heard” is completely absurd, and the idea that the government can enforce a a private individuals “right to be heard is utter insanity.
.yes, long ago, I think it was Justice Marshall? It follows nature.
She can do an on-line presentation. No risk at all then.
An invitation doesn’t mean an infinite amount of money is obligated. If it turns out that the costs are too high, then the invitation can be rescinded.
Did the World Trade Center experience loss of control over its own environment? Were they to blame?
Why should the university have to offer a stage to someone who had access to a national television network and controls the news reporting arm of it?
Those who signed the petition were NOT a majority. They were 23% of undergrad+grad students (11K/48K).
Vocal minorities have gotten used to being pandered to. But, the silent majority is making a comeback.
“They were 23% of undergrad+grad students”
I bet not even a small fraction of that.
The revolting organization Code Pink ginned up the cancel petition.
How many signed a petition for her to speak there?
Aside from Spin and lots of missing critical factors you are correct.
Weis has the right to speak and Governmment public universities are OBLIGATED by the constitution to make that possible.
Students and others can refuse to attend, close their ears, protest, But they can NOT disrupt her speach, and they can not prevent those who do wish to hear her from doing so.
The public university is obligated to provide whatever security is needed for that speech to occur.
Weiss does not get to dictate security, nor does the university – if the parties can not come to terms – the courts resolve what is necessary
This is what happened when Ben Shapiro spoke at Berkeley – and that went off without a hitch – after Ben sued UCB.
It did NOT however go so well for Milo Yanopolis and numerous others who accepted the crap security that CA univesities offered and a riot ensued in which Yanopis was essentially kidnapped, and I beleive there was 100M in property damage.
The obligation to provide adequate security falls on the government – that is Also true at J6 the refusal of the DC NG until it was too late was a failure of the house sargent at arms at the aparent direction of Schumer annd Pelosi.
John brings up an important point. This isn’t happening in a vacuum. There is history here. California universities have already demonstrated situations where security failed and events were disrupted or shut down.
Security assessments don’t ignore history. They factor it in. Past performance, institutional response, crowd behavior, and enforcement follow-through all shape the risk calculation. Security isn’t based on what an institution says it will do. It’s based on what it has demonstrated it can do. That history matters.
. Utah College and Charlie Kirk was not secure applies.
What should come of Peters threat? If Weis had decided to do virtual Peters job is in jeopardy. Surely Weis pulled out not wanting such a showdown? We should ask Weis. It was CBS decision. What follow through by UCLA re Peters?
Girl fight. 😉 code pink feminists.
John Say
This claims is complete and utter insanity, and simply proves that you are unstable and profoundly mentally ill.
There is absolutely no obligation for the government to enforce the right of a private individual to be heard.
There is no right to heard in the first place.
And the idea that the government is compelled to enforce a supposed right of private individuals to be heard that doesn’t even exist is insanity that goes against all concepts and precedents of the government role in free speech.
You simply make stuff up in wild flights of fancy through the magical wonderland of delusion that is your mind.
If all mankind minus one were of one opinion, mankind would be no more justified in silencing that one person than he, if he had the power, would be justified in silencing mankind.
John Stuart Mill
. There is that philosophy, John. The nihilist and existential deny it. These philosophies deny the constitution and any kind of idea can be imposed upon all.
@OLLY
Agreed. This is what these kids are being inculcated against, though – it is literal brainwashing, IMO. They literally, quite literally, think a difference of opinion is violence worthy of retaliation; it started as a drip, it’s a shower, if not a flood, now. It is mental illness in its purest form. And it is rampant. Wasn’t kidding about even community colleges being on board. Modern parents do not do enough research and are woefully uninformed.
As has been stated: mass psychosis is a real phenomena, and we are dealing with a very much instigated mass psychosis. We are beginning to transcend politics altogether. And the parents of these kids are *paying* for it. Large sects of the modern left think it should simply be free (of course that means we the people pay for it).
Thank you James. I think you’ll appreciate this article I received yesterday that addresses your diagnosis perfectly. As much as I’ve been either ignored or attacked for my recent claim about Citizen Formation, notice in the conclusion of this article that’s the question they believe needs to be addressed:
Conclusion: A Three-Part Lens
Read together, Kelley, Arendt, and Desmet offer a remarkably comprehensive multi-level analysis of how ordinary societies produce totalitarian outcomes. Kelley provides the clinical ground level: the psychological portrait of the actual individuals who drive and execute authoritarian systems, with all their ordinariness and all their specific moral failures. Arendt provides the structural and historical level: the identification of the social and political conditions, atomization, loneliness, the collapse of class and communal structures, the manufacture of enemies, and the destruction of the public sphere, which makes populations available for totalitarian capture. Desmet provides the psychological mechanism that bridges the individual and the social: the specific sequence through which a lonely, anxious, purposeless population comes to embrace an authoritarian narrative and defend it against correction.
What emerges from this triangulation is a picture that is simultaneously more coherent and more troubling than any single account alone. The preconditions are real and demonstrably present in modern societies. The psychological dynamics are real and have historical precedent across many contexts and cultures. The individual capacity for conscience, judgment, and independent thought is real but fragile, and cannot be assumed. The institutions and habits that sustain democratic resistance require constant cultivation and can be eroded in ways that appear gradual until they are not.
Kelley wrote in 1947 that the lesson of Nuremberg was not about Germany specifically but about the permanent human capacity to do what Germany had done, and about the imperative of creating the conditions, individual and social, under which that capacity would be less likely to be exercised.
Nearly eight decades later, that lesson has lost none of its urgency. The three thinkers examined here, despite their significant differences of method, emphasis, and conclusion, are united in the conviction that the answer to totalitarianism is not the identification of a particular kind of monster, but the cultivation of a particular kind of citizen and a particular kind of society. The question is whether cultivating a better citizen and a better society is possible.
https://www.malone.news/p/three-diagnoses-of-totalitarianism?
Always the conservative approach. Make other people pay for your entertainment.
It’s a university, not a fortress. It’s not there to provide protection, but to provide a place for learning. If Weiss needs protection, then CBS can pay for it and provide it, same as for any other high-ranking management position.
“Anathema in the University Mission”: Bari Weiss Canceled at UCLA”
– Professor Turley
_____________________
Ah, the nascent Coup D’état.
“The October Revolution” of the Bolsheviks
Led by Susan Rice and Barack Obama
“I’m not trying to impress you, I’m just trying to impress upon you, I’m like you. I’m no better than you. You know, I’m a 960 SAT guy… you’ve never seen me read a speech because I cannot read a speech.”
– Gavin Newsom To Atlanta Mayor Andre Dickens
_______________________________________________________
AI Overview
Average SAT scores in 2024-2025 in America
Asian: 1229
White: 1100
Latino: 928
Pacific Islander: 922
African: 904
Indian: 881
An SAT of 960 corresponds to an IQ of 104
I think Newsom was exaggerating his score.
He’s dyslexic so he got some digits reversed.
I wonder what trump would have got for his score had he taken an SAT. By the way he talks I am guessing an IQ of something less than 80.
OT
Newsom on a book tour speaking to a black audience basically seemed to say:
I’m just like you, stupid and illiterate.
He really wants to bond with his audience using that “black like me” routine.
Apparently he also said Willie Brown got him into politics and added that they wouldn’t have heard of Kamala if it weren’t for Willie Brown.
That seems true enough though I am not sure Kamala wants to bring that up.
A SAT of 960 is an IQ of 104 – barely above normal. Certainly not a rocket scientist.
To be clear, is this an accurate observation regarding your avatar, Mr. Say?
_________________________________________________________________________________
“I am here, I am queer, and I am prepared to defend my right to exist and be respected—don’t test me.”
– John Say
I think it is an accurate observation that you make.
Gay people rightfully stick together to support each other, and this would explain why the inestimably talented Mr. Say is so supportive of the openly gay Bari Weiss.
I am not gay. I have no problems with those who are gay (or Trans). All of us are entitled to the same actual rights.
I do NOT share all of Weiss’s values – I am pro-israel – but not nearly to the extent she is.
There is a difference between anti-semitism and anti-zionism – Weiss does not accept that.
Though it is true that most anti-zionists are antisemites.
Weiss is generally farther left than I am. But she is NOT a woke left wing nut.
I am not defending everything she says or does – though I do agree with her alot, and when I do not, she is still worth listening to.
But I am defending her right to speak.
With respect to CBS, she was hired by the owners to turn it around.
I doubt he will succeed – the problem is just too big.
But she was given the power to do that, and she was hired to do that based on a track record that gives her a better chance of succeeding than many others – and particularly insiders.
If she fails – that is on her and the owners.
But the decisions as to how to accomplish what the owners want – and grow CBS’s market are HERS – not the people at CBS who have created the problem.
Work with her, get out of the way or be gone.
No one hired the people $hitting on her to do the job.
The owners would have done so had they beleived those people could do better.
I hope she succeeds, but I doubt it.
I think it is too late.
I am here, It is irrelevant what my sex, or orientation is, and I am prepared to defend anyone’s ACTUAL rights, do not tread on me
Each of us have the same ACTUAL rights.
Nothing entitles any of us to more rights than any other.
Please do not project your values onto me.
My avatar says what I want to say.
Id does not tell you anything about me except my position on individual rights.
If your avatar says what you want it to say, what does the Gay Rights flag say. Could you be a little more explicit.
Do you have an actual Gay Rights flag on display at your home, or do you hide it in your “closet”.
Kamala also received considerable help from Barak Obama who actively campaigned for her with the Vp selection committee and campaigned on the stump for her when she ran for attorney general of CA
I think Kamala’s help from Willie Brown was more of the Epstein type whereas Obama’s predilections likely lay elsewhere.
Willie’s Casting Couch
Turley– “It is important for speakers to continue to appear on campuses despite these threats. We cannot yield to the mob.”
Yes, but there are risks. Basically, university campuses are become little Tiananmen Squares and university administrators dream of being Mao.
OT
The Supreme Court could and should have allowed Trump’s emergency declaration under IEEPA 9 – 0 unanimously; instead, it usurped and exercised executive power.
__________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
“The International Emergency Economic Powers Act (IEEPA), which President Trump used to impose tariffs on Mexico, China, and other nations, requires the formal declaration of a national emergency under the National Emergencies Act (NEA). Trump invoked these “emergency” powers to bypass traditional trade law limitations, citing crises like fentanyl trafficking and trade imbalances, though the Supreme Court later struck down these tariffs in February 2026.”
“The ‘Emergency’ Requirement: IEEPA requires an ‘unusual and extraordinary’ threat to U.S. national security, foreign policy, or the economy to be declared before economic sanctions or tariffs can be implemented.
“Trump’s Use of IEEPA: President Trump invoked IEEPA to declare emergencies and impose 25% tariffs on goods from Mexico and China (fentanyl trafficking) and a 10% global tariff in April 2025 based on trade deficits.”
– Gemini
Perhaps you can point to the part of the Constitution where it allows the President and the President alone to set tax levies. Tariffs are a tax. Please, cite the section of the Constitution that enables the President to set a tax rate.