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‘We must not publish a study that says we’re harming children because people who say we’re harming children will use the study as evidence that we’re harming children, which might make it difficult for us to continue harming children.’ – J.K. Rowling puts the boot in. October 25th, 2024 | 41 comments - (Comments are closed)
 Several people have asked: why does âdiverseâ content spark backlash now when it didnât before? I think it comes down to one thing: removal. In the past, inclusionary moves didnât try to clear out the previously enjoyed things. Kim Possible did not replace James Bond, she was just another secret agent you could watch alongside James Bond. In video games, serious action girls existed alongside miniskirted vixens, and everyone was fine with that. Avatar: The Last Airbender existed alongside Teen Titans. The Hunger Games existed alongside Harry Potter or Percy Jackson. But now, the priority seems to be not addition, but subtraction. Itâs not enough to have a new Jedi; you have to remove the old ones. Itâs not enough to have a female super-spy; you have to remove James Bond. Itâs not enough to have serious action girls in your video game; you have to cover up or delete the vixens. Itâs not enough to have new video games with modern sensibilities; you have to remove the old ones, or censor them in re-releases. Itâs not enough to have new novels that fit modern ideological priorities; you have to censor the old ones. – Rawle Nyanzi, writing on TwitterX. I think he absolutely nails a key driver behind increasing radicalisation in the culture war. October 22nd, 2024 | 11 comments - (Comments are closed)
Fuck off. I despise Google, but Iâd trust them more than I trust Wes Streeting or any of the other narcissistic arseholes in government. I will do whatever I can to foil any attempts to drag me into their net. I, not they, am the owner of myself and my data. At every turn I will put down obstacles and refuse to comply. Weâve been here before â twenty years ago, in fact. Nothing changes. Different faces, but the same lurking evil. – Longrider quietly musing on the relationship between the state and its subjects. October 20th, 2024 | 9 comments - (Comments are closed)
“Itâs not too much to say that if Israel had taken Mr. Bidenâs advice, Sinwar, Nasrallah, and the rest of the Hamas-Hezbollah leadership would still be alive.” – Wall Street Journal editors. October 18th, 2024 | 17 comments - (Comments are closed)
We must be clear about things: A just world required this man to die, and ideally without dignity. I can put it in no blunter terms than that, nor even conceive of them. I am utterly relieved about his death, and more than a bit elated as well â not because I am bloodthirsty, but precisely because I despair over the implacable bloodthirstiness of Hamas, an organization that came to power in the Gaza Strip after it was literally handed to the Palestinians but that, instead of governing for the benefit of its people, harvested its resources and human capital to plot the slaughter, abduction, rape, and eventual genocide of its Jewish neighbors. Sinwar died with a shell through his skull and a roof collapsed upon his bomb-belted body, and I confess my grim satisfaction at the closure of it, if nothing else. He was given the opportunity to be an actual leader, and he invested all of it in hatred and terror. I celebrate, and couldnât care less if you think differently. October 17th, 2024 | 11 comments - (Comments are closed)
“When competence is rewarded, you get more of it. When the ability to play internal politics is what gets you ahead, then you get more of that. SpaceX has clear goals, short deadlines and clear lines of responsibility. Boeingâs culture, once one that revered engineering, has become one that worships byzantine corporate politics â where youâre more likely to get fired over DEI infractions than over job performance. And itâs not just Boeing; in Oregon, a top forestry official was put on leave after a DEI officer complained he was âseeking only the candidates most qualified for the job,â without emphasizing their âgender and identity.â Ditto the federal government, which has created a self-perpetuating culture of incompetence: Itâs virtually impossible to get fired, and failures often bring more resources to the agency, not less.” – Glenn Reynolds, New York Post. October 15th, 2024 | 5 comments - (Comments are closed)
Just to make the problem clearer. Economies do add up. If this happens here then that over there must also happen. If we donât see that second then weâre mistaken in our assumption that the first has. If productivity has risen and wages havenât then the labour share must have fallen. The labour share – up to when PK wrote in 1996 – had not fallen. Therefore that confident blue line from 1970 to 1996 is wrong. We donât even have to worry about why itâs wrong. It just is – so bollocks to the rest of it. Chakraborttyâs getting on a bit to be an enfant terrible of course, his unwillingness to spend time and energy understanding the economics heâs attempting to write about is easier to explain for heâs at The Guardian. In fact, he writes the economic editorials for The Guardian and an actual knowledge of economics in that job – let alone time and effort spent gaining it – would be a positive hindrance. No, really. – Tim Worstall putting the boot in đ October 14th, 2024 | 12 comments - (Comments are closed)
This is the first anniversary of the October 7th attacks. The savage invasion of last year in which Hamas broke through the borders of Israel and proceeded to kill, rape, behead, burn, maim, and kidnap innocent civilians predictably provoked the Israeli government to retaliate. It was perhaps also unsurprising that Israelâs reprisal would be denounced by the usual unholy alliance of Islamists and leftists. These perennial detractors of Israelis and Jews had, for decades, made a habit of not only excusing Palestinian intransigence but also blaming Israel no matter what. October 7th, 2024 | 26 comments - (Comments are closed)
“Todayâs censors wield cudgels with the word âinformationâ. Content they donât like they call âmisinformationâ or âdisinformationâ. The justification is fake. The protection is faux protection. Pretending to protect people from bad information by means of censorship may be called infaux thuggery. The cudgels are hidden, of course, but it is not hard to see through the pretence and discern the underlying message: knuckle under or we will hurt you. The UKâs Online Safety Act exemplifies infaux thuggery, as does Brazilâs recent action against X (formerly Twitter). The Australian government is dominated by another gang of infaux thugs. The UK, sadly, not only practices infaux thuggery at home, it tutors the world in infaux thuggery.” October 6th, 2024 | 15 comments - (Comments are closed)
But the U.K.’s climate agenda is now decades old. The Climate Change Act (CCA) was made legislation in 2008, 16 years ago, but the drive towards decarbonisation started much earlier in the days of the Blair Government. The years ahead of the CCA saw the formation of a cross-party Westminster consensus on climate change, rather than a conversation with the public about what it would require of them and to seek their support. Consequently, the apparatus for the climate agenda was established through intergovernmental agencies and agreements, deals with the EU, legally-binding legislative measures to allow the enforcement of the green agenda by wealthy interests in the courts, and the construction of domestic carbon bureaucracies. Gary Smith was the sole member of the panel at what was intended to be a debate for the same reason that it has not been possible for critics of Net Zero to get answers out of the likes of the U.K. Climate Change Committee (CCC). The CCC, as with any other agency or organisation, does not debate because it does not need to. The matter is settled. The cross-party consensus was established by green lobbyists without debate. And consequently, ostensibly democratic institutions have been wholly aligned to green ideology and the Net Zero policy agenda. Itâs not up for debate. – Ben Pile October 5th, 2024 | 9 comments - (Comments are closed)
But moving away from the obvious and serious to something more jocular.
And, no, really, just no. Yes, yes, we all know what theyâre saying but it doesnât work as a construction. Think of the average nutter – the average socialist but I repeat myself – whoâll scream the house down about the power of The City, of âthe marketâ. This is to make a category error, it is to reify the markets. Those markets are not, for all the linguistic ease of our saying so, âa thingâ. Theyâre just you and me and the folk holding our chequebooks, thatâs all. Thereâs no thing there, no market view, no market control – either control of the market or the market controlling other things. Just that interaction of 8 billion people each counting their own pennies. The markets – as opposed to the market – do not impose borrowing costs upon anyone. They donât impose anything at all. Thereâs a price at which people will lend you their pennies, a price at which they wonât. That changes over time. And, erm, thatâs it. This is not an imposition. October 3rd, 2024 | 14 comments - (Comments are closed)
“The only appropriate responses to Israelâs gallantry, fortitude and skill from usâits nominal allies, especially in the U.S.âare âthank youâ and âhow can we help?â Instead, time and again Israelâs supposed friends, including the administration of Joe Biden and Kamala Harris, have, while expressing sympathy over the outrage of Oct. 7 and uttering the usual support for âIsraelâs right to defend itself,â repeatedly tried to restrain it from doing just that. Their early, valuable support has been steadily diminished by the way they have too often connived with the anti-Israel extremists in their own party.” – Gerard Baker, Wall Street Journal ($) October 2nd, 2024 | 35 comments - (Comments are closed)
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