Why are white progressives so afraid of merit? You would have thought that after they lost the Civil War, white progressives would have accepted their black brothers and sisters as equals.
But after 150 plus years the progressives still are acting as if blacks are their personal property. At least with this weeks Supreme Court ruling, it will be much harder for schools to pack their enrollment with students that are at the eight grade level in many basic subjects.
Organizations such as the Moms for Liberty seek to push back against critical race theory in schools. (Reuters)
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Why do groups like Moms for Liberty scare White Progressives, certain Blacks, and the LGBTQ crowd? It’s really very simple. Moms for Liberty feel that they do not need co-parents. Schools should teach the children how to Read, Write, and Arithmetic.
White Progressives have no issues with teachers going off curriculum and injecting their social views. That’s not what a well rounded education is about.
Some Black parents and Black hate groups are more about students learning about racism, and government programs than learning how to do it for themselves.
The LGBTQ crowd cares about what boys can be girls and girls can be boys. Big topic is about boys using girls bathrooms.
But we are always told the police only stop people of color. Pa. State Police data shows no racial profiling in recent study of traffic stops. The 160-page report conducted by the National Policing Institute showed 78.5% of people stopped were white, 14.4% were Black and 8.2% were Hispanic.
You’ve heard the stories. White progressives and black race baiters are always telling us how the police just troll out there looking for people of color. Well this report just released yesterday tells a different story. Of the more than 440,000 drivers stopped by Pennsylvania State Police in 2022, a new report shows that nearly four out of five were white and 40 percent were pulled over for speeding. State officials said there were no signs of racial profiling in any of the data collected.
A loon at his finest. John Kerry. Kerry is at it again. You know him. The green nut who says the sky is falling as he jets from country to country. Well he’s after the farmers now.
He’s crying how his junk science is saying that farms cause 33% of the world’s total greenhouse gas emissions. Anyone want to tell him where we get our food from? Well the Netherlands bought his baloney and are now getting rid of 3,000 farms. Thinking it’s going to stop Climate change.
JUST IN - Netherlands to "compulsory purchase" and close up to 3,000 farms to comply with EU environmental rules.https://t.co/cX9e6QGihF
The old vaxes haven't killed/injured a high enough percentage of the people.
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Story by Karen Weintraub, USA TODAY
Bracketed comments by Phoenix
The Biden Administration Monday announced a $5 billion program to accelerate the development of next-generation COVID-19 vaccines and treatments.
[Of course, the elephant in the room is: “Why? We already have effective treatments, ones that don’t kill people.” Oh, wait: they’re cheap, and Big Pharma can’t make more Billion$ from them. Carry on…..]
Like Operation Warp Speed, which developed and distributed vaccines in the early days of the pandemic, Project NextGen will cut across government agencies and involve public-private collaborations, a senior Biden official told USA TODAY.
Current vaccines, developed rapidly in the heat of the emergency, are “really good, but they’re not great,” said Michael Osterholm, an epidemiologist who worked with the administration to develop the new program. “There is a substantial amount of work (to be done) to take these good vaccines and hopefully achieve better vaccines.”
Project NextGen has three primary goals, which Osterholm and colleagues laid out in a “roadmap” issued in February: Develop a nasal vaccine that will hopefully prevent infection as well as severe disease; develop longer-lasting vaccines; and create “broader” vaccines that protect against all variants and several different coronaviruses
[ Why do they need a “new” nasal vax when two already exist? Oh, wait. Same answer.]
It will also include funding to develop more durable monoclonal antibodies resistant to new variants, according to the administration. Antibodies were highly effective treatments earlier in the pandemic but have not been able to keep up with the virus as it evolved and are no longer available.
The Biden administration Monday announced a $5 billion program to accelerate the development of next-generation COVID-19 vaccines and treatments.
Like Operation Warp Speed, which developed and distributed vaccines in the early days of the pandemic, Project NextGen will cut across government agencies and involve public-private collaborations, a senior Biden official told USA TODAY.
Current vaccines, developed rapidly in the heat of the emergency, are “really good, but they’re not great,” said Michael Osterholm, an epidemiologist who worked with the administration to develop the new program. “There is a substantial amount of work (to be done) to take these good vaccines and hopefully achieve better vaccines.”
Project NextGen has three primary goals, which Osterholm and colleagues laid out in a “roadmap” issued in February: Develop a nasal vaccine that will hopefully prevent infection as well as severe disease; develop longer-lasting vaccines; and create “broader” vaccines that protect against all variants and several different coronaviruses
It will also include funding to develop more durable monoclonal antibodies resistant to new variants, according to the administration. Antibodies were highly effective treatments earlier in the pandemic but have not been able to keep up with the virus as it evolved and are no longer available.
The administration said the initial allocation of $5 billion for Project NextGen would be financed through money saved from contracts costing less than originally estimated. The investment was first reported Monday by the Washington Post.
Dr. Gregory Poland, director of the Mayo Clinic’s Vaccine Research Group who was also involved in the earlier roadmap, said he and others have been advising the White House since last summer to launch something like Project NextGen.
The funding is a start, he said, “but much more will be needed to accomplish all three goals,” he said. “The need though is urgent and now – something government generally doesn’t do well, hence the key will be prioritization and implementation.”
The Biden administration Monday announced a $5 billion program to accelerate the development of next-generation COVID-19 vaccines and treatments.
Like Operation Warp Speed, which developed and distributed vaccines in the early days of the pandemic, Project NextGen will cut across government agencies and involve public-private collaborations, a senior Biden official told USA TODAY.
Current vaccines, developed rapidly in the heat of the emergency, are “really good, but they’re not great,” said Michael Osterholm, an epidemiologist who worked with the administration to develop the new program. “There is a substantial amount of work (to be done) to take these good vaccines and hopefully achieve better vaccines.”
Project NextGen has three primary goals, which Osterholm and colleagues laid out in a “roadmap” issued in February: Develop a nasal vaccine that will hopefully prevent infection as well as severe disease; develop longer-lasting vaccines; and create “broader” vaccines that protect against all variants and several different coronaviruses
It will also include funding to develop more durable monoclonal antibodies resistant to new variants, according to the administration. Antibodies were highly effective treatments earlier in the pandemic but have not been able to keep up with the virus as it evolved and are no longer available.
The administration said the initial allocation of $5 billion for Project NextGen will be financed through money saved from contracts costing less than originally estimated. The investment was first reported Monday by the Washington Post.
Dr. Gregory Poland, director of the Mayo Clinic’s Vaccine Research Group who was also involved in the earlier roadmap, said he and others have been advising the White House since last summer to launch something like Project NextGen.
The funding is a start he said, “but much more will be needed to accomplish all three goals,” he said. “The need though is urgent and now – something government generally doesn’t do well, hence the key will be prioritization and implementation.”
Why do we need new coronavirus vaccines?
When the current vaccines were developed, speed was a priority along with safety and effectiveness. They were 95% effective at preventing all disease when first released in late 2020. But their effectiveness against mild disease, in particular, wanes over just a handful of months.
Protection may also not be as good as the virus continues to evolve. The current bivalent booster is aimed at both the original virus and the BA.5 variant.
But SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID, is the third new coronavirus to pop up in the last two decades, following Middle-Eastern Respiratory Syndrome (MERS) and Severe Acute Respiratory (SARS). If and when a fourth turns up, it would be great to already have a vaccine that could protect against” it,’ said Osterholm, who directs the Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy at the University of Minnesota.
[ “…when a fourth turns up, it would be great TO ALREADY HAVE a vaccine that could protect against it…” Hmm, Bill Gates & friends have already told us there’s another pandemic coming, is there something they know that we don’t?]
A nasal vaccine is the third item on the wish list. The idea is that by delivering a vaccine directly to the area where the virus enters the body, scientists could set up a barrier of protection to prevent even mild infections and transmission from one person to the next.
[But didn’t they tell us initially that surface contact would spread it? DISINFECT EVERYTHING! And what about people who breathe more through their mouths — like people with allergies such as Hay Fever?]
“I think an initiative like this is much needed and should have been put in place much sooner,” said John Moore, an immunologist at Weill Cornell Medical College in New York.
What happens next?
Reaching these goals will likely be more difficult than it sounds, Moore said.
“Anyone familiar with vaccine development knows that translation into a practical product is a much harder and more expensive process” than simply creating a basic vaccine, he said. “A lot of designs that look good in the early stages fizzle out because they cannot be manufactured efficiently under the conditions required for human trials.”
[And when did they have time for human testing under Warp Speed?]
Dr. Paul Offit, a pediatrician who directs the Vaccine Education Center at Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia, is skeptical that any of these goals are realistic.
Researchers have been trying for more than 40 years to develop vaccines against multiple strains of flu and against HIV, the virus that causes AIDS. Both have proven elusive, he said, because the viruses mutate so much, as does SARS-CoV-2.
Meanwhile, nasal vaccines are still being tested in clinical trials, so it’s not yet clear how effective they’ll be against COVID. A nasal vaccine for the flu doesn’t provide any more protection than a shot, Offit said, and it’s most effective in young children who have never been exposed to the flu virus before. At this point, nearly every American has already been exposed to the virus that causes COVID.
Moore agrees that developing a nasal vaccine should be a high priority, but “it’s seriously naive to believe that it will be easy to make one.”
Offit worries that the emphasis on making COVID vaccines better will undermine public trust in the ones we already have. He said the current vaccines have been “amazing,” but that vaccines can only do so much.
What did Operation Warp Speed do?
Under the Trump administration, Operation Warp Speed spent about $30 billion beginning in March 2020 to develop, manufacture and distribute COVID-19 vaccines.
The federal government essentially placed bets on six different drug companies hoping at least a few of them would prove successful. Each received over $1 billion (although Pfizer/BioNTech developed its vaccine without government support) with a promise of a guaranteed market if they succeeded.
►Moderna and Pfizer/BioNTech both developed, tested, passed regulatory hurdles and produced millions of doses of their mRNA vaccines in under a year. Previously, the fastest vaccine had taken four years to bring to market.
►Johnson and Johnson also developed a vaccine based on a different technology. While effective, the vaccine led to a rare side effect and is no longer widely available in the United States.
►Novavax pursued a third type of vaccine technology and has also won emergency regulatory approval, though it is not widely available.
►The other two efforts, one by Sanofi and another by AstraZeneca, fell behind early and were not advanced beyond preliminary testing.
[It’s obvious I’m skeptical of the claims here. If the previous record for developing a vaccine was FOUR YEARS, how did they manage to develop –AND TEST– them so quickly (less than a third of that time)? Why weren’t these vaccines pulled after the deadly side effects became apparent? It only took a ‘mere’ 50 deaths to yank the swine flu vaccine; how many THOUSANDS have died/been seriously affected by the clot shots?]
Dr Rappuoli was the head of vaccine research and development at GSK, the Big Pharma behemoth formerly known as GlaxoSmithKline. Which had to pay a $3 BILLION fine for health care fraud. Hmm.
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The longtime government bureaucrat links up with infamous Big Pharma heavyweights for a new consultant gig.
In news that has somehow remained entirely unreported in the United States, Dr Anthony Fauci seems to have inked his first gig outside of U.S. Government Health, where he is reportedly still taking a salary.
According to several Italian press reports, Fauci has agreed to serve in a consulting capacity to a newly created “anti-pandemic” bio lab, which is being run by a high-level Italian scientist and longtime pharmaceutical executive.
“American immunologist Anthony Fauci has agreed to act in an informal capacity as a strategic advisor to Rino Rappuoli, scientific director of the Biotecnopolo biotech hub in Siena, an institution founded by the Ministries of the University, Health, Economy and Industry with the aim of focusing on applied research in biotechnologies and life sciences, the Fondazione Biotecnopolo announced this week.”
The news was also reported by Italy’s L’Eco di Bergamo and others, but there seem to be no reports on the matter outside of the country.
Biotecnopolo, the newfound bio lab that is funded by the Italian government, is self-described as “an anti-pandemic hub with a particular focus on the development and production of vaccines and monoclonal antibodies for the treatment of emerging epidemic-pandemic pathologies.”
Rome has already committed hundreds of millions of Euros to the noticeably below-the-radar state-backed project.
What is an “Anti Pandemic Center?”
In a press release, a board member declared that Fauci’s new role will be “a fundamental step towards making the Biotecnopolo the Italian hub for the research, study and prevention of pandemics”.
Fauci has not released a statement on the matter. Dr Rappuoli did not reply to a request for comment.
It still remains unclear why Fauci, a lifelong American government bureaucrat, has decided to become a consultant for an entity funded by the Italian government. On several occasions, he has spoken highly about his Italian heritage. In 2020, the Italian government awarded him with the Order of Merit of the Italian Republic.
Italy and the United States share a lot when it comes to the humanitarian catastrophes our governments imposed in the name of a virus. Dr. Fauci, campaigned for coronavirus lockdowns that modeled after Italy’s response. What remained unspoken was that Italy got the idea for its brutal lockdowns from China. Both Fauci and Dr Deborah Birx, his longtime mentee, remained committed to the Italian model for several years, declaring Italy as the gold standard for “the measures.”
Moreover, Fauci’s new “informal” relationship with Dr Rappuoli should raise some eyebrows.
Before becoming the chief scientist for the new bio lab, Dr Rappuoli was the head of vaccine research and development at GSK, the Big Pharma behemoth formerly known as GlaxoSmithKline. He is also the Professor of Vaccines Research at Imperial College, London, the home of the infamous computer model simulations that helped to launch the coronavirus hysteria.
GSK is known for record setting fraudulent activity. In 2012, GSK agreed to pay a $3 billion settlement to the U.S. government, breaking Pfizer’s record for the largest health-care fraud settlement for a drugmaker in U.S. history.
Last year, Fauci spoke at a conference organized by GSK on the “role of vaccines in protecting people and the planet.”
So Fauci has now linked up with Big Pharma heavyweights and he’s an advisor for a clandestine bio lab project being financed by the Italian government. What could possibly go wrong?
Why Progressives way of doing Green Energy makes no sense. China uses coal to puts more toxic gasses in the atmosphere than the US and all the European nations combined. So what does the US and European nations do? Buys Solar Panels from China.
China doesn’t only benefit from not having to pay so-called climate reparations. But they benefit from the entire UN Green New Deal [and] net-zero agenda because the world is going to be looking to China. The U.S. buys over 80 percent of our solar panels currently from China. We rely on China for all the rare earth mining for lithium and cobalt. China is expanding mining operations in Africa — places like the Congo with allegations of underage labor of children of 8, 9 years old by international human rights groups.
After receiving Pfizer’s Respiratory Syncytial Virus (RSV) shot during a clinical trial, two older individuals contracted Guillain-Barré syndrome.
People around the globe have suffered serious adverse reactions resulting from COVID vaccines, especially from the Pfizer shot.
Now the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) tells us another Pfizer vaccine can cause serious complications in recipients. After receiving Pfizer’s Respiratory Syncytial Virus (RSV) shot during a clinical trial, two older individuals contracted Guillain-Barré syndrome.
This was enough for the FDA to flag the disease as “an important potential risk” from the RSV shot. Yet Pfizer is still seeking approval for general public use.
According to the Mayo Clinic, Guillain-Barré syndrome is a rare disorder in which your body’s immune system attacks your nerves.
While most people recover from Guillain-Barre syndrome, some severe cases can be fatal. Other serious cases can result in paralysis.
There’s no known cure for Guillain-Barre syndrome.
The Gateway Pundit previously reported on individuals contracting the disorder after receiving the COVID vaccine. One person became partially paralyzed from the waist down and suffered full facial paralysis from the disease shortly after he was vaccinated.
The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) stated that two older adults who received Pfizer’s respiratory syncytial virus (RSV) vaccine during a clinical trial were subsequently diagnosed with the rare neurological disorder Guillain-Barré syndrome.
Briefing documents released on Feb. 24 ahead of this week’s meeting of the Vaccines and Related Biological Products Advisory Committee flagged the two cases of the disorder and stated that Pfizer’s vaccine poses a potential risk.
“Given the temporal association and biological plausibility, FDA agrees with the assessments of the investigators that these events were possibly related to study vaccine,” the FDA stated in the documents. “Therefore, [Guillain-Barré] is being considered an important potential risk.”
Two people in their 60s who received the RSV vaccine were diagnosed with Guillain-Barré syndrome in a phase 3 trial, which involved 20,000 recipients of the vaccine. There were no instances of the neurological disorder in people who received a placebo.
The briefing documents show that the FDA asked Pfizer to conduct a safety study if the RSV vaccine is approved in the spring.
No safety concerns were identified by Pfizer during the trial and the company stated that it would carry out a safety study on its RSV vaccine if approved.
The FDA’s briefing documents state that Pfizer’s RSV vaccine was 85.7 percent effective at preventing severe illness.
Only a naïve individual would believe Pfizer’s claims regarding effectiveness after what they said about their COVID vaccine. One should also count on more complications arising from “unknown” causes should the FDA approve Pfizer’s RSV shot.
Former President Donald Trump hands out Make America Great Again hats to McDonalds employees in East Palestine, Ohio. (Jabin Botsford via Getty Images) TGIF: Dignity for Oompa Loompas Robots replace academics. Another Dolezal. The censors come for Roald Dahl. Buttigieg blows it in Ohio. Plus: David Mamet on cowboys.
By Nellie Bowles
February 24, 2023
→ Home sales fall for 12 straight months: It’s the longest streak since 1999. Mortgage rates are still too high. See I only care about politics that directly impact me financially, and this does because it means when I look at my house on Zillow I see the number going down. Not allowed! Meanwhile, office landlords are beginning to default as those 10-year leases end.
→ Georgia grand jury foreperson gone wild: The head juror for the special grand jury looking into Trump’s effort to overturn the 2020 election results has gone rogue. She is Emily Kohrs, 30, a private citizen, a grand jury foreperson tasked with protecting elections, and as of this week a chatty new media darling.
To MSNBC: “I kind of wanted to subpoena the former president because I got to swear everybody in. And so I thought it’d be really cool to get 60 seconds with President Trump, of me looking at him and being like, ‘Do you solemnly swear?’ And me getting to swear him in.”
To CNN: “There may be some names on that list that you wouldn’t expect. But the big name that everyone keeps asking me about—I don’t think you will be shocked.”
Emily’s having fun! (And of course she’s into witchcraft.) Honestly, the grand jury foreperson’s main bias seems to be toward drama and chaos, and in that we salute her.
“This was a horrible idea and I I guarantee you prosecutors are wincing”
As an aside, you know why Trump hasn’t been caught for anything big? The man never writes anything down. Not an email, not a text. The resistance, run by chaos Wiccans like Emily, will simply never catch him.
→ Roald Dahl meets 2023: The long-dead British children’s books author—Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, Matilda, The BFG, and, who could forget, The Witches—has not escaped our moment, and now his books are getting a modern makeover to remove offensive bits. I forget, were those books racist? Sexist? Not exactly, no, but lots of people might be offended, for example, by the fact that Dahl describes witches as bald. And so now there is a new line in the book right after his description of a witch’s hairless head: “There are plenty of other reasons why women might wear wigs and there is certainly nothing wrong with that.” (I’m dead serious.)
Augustus Gloop in Charlie and the Chocolate Factory was described as “fat.” That’s gone (now he’s just “enormous”). And did anyone ask the Oompa-Loompas whether they self-identified as “small men?” Now they are “small people,” which of course gives these characters, who are called Oompa. Loompas. All their dignity back. In one story, a character Dahl described as “ugly and beastly” is now just “beastly,” a concession, I guess, to sensitive ugly people. But what about the beastly?!
Now the next lines from James and the Giant Peach are so offensive, I want you to be very careful who sees your screen. These were traditionally sung by the Centipede: “Aunt Sponge was terrifically fat / And tremendously flabby at that.” And: “Aunt Spiker was thin as a wire / And dry as a bone, only drier.”
Those are gone now, replaced with new and worse rhymes coughed up by the very nice censors at Inclusive Minds.
Now, Dahl was also famously an antisemite, which he occasionally cloaked as simple anti-Zionism. Actually, that didn’t need a modern progressive update at all. Now excuse me while I go track down my original copy of The Twits before a sensitivity reader with red pens shows up at my door.
→ Ancestry is complex: One-time Black Panther Angela Davis went onto the PBS show Finding Your Roots, where Henry Louis Gates Jr. does a deep dive into your ancestry. But then something strange happened: It turns out her ancestors arrived on the Mayflower. Now the gotcha here from the right is something like “Oh she’s a descendant of the Mayflower! Not so victimized, eh?” But actually it’s sort of a vindication of the 1619-mindset, in that the history of America and slavery is entwined from the start. It’s worth watching the clip just to see Davis’s face and the gravity of being tied genetically back to that ship. “No, my ancestors did not come here on the Mayflower. No, no no. That’s a little bit too much to deal with right now.”
→ Selling unused Covid gear on the cheap: New York City is auctioning off $200 million in Covid supplies for just $500,000. This comes from local news blog The City, who got the scoop. Among some of the details from the story: A junk dealer from Long Island picked up $12 million in ventilators for just $24,600. “It took the dealer 28 truckloads to cart the stuff away, auction records state.” It’s a great story that also includes emails showing city officials fretting that people might find out how much they overspent. It’s like Storage Wars but so, so sad.
Congratulations to the junk dealer who got 500,000 pounds of ventilators.
→ Jimmy Carter, 98, in hospice: The former president is now in hospice in his Plains, Georgia, home. I recommend this 2018 feature about his sweet and simple life in retirement with Rosalynn, where every Sunday he taught a lesson at the Maranatha Baptist Church. TGIF salutes Jimmy Carter, a model of decency.
Speaking of gentle souls with good intentions, humble dreams, and devoted marriages, let’s see what Bill Clinton and Donald Trump are up to this week. . .
→ Trump gets to East Palestine before the White House: Trump visited the site of the toxic train derailment, spoke to residents, and brought pallets of water (Trump-branded, of course). He stopped at McDonalds, telling workers quite believably: “I know this menu better than you do.”
Meanwhile, local officials in East Palestine are getting on camera to show themselves drinking tap water. Like, see, it’s totally safe! The fish are dead and your dog is dying, but we’re cool! Don’t be so uptight about “vinyl chloride” and “phosgene,” which are just fancy words for totally not-toxic water.
One thing that makes Trump successful is he says that things are shitty when they’re shitty, and I’m sorry, but the water in East Palestine is shitty right now.
Racing there after Trump was Secretary of Transportation Pete Buttigieg, the man who is proving single-handedly that Rhodes Scholars are overhyped. Buttigieg whiffed when he arrived: he ran away from reporters, leaving his press secretary begging those reporters to turn off their cameras before she would talk to them. When he did finally speak, he said he “lost his train of thought.” Oh god:
Is there something I’m missing here? Why did the train derailment get coded as so conservative that no one could talk about it? Why do the cameras have to be off? Why isn’t Michael Moore there? To me, this whole thing is a gimme for Democrats: use it to argue for more and smarter government infrastructure spending. But for some reason, acknowledging the crash and its environmental impact is verboten. If you can answer this political mystery, please do in the comments.
→ I really don’t like this item: Mark Middleton, a one-time advisor to Bill Clinton, who seemed to be involved with handling his Jeffrey Epstein relationship, is dead by apparent suicide. Details came out this week: Middleton was found hanged with an electrical cord—and with a gunshot wound to his chest. When it comes to Epstein-related shadiness and the extended cover-up of that scandal, at this point, I’m willing to believe just about anything. On the other hand, people who have done bad things do generally want to avoid facing their own souls. So I’d say I’m Epstein-related-murder-conspiracy-open but not sold. But let’s give it a week.
→ James O’Keefe is out: Project Veritas, the right-wing undercover investigations outlet, has ousted its leader and star, James O’Keefe. He spoke to staff before leaving and you can watch that strange, rambling speech here. The board accused him of spending “an excessive amount of donor funds in the last three years on personal luxuries.” Items and amounts that the Veritas board lists: “$14,000 on a charter flight to meet someone to fix his boat under the guise of meeting with a donor” and “over $150,000 in Black Cars in the last 18 months.”
Now, to be clear, James O’Keefe’s job is setting up shady stings of his enemies. One of my friends who got stung was on his third date with a woman who turned out to be an undercover Veritas operative. It was on that date that she recorded him. To me, there’s no one better to run an operation like that than a dude who spends $14,000 to meet someone about a boat. Over $150,000 on limos is basically the minimum spend for a guy like this.
→ Ozy Media founder arrested: It’s not only right-wing media that’s losing a star this week. On Thursday we learned that Carlos Watson, founder of progressive media company Ozy, had been arrested on charges of fraud. The United States of America v. Carlos Watson and Ozy Media, Inc. is pretty fun reading. Among other things, Watson allegedly had a subordinate— Samir Rao, Ozy’s COO—pretend to be a YouTube executive on a call with Goldman Sachs, to say how great Ozy Media was doing on YouTube.
This whole thing was first broken open by scoop hound Ben Smith, now of Semafor. An idea: maybe Carlos Watson and James O’Keefe can start something new together?
And now, a word from resident cartoonist David Mamet . . .
→ University DEI admins come up with their perfect replacement: Vanderbilt University’s office of diversity issued a statement consoling students about a recent mass shooting at Michigan State. But apparently they are so very busy that they used AI to write it.
Let me back up: last week, 43-year-old Anthony Dwayne McRae—who had previously pleaded down a felony charge that would have prevented him from possessing a gun—slaughtered three students, seemingly at random, on Michigan State’s campus.
In response, Vanderbilt’s equity workers released a touching statement about how everyone needs to be kind and inclusive to, I guess, prevent mass shootings by nearby career criminals: “Another important aspect of creating an inclusive environment is to promote a culture of respect and understanding.” And: “[L]et us come together as a community to reaffirm our commitment to caring for one another and promoting a culture of inclusivity on our campus.” And: “Finally, we must recognize that creating a safe and inclusive environment is an ongoing process that requires ongoing effort and commitment.” It’s the same nonsensical but warm sentiment said over and over—inclusive (7 times), community (5 times), safe (3)—and it kinda worked!
Except at the bottom of the statement was this sentence: Paraphrase from OpenAI’s ChatGPT AI language model, personal communication, February 15, 2023.
People were upset. The university apologized. And yes, you could ask what exactly these bureaucrats are doing all day. But their laziness might also be their genius: replace all university bureaucrats with ChatGPT. Like the discovery of penicillin, sometimes accidents make genius.
→ NPR cutting 10 percent of its staff: The public radio station—that is, in part, taxpayer funded—is losing money and needs to cut staff. I can’t point to an institution that has more fully failed its mission than NPR, which went from fulfilling a genuine public service with news and great stories (I’m thinking of early This American Life) to just another hyper-partisan maker of mush. Tote bags and mush.
→ NYT union versus NYT workers: The New York Times’ labor union is a funny thing because reporters pay into it every two weeks and, in turn, the union’s main project is getting some of those reporters fired. It’s a bit like musical chairs: If you’re too slow putting the fist in your Twitter profile picture, you’re it. See, the union is pretty bad at achieving boring stuff like raises, but it shines at gathering groups of reporters to get a deskmate ousted. Who needs money when you can draw blood?
The latest: the union stepped in to help ax a couple Times writers who reported on trans issues with anything close to an objective lens. Here’s what union head Susan DeCarava wrote to Times staff in a note about how to organize: “[E]mployees are protected in collectively raising concerns that conditions of their employment constitute a hostile working environment.” Oh yes, reporting on trans issues makes a hostile work environment. Perfect. We got the language, now let’s march on Katie, that very bad Times reporter! Let’s picket the awful Emily! The people united will get Katie fired!
Except finally, finally, the union this week is seeing some organized pushback, and a group of Times people wrote their own letter asking the union to just please stop. “We ask that our union work to advance, not erode, our journalistic independence.”
If media union bosses can’t wake up and get Katies and Emilys fired, what exactly are they supposed to do all day?
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