March 27, 2025

YES: “The long-term signs show that national populism is far from a spent force. In Germany and elsewhere in the world, populist parties and figures continue to increase in size at the expense of the old parties, left and right. The outlook for reversing that trend seems dim. Populists of all stripes are gaining because the old elites are failing. They rose to power by delivering peace, social solidarity, and prosperity. They have failed to deliver any of these now for most of this century, and the prospect of them changing course is not good.”

Plus: “This can only point in one direction: the likelihood that in a decade, perhaps two, most of the West will be governed by a conservative-populist coalition not unlike what Donald Trump has created in America.”

Related: The Sociology of Party Decline: Democrats are having trouble with working-class voters because many of them don’t come from these communities or occupational backgrounds. Worse yet, one of the main things binding their party together is a unified Mandarin-class contempt for those they see as their social inferiors.

Posted at 12:06 pm by Glenn Reynolds 9

FAIL, BRITANNIA: Spice Girls latest victims of woke censorship as iconic ’90s song has ‘offensive’ lyric removed by BBC and other stations. “The censorship comes despite no apparent public calls for the change to the track, which was one of the biggest-selling girl group’s top five best-selling songs.”

Of course there was no public call to censor an innocent line in a silly song. But bossy busibodies have to keep themselves busy with something.

Posted at 11:43 am by Stephen Green 64

K-12 IMPLOSION UPDATE: Seattle is losing top students: ‘We don’t serve their needs.’

“What we are doing in Seattle public schools is we’re disappearing our top students in math,” says David Evans, a middle-school math teacher.

The district’s plan to close schools for “highly capable” students has pushed families out of the system, charges Danny Westneat, a Seattle Times columnist. That plan is now on hold for three years, but the pause came too late, he writes.
…
Laura Rose Murphy’s son qualified for advanced instruction in math, but hasn’t received it, she said. “His teacher is great, but she says she has zero support from the district in how to help my son access appropriate-level learning — no resources, no training, no funding, and they don’t even tell her who has qualified or how they qualified.”

Fewer students are taking advanced or accelerated math in middle school over the last nine years, said Evans. He’s helping more families fill out applications for private schools. “They’re leaving because we don’t serve their needs,” he said.

Well, they don’t.

Posted at 10:41 am by Stephen Green 122

SKYNET SMILES: Rand Corporation tells lawmakers to prepare for AI ‘wonder weapons’ in cyberspace.

The Rand Corporation is warning lawmakers they need to prepare for the sudden emergence of advanced artificial intelligence “wonder weapons” in cyberspace.

Rand’s Jim Mitre told the Senate Armed Services Committee that unforeseen weaponry could emerge upon the development of artificial general intelligence (AGI).

Researchers, such as those at the nonprofit Rand Corp., use AGI to refer to a theoretical AI system that outperforms human abilities.

“AGI might enable a significant first-mover advantage via the sudden emergence of a decisive wonder weapon,” Mr. Mitre said in written testimony. “For example, a capability so proficient at identifying and exploiting vulnerabilities in enemy cyberdefenses that it provides what might be called a splendid first cyber strike that completely disables a retaliatory cyber strike.”

Mr. Mitre said the emergence of AGI may alter the global balance of power, with states that control and capitalize on the consequences of AGI’s emergence gaining expanded influence.

To be perfectly honest, this was the 21st century I was promised back in the ’70s and ’80s.

 

Posted at 10:35 am by Ed Driscoll 45

UNEXPECTED HEADLINES: California’s a Trailblazer Again, Fields Baseball’s First Homeless Team. “On Thursday, the Seattle Mariners will kick off their 2025 season with a game at home against ‘the Athletics.’ Not the Oakland Athletics, although the team’s ignominious abandonment of its home since 1968 is still so recent that its season schedule page at MLB.com still carries an ad that tries to entice you to visit lovely Oakland.”

Posted at 10:10 am by Stephen Green 78

DO NOT TAUNT THE HAPPY FUN SARAH:

Much — much — more at the link.

In a perfect world, there would be no need for tariffs. But it’s shocking news to some people that we do not live in a perfect world, and tariffs can be useful for protecting vital industries, steering trade away from hostile, rival, or s***hole countries, and protecting US wages.

Posted at 9:55 am by Stephen Green 176

THEY DON’T HAVE MUCH ELSE RIGHT NOW BUT THEY’VE PROVEN FRIGHTENINGLY EFFECTIVE AT USING IT: Democrats, lacking popular support, resort to judge-shopping and more lawfare. “When Democrats said democracy would be in peril if President Trump won, they neglected to add that they themselves would be the ones creating that peril under a second Trump presidency.”

Posted at 9:39 am by Stephen Green 64

NOTHING TO SEE HERE, MOVE ALONG:

Posted at 9:18 am by Glenn Reynolds 131

KRUISER’S MORNING BRIEFING: I Don’t Want to Be Greedy, but Can We Get Some COVID Comeuppance Now? “Consequences aren’t a big part of the lives people on the Left who do awful things to others, which is galling. The worst of the COVID tyrants — Andrew Cuomo and Gretchen Whitmer come immediately to mind — have body counts for which they’re not being held responsible. Cuomo lost his job because he was a sexist pig at work and he’s already attempting a political comeback. All of the elderly people he sent to die in nursing homes don’t seem to weigh on his conscience at all.”

Posted at 9:08 am by Stephen Green 46

THE NEW SPACE RACE: Firm wins Space Force funding to provide an ‘aircraft carrier’ in orbit.

In interviews about the concept with Ars, company officials were fairly vague about specific details of what orbital carriers will be able to do. A news release published on Wednesday morning, highlighting the Strategic Funding Increase, or STRATFI grant from the United States Space Force, also lacks specifics. The Space Force would prefer to keep the vehicle’s operational capabilities under wraps.

But in general, the idea is to provide an unpressurized module in which one or more satellites can be pre-positioned in orbit.

Such a module would isolate the satellites from the space environment, sparing their batteries and sensitive electronics from harsh thermal cycles every 90 minutes, and provide some shielding from radiation. In addition, the orbital carrier would obfuscate the satellites inside from observation by other nations or hostile actors in space. Then, when a satellite is needed, it can be deployed into multiple orbits by the carrier.

It might be smart if the carrier were designed to look like an ordinary comms satellite.

Posted at 8:37 am by Stephen Green 39

HOW TAXPAYER MONEY IS SPENT:

Posted at 8:30 am by Glenn Reynolds 57

HERE’S WHAT THE NATIONAL SCIENCE FOUNDATION FUNDS:  The level of woke jargon is very high here:

Despite well-intentioned university efforts to support Black undergraduate STEM students, policy and practice reforms run the risk of not appropriately benefiting all Black people due to pervasive, deficit-based assumptions about Black racial identities and the types of structural engagement needed to advance holistic, racial well-being in transformative and sustainable ways. Stated simply, STEM contexts do not adequately support Black undergraduate STEM students because STEM educators and practitioners remain unsure of what Blackness means for individuals, thereby constraining true racial equity endeavors. Contemporary literature regarding race posits instead that embodiment(s) of Blackness differ across multiple dimensions and axes, including ethnic identity (e.g., African American, Caribbean American, Nigerian American), place identity (e.g., South, Midwest), and generational identity (e.g., first-generation, second-generation, third plus generation). Black students from different ethnic and generational identities having varied perceptions of the racial climate and understandings of their STEM experiences. Recognizing the scope of Blackness and its implications for creating and sustaining holistic, heterogenous conceptions of racial equity in STEM, the team will establish a collaborative network among six institutions (two HBCUS, two PWIs, one majority Black institution, and one HSI) located across the Mid-Atlantic, Southeast, Southwest, and Midwest regions of the US to study how Black undergraduate STEM students? notions of Blackness vary with respect to these dimensions. … (Rest of Abstract here.)

This project–entitled “Examining Blackness in Postsecondary STEM Education through a Multidimensional-Multiplicative Lens”–fetched $1,633,132.00.  So far only $767,25 has been disbursed.

 

Posted at 8:23 am by Gail Heriot 79