Do you remember Taki? The publisher of Taki’s Magazine? I’ve linked to him before. There are plenty of reasons to subscribe to his digital posts, including the diversity of opinions you’ll find there. But for me, the best reason is the fun of reading about his amazing life, past and present.

Here’s an example, but caveat emptor. Reading Taki may result in feelings of jealousy or self-denigration, as if you’ve done nothing interesting with your life.

The COVID Response: What We got Wrong.

The News You Didn’t See

Why Didn’t You Hear About This? 

This should have been breakthrough news. But you never heard about it because you get your news from the mainstream media.

At a congressional hearing on March 9, Dr. Redfield, the ex-director of the CDC, under oath, admitted that Fauci and the CDC knew that gain of function research was being conducted at the Wuhan lab. Not only that, but that the US government – including the DOD – knew about details of the leak that should have made it obvious to them that the lab-leak theory was not a conspiracy but a high probability.

Okay. Now you know. And by tomorrow, you can forget about it. Because if you mention it to anyone, they won’t believe you. And even if they do, they won’t care.

Click here.

On Top of It All, Wuhan Double-Charged Us! 

On CBS recently, Diane Cutler, a former federal investigator assigned to the story, admitted that the US was supporting the Wuhan lab. She added: “What I’ve found so far is evidence that points to double billing, potential theft of government funds. It is concerning, especially since it involves dangerous pathogens and risky research.”

From Meryl Nass:

“CBS News is here to tell us that not only did we fund the labs that were doing the COVID research that probably screwed up and released the virus that killed millions, but we got double-charged for it! The debate about COVID’s origins has zoomed past the pesky China issue and settled into a place we can all agree upon and enjoy: complaining about getting overcharged.”

Click here.

The School That Couldn’t Quit 

Nobody wears masks anymore in Florida. I mean nobody. In New Orleans, the mask-wearers are about one in 100. But during my long weekend in LA last week, that ratio seemed to be considerably higher. Maybe one in ten. And about the same percentage of stores and restaurants still require their employees to mask up. A few even ask customers to do it.

It makes me wonder: Is this a measure of something? And if so, what? Fear of dying? Political preference? Virtue signaling?

Interesting: There is a school in upstate New York that has taken this post-pandemic masking thing to a new level by mandating that their students wear masks outside!

Click here.

The conservancy that my family and I are developing in West Delray Beach, FL, has one of the largest and best-curated palm tree collections in the world, as well as a growing collection of outdoor sculptures, a traditionally styled Japanese tea house, a stock of African cycads, and dozens of other exotic plants and trees.

Here’s one of the cycads:

Mombasa Cycad

Binomial name: Encephalartos hildebrandtii

Cycads are ancient plants that existed long before dinosaurs. The Mombasa Cycad is a large, tough plant with leaves that can reach 10 feet in length. All cycads are dioecious, meaning a plant is either male or female. In the female Mombasa, the cone and seeds are very pale, almost white. In the male, they are yellow. From the photo, it looks like this one is a male.

For more information about Paradise Palms, click here.

Could this be true?

I don’t think so. Dropped from that distance, the force of the kid would have knocked them down.

Click here. What do you think?

The Open-Carry Question

 

Yesterday, in downtown Pasadena, I saw a fight break out between two Hispanic “parking enforcement” officers and a young Asian man. The young man, someone said, had flicked a lit cigarette at one of them after he found that his car had been ticketed.

The fight was short-lived. Three rounds at 30 seconds each. At one point, the official-looking duo had wrestled the aggressor to the ground. But lacking any apparent martial arts skills, they allowed him to wrestle himself up to a standing position, which allowed him to continue fighting.

Passersby stopped to watch. Someone from across the street was shouting. I wasn’t sure what he was saying, but he seemed to be rooting for the Asian kid. Closer to the action, people stood and watched, mute, trying to figure out what was going on or, like me, just observing. Two more rounds ensued, and then the brawl came to an uneventful end. The ticket police brushed themselves off and the kid walked away.

This morning, I read that last week at a Burger King drive-through in Ellenwood, GA, a customer who received the wrong sauce with his order barged into the restaurant and started beating people. A 16-year-old employee gunned him down.

All of it got me thinking. If California was an open-carry state, would that fight over a parking ticket have turned into a gun battle? If Georgia had more gun controls, would that sauce-crazed bully have escaped with his life?

These questions come to mind because Florida is about to become an open-carry state. Will that result in fewer crimes, as the NRA says? Or will it mean more shootouts at our fast-food restaurants?

I believe the rationale behind open-carry laws is that the presence of guns on hips will reduce the likelihood of violent confrontations. Reasonable people, seeing a gun on the hip of someone they have a problem with, will tend to talk it out, rather than get into a scuffle. But is that a fact? What does the evidence say about it?

More on this on Friday, after I’ve done some research.

When More Than 650 Refugees Arrived in This Town… 

LC, a friend, forwarded me this story. It’s about how, in a rural town in Australia, attitudes towards immigrants improved over a period of several years. I suppose the intention of the piece was to suggest that familiarity breeds contentment.

Two problems with this conclusion:

  1. Attitudes towards immigration are initially fueled by fear and prejudice. But they get better or worse depending on the customs and behaviors of the immigrant population compared to the cultural norms of the host population.
  2. Even in cases where the cultures clash, the attitudes don’t become significantly negative until the percentage of the immigrant population becomes significant enough to be considered a threat. Based on what has happened in Sweden and Denmark, I think that threshold is around 10%.

More on Chat-GPT

People that haven’t used it find it difficult to believe that Chat-GPT can provide in seconds high quality (competently researched and well written) answers to any reasonable question. Many of my colleagues in the writing, research, and publishing industries have the impression that AI technology is capable only of basic work and that it will be decades (if ever) before its production can match the brain.

I’m thinking the time has already come. Here’s an example. A NYC broker asks Chat-GPT three questions about real estate investing in the city. And he instantly receives three answers that would be approved for publication in any general information magazine. Click here.

Yes, but… 

As amazing as the functionality of Chat-GPT seems to be, there is room for concern.

According to two reports I’ve read lately, the app is not designed to check facts against current data. So, apparently, it’s possible to generate fake news that is then stored for future retrieval.

For example…

* A corporate cautionary tale in the making saw Samsung employees leak confidential company info by feeding it into Chat-GPT on at least three separate occasions. Yikes!

* Also troubling: Brian Hood, mayor of Australia’s Hepburn Shire may sue over Chat-GPT, saying he went to prison for bribery. (He was the whistleblower in the case.) Chat-GPT also named a law professor in a sexual harassment scandal that never happened, citing a Washington Post article that didn’t exist.

Before Politics, There’s the World 

I introduced you to Freddie deBoer in the April 7 issue.He’s a self-proclaimed Marxist and public intellectual that I’ve begun to read because his ideas are original, as opposed to voicing a party line.

Here, he talks about an argument he had with someone about whether it is ever appropriate for a teacher or caretaker to engage physically with emotionally troubled children. De Boer explains, very convincingly, that it is not only appropriate but virtuous in some cases.

Is “Social Audio” a Thing of the Past?

In 2021, Clubhouse was an application everyone was talking about. Many of my colleagues in the internet infotainment world were getting involved. Back then, the audio chat room had 10 million users, which gave it a huge valuation and spurred numerous well-funded competitors. Today, those competitors have disappeared, and Clubhouse is only a shadow of its former self.

Click here.

A Certain Morning (Un Certain Matin

This is a short film (15 minutes) written and directed by Fanta Régina Nacro. It was the first dramatic film made by a woman from Burkina Faso.

The scenery reminded me of Chad. The story may seem far-fetched to anyone that knows Africa only from being on a trek or staying in a hunting lodge. But to anyone that has lived in the rural lands of Africa’s center, it will make good sense.

In any case, I thought it was well done. I’m going to check out some other of her movies.

You can watch A Certain Morning here on the Criterion Channel.

About Fanta Régina Nacro…

Since the release of A Certain Morning in 1992, Fanta Régina Nacro has made a number of short films that tackle issues like the AIDS epidemic in Africa. They have won many international awards and have been hailed as representing the “African New Wave.”

Click here to watch an interview with Necro (in French) about The Night of Truth (La Nuit de la Vérité), her first feature film.

The von Trapps of Harlem

This is a fun read about a family of 12 musicians trying to become “the Kardashians of Classical Music”!

Click here.

Gallows Poetry, Anyone? 

Have you ever heard the name Chidiock Tichborne?

My mother, who required us to memorize a poem every weekend, told me about him when I was very young. I was reminded of him earlier this week in an essay by Douglas Murray in The Free Press.

Tichborne lived in Elizabethan England. In 1586, he was accused of being a conspirator in the Babington plot, a scheme to dethrone Elizabeth and replace her with a catholic monarch, Mary Queen of Scots.

He was sentenced to die. But how he died, as my mother described it, was what locked his story in my brain for all these years. He was hung until he was nearly dead but still conscious, then pulled down from the gallows and racked in front of a viewing public, where he was castrated and disemboweled. The final touches: His head was chopped off and his body was hacked into pieces.

Before his execution, at the tender age of 24, he somehow had the courage to write this beautiful little poem, consisting entirely of one syllable words:

 

Elegy 

By Chidiock Tichborne 

My prime of youth is but a frost of cares,

My feast of joy is but a dish of pain,

My crop of corn is but a field of tares,

And all my good is but vain hope of gain.

The day is fled, and yet I saw no sun,

And now I live, and now my life is done.

The spring is past, and yet it hath not sprung,

The fruit is dead, and yet the leaves be green:

My youth is gone, and yet I am but young,

I saw the world, and yet I was not seen.

My thread is cut, and yet it is not spun,

And now I live, and now my life is done.

I sought my death, and found it in my womb,

I looked for life, and saw it was a shade:

I trod the earth, and knew it was my tomb,

And now I die, and now I am but made.

The glass is full, and now my glass is run,

And now I live, and now my life is done.