The Sam Brinton Story Just Got Weirder

Do you remember Sam Brintin? The MIT graduate/ non-binary person that the Biden administration hired as a Deputy Assistant to the nuclear waste bureau of the Department of Energy?

If you don’t remember, here’s a report on Brintin filmed after his appointment was announced.

I have been a fan of Brinton ever since he/she made his/her first appearance in the press. I was disappointed, therefore, to discover that, not long after taking office, he/she was caught on camera stealing luggage from the Minneapolis-St. Paul airport.

According to police reports, that was not his/her first arrest. Still the Biden administration and the mainstream media tried to stay loyal to him/her. But the reports kept popping up. More disturbing, his/her kleptomania had a particular focus: women’s clothing. Still, the story would have probably gone away, except that several weeks ago, a fashion designer for women, a Tanzanian, no less, came across a photo of Brinton wearing one of her custom-designed dresses. It was the very dress that was in a travel bag of hers that had been “lost” by an airline in 2018.

Check it out here.

“Should we automate the CEO?” 

From The Hustle:

Last August, NetDragon Websoft – a Hong Kong-based online gaming firm with $2.1B in annual revenue – appointed a CEO to helm its flagship subsidiary.

The new chief, Tang Yu, was responsible for the typical duties of a company figurehead: reviewing high-level analytics, making leadership decisions, assessing risks, and fostering an efficient workplace.

Even better: She worked 24/7, didn’t sleep, and was compensated $0 per year.

But there was a catch: Yu wasn’t a human. She was a virtual robot powered by artificial intelligence.

So far, having an AI CEO hasn’t had any catastrophic consequences for NetDragon Websoft. In fact, since Yu’s appointment, the company has outperformed Hong Kong’s stock market.

For more on this story, click here.

College Students Are Turning Away From the Humanities.

Is That a Problem for the Next Generation?

SL and I are on the board of a task force at a local university. The goal is to boost enrollment in courses offered by the English Department.

We were asked to help because we are incredibly good looking… and because we know a little bit about English and American literature… but mostly because we have spent our careers in sales and marketing.

The challenge: In the last ten years, enrollment in English and other Humanities has been down considerably. And it’s not just a local thing. It’s a problem throughout the US.

As a student of literature, art, and philosophy, I’ve long touted the benefits of a Liberal Arts-centered education. My argument is that whatever career a young person might end up following, there are three skills that most determine success: thinking analytically, writing coherently, and speaking persuasively.

I believe that to be true regardless of whether one ends up working as a teacher, an artist, an engineer, a lawyer, or a doctor. The rise to the top is a labyrinth of gaining respect and power by thinking well, writing clearly, and speaking convincingly.

Unfortunately, too few young people have been exposed to my argument. They see courses in literature, arts, and philosophy as useful only for teaching literature, arts, and philosophy. They have little interest in spending the rest of their lives earning an ordinary income. They want a life that is, in some way, more exciting. I’m sympathetic to them in that regard. But they are wrong in assuming that they will do better generally, and make more money, if they study the STEM curricula. (Science, Technology, Engineering, Mathematics)

SL and I each have our own ideas about how to fix the problem. He suggested that we start by revising the school’s brochures to make the Humanities courses sound more interesting. I agree with that. Plus, I’d like to launch a campus-wide, multi-media advertising campaign promoting my thesis that a major in Liberal Arts is the very best way to get to the top of any business or organization. (I think I know how to sell that idea. And I think it should be fun to try.)

Meanwhile, here’s a link to a New Yorker essay by Nathan Heller titled “The End of the English Major.” Heller makes it crystal-clear that the problem we are facing here in South Florida is not a regional issue.

Petty Crime Is Causing Serious Capital Flight in Big, Blue Cities 

Large retail stores are shutting down in big cities across the US. The reason? Nobody wants to talk about it. It’s because of a massive spike in shoplifting.

The latest example: Walmart is closing its Portland, OR, stores, leaving hundreds out of work and thousands in Portland’s marginal communities without a local place to shop cheaply. When asked why they closed the stores, Walmart’s PR department gave vague answers. Understandably, they don’t want to be portrayed as running away from “underserved” communities.

Click here.

More on the Fentanyl Epidemic 

On the morning of July 25, 2020, Matthew Thomas took what he believed was a Percocet, a prescription drug for pain relief. He died moments later, the victim of fentanyl poisoning.

On Jan. 26, 2019, Austen Babcock took what he believed was cocaine. Unbeknownst to him, it was laced with fentanyl. He died shortly thereafter, another victim of fentanyl poisoning.

What I’ve been learning about the fentanyl epidemic since I wrote about it on March 3, [LINK] is pretty scary. Many, if not most, deaths caused by fentanyl are not due to overdosing on fentanyl per se, but to what appears be other drugs that are laced with unbelievably lethal doses of it.

If you’d like to know more, this report from Katie Spence, writing for The Epoch Times, makes it clear how ubiquitous the drug is and how easy it is for unsuspecting young people to be poisoned by it.

The Penalty for Rape in Canada Is… What? 

Ever since Justin Trudeau became Canada’s leader, he’s been showing the rest of the world what it looks like to advance the sort of woke political agenda that is just getting underway in the US.

One of his party’s key aspirations has been to dramatically lower the number of Canadians that are imprisoned. And they have made progress. Mostly by changing the criminal code. Many of the crimes that were considered felonies are now treated as misdemeanors.

How far have they gone? How about giving convicted rapists ankle bracelets instead of sending them to jail? Check it out here.

It’s Happening Faster and Faster! 

I wrote about the rapidity of AI development in the Feb. 24 issue. I said then that it is advancing faster than I believed possible. Here’s a short talk by Jordan Peterson on this topic that will probably scare you.

Our New Aviation Tsar! 

The most obvious problem with making equity (equal outcomes) a top criteria for hiring is that, sooner or later, you are going to be forced to hire unqualified people. This was hilariously obvious in the Biden administration’s recent appointment of a new Aviation Tsar. Watch this clip of Ted Cruz hammering the guy and answer this: Are you comfortable knowing that he’s the one that will be determining aviation safety standards from now on?

Is There Really a Fentanyl Crisis?

If you watch conservative media, you are familiar with the claim that the Biden administration’s border policy has resulted in a flood of fentanyl into the US and a huge surge in fentanyl-related deaths.

Is that true? Or is it just right-wing bias? Is America’s southern border really an open door for one of the world’s deadliest recreational drugs?

In this podcast, a seemingly reasonable doctor tries to answer that question.

What Our World Population Will Look Like in 2050 

Back in September, I wrote about how dramatically the world is changing. More recently, I found this visualization of the population of the world in 2050. Once again, I was amazed.

For example: While the US population will grow from 338 million to 375 million (about 10%), Nigeria’s is projected to grow by more than 50%, from 219 million to 375 million. India will have modest growth. And, surprisingly, China’s population will get smaller, from 1.4 billion to 1.3 billion.

Take a look here.

Can America Cope with Population Decline? 

There are, of course, significant social, political, and economic repercussions from population change. It used to be thought (and still is in many corners of academia) that the world was becoming vastly overpopulated, and that “depopulation” was necessary to save the planet.

But, like so many other widely held scientific beliefs, that concern no longer tops the Armageddon charts. Today, depopulation is what popular science is worried about.

Notwithstanding the very significant population growth in many African countries, the population of China, and most developed countries, is decreasing. If we get to a net negative population trend, it will be the first decline in human population since the bubonic plague pandemic in the 14th century.

Click here for a discussion on depopulation with Dr. Nicholas Eberstadt, a political economist at the American Enterprise Institute.

And here for a short and interesting view of it by Dr. Meryl Nass, who publishes Meryl’s COVID Newsletter.

Google Employee Fired for Not Cheating on Spouse 

What? Did you read that right? Fired for not cheating?

I’m sure there’s more to this story than the sensational headline suggests. But it was covered by several internet news feeds – so, on your behalf, I scurried down a half-dozen rabbit holes and ended up with the following…

Click here.

And here.

And here.

Political Correctness: Identifying Suspects 

Two years ago, in preparation for an essay I never wrote, I was researching a scary spike in gang rapes that occurred in Sweden from 2000 to 2020. From data compiled between 2000 and about 2015, one could see that nearly 90% of these crimes were committed by young, Muslim immigrant men. That should have allowed the law enforcement community to focus their attention on this community. But when I looked for data since 2015, I came up empty. Race and ethnicity were no longer being used as descriptors when reporting violent crimes.

“It’s profiling,” one media representative was quoted as saying.

“Yes, it is,” I thought. “But when you are talking about at-large criminals, what’s wrong with that? Doesn’t profiling make it that much easier to identify and arrest the suspects?’

I wasn’t able to continue to pursue the research. The data was no longer there. So, I dropped it, thinking the Swedish people would come to their senses soon.

But now I’ve noticed that this idea has taken root in the US. Not in police reporting, but in media reporting.

Example: Anthony McRae on the Michigan State University campus killing three students and injuring five others. The police described him as a short, Black male, wearing a mask. But in reporting the shooting, the media – from Reuters to The Guardian to Bloomberg – omitted the fact that he was Black. Click here.

Is It Finally Here?” Weight Loss in a Pill? 

In the multibillion-dollar industry of weight loss, it’s the Holy Grail.

Ozempic, taken once a week as a shot in the arm, stomach, or thigh, was approved by the FDA in 2017 to lower blood sugar in people with Type 2 diabetes. But the drug came with a wonderful, unexpected side effect: rapid weight loss.

In 2021, the FDA greenlit a higher dose product, Wegovy – made by the same Danish manufacturer, Novo Nordisk – as an obesity treatment. Since then, it’s been peddled heavily in Hollywood, and ads for and stories about the drug are being tied to all sorts of celebrities, including Khloé Kardashian, who once called herself the “fat sister.”

Click here.

Bankman-Fried’s Bond Co-signers Revealed! 

Click here for the story.

The Aerial Invasion: Are They Spycraft? Weather Balloons? Or what? 

John Kirby, National Security Council Coordinator for Strategic Communications, admitted that the mysterious UFOs the military has been shooting down were “probably not commanded by ETs or other countries,” but more likely commercial balloons that “pose no military threat to Americans.”

However, Mr. Kirby continued to maintain that the original balloon shot down Feb. 4 was, indeed, a Chinese spy balloon, although he wasn’t able to offer any proof.

Read more here.

The Hunter Biden Show

Can Someone That Rich Be That Dumb?!!

Or Someone That Dumb Be That Rich?!! 

JM, one of my trainers, made the claim. I didn’t believe him for a second.

“Look it up,” he said.

“Where?” I said. “On one of your dark web conspiracy sites?”

“Anywhere you like,” he said.

So, I looked it up. In several different places. And by gosh, he was right!

Hunter Biden’s net worth is north of $300 million!

How could that be true? Isn’t this the guy that got kicked out of the Navy – twice – for drug and alcohol addiction? Isn’t this the guy that photographed himself with all those hookers? Isn’t he the guy who barely graduated college and knows nothing about energy but became an expert consultant to major energy companies in the Ukraine, in Russia, and in China?

A lot of incriminating questions about Hunter Biden will be asked in the coming weeks and months by House Republicans. I hope one of those questions will be: “How could he have been so stupid as to allow his net worth to be published?”

Sabotage? Act of War? Mystery Solved! It Was Us! 

At the end of his long and distinguished career, Pulitzer-Prize-winning journalist Seymour Hersh believes he has solved the Nord Stream pipeline bombing mystery.

Hersh, who scooped journalism’s top award more than five decades ago for exposing the My Lai massacre of Vietnamese civilians by US troops in 1968, reported that US Navy divers, acting under the authority of President Biden, laid bombs that destroyed three of the four pipelines built to carry natural gas from Russia to Europe.

Although the Biden administration initially denied it, there is increasing evidence that they did it, including videotape of Biden threatening to blow it up back in February.

Check it out here.

Or here.

Bits and Pieces 

From National Geographic: Nature’s Design for Having Babies 

How big an issue is age in predicting fertility in women? And what should women do if they hear “the clock ticking”?

Here’s a good article that answers those questions.

The Future of the Universe 

If you are worried about humanity disappearing in a hundred years because of atomic war or climate change, this may make you feel better. Populations may thrive and die. Planets may come and go. But the universe? Click here for a bracing perspective.

The World’s Most Repressive Countries 

When it comes to women’s rights, the most repressive countries in the world are Islamic. No surprise there. But you might be shocked to learn that when it comes to free speech, the most repressive countries include Canada, England, Australia, and New Zealand!

There are many studies that have rated the right to free speech by country. I’ve looked at several, and they were surprisingly consistent.

Here’s an example of repression that I came across last week.

Bits and Pieces 

A Surprise Gift from Nicaragua to America 

Nicaragua released 222 political prisoners to the US yesterday, as part of a negotiated deal between the administrations of Daniel Ortega and Joe Biden.

According to the NYT, the move was “an effort to restart relations with the United States.” I don’t know about that. But I do know, personally, at least one person that was released: the father of a woman that works for us there. And he was very rare in terms of border crossers. He was a true political prisoner. (He was imprisoned for speaking out publicly against the Ortega regime.)

As for the other 221 Nicaraguan immigrants we welcomed in yesterday, I can’t vouch for them. I’d like to think they were vetted. It would be unfortunate if this turns out to be another Mariel boatlift situation.

Here’s what I’m wondering: Do they become citizens automatically? And if so, I presume they would be automatically entitled to the rights and privileges of all American citizens. Including public assistance. And if that is true, is there a limit?

You can read the NYT piece here.

Your Age Is Written on Your Face 

We all know that there is often a difference between one’s chronological age (the age on your license) and one’s biological age (the relative age of your body). And naturally, we would all like to be biologically younger than our chronological age.

There are various ways to measure your biological age, some more accurate than others. There are physical response tests, mental agility tests, and bio-markers that can be found through blood tests.

And now there is a new way. Thanks to Jing-Dong (Jackie) Han and her colleagues at Peking University, biological age can be measured by taking a 3D image of a person’s face.

Check it out here.