@amuse on X - "SCOTUS: Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson told the Court that presidents should not be able to fire the PhDs & experts who run the government. She even argued presidents should avoid control over transportation & the economy. In a remarkable exchange in Trump v Slaughter, Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson claimed the president should have no power to fire expert bureaucrats. She said economists, PhDs, scientists, & transportation officials should operate beyond presidential reach. Such a view would carve the heart out of Article II & cement rule by permanent insiders rather than elected leadership. Jackson’s theory elevates the deep state over the voters who choose a president. That is a constitutional revolution in plain sight. h/t @Badhombre"
Wall Street Mav on X - "She described exactly what has happened in the European Union. All power has been given to the bureaucrats and taken away from the people actually elected by the voters. The elected members of the EU parliament do not get to propose any laws or fire anyone. They just get to rubber stamp what the bureaucrats present to them to vote on (on some issues)."
CSPAN on X - "Justice Jackson says that it is the “best interest of the American people to have certain kinds of issues handled by experts” and it is undermined when one person has too much power. Agarwal agrees, saying too much power with one person is problematic."
🇺🇸 Mike Davis 🇺🇸 on X - "This is stunning a Supreme Court justice:
1. Actually thinks we must be ruled by unelected, unaccountable (leftwing) "experts"
2. Said it out loud in an oral argument, as if she's in a Democrat primary debate for a U.S. House seat in some Democrat dump district"
Coddled Affluent Professional on X - "Yeah, libs haven’t been hiding the ball at all on this. They want managed democracy run by a technocracy where the only thing you get to vote on is small differences in the marginal tax rate and bureaucrats and experts *acting in your best interests* make political decisions without any say from the public. I’ve never been happier that RBG ‘persisted’ and refused to retire in 2014. And that Mitch McConnell refused to give Merrick Garland a hearing. And that Hillary didn’t fly to Wisconsin. We could be closer to Europe’s fate where things are much, much worse than they are now."
Andrew Follett on X - "The Dem dream is bureaucratic dictatorship where their activists in lab costs get unchallenged control over everything...un-bothered by elections. The role of average people in this? To be a cell in a spreadsheet!"
Bad Hombre on X - "Ketanji lost it today during oral arguments and went on a “No Kings” style rant about President Trump wanting to rule like a monarch, and how we should instead have many issues handled by “the experts and PhDs” like Dr. Fauci, Dr. “Rachel” Levine, and the gay bondage AIDS dude."
IT Guy on X - "This would be funny if not so terrifying. 👇 Ketanji isn’t even pretending to make a Constitutional argument. She basically declares that self-perpetuating government is superior to what we currently have, stated as a self-evident truth. She also perverts the check and balance of the Executive Branch granted by the Constitution to Congress, specifically impeachment. In her worldview, the courts must stop Trump from doing anything she doesn’t like. I say “terrifying” because imagine if there were four more just like her on the Court? Or Democrats regain enough power someday to expand and pack SCOTUS with judges like her? It would be game, set, and match."
Based Jessica on X - "Newsweek asked RFK Jr. "why don’t you stop promoting conspiracy theories?" RFK Jr’s reply: "My father told me when I was a little boy that people in authority lie and the job in a democracy is to remain skeptical. I've been science based since I was a kid. Show me the evidence and I'll believe you, but I'm not going to take the word of official narratives." "The way you do research is not by asking authoritative figures what they think. Trusting experts is not a feature of science, and it's not a feature of democracy. It's a feature of religion and totalitarianism.""
Trust the Experts. Even when they are wrong
Simon Maechling on X - "The collapse of trust in science is going to go down in history as one of the most sad, bizarre, and destructive social contagions of modern times. We cured diseases, fed billions, and powered nations - and people ran toward conspiracies instead."
Bret Weinstein on X - "Responsibility for the collapse of trust in science belongs those who participated in its corruption, especially those “scientists” who decided to pursue higher priorities than the truth. They have plunged us into a dark age, whether we understand that or not."
Richard H. Ebright on X - "The erosion of respect for the scientific establishment stems from the fact that the scientific establishment caused a pandemic that killed 20 million and cost $25 trillion and from the fact that the scientific establishment lied, and continues to lie, about causing the pandemic."
Jason Locasale on X - "The collapse of trust in science came from institutions abandoning the principles that once earned public trust. When agencies censor dissent, journals launder politics as authority, universities punish inconvenience, and former government officials cycle straight onto the boards of the industries they regulated, the public isn’t irrational for noticing. Trust was squandered by the same institutions now blaming the public for no longer believing them."
Chris Martz on X - "I love seeing these sob story posts from poindexter Ph.D.s complaining about the fact that much of the general public doesn’t trust them, then label laypeople as “science deniers.” These nerds act like they are holier than thou sacred priests who cured polio, proved that the Earth is an oblate spheroid, and launched rockets into low Earth orbit. I am a scientist, and as one, I have no issue admitting that the main reason why public trust in the scientific community has eroded to a historic low is almost exclusively due to the fact many of today's "scientists" have taken it upon themselves to use their status as authoritative "experts" as a call to political activism for whatever cause is most relevant to their research. When it was decided that most scientific research would be paid for by taxpayers, that put Congress directly in charge of allocating how much money gets invested into research and development (R&D), and the White House's Office of Management and Budget (OMB) in charge of apportioning it to specific agencies that then use that those funds to issue research grants that often have very specific guidelines that the researcher receiving it must adhere to. Many of today's scientists are not having the kinds of breakthroughs and discoveries that scientists of the 17th, 18th, 19th and early-to-mid-20th centuries did. Instead of actual science, we instead get consensus statements to advance a political agenda that say something to the effect of:
• "There are two weeks to slow the spread."
• "Transwomen are real women; a biological man who says he is a woman is a woman because science," or,
• "Man-made climate change is an existential threat to the planet."
And, in order for anything to be considered valid by the crusaders of "science," any and all ideas must be "peer-reviewed" and published in a prestigious academic journal that the scientist [often] has to pay hundreds or even over a thousand dollars (and in some cases sign over the rights of his or her work) to. Thus, whether or not a theory is acceptable is contingent on whether or not your colleagues agree with it, rather than publication rejection being purely because of a mathematical error, plagiarism or the results not being reproducible, which would (in my opinion) be the only three legitimate rejections. There is also this gatekeeping in social circles that if you aren't a scientist (or maybe are one like myself, but don't have a M.S. or Ph.D.), then you cannot talk about any scientific issues, discuss scientific facts or debate ideas. Gatekeepers argue only "experts" are allowed to engage in a discussion on said topic, but even if you have a Ph.D., only those that adhere to the popular point of view are worthy of being listened to. All of this to say that scientists need to come off of their high horses and read the room. The reason why the public doesn't trust you has little to do with disinformation campaigns from right-wing and libertarian think tanks, and even less to do with conspiracy theorists. It has almost everything to do with the superiority complex you exude, the silencing of scientists who disagree with you, and activist sales pitching. Look in the mirror before you start pointing fingers. Thanks for your attention to this matter."
Coddled Affluent Professional on X - "This is the core ideological tension right now. The post war lib Boomer dispensation is crumbling. (Trump’s election in 2016 signaled this but many people missed the message because there was so much misdirecting hysteria: fascism, Russia collusion, etc.) But it’s unclear what the successor ideology will be or whether it’s even possible to manufacture a new consensus with dominant narratives given the fragmentation and disorientation caused by technology. (The institutional and technological mechanisms for regimenting the public that Walter Lippmann described in 1922 in ‘Public Opinion’ are on their last legs.) Being able to independently come to a coherent, independent world view requires intelligence, emotional regulation, and knowledge that less than 1% of people possess, so it’s extremely unlikely that anything coherent will congeal spontaneously. Fuentes is a good, representative example because (while smart) he is almost completely defined by his reactive opposition to Boomer shibboleths but struggles to stand reliably for anything beyond that (excepting a Culture of Critique rehash) and requires a constant stream of spats with other media figures to ‘define himself.’ MAGA populism has had a good run and it will be interesting to see whether it holds together without the force of Trump’s personality, or if some other institutional force or personality emerges as a center of gravity. It’s also possible that nothing will emerge and the schizoid engagement logic of someone like Candace Owens will be defining and algorithmically ascendent (maybe it already is)."
Devon Eriksen on X - "This is one is actually kinda true. It's yet one more thing about America that Europeans don't really quite understand. Europeans seem to by constantly aware, in the back of their minds, of all the other European nations their surrounded by, and what those other, slightly different, cultures might think about X, Y, and Z. And a lot of them speak two or three different languages, the tongues of those close-packed neighbors. What they don't have a firm grasp on is what it's like to be American. Because America is not a European country. We're not packed in next to six different cultures that we've had alternating alliances and wars with for the past 1500 years. We're in a great big wilderness with lots of elbow room. We don't have to care what our national neighbors think, because we don't really have any. We have a failed state run by narco-gangs to the south of us, and a few cities full of socialists huddled against our northern border to stay warm, and that's it. We don't speak languages other than English, because there's no one to practice with, and anyone in America who doesn't speak English isn't worth having a conversation with. So we hang out with other people like us, in our big, spacious, largely-wilderness country, and we do our own thing. Just like our ancestors, who moved here because they didn't like busybody neighbors telling them what to do, and not do. That's how we like it. It's not that we are literally unaware of your existence. We just don't think about you that often, because you're on the other side of the planet, and we don't see you every day. We understand that European countries are all up in each others' business, and everyone gets to have an opinion on everything, and yell it at everyone else at the top of their lungs. We just find it extremely arrogant that you try to apply this to us. You think it's extremely rude that we don't what the neighbors think, but you aren't our neighbors. Your opinions are as distant to us as those of Sumatra or Singapore or Malaysia are to you. And, sure, you can say you have to care, because our politics effects you, but that's because you asked for it to effect you. Every time you have a major war, or even a minor one, there's a significant percentage of your population that tries to beg, or rationalize, or guilt-trip us into either fighting it or paying for it. You don't actually need us to defend you from Russia, because stout and determined as the Russians are, they suck at logistics, and anyone who sucks at logistics sucks at warfare. They haven't even been able, in four years, to conquer their former colony, because we let those guys have a bunch of our obsolete GWOT gear, and some money that their corrupt politicians mostly hoovered up. You could easily restrain whatever territorial ambitions Russia has, all by yourselves, if you just got out of the cuck chair, remembered who you are, and beat your plowshares back into swords. I think a lot of you kind of resent us, and I understand why. People are only grateful for gifts up to the point that they feel they can repay. If they can never repay, then they must rationalize that they are owed. We're richer and more powerful than you, and you need us, but it doesn't have to be that way. You don't actually have to need us. You just need to get rid of your parasitic bureaucracies and get busy building stuff again. Your ancestors were warriors and inventors and explorers, but now, from the great distance that we see you from, it looks an awful lot like you just sit around and regulate each other all day. There is no perfect set of laws that makes everything fair for everyone. There's no pot of gold at the end of that particular rainbow. The only real purpose of your whole experiment in unified bureaucratic governance, and busybody totalitarianism, is to give you a feeling of moral superiority. But you don't actually need a feeling of moral superiority. You could have feelings of technological, financial, and cultural superiority instead, if you just got over the collective trauma of WW2, stopped telling each other in loud voices that the will to power is inherently bad, and actually applied yourselves to something real. I understand that you resent being vassal states. I would too. And I'm not in love with the whole idea of an American empire, because I don't think that for the average American, the juice has actually been worth the squeeze. Sure, there's lots of people who say we have to maintain the empire, but the reasons they always give seem to boil down to, "to defend ourselves from people who hate us because of all the empire-building" , and "so we can do more stuff to maintain the empire". Feels a bit like a treadmill. And no, it's not our empire that makes us wealthy. We were wealthy and innovative and successful long before we had one. And back then, our federal budget was balanced, too. The indifference of the average American on the street to your opinion of us is frankly the only healthy thing about our relationship. And if you could start to emulate that, look to yourselves, take back your countries from the bureaucrats, and see to your own people instead of an endless stream of strangers... well, you wouldn't need us anymore. Healthy relationships aren't based on need."
VEO on X - "There’s this recurring trope that Europe is overregulated and the US is this sort of free-wheeling world where anything goes. As with everything, the reality is far more nuanced. I used to believe this trope myself… until I actually lived in Europe and experienced it. In Europe, regulation often operates at the collective level.. think healthcare, labor protections, food standards, infrastructure. These regulatory frameworks are heavy by design in that they create stability by increasing broad citizen-level confidence in them actually functioning. But at the individual level, daily life can be far looser. There are playgrounds in Europe that would be illegal in the US due to their “danger.” People rarely wear helmets.. not even toddlers.. on bicycles in many places. Kids climb trees higher and parents barely care or even notice. Farms are open.. kids can climb all over haystack mountains and nobody asks if their farmer is insured. There is a playground in the NL of *literal* piles of discarded shipping pallets and construction debris with rusty jagged nails sticking out everywhere… and little kids climb all over them with hammers connecting random pieces together. One false step and you’re slicing an artery or losing an eye. Yet there is barely any adult supervision, parents don’t care, and nobody is signing any paperwork or waiving liability. We bring American friends there and they literally cannot believe what they’re seeing. And they don’t let their kids. Activities proceed on the assumption that risk is visible, understood, and partly if not mostly your responsibility. Menanwhile… in the US we paradoxically flip this culture. Collectively, we resist broad social regulation writ large. Individually, though, life is wrapped in micro-regulation everywhere… liability waivers, warning labels, signage, insurance restrictions, endless legal disclaimers. Every activity sees to have some paperwork. Everyone is covering for something. This is a cultural thing. The US actually uses the legal system as a cover for social risk-sharing. In much of Europe, the downside of injury or bad luck is partially absorbed by healthcare systems, disability supports, and social insurance. The cost of risk is basically capped for you. The system carries some of the shock. In the US, harm can be financially catastrophic. When something goes wrong, someone has to pay, and courts become the primary mechanism for redistributing that risk after the fact… not “the government.” The you had to layer in contingency-based personal injury law and jury trials, and blaming someone else for your problems becomes economically logical. There’s little downside to suing, meaningful upside if you win, and enormous unpredictability for defendants.. hence why insurance costs have become comically absurd. So what happens…. Businesses respond long before anything reaches court by engineering out risk in daily life… more warnings, more forms, fewer “at your own risk” type playgrounds or other environments. So Europe can feel more regulated on paper… but in actual lived experience that matters to your day to day existenxe, in the US we are often navigating a far narrower acceptable window of risk. In many ways, the US is the most highly regulated place in the entire world, by far, it’s just not “the government” doing the regulating."
‘Miracle flights’: Where wheelchair-bound passengers walk off ‘healed’ - "Something strange is happening at 35,000ft. Indeed, according to airline bosses and flight attendants, a “miracle” is occurring, particularly on routes to and from India. The scenario plays out as follows: many air passengers request wheelchair assistance to travel through the airport before departure. This assistance means they are able to skip the queues at security and passport control, as well as board the plane first. However, upon landing, some of these people are suddenly able to walk off without assistance, seemingly “healed”. Such passengers have earned tongue-in-cheek nicknames: “miracle walkers” in the UK, or “jet-stream Jesuses” in the United States... Barry Biffle, the CEO of American low-cost airline Frontier Airlines, said at an aviation industry event in 2024: “There is massive, rampant abuse of special services. There are people using wheelchair assistance who don’t need it at all.” He gave the example of a flight where 20 people had been wheeled to the departure gate, with only three requiring a wheelchair on arrival. “We are healing so many people,” he joked. Indian airports have seen a particularly stark rise in wheelchair assistance requests. According to Indian media, Air India receives as many as 100,000 wheelchair users per month, with particularly strong demand on routes to the UK and the US. One widely cited flight is a Delhi-to-Chicago route, which allegedly had 99 wheelchair bookings on Feb 19 2025... Saj Ahmad, the chief analyst at StrategicAero Research, said: “This is clearly a cultural issue stemming from parts of Asia, and it’s clear authorities need to get a grip on this before a complete breakdown happens. “Short of forcing people to show up to the check-in desk with a medical certificate, it’s clear that some airports are just waving people through and not doing enough checks. “There’ll clearly be those who are injured, old or infirm that need assistance, but those exploiting the assistance afforded by airport staff need to be punished so as to deter others from doing the same.”"
I invented a wheelchair that lets me look you in the eye - "People would see this massive chair and presume that I was cognitively impaired, as well as physically. They wouldn’t talk to me, only to the person pushing me – and if they did interact with me, they’d bend down, which felt infantilising... The Omni powered wheelchair created by the company I founded, Conquering Horizons, is one of the world’s most advanced mobility device. In it, users can manoeuvre in tight spaces, reach eye-level with their loved ones, mount and descend kerbs and travel up to 8mph, even in tricky terrain"
I’ve spent the past 50 years exploring France: this is how the country has changed
Elvis-loving judge resigns after wearing wig in court - "A Missouri judge has been forced to resign after wearing an Elvis Presley wig in court. Matthew Thornhill was put under investigation for wearing an outsized black wig and sunglasses on the bench and in the St Charles County Courthouse. Mr Thornhill, is a Presley fan, was known to wear the costume while presiding over cases “routinely on or about Oct 31”. The judge gave some witnesses the option of being sworn in to the sounds of Elvis Presley’s greatest hits, which he would play from his phone. Mr Thornhill would also make references to Presley during his cases, sometimes weaving lyrics into his official remarks. His actions violated rules requiring judges to maintain “order and decorum” and “promote confidence in the integrity of the judiciary,” the commission found... Judge Thornhill, a father of seven who has been on the bench since 2006, he had referenced the music legend in a bid to “add levity at times when [he] thought it would help relax litigants.”... It also found he promoted his re-election campaign from the courtroom."
Bohumilo on X - "The right is a ragtag alliance of everyone who just wants to be left alone. The left is an alliance of those who want power over others. They have a goal, a pressure point, a vector of attack — something around which they can spontaneously self-organize and coordinate. The right doesn’t have that. Their concept of victory is to dismantle power over them, to send their enemies home (for example, to close the Department of Education and send employees away). But a power vacuum doesn’t stay empty for long, and their enemies are at their backs very quickly — again and again and again, until they’re defeated. Being left alone is not stable equilibrium. That’s why, even if you want to be left alone, you have to go for power, seize it, rule."
Suspect in killing of tourist is DoorDash driver whom victim asked for a ride, complaint says - "A tourist killed while on a golf trip in Wisconsin tried to negotiate with the suspect, a DoorDash driver, for a ride back to his hotel before he was fatally shot, according to a criminal complaint. Sheboygan Falls Police say 32-year-old Giovanni Michael “Mike” Robinson was on a golf trip in the area when he was killed in a drive-by shooting just after midnight Wednesday. Robinson was a new father from Ontario, Canada. His family says he was walking back to his hotel with his brother-in-law when he was shot. Police said Friday they arrested 35-year-old Luis Cruz Burgos in relation to the shooting. He was charged with first-degree reckless homicide. According to a criminal complaint, Cruz Burgos is a DoorDash driver who encountered Robinson and three other people after they went to a tavern to celebrate a golf event. The group had taken an Uber to Sheboygan Falls and wanted to take one back to their hotel but couldn’t find one. The complaint says all three of the people with Robinson said in police interviews they spoke with a Hispanic man completing a DoorDash order. They tried to pay him in cash to get a ride back to their hotel but began to walk away after they say the man wanted more money. As they were leaving, the witnesses told police a car drove past them. They heard what sounded like loud pops or firecrackers, and Robinson screamed and fell to the ground as the car then sped off. Robinson was shot in the middle of his chest, according to the autopsy. Police say he died at the scene... When police spoke with Cruz Burgos, he told them he had been driving for DoorDash for nine months. He said Robinson’s group flagged him down and asked for a ride but said they hadn’t talked about negotiating for one. He alleges members of the group called him “stupid” and “flipped him off” as he drove away. Cruz Burgos also told police he did a U-turn and passed the group again but said they all looked fine and he didn’t see anyone shoot a gun. He told police he had no guns because he was no longer allowed to possess them following a 2019 domestic incident in Florida."
Food take-away: Why Spain is saying a big no to its daily diet of bread - "Bread, that inseparable companion of every Spanish meal, is disappearing from our tables at an alarming rate. The figures are stark. In the early 1960s, each Spaniard consumed 134 kilograms of bread a year; today that amount has plummeted to 28 kilograms a year, a drop of 80% that reflects much more than a simple change in diet... Young people have replaced this traditional food with other sources of carbohydrates such as pizzas or pasta, and associate bread directly with being overweight and food intolerance... "Bread has been demonised by the mistaken mantra that it is fattening," denounces Silvia Martín of the Association of Bakery Industries. This belief has become so widespread that 29.2% of Spaniards follow a bread-free diet, while 24% do not consider it necessary for a balanced diet... many non-intolerant people have wrongly stopped consuming gluten products, further contributing to the decline. The crisis has hit the traditional sector hard. Four out of ten bakeries have closed since the beginning of the century, victims of falling consumption and problems of generational replacement. Bread has become 30% more expensive in a decade, and is now mainly sold in supermarkets and petrol stations, where industrial production prevails. As the artisanal bakery 3Letras Pan denounced on RTVE, "what has happened is an industrial-level product with a very short fermentation and with a lot of yeast and very, very flat flavours". This vicious circle is clear: industrialisation generates poorer quality, which in turn reduces consumption, which encourages even more industrialisation. Despite the gloomy outlook, there is a growing niche of conscious consumers who are opting for quality, wholemeal or sourdough breads. Those who continue to consume bread are doing so more frequently and with better criteria, which indicates a polarisation of the market."
