Links - 19th September 2026 (2 - Homelessness)

A judge just hallucinated that homelessness is the same as race or sex | National Post - "an Ontario Superior Court judge ruled that the Region of Waterloo cannot clear a 30-person tent encampment from a parking lot in downtown Kitchener, even though the region owns the lot. The municipality has been trying to do so as part of its plans to build the Kitchener Central Transit Hub, which will eventually connect local and regional bus and light rail services, along with VIA Rail (the kind of integrated transit infrastructure Canadian cities are constantly told they need more of). People have been living in tents on the site since 2021. The region has spent three years trying to clear them through the courts. It passed a bylaw. When the bylaw was challenged, it amended it. It removed the $5,000 fines for people who refused to leave. It created a transition policy to help residents find alternative housing. It offered individualized housing plans to every resident. None of it was enough. To use its own land, the judge ruled, the region must first provide an alternative legal encampment site or a formal “tenting protocol” with equivalent services. The absurdity of the decision is obvious to any sensible observer, but the case is just the latest in a disturbing trend in how this country is governed. Buried in the 88-page decision is yet another instance of an Ontario court overturning settled law to invent a new constitutional right, and in the process imposing a policy outcome that no elected government has voted for and no majority of Canadians has ever endorsed. The number of cases where courts use the Charter to invent new rights and impose the policy fever dreams of out-of-touch progressive activists has become impossible to ignore. The crux of the decision begins at paragraph 204 of the ruling. There, Ontario Superior Court Justice Michael R. Gibson declares that homelessness should be recognized as an “analogous ground” under Section 15 of the Charter, meaning a protected characteristic alongside race, sex, religion, and disability. Homeless people, Gibson writes, possess a “constructively immutable characteristic” and constitute a “discrete and insular minority.” Faced with the awkward fact that homelessness, unlike race or sex, is not actually permanent, he concedes (he has to) that homelessness is transitory. He then asserts this does not matter, because such characteristics are, “while they last,” beyond an individual’s conscious control. Read that twice. Homelessness is immutable, except that it isn’t, but it should be treated as though it is. The judge has redefined “immutable” to mean its opposite. The reasoning would not survive a first-year constitutional law tutorial, and yet there it sits, in a published Superior Court ruling, as the basis for a substantial expansion of equality rights in Canadian law. This argument has been tried before and lost... If the ruling stands, every municipal bylaw in Canada that differentially affects homeless people (encampment clearances, park rules, public-space regulations, loitering provisions) becomes a potential equality-rights violation. And this is not an isolated mistake. Last summer, a different Ontario Superior Court judge struck down provincial legislation removing bike lanes from three Toronto streets, on the grounds that removing the lanes violated cyclists Section 7 rights to life and security of the person. A de facto constitutional right to bike lanes, found by a single judge, against the explicit will of an elected legislature. The pattern across both rulings is strikingly similar. Identify a sympathetic group. Connect their circumstances to a Charter provision. Then tell elected officials what they may or may not do, or what they must affirmatively provide, regardless of what voters and their representatives have decided. Notice that the Charter’s text is endlessly elastic in the direction of the activist class’s preferred outcomes, and remarkably inflexible in any other direction. What has happened, slowly and then quickly, is that a particular reading of the Charter has captured much of the legal academy and the bench. On this reading, the Charter does not merely constrain government action that violates clear individual rights. It empowers courts to assess the substantive outcomes of any law, identify groups disadvantaged by those outcomes, and order remedies that turn out to look identical to progressive social policy. More bike lanes. More tenting protocols. More positive obligations imposed on public bodies. More constraints on resource development. The Charter’s framers in 1982 did not intend this. The text does not require it. No Canadian government has ever been elected on a platform of delegating social policy to the courts. But this is what we have, because the people who decide what the Charter means have decided it should be so. There is a remedy. Section 33 of the Charter (the notwithstanding clause) was designed for exactly this kind of judicial overreach. Both Section 7 and Section 15 fall within its scope. The Region of Waterloo cannot invoke it on its own; but the Ontario legislature can. Thirteen Ontario mayors have been asking Ford to do precisely that since October 2024, when the mayors of Sudbury, Cambridge, Guelph, and ten other municipalities signed a joint letter requesting that the province invoke Section 33 to allow encampment clearances, following earlier court rulings. Ford declined and tried a softer route: the Safer Municipalities Act and $75.5 million for homelessness prevention. The judiciary responded by going further still, inventing a new analogous ground and demanding tenting protocols as the price of regional governance. The case for Section 33 was strong then. It is overwhelming now. That the notwithstanding clause is widely treated by the legal commentariat as illegitimate to invoke is itself part of the problem. The clause exists for moments like this. Decades of constitutional commentary, much of it produced by the same legal class now driving the expansion of Charter rights from the bench, have insisted that using Section 33 is undemocratic, anti-rights, even authoritarian. The result is a Charter in which one half (the rights provisions, indefinitely expandable by judges) is treated as sacred, whilst the other half (the democratic override) is treated as a constitutional taboo. Nobody voted for the judge who wrote paragraph 204. Nobody can vote him out. But Ontarians did vote for the legislature that can override him. Decisions like this are likely to continue until somebody with political authority decides that the democratic legitimacy of elected legislatures is worth defending against a judiciary that has, quietly and with the full approval of most of the legal class, made itself this country’s most consequential legislature."
Damn automobile lobby making it impossible to build public transit! We need to ban cars!
This is why left wingers hate the notwithstanding clause so much - it (temporarily) blocks legislating from the bench to push the left wing agenda

guyfelicella🇨🇦🍁 on X - "Let me break it down for everyone 👇🏼   Everyone is upset that an Ontario judge said you can’t just keep displacing homeless people.  Here’s an idea: stop complaining about homeless people and start demanding governments actually house people. Then maybe the courts wouldn’t have to step in to protect basic human rights.  You can’t oppose encampments, oppose supportive housing, oppose shelters, oppose affordable housing, oppose mental health supports  and then complain that homelessness still exists.  You don’t solve homelessness by pushing people from one sidewalk to another. You solve it by giving people somewhere to go."
Ben Woodfinden on X - "This is a nice strawman.   The Region of Waterloo offered every encampment resident an individualized housing plan. It dropped fines. It created a transition policy. The court said none of it mattered.   What the judge actually did here, and what you're conspicuously not mentioning, is declare homelessness a constitutionally protected class under s.15 of the Charter, something courts have previously refused to do, including in this very case three years ago. You're happy about it because the judge happens to share your policy preferences.   That's all this is. An activist class that can't win these fights democratically cheering when judges do it for them."

Judge rules taxpayers must fund housing where homeless can smoke crack | Toronto Sun - "In effect, Gibson is saying that the people in this encampment cannot be moved until they are provided with housing that they find adequate. The people behind this challenge don’t want to stay in shelters, they don’t want to stay in motels paid for by the local government. They want the region to provide them with housing option where they can continue to smoke crack, smoke meth and consume opioids without judgment.  That’s not an exaggeration — it is in the judgment.  “Emergency shelters are not always appropriate or available for people who lack capacity, have serious mental health, and/or substance use issues,” Gibson writes.  He notes that some people have been barred from shelters due to persistent illegal drug use, which is not allowed in the shelters, but then also says the motels offered by the city are not sufficient.  “Motels do not provide the levels of support required for high-needs individuals; behavioural issues frequently lead to eviction and unsupervised drug use can lead to overdose with no one nearby to notice or assist (a risk that may be mitigated by the ‘buddy system’ in the encampment),” he writes. Gibson arrives at his conclusions by interpreting Canada’s Charter, not in the way it is written but rather through the lens of several United Nations declarations and even a non-binding report.  Citing the UN Special Rapporteur on the Right to Housing and their National Protocol for Homeless Encampments in Canada report, Gibson invented a new right to housing and stated the government must provide it.  “Adequate alternative housing, with all necessary amenities, must be provided to all residents prior to any eviction,” he wrote.  That line effectively turns Canada’s Charter on its head from a document that protects citizens from government overreach, such as the government trampling on your rights, into one where the government is obligated to provide certain services to you at certain levels. This would hand over control of how our country is run from our elected officials to appointed judges, who, as Ford said, answer to no one."

Ford blasts judges, threatens notwithstanding clause over encampments - "Elizabeth MacIsaac, president of the anti-poverty organization Maytree, said it is “deeply disappointing” to hear Ford discussing the notwithstanding clause again. “Sec. 33 wasn’t set up as a ‘get out of jail free’ card. It has a purpose, and its purpose is to protect the most vulnerable, not to enable a government to override the rights of the most vulnerable. I think it’s the wrong tool for what he wants to achieve,” MacIsaac said. “If Premier Ford wants to see encampments gone, there is an answer to that. And it’s not taking away their rights; it is providing the housing needed, the deeply affordable options for housing that would allow people to live with dignity. But this government hasn’t done that.”"
Only groups the left loves have rights. Ordinary people have no rights

Murder, floods, disorder: Granville strip crime and chaos at untenable levels, hospitality industry says - "“What is happening is continual public disorder, open drug use, and mental health episodes that are frankly scary,” Kershaw said from inside the Roxy Cabaret... business owners saying rising crime and disorder are making Granville’s nightlife and tourism district untenable. Kershaw said nearly 31 fires and the water flowing down from units at St. Helen’s Hotel, the SRO above his club, have caused more than 100 floods in his business, while repeated false fire alarms have driven away customers. “The loss of sales due to this disruption, for me personally, is now in the six figures.” “We’re asking the NDP government to move quickly to relocate these residents to supportive housing that properly serves their needs, and allow business owners to restore the entertainment district Vancouver deserves,” Kershaw said. Crime and emergency calls have surged in the area since the SRO conversions, according to Vancouver Police Department data collected by the Hospitality Vancouver Association. Police and fire services responded to roughly 6,641 calls at the three SROs between 2020 and 2025, an increase of more than 800 per cent compared with the year before the conversions, spokesperson Laura Ballance said. “We give you a snapshot of the past 10 days on this street: a daytime murder in the middle of a busy work week, a major fire with a resulting flood, other smaller floods, and a sharp escalation in street disorder,” Ballance said. Vancouver Police Chief Const. Steve Rai said Thursday that the three social housing buildings in question have generated 18 times more police calls per capita than the rest of the city. “Residents in these buildings are 12 to 16 times more likely to experience violent crime,” Rai said. He added that B.C.’s closing of The Luugat hotel was a step in the right direction."
Clearly, all you need to house people and everything will be okay. Greedy business owners need to shut up and not persecute defenceless homeless people/i>

After fatal stabbing, HVA calls Granville Street SROs ‘a failed experiment’ - "Vancouver police are investigating after a man was stabbed and killed on Granville Street on Monday afternoon... members of the Hospitality Vancouver Association (HVA) are expressing concern after the brazen daylight incident.  The man was stabbed and killed across from the Luugat single-room occupancy housing (SRO) on Granville Street.  “Today, our organization reiterates our ongoing concerns related to the situation on Granville Street, which is dangerous and unsustainable,” the HVA said in a statement.  “We recognize and appreciate the efforts of the Vancouver Police Department to keep the area safe but feel that it is increasingly clear that the BC Housing decision to locate over 300 SRO beds into a concentrated two block stretch of Granville Street is a failed experiment.”  The HVA says it has been calling for the permanent closure of SROs along Granville Street for years... The HVA said there are two other “highly problematic” SROs located within two blocks of each other on Graville Street that are “a real threat to public safety and need to be closed immediately.” In June, the provincial government announced plans to transition supportive housing out of the Granville Street entertainment district, according to Vancouver Mayor Ken Sim.  This announcement came after a fire broke out in the Luugat building on the strip, leaving two people needing treatment for smoke inhalation.  The B.C. government bought the building at 1176 Granville in 2020, and controversially converted it to housing as it sought to shelter the city’s homeless during the COVID-19 pandemic quickly.  It has since generated thousands of emergency calls, with residents setting fires, pulling fire alarms and setting off the building’s sprinkler systems."
Trust the Experts! Double down on Housing First! Formerly homeless people only set fires, pull fire alarms and set off sprinklers because of discrimination and stigma, so we cannot punish them!

After fatal stabbing, HVA calls Granville Street SROs ‘a failed experiment’ : r/ilovebc - "Less idiots than ideologically homogeneous activist-researchers.  When each "study" on this phenomenon qualifies the research conducted and the data presented to conform to the authors' ideological perspective then all credibility should be lost.  A major contributor to such junk science that has unilaterally informed our policies created to address the issue has been the proliferation of "trauma-informed principles" from therapy venues to institutions foundational to our society.  When activist-researchers rely on the stories of purported oppression and traumatic experiences offered as excuses for addiction and antisocial behaviour by addicts, and when such self-serving diatribes are uplifted to a level of unimpeachable truth based purely on identitarian principles and without further investigation, much-less corroboration, then the data which is presented should be ridiculed -- not implemented.  When each study over the past 30 years that is accepted and implemented is produced and influenced by a minority of socialist extremists hiding behind purportedly non-partisan NGOs and other activist organizations -- such as the Canadian Drug Policy Coalition, DULF, or VANDU -- then the solutions offered cannot possibly diverge from the praxis of the activist-researchers' chosen ideology.  If more socialism for the lumpenproletariat was the answer then the population of addicts in the DTES would not have grown exponentially in the 25 years since the Four Pillars strategy was implemented.  If utopian narratives surrounding the nature of addiction were accurate then our "trauma-informed" approach to the antisocial behaviours associated with addiction wouldn't have created a new class of repeat-criminals called prolific offenders.  If giving addicts the redistributed wealth of those who actually contribute to society through an ever-expanding suite of entitlements led to positive outcomes then the overdose rate wouldn't have risen 500% since the implementation of the Four Pillars strategy."
"Obviously this is a great comment, I just want to point out that we never really executed on the “four pillars”. To suggest Four Pillars = 500% increase in overdose deaths isn’t completely fair. Harm reduction, prevention, treatment, and enforcement all should have involved housing, access to means in a medical setting, re-socialization, etc.  We basically just turned a blind eye to open use of illicitly sold drugs, tested some of the street supply to prevent a few deaths, slapped a sticker on it and called it the Canadian Drugs and Substances Strategy. And then we got hostile with our neighbors/local businesses when they complained about the effects of being near SRO/SIS."

Undercover TTC agent : r/askTO - "Saw some uniformed guys the other day, asked everyone for pop except the smelly homeless guy in the back of the car who was having an episode. Gotta love how the TTC is more concnered with collecting their pound of flesh than it is making transit safe for paying riders. This city is a joke."
Undercover TTC agent : r/askTO - "Yet they do nothing about tweakers on the streetcars or subways, needles thrown around the TTC, people jumping onto the tracks causing hour delays, etc etc. the list goes on.  But thank goodness they stopped this one dude from not tapping, that’ll surely improve the quality of transit in Toronto."
"Not only are they doing nothing, they are actively encouraging it. I have witnessed TTC employees working at the ticket booths open the gates to let unhoused/ mentally disturbed people in for free. They don’t want to deal with them so they let them into the subway and trap them with us."
Another aspect of anarcho-tyranny. Naturally, at least one person went around lecturing others about having no "empathy"

Anthony Furey: Toronto's radical plan to turn all homeless shelters into drug sites - "The City of Toronto’s shelter system is still guided by radical policies that encourage the city to hire active drug addicts to staff their programs, push for drugs and drug kits to be provided in abstinence-based facilities and even require that all shelters with children residing in them provide drug services... When it comes to hiring drug addicts at facilities, the document says that: “Shelter programs should plan for the intentional integration of people who use drugs into their staff team.” Paid duties can include helping friends shoot up. Drug dealers are drawn to the vicinity of injection sites because that’s where they find their client base. If a shelter has active drug users employed on site, this suggests that even staff will be liaising with dealers. It’s this sort of twisted attitude that got us to the point where a staff member at the Leslieville drug site was criminally charged for helping a drug dealer when a young mother was killed in drug warfare crossfire as opposed to helping the actual victim. They also seem to want to ruin the chances of people to keep clean. “Abstinence-based shelters are an important option for some people in the shelter system with lived and living experience of drug use,” the guide notes. “While these programs may not directly provide the fullest spectrum of harm reduction services, they remain accountable for employing a harm reduction approach, ensuring that their residents who use drugs are enabled to do so in the safest ways possible.” An abstinence-based shelter would be one where people are not supposed to be doing drugs. They are abstaining. So, no, the people in these shelters should not be “enabled” to use them and yet here we have a city guidebook telling them to make it happen. When it comes to shelters designed to house children along with their parents, the guide informs us that “family shelters are required to use a harm reduction approach to drug use. Family shelter operators are tasked with supporting safer drug use practices, while upholding legislative requirements and identifying any substantive risks to children and the family unit.” Right, because advertising a shelter for children and then enabling hard drug use on site is somehow not a risk to those children? Let’s be very clear on one point here: These are not policies just for drug injection sites. These are policies for all the homeless shelters within the City of Toronto. And the document makes no mention of ways to support people in getting off of drugs. If there is a shelter coming to your neighbourhood, in any form, it will not just be a place for people seeking something to eat and refuge from the cold — which is what well-intentioned people of all political leanings typically think of as a shelter. It will actually, if it’s following these guidelines, be a facility staffed by drug addicts who promote open drug use in the presence of children. What’s concerning is that this guidebook is not new. While it is posted as a current resource alongside other 2025 city documents, it was first authored in 2021. In other words, this has been doing the bureaucratic rounds for almost five years and no adult in the room has yet stepped in to have it removed."

‘Black mandated’ homeless shelter on way, city hall confirms - "Toronto officials are taking applications until Friday for city council’s new “Black-mandated” shelter, where everyone from employees to the homeless could be excluded on the basis of race.  City Hall has also decreed that experience in running a shelter is not a requirement for those submitting applications... The B3 shelter competition follows a similar process for an Indigenous shelter, which could move to construction as soon as this year."
Left wingers love racial segregation

Northern Ont. man defies eviction threat, vows to remain in self-built dwelling : r/OntarioNews - "He should go be homeless downtown anywhere. Somehow thats better."

Northern Ont. man defies eviction threat, vows to remain in self-built dwelling : r/OntarioNews - "People are missing the real issue. The reason he had to build a dangerous shed to live in is because of a local bylaw preventing him from using an RV. Normally, that would be fine, but there is a housing crisis. There are literal cities of tents. Higher levels of government should step in here and end those bylaws, at least until the crisis is over. An RV is perfectly safe. The municipality should be absolutely ashamed for not letting this man live in an RV on his own land during a crisis."
"The problem is they don't get their cut, the costs for the permits and licenses, inspections and what not is owed to them and they want it. Doesn't matter that Canada is burning to the ground around us as long as they get their cut."
Proof that capitalism has failed!

Jonathan Kay on X - "The media’s love affair with homeless encampments continues. A main reason people set them up is to use drugs (banned in shelters). The camps destroy local civic life, & (as in this case) can be fire hazards. There were just 12 ppl here, all of whom were offered shelter space"

Half of Toronto's and 42% of Ottawa's homeless population consists of asylum seekers, fed funding for asylum seekers housing to fall from 95% in 2025/26 to 0% in 27/28 : r/TorontoRealEstate - "Why do we willingly bankrupt ourselves?"
"It helps destroy the middle class and it gives more power to the elites."
"Best way to keep a populace in line is to make them dependent on the government.  Like a quarter of them working for the government."
Clearly, the solution is to virtue signal even harder and encourage the whole Third World to go live there

Longtime tenants no longer feel safe in 55-plus building providing housing to homeless people - "Complaints about drug activity, drinking, thefts and break-ins have prompted a provincial investigation into the safety of a 55-plus social housing complex in Winnipeg's North End.  In interviews last week, residents in the Canadian Polish Manor at 300 Selkirk Ave. said the eight-storey rent-geared-to-income building used to be a peaceful and comfortable place to live, but that started changing last summer.   That's when new tenants with backgrounds of homelessness and addiction, along with other complex needs, started moving in, says Allison Bailey, 62.  "They just brought in anybody, and that's when a lot of the problems really started," said Bailey, who has lived in the building for two years... Richard Stein, 73, who has lived in the building nearly eight years, says in recent months, copper wiring has been stripped from laundry machine power cables and flat-screen televisions in common areas have been stolen. Garbage, discarded needles and human waste have been found in shared spaces... while CBC was in the building speaking with tenants in the lobby, Stein — who has had a tracheostomy, lives with cancer and uses a cane — chased away a man who appeared to be intoxicated, after the man followed someone in through the locked front doors.  "This is what we go through 24 f--ing seven," Stein said. "No f--ing security."... Agnes Breton, 73, who has lived in the building 11 years, said tenants have found people sleeping or passed out in laundry rooms.  "My daughter wants me to move out so badly," she said. People who live there once enjoyed sitting together outside but no longer feel safe doing so, Breton said.  "There's people yelling outside," she said. "The police are here a lot more now because of what's been happening."  Resident Freda Campbell, 69, needed help from police after someone recently discharged bear spray in the hallway of her floor... She's now using a security bar in her suite to prevent people from breaking in.  And Isabelle Lewis, 74, an avid sewer who's lived in the building for five years, previously used an eighth-floor common area with tables for pool and tennis table to lay out her fabric, but she doesn't feel safe using that space anymore. "I'm afraid," Lewis said. "This is not a safe haven."  A Polish restaurant operating out of the building has also had break-ins, with food and cash stolen, said Teresa Szpakowski, who works in the kitchen... Residents were reminded in a recent memo to report any drug-related activity, prostitution, assault, unlawful use of firearms and any other situations that threaten the health, safety or well-being of tenants.  Housing advocates have expressed concern that the provincial NDP government's focus on housing people experiencing chronic homelessness has made other low-income Manitobans, including seniors and families, less of a priority."
These seniors are just awful, terrible, heartless people. They need more "empathy".
When you vote NDP, you're just asking for more Needles, Drugs and Poverty
More proof that the solution to homelessness is just to house people! It's so simple and evil conservative governments just want homeless people to die by not doing that

Canada Proud | Facebook - "The Liberals spent $1.2 MILLION on a project to "help" homeless veterans. The actual project? Giving out cameras to homeless people to take pictures while staff at Egale Canada, a Liberal-funded LGBT organization, handed out nearly $1 MILLION to their own staff. The staff promised they would include the homeless veterans' photos in an art exhibit. Housing minister Gregor Robertson approved this disgraceful project. He needs to resign immediately."
If you don't spend more money on homelessness, you're heartless, lack empathy and want homeless people to die

T.D. Leaker on X - "A Canadian university conducted an actuarial study and concluded 60% of new homeless tent owners were displaced due to high housing costs as a direct result of immigration policy and insatiably appetite for low wage earners. The study was buried for fear of being seen as racist - risking funding."

Managing Risky Behaviours and Challenges to Prevent Housing Loss in Permanent Supportive Housing - "Approximately 10-20% of individuals experience difficulties in PSH that can result in eviction, recurrent homelessness, and/or rehospitalization."
Managing high-risk behaviours and challenges to prevent housing loss in permanent supportive housing: a rapid review - " in an examination of over 12,000 supportive housing applicants in Toronto, Canada, 20.3% had a history of suicide attempts, 17.7% were perpetrators or victims of physical assault, 14.7% had engaged in non-suicidal self-injury, 8.0% had fire safety concerns, 7.9% had damaged property, and 5.9% engaged in hoarding behaviours"
Clearly, the way to end homelessness is to just give homeless people houses, which they can burn down and/or destroy, and where they can kill themselves and beat up other people

Harvard Scandal Proves Science Is Broken

From 2025:

Harvard Scandal Proves Science Is Broken | National Review
Harvard’s dishonest expert on honesty is a poignant symbol of a far larger problem in academia: ideological allegiance replacing the quest for truth. 

A once-prominent Harvard University professor was stripped of her tenure and fired this week for outright fabricating data on numerous academic studies of dishonesty and unethical behavior. The timing couldn’t be worse for Harvard: The troubled university currently faces a critical dispute over funding and foreign student visas with the Trump administration. 

Francesca Gino was regularly cited as an authority by prominent left-leaning outlets such as National Public Radio and the New York Times. Both outlets now admit that Gino’s research was likely fabricated. Disturbingly, the flaws in her research were exposed not by the allegedly robust university system of peer review, but by a series of posts by science bloggers. 

No professor has had tenure revoked at Harvard since the 1940s, when the rules for doing so were formalized, according to the Harvard Crimson. This is the academic nuclear option. 

Gino’s first retracted study showed evidence of data fabrication all the way back in 2021, and an investigation into her academic dishonesty lasted for the following two years. Gino initially blamed errors by her research assistants or potential tampering by an unknown outside party. She was placed on leave in March 2023. 

Gino maintains her innocence and states on her private website, “There is one thing I know for sure: I did not commit academic fraud. I did not manipulate data to produce a particular result.” On the site, she explains why she filed a lawsuit against Harvard for $25 million in damages, citing reputation damage and lost income. A federal judge dismissed Gino’s claims against Harvard last September.

She received more than $1 million in compensation annually and was the university’s fifth-highest-paid employee in 2018 and 2019, according to the Harvard Crimson. The lengthy tenure and high pay of Gino shows just how far the university’s standards have slipped in allowing this level of fraud for 15 years. 

When independent bloggers and scientists looked at the data, it became clear that she was both exaggerating the size of “nudge” effects and outright fabricating any effect of nudges on behavior. Much of Gino’s research repeatedly tested a series of arbitrary data combinations until arriving at the desired statistical correlation she wanted to believe. 

Specifically, Gino’s “research” was aligned with progressive assumptions about how the world works, stating that small “nudges,” such as putting the signature for an honesty pledge at the start of a form as opposed to its end, can alter human behavior in this case. This type of research was of great interest to the Obama administration, which weaponized it in an attempt to “improve” human behavior in accordance with its ideals. Attempts to change human nature in this manner have long been central to leftist politics. 

Essentially, Gino was designing her studies to generate evidence for a belief favorable to progressives, which effectively ensured that very few in her elite left-wing circles questioned it. She was telling academia what it wanted to hear, so very few looked deeply into it, and instead widely cited it. 

When I previously wrote about this scandal in July 2023, I predicted this was “just the tip of the iceberg,” which has sadly been borne out by recent events. 

Shortly afterward, Harvard’s president, Claudine Gay, was ousted for plagiarism following investigations by conservative outlets and activists. Media publications focused at first not on the more than 50 clear examples of plagiarism, but instead on the fact that conservatives were the ones finding the plagiarism . . . and of course asked “how serious was it really?” while noting that Harvard’s own board found “no violations of Harvard’s standard for research misconduct.” That’s exactly the problem!

This tenacious redefinition of plagiarism to benefit Harvard’s president followed her testimony before Congress that calling for the genocide of Jews would violate the university’s rules only “depending on the context.” 

Politically motivated lying for advancement shouldn’t be surprising, as it’s incredibly easy for researchers to slightly alter their conclusions to fit a progressive narrative, knowing that such results are “too good to check.” 

Like Gino, any social scientist who wants an academic career has a very clear incentive to select only a study design or a dataset that is likely to generate results that are uncontroversial in academia. According to the Harvard Crimson, fewer than 3 percent of Harvard faculty members identify their personal political leanings as “conservative” or “very conservative,” while 32 percent identify as “very liberal” while another 45 percent identify as merely “liberal.” Any group politically polarized to this extent will have a difficult time arriving at the truth without injecting ideological bias, as the easiest way to advance is clearly to flatter the preconceptions of progressive faculty. 

This creates a kind of ideological streetlight effect, in which researchers uncritically accept studies that favor their ideological preconceptions.

An excellent example of this occurred in 2015, when University of California, Los Angeles, doctoral candidate Michael LaCour faked data in a political science study to “prove” that gay canvassers could change voters’ minds in favor of LGBT causes through brief conversations. The resulting study, co-authored with a Columbia University professor, received an immense amount of media attention, including from the New York Times, which set LaCour on an easy path to academic success, even landing him a coveted job offer to become an assistant professor at Princeton University. When it was revealed that LaCour seemingly never conducted any study at all and simply made up the data, Princeton University rescinded its offer, and the New York Times was left asking, “How could this happen?” 

Science is failing because of the strong incentives to lie to flatter progressive sensibilities. Work that flatters them advances and gets promoted in the media. Work that doesn’t is met with direct censorship by the powers that be in universities.

But it’s actually worse than that. 

Most universities — including my own graduate alma mater of George Mason University, with its famously pro-free-market economics program — flat-out demand that potential scientists sign loyalty oaths to “anti-racism” as a condition of employment. Mason demands that “every member of our community” create “an inclusive and equitable campus environment in which every member of our community, without exception, is valued, supported, and experiences a sense of belonging” so that “George Mason University will become a national exemplar of anti-racism and inclusive excellence.” 

Major scientific journals such as Nature openly refuse to publish politically incorrect ideas. Given the incredible pressure of the academic job market, these measures ensure that true inquiry is effectively impossible. 

By definition, such motivated reasoning cannot be truly considered science, as it openly coerces prospective researchers not to investigate their chosen fields outside of strict political boundaries. 

As one of GMU’s own tenured professors pointed out, the wording of GMU’s diversity statement is more severe than the infamous McCarthy-era loyalty oaths to America that progressives still are complaining about decades later. 

“A devout Leninist revolutionary could honestly swear this oath as long as he doesn’t belong to an organization that advocates the government’s violent overthrow,” libertarian GMU economist Bryan Caplan wrote on his blog about a UC Berkeley anti-communist oath from 1950. “Furthermore, he could belong to an alternative Communist Party dedicated to establishing Communism by democratic means. In sharp contrast, diversity statements really do demand your outright, wholehearted agreement with DEI.” 

Harvard’s dishonest expert on honesty is a poignant symbol of a far larger problem in academia: ideological allegiance replacing the quest for truth. Science is dead, and the left killed it. 

 

Weird. Left wingers tell us that white academics are never fired or investigated for dishonesty, fraud and/or plagiarism, unlike black ones like Claudine Gay and Jason Arday.

Ignorant bloggers should just Trust the Science and Trust the Experts. If their findings are not peer-reviewed, they're not credible. 

Links - 19th September 2026 (1 - General Wokeness)

The Way Some Gamers Talk About Pragmata's Diana Is Disgusting, And Must Be Stopped - "I have not yet played Pragmata"

Meet Farah Ahmed, Jason Arday’s colleague | The Spectator - "During her time at Cambridge, she has written that the Islamic concept of education is sharply opposed to ‘gaining literacy and numeracy and other disciplinary skills demonstrated through qualifications’... Most popular Melanie McDonagh The tragedy of Jason Arday The tragedy of Jason Arday James Dixon Nothing beats writing by hand Andrew Gilligan Why is Cambridge platforming Islamic creationism? Ahmed is now responsible for postgraduate research in education at Britain’s top university, and for teaching undergraduate students, the future leaders of the profession, ‘how education shapes individuals and society.’... in any subject, boys and girls may be asked to work together. ‘As Muslim parents we try to protect our children from the rubbish that western society encourages’, but interaction with non-Muslim children in the playground, which is ‘full of the competitiveness and individualism that western culture encourages… moulds their personalities away from Islam.’ As she puts it: ‘western culture is playground culture.’ Ahmed first came to public attention in 2009, when I exposed the fact that she was running two private primary schools, and getting more than £100,000 in public money to do so. At least three of the four trustees of the schools were Hizb ut-Tahrir members or activists, including the wife of Hizb’s then-leader, and the schools’ curriculum closely matched key tenets of Hizb ut-Tahrir’s separatist, anti-democratic ideology... The story caused a political row, but predictably enough the then schools secretary Ed Balls, the Charity Commission and Ofsted did absolutely nothing. Ahmed went on TV, presenting herself as a poster girl for Muslim persecution, though coyly refusing to answer when asked if she had ever been a member of Hizb ut-Tahrir. The two schools, in Haringey and Slough, continue to receive public funding (£382,000 last year) and Ahmed is still a trustee of the body which runs them. Now, however, she has rather clearly moved up in the world... As well as being an assistant professor at the university itself, Ahmed is director of something called the Islamic Educator Learning Community (IELC), part of Camtree, the Cambridge Teacher Research Exchange. Camtree is a centre at Hughes Hall, the Cambridge University college where Ahmed is a research fellow and member of the governing body. In summer 2023, IELC, Camtree and Cambridge University ran a conference on Islam, science and education to ‘recognise the role of science as part of a wider modernist and colonial project’, and to ‘consider challenges’ to the view that ‘sees science as “objective knowledge”’. Ahmed was one of the organisers. In December 2023, Ahmed and Cambridge University also organised a conference to ‘unlearn conventional teacher education and move toward Islamically grounded teacher development’. This attacked the ‘secular, neoliberal system of education’ as ‘anti-metaphysical’, and said that teachers ‘need to re-centre our focus on preparing the Muslim learner for the akhira,’ everlasting life after death... IELC’s website promotes (though claims it does not endorse) a site called ‘Salafi Homeschool’. This attacks the fact that ‘many Muslims openly participate’ in celebrating Christmas and warns that ‘repeated exposure [to non-Muslim festivals] can lead to normalisation. Without clear teaching, children may begin to associate happiness, generosity, and togetherness with non-Islamic celebrations instead of the occasions Allah has chosen for this ummah.’ ‘Whether it is “just a roast,” “just a birthday cake,” or “just presents for the children,” these actions blur the clear boundaries of the deen,’ it continues. Salafi Homeschool also warns that by going to state schools Muslim pupils may asked to ‘sing songs with messages that conflict with Islamic values’, or ‘join activities like mixed-gender dancing’... If gaining qualifications in literacy is wrong, if scientific truth is a colonial construct, and if celebrating Christmas is forbidden, we really are almost back to the world of Ahmed’s old Hizb pamphlet, where English is dangerous, fairy tales are evil and biology is blasphemy. Only this time, dressed up in slightly prissier language for a gullible academic audience, it is happening at the heart of the British educational establishment. Once again, I predict, the authorities will do absolutely nothing, ignoring all the evidence outlined in this article. The case of assistant professor Farah Ahmed will become the latest exhibit in the gradual suicide of Britain and the West. When Ahmed says that British society is corrupt, her appointment to this job proves she is surely right."

Meme - "*Superman*
>Maybe the 225 million dollar written-by-comittee Hollywood movie designed for inoffensive mass appeal is the real punk rock"

Meme - "Jesus said "my kingdom is not of this world" so that means you have to stop opposing my... I mean... the left's agenda. The gospel must come first, my dear Christian brothers and sisters"

The Irish Politics Newsletter on X - "This is shocking. At an EU Foreign Affairs Committee meeting, Lynn Boylan lamented that it was “a pity we can’t use our own language.” When it was pointed out that she could, in fact, speak Irish, she backtracked almost instantly: "I wasn’t prepared, so I’ll use English.""
Adam 🇺🇦 on X - "This is superb. Sinn Fein MEP scolds the European parliament for not providing interpreters to let her speak in Irish. She's told that the Irish interpreters are present. She flubs for a moment and then continues in English, because she doesn't actually speak Irish"

Daniel on X - "Remember when people on TikTok were mind blown by Osama bin Ladin’s letter to America and then you go and read it and it’s like “we want to kill Jews. Why do you stop us from killing Jews.”"
Thread by @simonsarris on Thread Reader App – Thread Reader App - "yeah the letter reads like almost comic villainy. "Civilians deserve it, we hate you for your freedoms(!) especially gambling and loaning money with interest, alcohol, various acts of fornication, your anti-WMD stance, and choosing your own laws instead of taking Shariah law"he shoehorns in a lot of what he must have assumed at the time were wedge issues, though many were years out of date by then (AIDs, industrial pollution, clinton scandal). Also strangely incest, which is astronomically higher in Islamic countries. Grasping at anything.despite the grasping, as we saw on tiktok, it works. You don't need to do more than button mash issues to get people to think you've said something intelligent. If you have a 1-in-30 hit rate, if the 1 grazes their political ideals, even if the rest go against, it seems to work!"
We are still told that Islamists do not hate the West for its freedoms

Basil the Great on X - "🚨NEWS: The release of the transcripts around Henry Nowak's murder have revealed that Police Officers went back 6 years in his phone messages to when he was just 12 years old in an attempt to find anything they could use to describe him as a racist. Sickening"
Allison Pearson on X - "This is deeply upsetting. Police were so desperate to prove Henry Nowak was a racist, even after his murder, they went back years to texts he sent as a kid. Shame on them. @HantsPolice"

Meme - Peter McLoughlin author: "Can you imagine if I tweeted "every single day I resist the urge to kneecap immigrant women"? Would I get to keep my job as Professor of Racist Grievances at Cambridge? In Manifesto (2024) we warned you: when the indigenous people are an ethnic minority by 2041 there will be nothing restraining the violent urges of the immigrants who have been trained to hate us."
Priyamvada Gopal: "I resist urges to kneecap white men every day. So, no **I** am the hero."
Left wingers just hate white men. Though they always deny it.

Meme - Priyamvada Gopal: "I'll say it again. White Lives Don't Matter. As white lives. Abolish whiteness"
Shaista @shaistasalam1: "Wrong. All lives matter."
Priyamvada Gopal: "Yes, all lives matter. White lives as white do not."
Left wingers just hate white people

Meme - Tim Worstall: "Apparently if you note the uneven distribution of epicanthic folds among the population of the world then you're a racist. Note that this is a Professor at Cambridge making this claim. Sigh. That's before we get to the interesting ones like sickle cell, thalassaemia, cystic fibrosis and so on. Even uninteresting ones like the observable differences in an Olympic 100m final, the 1500m final and the marathon. And how are we to explain the basics of skin and eye colour without biological differences?"
Priyamvada Gopal @PriyamvadaGopal: "If you believe in the existence biological racial differences, you are a racist. Hope that clears it up."
Readers added context: "While the term "race" is loaded in the literature, biological difference is not. To quote, "there are obvious physical differences between populations some are strongly inherited". E.g. black people definitionally have higher melanin production than white people."

Prof Ian Pace on X - "Priyamvada Gopal likes to present herself as a subaltern. I prefer to think of her as a diplomat’s daughter. Drowning in privilege."
Cosmopolitan Reactionary on X - "It’s hard to imagine, from a Bioleninist perspective, how attending an elite international school in Vienna wouldn’t have coloured Gopal’s politics and contributed to her intense hatred of the West. Presumably she was surrounded by lots of pretty blonde-haired, blue-eyed Christian girls who had no interest in or deference to the Brahmin status she had enjoyed back in India, and when that came to end she felt it viscerally. Naturally, such women gravitate towards “postcolonial studies”."
Variolation was the thing. Too late now. on X - "Demanding that the college porters call her "Doctor" does indicate that, yes. Spoiled little cow, used to extreme deference from lower labouring classes."

Dr. Insensitive Jerk on X - "Politics is Not "Makers versus Takers." It just seems like it is. The battle of Left vs. Right feels like the battle of Flea vs. Dog, but that's the wrong frame. IMO, the real distinction is not between parasite and host, but rather between two survival strategies: Living off the Earth vs. Living off people.
Those sound like the same thing, so let me phrase them better: Politics is not Makers vs. Takers; it is Producers vs. Influencers. It's not Dog vs. Flea; it's Dog vs. Flea whispering into the dog's ear. This framing is better because it explains our career choices; it predicts more outcomes; and it delivers actionable advice. For example, doctors have historically been mostly Republican, while medical ethicists are overwhelmingly Democrat. (I'm in a doctor family.) Doctors tend to be Republicans because they repair things. Conceptually, doctors are plumbers. They operate on physical objects in the physical world, subject to the discipline of impartial physical laws that cannot or should not be moved with your tongue, and sometimes they get sprayed with bodily fluids. Like plumbers, their performance can be measured objectively. (Did the patient die? How many turds on my kitchen floor?) By contrast, consider medical ethicists: They live entirely within the realm of words, and their performance cannot be measured. That's the kind of job that attracts Leftists. Medical schools are another example, and they show why Producer-vs-Influencer is a better frame than Host-vs-Parasite. (This will also be my first prediction, but it won't impress you because it's already coming true.) Unfortunately, while "Doctor" is a producer job, "Medical school administrator" is not. Every administrator made the conscious choice to control doctors rather than to become one. The administrator's job may be vital, but he doesn't make anything real, or even repair it. That's why, when doctors gratefully handed the tedious administrative tasks over to professional bureaucrats, our medical schools turned hard Left. Now medical students are compelled to pledge their loyalty to wokeness. This is actually true. As professional bureaucrats consolidate their control, squeezing the actual doctors out of medical-school administration, we should expect our future doctors to be more influencers, and less producers. That means you might die, but you won't mind because your young doctor will have a fabulous bedside manner. I predict this trend will continue until doctors re-shoulder the burden of medical school administration, under rules that ensure they remain doctors. To get that prediction from the Parasite-vs-Host framing, we must say that medical school administrators are parasites. Certainly some are, probably most of them, but the sad fact is medical schools need administrators as much as they need plumbers, to perform a vital yet distasteful function so the actual doctors won't have to. Ditto for hospitals, which used to be run by doctors, but are now mostly run by MBAs. Double ditto for medical journals, because "Journal editor" is a pure influence job. Thus the medical journals have all turned extreme Left, even though journal editors are not parasites. An actionable prediction: Any influence position will attract the Leftist-influencer personality type, and repel the producer type. So when you create, say, a medical review board with power to approve or deny drug trials, the people who volunteer to serve will mostly be Democrats.
If you don't like the medical example, let's talk about plumbers. A plumber produces something tangible, so most plumbers are Republicans. Unless his income depends on his union status. (About 25% of plumbers, pipefitters, and steamfitters have union jobs, according to Perplexity, which is usually wrong.) Unions are designed to insulate their members from reality, to allocate jobs and income by seniority or by pull, rather than by output. It's much harder to walk in off the street and get a union job; usually you must know someone. In other words, unions are less about production, and more about influence, so union plumbers will be more Democrat than free-range plumbers. And union administrators will be the most Democrat of all. Some jobs lie midway between producer and influencer. For example, a computer programmer is partly a producer, because he creates a product that must work. His code must execute without error and satisfy the project requirements. However, few programmers face the full test of reality, because their code need not reflect anything in the physical world. The physics in Grand Theft Auto need not be accurate; it only needs to please humans. Thus, coding is a mix of production and influence, so coders are a mix of Republicans, Libertarians, and Democrats. (This is actually true.) I predict the coders who write games are more Democrat than the guys who write CAD software, because CAD physics has to be right, not just look right. You can't get this prediction from the Parasite-vs-Host framing. The influencer personality recoils from the implacable tests of physical reality, so he will avoid producer jobs. By contrast, a producer might take an influence job, because he can satisfy his producing needs elsewhere. A Right-wing author will usually do something real in his spare time, like building his own deck or restoring classic cars. So a few Republicans might volunteer to serve on your Medical Review Board, out of a sense of duty. In a Leftist author's spare time, he will tour wineries. Of all the jobs on Earth, surely the two that are most devoted to pure influence are the politician and the critic. Even an author, who toils in the realm of words, must produce a book. A literary critic does not meet even that low bar. And of course, politics is influence personified, so we should expect most politicians to be the influencer personality type (I.e., Leftist) even if they pretend to be Republicans. So here is my actionable advice: To judge whether a Republican candidate is a RINO imposter, inquire into his hobbies. Ask him to show us a few things he made with his own hands. If he flies a homebuilt airplane, he's a good gamble."

Meme - "The Lesson of the Screw. To build something solid and stable, turn to the RIGHT; to dismantle something, turn to the LEFT."
This is a good response to the supposed Spanish saying about the left liberating and the right oppressing

It’s no wonder respect for the BBC has plummeted - "According to a survey by the think tank Demos, 15 years ago the BBC’s net “pride score” (the proportion of the public expressing pride in the BBC, minus those who did not) was an impressive +48 per cent. Now, reports Demos, that figure is -11 per cent, on a level with “politicians”. Ouch. When the BBC complains that fewer than 80 per cent of households pay the licence fee (actually, 76 per cent by my calculations), despite well over 90 per cent of the population having a legal obligation to do so, it should look closely at a survey like this and be less puzzled. There are parts of BBC output that remain impressive, but overall it is hard to compare it favourably with the peak years of public service broadcasting, in the 1980s and 1990s. The advent of satellite and cable, and more recently broadband streaming, has allowed viewers access to a huge amount of choice, including content enjoying far bigger budgets than the BBC can afford. Unable to compete financially for sports rights in the open market, the BBC is heavily reliant on events that are not allowed to be broadcast on subscription services (the World Cup, the Euros), plus Wimbledon, which is content to preserve its multi-decade relationship with the BBC. Compared with its glory days, these are slim pickings. But it is more than exposure to competition that has undermined the BBC. Its programming choices betray a taste for political correctness that alienates many viewers and listeners. Its online agenda is eclectic to the point of irrelevance. Its occasional editorial mistakes, such as doctoring Donald Trump’s Jan 6 speech, are in sharp contrast to its obligations to impartiality. Its deployment of anti-colonialist historians – such as David Olusoga – leaves it vulnerable to claims of Left-wing bias. These are all self-inflicted wounds. That said, the main reason for the BBC’s decline in public esteem is surely one beyond its control: its displacement as a dominant feature of the media landscape, as a result of technological change. With fewer and fewer people consuming its output, there is less opportunity to build any relationship, let alone pride, or even respect. Drama and comedy are a rarity in the BBC’s output these days, not primarily because of a dearth of talent, but simply because of cost. The BBC is top-heavy with a surfeit of well-paid managers, and thousands of support staff. With revenue effectively static (and declining sharply in real terms), the BBC finds itself relying on cheap elimination contests, reality shows, travelogues and daytime fillers to prop up its schedules. This thin diet would be more noticeable if ITV and Channel 4 had not deteriorated even more than the BBC."
Time to regulate social media, since misinformation is making British people lose trust in the BBC

‘Woke’ is now a dirty word among Democrats - "Socialism may no longer be a dirty word among Democrats, following a wave of hard-Left primary victories, but “woke” certainly is. Prominent progressive figures have distanced themselves from the politics of 2020, when defunding the police and “decolonising” Thanksgiving became articles of faith among the party’s grassroots. That shift could have a seismic effect on the race to be the Democratic presidential nominee in 2028, which is gradually taking shape. In particular, it could spell doom for Kamala Harris, still seen as one of the front-runners in the contest, whose flirtation with woke politics cost her dearly. The 2024 election was a “wake-up call” for the party, according to Lanae Erickson, senior vice-president of Third Way, the centrist Democratic group. Voters saw the party as more extreme than Donald Trump, she said, a “horrifying” result." Ms Harris admitted during her short-lived campaign that she was never fast on her feet, and was haunted throughout by her former support for policies that were beyond the pale for most voters. Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, however, is naturally sure-footed, and managed a deft pivot when she appeared on ABC News on Aug 9. Asked about Francesca Hong, then the Democratic front-runner in the Wisconsin primary with a history of controversial comments, Ms Ocasio-Cortez neither endorsed nor disavowed her. Instead, she laughed it off, saying: “Woke 1 was crazy.” Ms Hong lost that primary, despite what some pollsters had predicted as a double-digit lead... Modern progressives are more ruthless, focused on winning elections while being selective about picking battles, and steering clear of the culture war. Zohran Mamdani is another who has managed to distance himself from his controversial comments... Still, the Left is not out of the woods either. There will still be radical elements who push progressive figures into more hardline stances, and it’s by no means clear what Ms Ocasio-Cortez or some ally will say about the issue of biological men in women’s sports. “AOC was smart to steer clear of Hong and her alienating positions, but many on the Left are still pushing candidates to embrace ideas that will actively repel the swing voters we need to win,” Ms Erickson said."

Giuseppe Conte, leading politician on Italian Left, rejects ‘woke’ ideology - "A leading politician on the Italian Left has rejected “woke” ideology, opening up fractures in the Left-wing alliance that hopes to beat Giorgia Meloni at the next election. The Left’s hopes of presenting a united front are at risk of being undermined by differences, with some politicians cleaving to issues such as LGBTQ rights and others insisting that “woke” agendas needed to be ditched. Giuseppe Conte, a former prime minister who leads the centre-Left Five Star Movement, argues that Italian voters were more preoccupied with low salaries, expensive petrol, hospital waiting lists and the rising cost of living... Mr Conte’s comments were endorsed by Matteo Renzi, another former prime minister, who leads a centre-Left party called Italia Viva. In an editorial on Sunday, he said that if the Left was to beat Ms Meloni’s Right-wing coalition at the next election, it must concentrate on “social issues, economic well-being and people’s daily lives, not woke culture”... Rocco Casalino, a former member of the Five Star Movement and a long-time confidant of Mr Conte, said it was a problem “when a struggle against discrimination becomes a ‘moral religion’, far removed from people’s day-to-day problems”. Mr Casalino, who is openly gay, said some “woke” policies had inadvertently damaged the LGBTQ community, adding: “I’m thinking of women’s sport. If you insist that a transgender person should be considered a biological woman, ignoring the principle of fairness, you give homophobes an excuse to attack the entire struggle for LGBTQ rights.” But not everyone on the Italian Left agrees with him. Ilaria Salis, an MEP, said “woke” culture was “a spectre created by the Right to undermine rights and social justice”... The conservative coalition led by Ms Meloni gleefully accused the Left of suddenly changing tack in the hope of winning votes. The Left “is doing what it did with communism – renouncing it after years of support, having ruined lives,” said Lucio Malan, a senator with the prime minister’s Brothers of Italy party. Ms Meloni touched on woke issues in a rare interview with the New York Times on Friday. In Italy, she is known in as the Presidente del Consiglio or head of the council of ministers. She defended her decision to refer to herself as “il presidente”, using the masculine form, rather than the feminine form “la presidenta”. Feminists have been fighting “the wrong battles”, she said, adding that what was important was the fact that she was able to become Italy’s first female prime minister. She added: “That’s equality, not being called ‘la presidenta’.”"

Simon Sebag Montefiore: Appeasing radical activists will make the West ungovernable - "Montefiore has taken immense care to depict highly charged events as neutrally as possible. “I’m not ideological. I’m not following either a Marxist imperialist or de-colonialist view of history,” he says. “Everyone has forgotten that the creation of Turkey and Israel happened against the will of Empire. Everyone says that it was the British who helped create Israel in 1948, but in fact Israel was an armed revolt against British imperial power… the history is essential for understanding what is happening now: if you want to understand why, for example, president Erdoğan of Turkey keeps talking about wanting to rule Jerusalem, Beirut and Damascus [formerly part of the Ottoman Empire], then it’s all here.” It’s telling that Montefiore feels the need to frame The Cauldron as a primer for the less-informed. Everyone has opinions on the conflict of Israel and Gaza, but many of us would be hard pressed to articulate the finer points of its torturous, millennia-old history. Subjective interpretations of the facts, let alone flat-out ignorance of them, is rampant in the febrile ideological climate that has sprung up with renewed toxicity in the wake of the Hamas attacks. “October 7 changed everything,” he says. “It was years in the planning that did what it was meant to do, which was to put the Palestinian issue at the centre of the world, unleash the ideology of anti-Zionism in Western universities, and nix the Saudis normalising agreements with Israel. The only thing it hasn’t succeeded in is helping the Palestinian people.” The speed and intensity of anti-Israel sentiment that has spread like wildfire through Britain took Montefiore “by surprise”. “There’s nowhere better to live now than Britain or America or France than at any other point in the last 10,000 years,” he says. “Yet that unprecedented comfort, liberalism and freedom have permitted the hothouse of exciting but intolerant radicalisms such as ‘de-colonialisation’, ‘anti-Americanism’, ‘anti-Westernism’, ‘Third-World-ism’ – whatever you want to call it – particularly in many cultural, academic and media institutions in this country.” He thinks that the liberal West has become guilty of ideological complacency. “In the book, I write about the extent to which Western comfort democracies have neglected these institutions and allowed them to manage themselves,” he says – he also means international organisations such as the United Nations and NGOs. “Much of the anti-Western thinking that has sprung up has been driven by a bourgeois graduate activist caste that dominate the NGOsphere and parts of the media, too. But these people specialise in intimidating the middle-aged people who run our main cultural institutions, and it’s essential that our institutions have the courage and principle not to bow to their purity tests and boycotts.” This is one function of democracy: to allow institutions to prosper free from political interference and to promote freedom of speech. “People absolutely have the freedom to preach the destruction of the liberal democracies that protect them,” he agrees. “I’m not in favour of banning or cancelling anybody unless they’re encouraging killing. But a lot of the people on the pro-Palestinian marches in this country, for example, were doing just that. I found myself encountering a few because the Israeli embassy is just around the corner. And while they were full of bien-pensant, white retired-teacher types, whose liberalism one probably couldn’t fault, they were also filled with extreme ideologues, who were backing Iran, and who were backing Hamas.” He thinks that Starmer, who became prime minister nine months after the marches first sprang up, appeased these demonstrations and their anti-Semitic rhetoric, which for months were a weekly feature of London life, partly out of a fear of offending members of Britain’s Muslim community. He fears something similar under Burnham who, days before we meet, apologised for Labour’s failure to immediately demand a ceasefire after Israel launched military action against Hamas (Burnham said that his party “didn’t get it right”). “To Andy, I would say: politicians need to think about the right response for Britain in the wider sense, and not just in the short-term sense of being terrified of losing constituencies,” he says. “The Muslim population greatly enhances this country, but it worries me how scared the Labour Party leadership is of the pro-Palestinian activists. It scares me that when MPs were harassed by [activists] during the election campaign, Labour don’t dare name them.” Has he experienced any abuse himself? “Of course. I’ve received death threats online. But you just have to get on with it.”... Montefiore has long been a champion of a Palestinian state. During the 1990s, he was good friends with the Israeli politicians Yitzhak Rabin and Shimon Peres who, along with Yasser Arafat, won the 1994 Nobel Peace Prize for helping to bring about the 1993 Oslo Accords. “It’s still the only way ultimately to settle the aspirations of both nations and save them from a future of grinding conflict,” he says. On this issue, however, he thinks Starmer failed to project sufficient power on the world stage when it came to international efforts to bring about a ceasefire. “The recognition of a Palestinian state, for instance, was a [virtue-signalling] absurdity that achieved nothing,” he says. “Instead, it revealed Britain’s impotence in the Middle East and it rewarded a genocidal organisation that is much more nihilistic than humanitarian. And I say that as a champion of a [Palestine] that I’m desperate to see established.” By which he means a Palestinian state without Hamas. What, given the options on the table, might that Palestinian state look like? “Hamas must be dismantled, the Board of Peace plan [which involves an international Board of members overseeing the implementation of a peace agreement] is difficult but plausible, the Palestinian Authority provides a possible structure. But it will be very hard. That’s for sure.”... “If politicians continue to appease sectarian or ideological factions on important matters of life and death, on terrorism, on migration and on gender, then Western democracy will become ungovernable,” he adds. “Public discourse has already got more dangerous. You only need to look at the terrible killing of Ann Widdecombe, who personified the idiosyncratic but honest eccentricity that has always been an essential part of British public life.”"

Meme - @starsandtigers: "Always funny when leftists go "Art is left wing" like they aren't constantly double checking and breathing down the necks of every artist, musician, and actor to make sure they're not right wing and making sure they lose everything they have if they are right wing."
Dan @PapistPilled: "So apparently being Catholic makes you a fascist..."
"HUMAN RIGHTS BEGIN IN THE WOMB"
"Gwen Stefani: From Feminist to Fascist" - matt bernstein

Links - 18th September 2026 (2 - Artificial Intelligence)

Meme - "Technologies People Resisted - And the Fears That Didn't Age Well
1. 1860s - Steam Locomotives & Rail Travel
"OAKRIDGE"
"NO IRON HORSES THROUGH OUR TOWN!"
"Too Fast! Too Loud! Too Reckless!"
Cow: "Uh oh ..."
Resistance: Too loud, too fast, too disruptive.
Fear: "Traveling this fast will ruin people's health!"
Fear: "The cows will stop giving milk!"
2. 1880s-1890s - Electric Lights
"Electricity? No Thanks!"
"BRIGHT IDEA OR BAD IDEA?"
Resistance: Why replace safe familiar lamps?
Fear: "Electric light is unnatural!"
Fear: "It will damage eyesight and disturb sleep forever!"
"DAILY HERALD: ELECTRIC LIGHT-A DANGEROUS FAD?"
3. 1900s-1920s -Telephones & Automobiles
"WHY TALK THROUGH A WIRE?"
"Horseless Carriages? Ridiculous!"
Resistance: New machines changing daily life too quickly.
Fear: "Telephones will destroy real conversation!"
Fear: "Cars will make society reckless and horses obsolete!"
4. 1980s-2000s-Personal Computers & the Internet
"KEEP IT REAL!"
"WELCOME TO THE INFORMATION SUPERHIGHWAY!"
Resistance: Why trust screens instead of paper?
Fear: "Computers will make people stop thinking for themselves!"
"BACK TO THE REAL WORLD!"
Fear: "The internet will instantly destroy books and real life!"
"THE INTERNET: TOO BIG! TOO RISKY! TOO WEIRD!"
"Every era has new tools. People often fear change - and many fears turn out to be exaggerated."
Left wingers are terrified of change and don't learn from history

Richard Hanania on X - "Trial lawyers lobby against self-driving cars because they need people to get injured and die. I’m surprised people can be this consciously evil. Usually you need a way to justify what you’re doing."
Trial Lawyers Lobby Against Autonomous Vehicles - "Roughly 37,000–40,000 Americans die in auto accidents every year. We now have large‑scale, real‑world evidence—from Waymo and a joint analysis with Swiss Re—that driverless operations can be substantially safer than matched human driving within their current operating domains. The latest data show that over 220 million miles driven, Waymo vehicles–in Los Angeles, San Francisco, Phoenix, Austin and Atlanta–have 94% fewer serious injuries, 82% fewer air bag deployments, and 93% fewer pedestrian injuries...  The American Association for Justice, the trial lawyers’ lobby, has been a prominent opponent to AV legislation (see also reports here). (They have been joined by Democrats worried about labor and demanding that heavy trucks be excluded)... In my view, product liability isn’t useful as a safety device in this field. Instead, the solution is simple. Every car should be required to be insured, regardless of driver. Indeed, Waymo vehicles are already insured at $5 million liability coverage per vehicle, far higher levels than most human drivers are covered.  The UK’s Automated and Electric Vehicles Act 2018 does basically this–a single insurer covers the vehicle whether the human or the automated system is driving; the victim is compensated directly by the insurer, no need to establish product defect; the insurer then subrogates against the manufacturer if the software was at fault. Victims get paid fast, manufacturers face the cost of their defects through recoveries and premiums, and the high-transaction costs (i.e. lawyer fees!) and messy manufacturer-versus-victim litigation is replaced by insurer-versus-manufacturer bargaining between repeat players who settle efficiently.   The great thing about this system is that insurance almost certainly deters better than tort: fleets generate data that makes experience rating precise, so insurers become continuous safety regulators, whereas litigation delivers a noisy, lagged, lottery like signal depending on safety-irrelevant factors of the jury and the locale."

Why we should thank pigeons for our AI breakthroughs | MIT Technology Review - "People looking for precursors to artificial intelligence often point to science fiction by authors like Isaac Asimov or thought experiments like the Turing test. But an equally important, if surprising and less appreciated, forerunner is Skinner’s research with pigeons in the middle of the 20th century. Skinner believed that association—learning, through trial and error, to link an action with a punishment or reward—was the building block of every behavior, not just in pigeons but in all living organisms, including human beings. His “behaviorist” theories fell out of favor with psychologists and animal researchers in the 1960s but were taken up by computer scientists who eventually provided the foundation for many of the artificial-intelligence tools from leading firms like Google and OpenAI.   These companies’ programs are increasingly incorporating a kind of machine learning whose core concept—reinforcement—is taken directly from Skinner’s school of psychology and whose main architects, the computer scientists Richard Sutton and Andrew Barto, won the 2024 Turing Award, an honor widely considered to be the Nobel Prize of computer science. Reinforcement learning has helped enable computers to drive cars, solve complex math problems, and defeat grandmasters in games like chess and Go—but it has not done so by emulating the complex workings of the human mind. Rather, it has supercharged the simple associative processes of the pigeon brain.  It’s a “bitter lesson” of 70 years of AI research, Sutton has written: that human intelligence has not worked as a model for machine learning—instead, the lowly principles of associative learning are what power the algorithms that can now simulate or outperform humans on a variety of tasks. If artificial intelligence really is close to throwing off the yoke of its creators, as many people fear, then our computer overlords may be less like ourselves than like “rats with wings”—and planet-size brains. And even if it’s not, the pigeon brain can at least help demystify a technology that many worry (or rejoice) is “becoming human.”  In turn, the recent accomplishments of AI are now prompting some animal researchers to rethink the evolution of natural intelligence. Johan Lind, a biologist at Stockholm University, has written about the “associative learning paradox,” wherein the process is largely dismissed by biologists as too simplistic to produce complex behaviors in animals but celebrated for producing humanlike behaviors in computers. The research suggests not only a greater role for associative learning in the lives of intelligent animals like chimpanzees and crows, but also far greater complexity in the lives of animals we’ve long dismissed as simple-minded, like the ordinary Columba livia...  Programs trained with a mix of human input and reinforcement learning defeated human experts at chess and Atari. Then, in 2017, engineers at Google DeepMind built the AI program AlphaGo Zero entirely through reinforcement learning, giving it a numerical reward of +1 for every game of Go that it won and −1 for every game that it lost. Programmed to seek the maximum reward, it began without any knowledge of Go but improved over 40 days until it attained what its creators called “superhuman performance.” Not only could it defeat the world’s best human players at Go, a game considered even more complicated than chess, but it actually pioneered new strategies that professional players now use...  Sutton, too, dismissed the claims of reasoning as “marketing” in an email, adding that “no serious scholar of mind would use ‘reasoning’ to describe what is going on in LLMs.” Still, he has argued, with Silver and other coauthors, that the pigeons’ method—learning, through trial and error, which actions will yield rewards—is “enough to drive behavior that exhibits most if not all abilities that are studied in natural and artificial intelligence,” including human language “in its full richness.”... If computers can do all that with just a pigeonlike brain, some animal researchers are now wondering if actual pigeons deserve more credit than they’re commonly given... In his most famous experiments, Wasserman trained pigeons to detect cancerous tissue and symptoms of heart disease in medical scans as accurately as experienced doctors with framed diplomas behind their desks. Given his results, Wasserman found it odd that so many psychologists and ethologists regarded associative learning as a crude, mechanical mechanism, incapable of producing the intelligence of clever animals like apes, elephants, dolphins, parrots, and crows... People who care about animals might feel uneasy about a revival in behaviorist theory. The “cognitive revolution” broke with centuries of Western thinking, which had emphasized human supremacy over animals and treated other creatures like stimulus-response machines. But arguing that animals learn by association is not the same as arguing that they are simple-minded.

shako on X - "natives: “yeah so we have huge amounts of unused land. we’d love to rent them to you in exchange for AI industry cash flow to our tribes”
nytimes: “these poor, poor exploited folks. they simply are not smart enough to understand”"

Aakash Gupta on X - "40 out of 86 Brown students scored a perfect 100 on their midterm. Then the professor moved the final in person, and 22 of those perfect scorers never showed up again.  He'd suspected AI cheating from the start. The take-home midterm was deliberately harder than usual, yet the class averaged 96 when the historical range is 65 to 80. Some answers contained odd phrasing that matched what ChatGPT produced when he ran the questions through it himself.  Roberto Serrano has taught economics at Brown for 34 years. He filed no accusations. He announced the final would be in person, count for half the grade, and that if the two distributions didn't match, the final alone would determine grades.  Then the exodus. 27 students never showed up. 22 of them had perfect midterms. Of the 59 who did show, 19 failed. Several signed the exam and turned it in blank. The average fell from 96 to 48, the lowest in the course's history.  He never needed a plagiarism detector. The cheaters identified themselves by walking away. A grade distribution became a confession.  Here's the part nobody's sitting with. Serrano proved it. He sent the distributions to Brown's dean and provost. The provost never responded. The academic committee's reply amounted to calling it "a wake-up call." The students who bailed before the final walked away clean.  Every university in America is now grading two populations, students and students plus ChatGPT, on one curve. The honest kids in Serrano's class watched a 96 average get set by machines, then sat a real final against it. The cheaters lost nothing. That's the incentive structure now, and it grades itself."

Sam Lyman on X - "NEW: BPI research reveals that a Marxist-Leninist group with documented ties to China has been a critical mobilizer in efforts that have blocked or delayed $23.6 billion in AI investment in the US.   Its scalps include 10 data center moratoria, 1 permanent data center ban, and 4 rejected or scrapped AI projects.  In Part II of our foreign influence investigation, BPI exposes the Party for Socialism and Liberation (or PSL) as the political arm of Shanghai-based Neville Singham, and lays bare a national campaign launched by the party to stop America’s data center buildout.  Singham is the subject of multiple federal investigations into his reported ties to the CCP. Our research uncovers the anti-data-center organizing of his activist vehicle, the PSL, across 21 campaigns in 14 states, in roles ranging from lead organizer to one member of a broader coalition.  This report adds to the mounting evidence that China and its surrogates are committed to stopping America’s data center buildout so that Beijing can gain the advantage in the AI race."
Crémieux on X - "Reminder that there are two types of anti-data center activists:
- Supporters of the Chinese Communist Party
- Stooges of the Chinese Communist Party
Anti-data center activism helps America's enemies and facilitates America's downfall."

Foreign Influence in the Campaign against American AI | Bitcoin Policy Institute - "international actors are working through state media organizations, nonprofit networks, and dark money groups to shape US policy and public opinion on artificial intelligence. The campaign against American AI is being waged across three vectors of foreign influence:
Foreign state media. Beijing’s English-language outlets — CGTN, China Daily, and Global Times — together with Russia’s RT have run attributed campaigns directly targeting US AI data centers and US export controls while the Chinese state simultaneously subsidizes its own AI buildout.
The CCP-aligned Singham network. A US 501(c)(3) ecosystem funded by Shanghai-based US expatriate Neville Roy Singham, who is currently under congressional inquiry for his reported ties to the CCP, has openly collaborated with China’s official state media organs and spent nearly five years producing parallel domestic content opposing US AI infrastructure, AI labs, and AI export controls.
Foreign-billionaire funding. Multiple foreign-tied charitable vehicles, including those of Swiss billionaire Hansjörg Wyss and British billionaire Alan Parker’s Oak Foundation, have funneled more than $2 billion into US 501(c)(3) and 501(c)(4) advocacy infrastructure. A significant portion of that money now flows directly into the organizations driving the anti-data-center campaign."
I was told that this was a conspiracy theory and only Kevin O'Leary is making this claim

China fueling anti-data center sentiment across US: Trump admin - "Interior Secretary Doug Burgum agreed during a Tuesday appearance on Fox Business.   “Any place that’s trying to build data centers is getting bombarded with foreign-directed propaganda to try to block these from being built,” Burgum said. “This is just another attack on the US and our ability to be competitive.”... he isn’t the only one to arrive at such conclusions — at least three reports from tech and Trump-aligned thinktanks and non-profits, including the Bitcoin Policy Institute, Power the Future and the American Energy Institute, drew similar conclusions about Chinese meddling in US data-center sentiments in studies of their own.   “The opposition to US data center construction is not a spontaneous grassroots movement,” a recent American Energy Institute report read. “It is a coordinated campaign financed in substantial part by foreign donors, operating through a network of national advocacy organizations and their local chapters.”"

vittorio on X - "once you look into it, you'll find that the organized "anti-datacenter" campaign is coordinated Marxist propaganda"
Meme - "Anatomy of an Influence Operation: The Campaign against American Al
3 Vectors of Foreign Influence Aimed at Slowing US Al Development
CHINA STATE MEDIA -> Direct State Control -> CCP/China -> OAK FUNDING FOR BRI PROJECTS -> Kristian Parker/Hansjorg Wyss -> FOREIGN Billionaire TRAIL -> ROUTED THROUGH U.S. NONPROFIT INFRASTRUCTURE -> newventurefund/Greenpeace/Oil Change International/sixteenthirty fund/Americans for Financial Reform -> signed. Dec 8, 2025. Food & Water Watch COALITION LETTER. 230+ signatories demanding national moratorium on new US AI data centers -> S. 4214 SANDERS-OCASIO-CORTEZ MORATORIUM ACT Introduced Mar 25, 2026 - 107 days after the coalition letter -> US CAPITOL EVENT ON EXISTENTIAL RISK OF AI. Hosted by Senator Sanders April 29, 2026
CCP/China -> HOUSE INVESTIGATION INTO CCP TIES  -> SINGHAM NETWORK. NEVILLE SINGHAM -> CODEPINK. JODIE EVANS, Wife of Neville Singham and Co-Founder of CODEPINK, peoples dispatch, tricOntinental. VIJAY PRASHAD -> SIGNAL BOOSTING ANTI-AI/DATA CENTER MESSAGING -> STATE AND LOCAL DATA CENTER MORATORIUM BANS
. At least 54 local data-center moratoriums already enacted across US towns and counties.
12 more states currently considering statewide moratorium bills.
CHINA STATE MEDIA -> Xinhua, Global Times, CGTN, China Daily *content amplification*, -> PRC Media Mouthpieces. Founding dean of the state-affiliated Beijing Institute of AI Safety and Governance. ZENG YI. Premier-appointed Counsellor of China's State Council, chair of its national AI governance committee. XUE LAN -> US CAPITOL EVENT ON EXISTENTIAL RISK OF AI. Hosted by Senator Sanders April 29, 2026"

China uses ChatGPT to sow unrest in America - "China has been using ChatGPT to sow unrest in the US, generating fake images and cartoons in an effort to turn Americans against AI.  OpenAI said a “cluster” of accounts based in China had been manipulating its ChatGPT bot to run “covert influence operations” targeting US voters with anti-AI messaging.  It said the fraudulent accounts, which were based in China but masked their true location, created memes and pictures that aimed to “amplify divisions or exacerbate public distrust”, with the AI-generated images shared on X.  They included material that claimed data centre construction is raising electricity prices in the US for ordinary families, criticism of US tariffs and false allegations that ChatGPT had suffered a data breach. OpenAI said the activity showed Beijing was trying to “gain a strategic advantage in AI development” by turning the US public against data centre development and the technology more broadly... These operators also used the chatbot to generate convincing English-language posts and spread anti-Semitic material in Chinese, including claims that “Jewish capital manipulates public opinion”... In February, OpenAI said Chinese law enforcement officials had used ChatGPT to plan operations for intimidating dissidents around the world.  In November, Anthropic, the company behind Claude, found Chinese hackers had used its AI tool to launch a hacking campaign against 30 organisations."
Left wingers are obsessed with Russian interference, but are so easily manipulated by the Chinese

The AI backlash is only getting started - "The buildings summon a vitriol well beyond conventional nimbyism. More Americans say they would be happy with a nuclear reactor next door than a data centre. Even plans to build one in the Utah desert have met with passionate opposition. Data centres can be ugly, it is true. But the opposition reflects the technology’s reputation. ai bosses have spent years warning of a looming job-pocalypse and the danger that an AI-engineered super-virus will make humans extinct. Opponents of data centres variously believe they are shielding the environment, protecting jobs and saving the species—and they are not entirely wrong. Yet this backlash is itself dangerous. AI promises to change the world for the better, much as electricity or the steam engine did. Not long ago, the era-defining problem for the rich world was stagnant economic growth and the populism it unleashed. Now it has a technology that could power a surge in productivity and incomes, help find cures for untreatable diseases and improve everything from education to green tech. All this could be lost if countries starve the technology of computing power or regulate it into uselessness. Look at mRNA vaccines research, which has been held back after a backlash during the covid-19 pandemic. Scenarios in which some countries give in to popular rage but others forge ahead are also worrying. If America succumbs, it could cede the global ai frontier, and the attendant cyber and military capabilities, to authoritarian China. Europe and Canada are more risk-averse than America. If they choked off AI while the rest of the world kept pushing forward, their losses could be unrecoverable. More than two centuries after the Industrial Revolution, few countries have managed to catch up with the first movers... here are four pointers for politicians and AI companies looking for policies. First, spread the benefits of AI as widely as possible. Blockers need to be shown that their local area will benefit if they get out of the way. Wisely, data-centre firms are beginning to offer funding to nearby towns. Gradually, this approach needs to be broadened to society at large... Second, regulate hard when interventions are needed. The hair-raising prospect of AI-enabled cyber-attacks or bioterrorism is still not taken as seriously as it ought to be. Tackling those issues and others is essential in itself, but it would also weaken arguments to ban or hobble AI indiscriminately. Ideally, these efforts would involve international co-operation. Third, measure everything. The common view that AI is already leading to lay-offs and raising electricity bills is probably wrong. But without better statistics it is hard to be sure. Data centres must contend with viral worries over water usage, a confected issue. (Modern ones drink up no more than other industries, and much less in total than America’s golf courses.) Facts won’t cure misinformation, but their absence worsens it. Britain’s AI Security Institute and new AI Economics Institute may offer models for other countries to follow. Fourth, use AI to make the state better. It is not just the private sector that could use AI to lift productivity. Filing taxes should be a breeze; state-run health-care systems should link up data seamlessly and schools should experiment with ai-powered learning. AI may also make it easier for citizens to monitor what politicians are up to. People are less likely to oppose a technology if it is behind their grandmother’s cancer treatment or helping their child’s education. And they are more likely to trust that the state can oversee it if they believe that government works."

Polymarket on X - "JUST IN: Polaroid unveils an anti-AI billboard claiming that data centers could “drink” up the ocean’s water."
Theo Jaffee on X - "Ironically it takes about 1000x less water to store a photo in a data center for five years than to print it on a Polaroid"

Meme - Steve Everley: "Data center water use, contextualized (chart via @axios)"
"Estimated U.S. water use, select industries. Gallons per day
Cattle - 137.0b
Power plants - 133.0b
Residential water use - 23.3b
Golf courses - 2.0b
Steel production - 1.8b
Data centers  - 627.0m"
Usually the cope is that you can eat cattle but not AI, so water for agricultural use doesn't count. Clearly, golf courses and steel are edible too

Meme - "Putting AI water use in context"
"AI vs the world's biggest water users
Al data centers - 0.5 km3/year
Homes - 327 km3/year
Industry - 400 km3/year
Maize (corn) - 770 km3/year
Rice - 992 km3/year
Wheat - 1,087 km3/year
Cattle - 1,260 km3/year
All human water use - 9,090 km3/year"

Alex Veremeyenko on X - "i'm obsessed with what's happening in AI reforestation right now this. Franco-Brazilian startup called MORFO took a patch of land in Brazil that was rock-hard and compacted from years of cattle farming. they replanted it using a single drone. months later the ground was covered n grass, bushes, and small trees. the land came back to life.  here's how the whole thing works.
1. drones scan the terrain with high-resolution cameras and sensors
2. AI analyzes the imagery alongside soil samples, moisture levels, slope, and surrounding vegetation
3. the system picks from a catalog of 300+ native species, deciding exactly which plants will thrive in which specific spot
4. the drone fires biodegradable seed pods packed with seeds, nutrients, and moisture at 180 capsules per minute
5. satellite and drone imagery monitors regrowth over time, with AI tracking vegetation cover and biodiversity
6. two people and one drone cover 50 hectares a day. a person planting by hand manages about one hectare.
 and MORFO isn't alone. AirSeed in Australia drops 250,000 seed pods per day into bushfire-scarred koala habitat, replanting swamp mahogany that koalas depend on to survive. Flash Forest in Canada fires 50,000 pods daily into wildfire-destroyed boreal forest, planning the replanting alongside Cree Indigenous communities. re-green won Prince William's Earthshot Prize after planting 6 million seedlings across 30,000 hectares of Amazon and Atlantic Forest.  five companies across four continents built this same approach independently. nobody coordinated. the physics of the problem demanded it.  knowing which seeds belong in which soil used to require years of ecological fieldwork, manual planting crews, and budgets that made large-scale restoration nearly impossible. now two people with a drone and an AI model trained on local soil data can replant 50 hectares before lunch.  this is the AI work that'll still matter in 50 years."
Time to demonise data centres again

Chance Lee Bowker | Facebook - "Whenever someone says, "We don't need more data centers," I always wonder... Which part of modern life are they willing to give up? Nearly everything we do every day depends on data centers. The internet. Social media. Netflix, Disney+, Hulu, YouTube, and Prime Video. Online gaming. Gmail and Outlook. Text messages, photos, cloud storage, Apple Music and Spotify. Amazon orders. GPS navigation. Video calls. Online banking. Credit card transactions. Smart home devices. Weather forecasts. Now think bigger. Hospitals rely on them for medical records, imaging, diagnostics, and life-saving research. Manufacturers use them to design products and automate factories. Airlines, railroads, trucking companies, and shipping networks use them to move people and goods. Emergency services, cybersecurity, satellites, military communications, and government systems all depend on them. Even our food depends on them. Modern farms use GPS-guided equipment, satellite imagery, AI crop analysis, precision irrigation, weather modeling, and soil monitoring to grow more food while using fewer resources. Conservation depends on them too. Data centers help power systems that track endangered species, monitor forests, predict wildfires, forecast hurricanes, detect earthquakes, and help communities prepare for natural disasters. The reality is simple: Our world doesn't just use data, it runs on it. There isn't a realistic "off switch." We're not going back to a world where businesses, hospitals, schools, farms, and families operate without digital infrastructure. That doesn't mean we ignore environmental concerns. It means we build smarter. More efficient cooling. More renewable energy. Better water management. Better planning. Better technology. The conversation shouldn't be whether we need data centers. They're already as essential as highways, power plants, and water systems. The real question is whether we'll choose to build them responsibly, or pretend we can live without the infrastructure that powers nearly every part of modern life. #DataCenters #DigitalInfrastructure #ArtificialIntelligence #BuildSmarter #Innovation #FutureOfTechnology"

China claims to have developed AI ‘cyber nuclear weapon’ - "A blacklisted Chinese company claims to have developed a “cyber nuclear weapon” that could be used to hack Western companies and governments.  Zhou Hongyi, the chief executive of cybersecurity company Qihoo 360, said it had built an AI system that matched the capabilities of Anthropic’s Claude Mythos, the most powerful US AI technology.  It comes after Five Eyes nations warned that enemies were just months away from being able to carry out devastating cyber attacks... Anthropic claimed Alibaba had “brazenly” sent millions of queries to its Claude bot in an attempt to reverse engineer the AI tool."