quite inconsequential, really

NAILED IT: Jeff Bezos: “A nurse in Queens who makes $75K a year pays more than $12K a year in taxes. Does that really make sense?” “So people talk about making the tax system more progressive. How about we start by having the nurse in Queens NOT pay taxes? At all!” “Why is a nurse in Queens who makes $75K a year paying more than $1K a month in taxes?” “That’s $1K a month that could help with rent or groceries or anything.” “And by the way, do you know what that all adds up to? The bottom half of income earners in this country pay only 3% of the taxes. It’s only 3%.” “We can find 3%. So we don’t have... it’s a small amount of money for the government. You know that. And the more I thought about it, to me, it’s kind of absurd that we’re doing this.” “We shouldn’t be asking this nurse in Queens to send money to Washington — they should be sending her an apology. It really makes no sense.” Exactly!

Bill Maher: “[China] doesn’t have freedom. Their people are not free. It is a police state.” will-i-am: “Their freedom is different than ours. Their need for freedom is different than our need for freedom.” Bill Maher: “That’s kind of patronizing to say what another person’s need of freedom is.” “Freedom is freedom… Maybe they don’t know. Maybe they’re so brainwashed at this point they don’t know how much freedom they need.” “They don’t have it.” “We generally have more freedom here than many many people do.”

La Vérité

In the wake of Charlie's assassination, many people are demanding that we redouble our devotion to the "free marketplace of ideas." The call seems at first glance courageous and noble. In reality, it is reckless and impractical. We had an open marketplace of ideas; the Left shot it up. Not only have extreme leftists committed violence in the marketplace of ideas; more scandalous still, mainstream left-wing voices have cheered and made light of the violence. There can be no open marketplace—of ideas or anything else—under such conditions. Marketplaces require rules, confidence, and common media of exchange. They require, in other words, order. Liberty requires order. One cannot be both free and undisciplined, for instance, or free and ignorant. We know this philosophically, and we also know it intuitively. It's why we don't let toddlers vote. What we require now is the reassertion of order. We must insist upon the acceptance of basic truths and moral goods, not as the asymptotic goal of endless debate but as the axiomatic foundation without which debate cannot occur. We must foreclose certain antisocial behaviors and suicidal ideologies. We must, to borrow a phrase from Chesterton, stop "the thought that stops thought." In practical terms, this means we must stigmatize certain evil ideas and behaviors, and we must ostracize people who insist upon them. More practically, this means that people who persist in such disorder should lose their social standing. In certain cases, they should lose their jobs. There must be consequences. With any political reform, it is wise to err on the side of caution. The offenses that merit such ostracism should be particularly egregious. A good place to begin would be with those who celebrate the murder of an innocent man.

For the DSA Left the ‘working class’ is a theoretical abstraction that is invoked to justify the self entitlement and prerogatives of a class of affluent (but downwardly mobile) professional and creative elites.

JCFA researcher: “Blocking the Strait of Hormuz will be considered by Iran as a declaration of war” Lt. Col. (Res.) Dr. Jacques Neria, a former senior official in the IDF Intelligence and a senior researcher at the Jerusalem Institute for Strategy and Security, warns that any attempt to block Iranian shipping will be interpreted in Tehran as a direct act of war. According to him, Iran has no option to ignore such a move and will be forced to respond with force. “There is no way such a move will go unanswered; for them, it is a red line,” he said. Neria emphasizes that Iran is already preparing for escalation and possesses significant capabilities for continued fighting, including thousands of missiles and a wide launch array. He stated that Tehran may prefer a prolonged confrontation: “A war of attrition that will wear down the U.S. and the West is a scenario they definitely want to see develop.” 13 APR 2026 | 08:45 ET ET SOURCE: חדשות 301 העולם הערבי

A common experience: Many brilliant scientists cannot grasp elementary philosophical distinctions. Last night I could not get a colleague to understand the difference between the "hard" (sentience, subjectivity, experience) and "easy" (reportability, information access) senses of "consciousness." Nor the difference between a definition of consciousness and various explanations of consciousness. Hypothesis: scientists tend to equate rigorous thinking with mechanistic explanation, and don't recognize that abstract concepts requires sharp analysis as well.

I get that you hate Zionism. But could you please explain why you hold those views? Zionism is the belief that Jews are entitled to have a Jewish state on their ancestral lands. Islam has conquered 57 countries, each of which was once non-Islamic. The number of people subjugated and killed by either ideologies is rather tilted heavily toward Islam. So why is Zionism your biggest fear? If you live say in Montana in 200 years, would you predict that Islam or Zionism would be more likely to be coming for you?