Cornell just released this statement from its committee of Trustees investigating the incident where the President ran over a student's foot with his car. The statement extols the President and blames the students.
— Dan Hirschman (@asociologist.bsky.social) May 15, 2026 at 3:20 PM
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Friday, May 15, 2026
America's Worst University
Cornell University.
The Professionals
Bari's kids are continuing to do great.
After failing to secure a visa to broadcast from Beijing, Tony Dokoupil was also forced out of his backup location in Taiwan, Status has learned, adding to an embarrassing series of events for the Bari Weiss-led network.
"We"
Trump complains he can't brag about the Iran War because of the "little man with the $4 gasoline": "I don't want to say we're making a fortune ... because if I say it, they're going to say, 'He forgets about the little man with the $4 gasoline.'"
— FactPost (@factpostnews.bsky.social) May 15, 2026 at 2:46 AM
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Republicans Will Do Liberal Things, But Conservatively
Dem legislators have occasionally been able to (though not rreally in the age of Trump) get some Republicans to sign on to some liberalish things, though too often by making those things overly bureaucratic, privatized, punitive, and means-tested.
Still the idea that the Republican party would ever embrace these things wholeheartedly is always nonsense.
This particular one was especially ridiculous. ONCE WE OUTLAW ABORTION, WE WILL THEN BE IN FAVOR OF HELPING WITH CHILDCARE.
Centrists are always imagining that there are nonexistent deals on the table, but this one was nonsensical.
Where In The World
Can I go to this place with no cameras?
Members of Mr. Kean’s team were seated conspicuously in the third row, watching as the Democrats took turns weighing in on their boss’s mysterious absence. Afterward, his chief of staff, Dan Scharfenberger, reiterated a now familiar explanation.
“He’s dealing with a personal health condition, and he’ll be back soon,” Mr. Scharfenberger said in an interview.
When pressed on the nature of the health condition and why Mr. Kean had not been seen in New Jersey or in Washington, Mr. Scharfenberger said, “There’s no cameras where Tom is.”
Gone for 2 months.
I don't think we need regular medical updates of every member of Congress, but missing for 2 months is an issue in itself.
Thursday, May 14, 2026
The Finest People
This will be a 4 minute story, because that's the world we live in now.
Mike Banks, the border patrol chief who oversaw the most aggressive militarization of the US southern border in recent history, has resigned with immediate effect.
“It’s just time,” Banks told Fox News in an interview. “I feel like I got the ship back on course from the least secure, most disastrous, most chaotic border to the most secure border this country has ever seen.”
It's just time...
The resignation comes weeks after the Washington Examiner reported that six current and former border patrol employees had accused Banks of regularly paying for sex with prostitutes during trips to Colombia and Thailand over more than a decade, and bragging about it to colleagues.
The behavior was said to have been investigated twice by CBP officials, with one inquiry reportedly ending abruptly while the former homeland security secretary Kristi Noem was in office.
Oh
My Apes Are Doing Great
I have no deep thoughts here other than I have no idea how the AI-driven stock boom ends.
I registered for a road race. The customary FAQ (what time does it start, where is there water during the race, is there a bag drop, etc...) was replaced by, or at least hidden under, an "AI" chatbot.
I registered for a road race. The customary FAQ (what time does it start, where is there water during the race, is there a bag drop, etc...) was replaced by, or at least hidden under, an "AI" chatbot.
It took about 45 seconds to answer any question and often couldn't.
There was nothing that couldn't be more easily and more accessible in a FAQ. There aren't many possible questions about a race! The set of information is very small! You don't need "AI" for it, especially slow AI that doesn't even work!
It Was Joe Biden Wot Did It
I know most people only see Fox News through clips (if at all), but while this sounds ridiculous, it is fits perfectly well into the Fox News Cinematic Universe.
It's always tempting to think their viewers can't possibly believe this stuff, but they've been hearing this stuff 24/7 for years. Of course they do!
And Fox is the tame right wing news source, relatively speaking, at this point.
Where It Hurts
I do think it's a bit tragic that everyone learned during the post-covid era, once again, that everybody hates inflation, even though I don't think that's precisely true. I actually don't think people are impacted too much by 4% versus 2% inflation, which is really what that debate is normally about, whether the Fed needs to put the brakes on every time the rate "spikes" to 2.2%.
I mean, I don't think they'd notice too much if that 4% was pure inflation, spread perfectly evenly across all goods and services (and wages!). Only people with real money would care. But that's not what happened. The prices of very visible things spiked due to post-covid supply chain and labor issues, and we just called that "inflation." General inflation was high for a bit, but food price inflation was even higher, running above 10%. That's the kind of thing that enraged people.
And, like now, it wasn't the "inflation" of Milton Friedman's mind, happening because the Fed was printing too much money. It was cost-push inflation.
Though Biden's cost-push inflation wasn't due to his actions.
Anyway...
I mean, I don't think they'd notice too much if that 4% was pure inflation, spread perfectly evenly across all goods and services (and wages!). Only people with real money would care. But that's not what happened. The prices of very visible things spiked due to post-covid supply chain and labor issues, and we just called that "inflation." General inflation was high for a bit, but food price inflation was even higher, running above 10%. That's the kind of thing that enraged people.
And, like now, it wasn't the "inflation" of Milton Friedman's mind, happening because the Fed was printing too much money. It was cost-push inflation.
Though Biden's cost-push inflation wasn't due to his actions.
Anyway...
Driving that increase were substantial price hikes for things like fresh veggies. On an annualized basis, fresh vegetable prices are more than 44% higher today than they were three months ago.
Keeping interest rates high to "fight" cost-push inflation is only obviously correct if you think fighting inflation trumps all other concerns.
Wednesday, May 13, 2026
Nasty Australians
Very mean, low IQ people.
Plans to build Australia’s first Trump Tower have been scrapped just three months after it was announced, with the local developer saying the Trump brand has become “toxic.”
“Let’s just say that with the Iran war and everything else, the Trump brand was increasingly unpopular in Australia,” David Young, CEO of Altus Property Group, told CNN in a statement.
No Need To Be Goldfish
Daniel's job is keeping track of this stuff, and he does that well, but the point his colleagues should take from his work is, "Everything Trump says is likely to be a lie and you should begin with that premise." It isn't a stretch to say that every news story about something Trump says should begin, "The president, who regularly lies, just claimed...".
The NYT also does a full rundown. Good for what it is, but, again, TRUMP IS PROBABLY TALKING BULLSHIT should preface every claim he makes, not be addressed 6 weeks later.
I shouldn't have to make this point after all of these years.Trump April 23: I contacted people "that have worked for me in the past, doing swimming pools," and one gave me a great price on the Reflecting Pool project
— Daniel Dale (@ddale8) May 12, 2026
Trump May 4: "I have some very good contractors," asked three of them to "do me a favor fellas" and go look at the…
The NYT also does a full rundown. Good for what it is, but, again, TRUMP IS PROBABLY TALKING BULLSHIT should preface every claim he makes, not be addressed 6 weeks later.
Edge Cases
Driving is probably the most complicated (no way to quantify that really) task any of us ever do. Humans do stupid things too, of course, but at some point we manage to figure out that we did, indeed, do a stupid thing.
Your personal self-driving car is not much nearer than it was 5 years ago.
Waymo is recalling its U.S. fleet of robotaxis after one of the autonomous vehicles was swept away when it drove into floodwaters in San Antonio.I'm not asserting that this type of thing means robotaxis are UNPOSSIBLE. They clearly work better than I had thought they would, though there is much more Mechanical Turk activity happening than they like to reveal. The point is more that this is still an incredibly complex activity which still is not close to being solved without constant active updates and intervention.
The voluntary software recall stems from an incident during severe weather April 20, when a Waymo vehicle “encountered an untraversible flooded section of a roadway,” the company told the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration. Though the vehicle detected the flooded road, it continued into floodwaters at reduced speed.
Your personal self-driving car is not much nearer than it was 5 years ago.
The Great Bed Shitting
Will hit consumer prices next.
The producer price index rose a seasonally adjusted 1.4% for the month, much higher than the 0.5% Dow Jones consensus forecast and the upwardly revised 0.7% March increase, the Bureau of Labor Statistics reported Wednesday. This was the largest monthly gain since March 2022.
On an annual basis, the index was up 6%, the biggest increase since December 2022.
Operation Pete Hegseth Has A Mighty Johnson So Stop Saying He Doesn't
Amazing.
WASHINGTON — The U.S. military is considering officially renaming the war with Iran “Operation Sledgehammer” if the current ceasefire collapses and President Donald Trump decides to re-start major combat operations, according to two U.S. officials.If you change the name, it's a new war!
Tuesday, May 12, 2026
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