Quick Read
If you haven’t begun drinking yet and want a mind-bending article, read this RealClearInvestigations article on The Epoch Times. The intellectual trick that makes it mind-bending is that you have to pretend the subject matter isn’t nonsense to begin with. Let’s unpack a relatively long quotation from the article: Ron Scapp, an academic specialist in ethnic studies,…
A Friday press release from the office of Governor Daniel McKee inches Rhode Island toward reopening. It’s actually very difficult to interpret the meaning of the press release, because it’s poorly written and it’s not clear where restrictions have been lifted and where they’re being modified. But this appears to be the set of changes:…
This NewsNation Now article by Leland Vittert, running on WPRI’s website wouldn’t ordinarily have merited comment, but the headline is enough to make you involuntarily spit out your coffee: “Putin praised Biden, experts say that could mean he’s rattled.” The article reinforces the propagandistic character of the headline: “He is focused,” Putin said. “He understands…
A central concern about the development of artificial intelligence is that it will depend so heavily (at least for its starting point) on the input of the people who created it. A Daily Wire article by Luke Rosiak about social-justice turmoil in the Google “Ethical AI” team provides a detail of just how short-sighted a launch…
I was thinking earlier about how the news media is able to shift the narrative and mood of the country simply by virtue of the things that it chooses to report or not to report. Very rare events when every small update to any related story is splashed across the media nationally. On the other…
The headline is, of course, that unemployment dropped to 5.8% in May, from 6.3% in April, which is nice (although it ought to be higher, given that we’re coming out of a pandemic-and-government-driven recession. But the state Department of Labor and Training’s press release paints a peculiar picture: The number of employed Rhode Island residents…
One long-time wish list item from Rhode Island cities and towns has been for the state to start taking ownership of the fixtures that illuminate roads the state owns, and it is now doing so. Of course, with new lighting technology, the savings to municipalities won’t be huge by local-budget standards (averaging a little more…
Identity politics is a great destroyer. Not only does it pit neighbor against neighbor based on superficial qualities like skin color, but it acts as an ideological litmus test. To its practitioners, one either bends the knee or is non-personned as a “hater.” Look at what’s happening in Barrington. This is from a Sarah Doiron…
Assuming the Associated Press’s science writer, Seth Borenstein, is accurately conveying the methodology of a study proclaiming that 37% of “heat deaths” around the planet were “caused by higher temperatures from human-caused warming,” the project seems problematic on its face: Scientists used decades of mortality data in the 732 cities to plot curves detailing how…
Legislation from Democrat state Senator Leonidas Raptakis (S0089) and Democrat state Representative Patricia Serpa (H5830) begins to address the abuse of school information: The General Assembly tonight passed legislation sponsored by Sen. Leonidas P. Raptakis and Rep. Patricia A. Serpa which prohibits the use of a school district’s listserv to distribute any political advertisement, invitation,…
