Newmark's Door

Places you are really unlikely to ever visit. (With cool pictures.)

"Never thought that I'd hear Led Zeppelin, Fred Astaire, and Rita Hayworth in the same sentence, much less the same video. Gosh, this was wonderful!! The editing was flawless."

I certainly can second The Godfather and Airplane!.

Ten really good ones in 35 seconds.

Jefferson Airplane.

Bonus: "Won't You Try--Saturday Afternoon".

Joe Cocker got gypped.

Tom Segura is funny.

Unsurprising: "Results are mixed."

For now, data and information and AI are hot.

"The “Asian hate crime” narrative is out there because the Democrats have noticed that affirmative action is hurting them. They’re hoping that a few cheap words will let them paint Republicans as anti-Asian haters so that they won’t have to actually do anything to help Asian-Americans . . ."

If it happens to you, do remember that the IRS wants to be paid.

"It has become conventional wisdom that society is suffering from an epidemic of loneliness. But the research is mixed. While some data suggests that loneliness is prevalent, it is unclear if it is any worse than in the past. Some data indicate that loneliness has decreased."

"Vomit draft" was a phrase new to me, but it is appropriate.

So far the wisecrack has panned out: fusion power is always 20 years in the future.

"Most professors would rather watch it die than reform."

Another view: "Are English Departments Really Dying? A closer look at the numbers reveals a more subtle story."

Matches my uneducated impression.

One of the biggest knocks on charter schools--mostly untrue on my read of the evidence--is that they "cherry-pick" their students. Hey, guess what: regular public schools can, and do, do it.

Probably more bad news for big-city dwellers.

Maybe another widely held bit of "science" bites the dust.

"I get most of my exercise these days from shaking my head in disbelief."

Arnold Kling:

When it comes to local government, Tiebout competition does not work very well. But it works way better than voting. In a jurisdiction that is proudly progressive, trying to vote against teachers’ unions is futile. Exit is your only option.

Mike Munger takes on an old argument that libertarians who use government services are hypocritical and refutes if beautifully.

Matt Taibbi usefully reminds us of the hysteria that once prevailed:

. . . the vehemence of this national wig-out was breathtaking. Jail-Trumpism truly became a religion during this time. I remember walking down the corridor of our Jersey City apartment building to walk the dog, hearing Rachel Maddow’s nightly crazy-casts blasting out from behind door after door, like the Songs of Angkar filling a Cambodian village.

Ouch:

Carson made little effort to provide a balanced perspective and consistently ignored key evidence that would have contradicted her work. Thus, while the book provided a range of notable ideas, a number of Carson’s major arguments rested on what can only be described as deliberate ignorance.

Seems reasonable.

Ross Douthat in the New York Times: (May be gated depending on how many times you've visited the Times website.)

Marijuana legalization as we’ve done it so far has been a policy failure, a potential social disaster, a clear and evident mistake.

I haven't tried any of these yet, but I may. And junk snail mail is a smaller annoyance to me then all the junk phone calls we get.

Until somebody beats it, 1780 points is impressive.