A Nashville public school is celebrating Ramadan during school hours over multiple days, but Metro Nashville Public Schools merely referred to the Christian holy day of Good Friday as "Spring holiday" in their District Calendar.
Political correctness has overtaken common sense.
https://www.mnps.org/about/district-calendar?cal_date=2026-03-08
I republished my column about the libertarian movement, Israel Derangement Syndrome, and at times open antisemitism, as an X Article to make it easier to find and share.
I wrote this in October 2024, completely shocked by some of the outrageous things being said by prominent people in the libertarian world, and I offered it as an internal critique of libertarianism by a libertarian.
Since I wrote this in 2024, the problem has gotten much worse unfortunately. To the point that it's very hard for me to continue calling myself a libertarian, even though I still have so much affection for the actual tenets of libertarianism, and for the work of so many of its great academics.
If you find this Article helpful, please continue sharing it with your circles.
🚨EXCLUSIVE
The American Medical Association should face an investigation and potentially lose its tax-exempt status, @donoharm says in an official complaint to the IRS.
🧵1/10
https://www.dailysignal.com/2026/04/08/exclusive-american-medical-association-should-lose-tax-exempt-status-watchdog-group-says/
The deeper problem in higher education, often overlooked, is that too many people who aren’t ready for college attend anyway.
Universities are admitting students who struggle with middle-school math. The dropout data underscore this point: students often describe leaving school in financial terms because that is the pressure they feel most immediately, but the strongest predictors of dropping out are inadequate academic preparation and poor early college performance.
If the system draws unprepared students into expensive programs that they are unlikely to complete, then policies focused solely on easing repayment or subsidizing access will not address the root problem.
From: https://www.city-journal.org/article/higher-education-college-cost-students
This is your periodic reminder that many years ago, @ComicDaveSmith had a regular segment on his podcast called “Contra Carlson” where he, to his credit, critiqued Tucker’s lefty populist economics. He doesn’t do that any more now that he’s using Tucker to expand his audience.
Altman is such a bizarre mix of evil, God complex, techno fascist, and sociopath that it's head spinning.
The whole valuation of OpenAI hinges on him continuing to baffle investors and tech ceos with AI/religious bullshit to keep up the appearance that his org is worth all the money they are sinking into it.
OpenAI doesn't even have an edge on model capability and development anymore. Their early lead is gone.
His org is heading towards either complete collapse or complete absorption by a larger tech giant within the next year.
🦔Oracle hired a new CFO this week with a base salary of $950,000 and a performance bonus targeting $2.5 million, effective immediately. This comes days after the company eliminated between 20,000 and 30,000 jobs by email, filed 3,126 H-1B petitions for foreign workers, and reported that its 5-year credit default swaps just hit a record high breaking the previous level set in December 2008.
My Take
The Oracle story keeps adding chapters. Lay off tens of thousands by email at dawn, file hundreds of foreign worker petitions, watch your debt insurance costs hit levels not seen since the financial crisis, and then bring in a new CFO at nearly a million dollars in base salary plus a $2.5 million bonus target. Every one of those decisions has an internal logic. You need financial leadership to navigate $124 billion in debt and a collapsing stock price. But the sequence laid out together is a precise illustration of how the costs and benefits of these decisions get distributed.
The people who built Oracle's products for decades absorbed the downside last Tuesday morning. The new CFO starts this week at compensation most of those workers will never see in a lifetime.
Hedgie🤗
After reading this piece on Sam Altman, one can reasonably conclude he’s put profit over loyalty, principles, and company governance.
There’s business savvy and ruthlessness, and there’s Sam, who at multiple points in his career has been the subject of investigations and forced departures from companies he’s founded.
When those closest to him raise alarms, they should be heeded by those whom he tries to con into business dealings.
While Dario is also insufferable, it should be obvious to all why both him and Elon, who worked closest with Sam, find him to be a dishonest swindler.
The last takeaway I have — this article is written by a gay Democrat, one of Sam’s own people, and even he is quite unconvinced that Sam is a good person.
OpenAI was clearly changed from a non-profit to for-profit to benefit Sam. It’s clear he lied to Elon and his co-founders.
“I think there’s a small but real chance he’s eventually remembered as a Bernie Madoff- or Sam Bankman-Fried-level scammer.”
This is the truth and the world sees it.
The more you hear Jen Newsom lecture about her obvious disdain for boys, the more you understand why Gavin Newsom said that their son was a huge fan of Charlie Kirk
So what I think is happening in the media space is that high profile narratives of intrigue etc, obviously pushed, are composed, LLM-style, of parts of earlier narratives lodged in the collective mind. The new scripts are probabilistic syntheses of their elements.
Luigi combines JFK shooting (we have footage of the crime), Unabomber stuff (he's against the establishment and wrote a manifesto), Manson stuff (girls fall under his spell!), and so on.
Charlie Kirk mystery built with the same structure. With different elements.
Disappearance of that newscaster lady's mom in Arizona is Lindbergh baby case, only it's an elder. Weak production, though. Cancelled.
Even the anti-war movement going on now is a pastiche of Vietnam Era tropes, with Trump as Nixon (impeach him) and the leaders of Iran as misunderstood freedom fighters à la Ho Chi Minh.
This is your world now. Don't be mistaken. And don't think I'm saying everything is "fake." Or that we live in a big "S" Simulation.
Real events can be molded through this process into what I'll call "Large Language Media." The tell is their strange halo of familiarity, of having been assembled from pre-existing units, as it is with AI-written prose.
Got it?
Recently, authors of the HHS review on pediatric gender dysphoria sat down with @NIHDirector_Jay to discuss the report and its significance.
In this video, MIT philosopher @byrne_a explains (with additional commentary from me) the language problems in gender medicine.
Hey there, most of this is land investment. The house itself was valued at the time only about $700,000, relatively close to the amount I sold my last house for.
We invested in land over other things because at the time, COVID had the economy in a bad place, we had just had a baby and an advisor suggested we put everything we have into a land purchase.
The suggestion here that someone is stealing money will probably land you in hot water like others, because my salary, which hasn’t changed since before covid is all publicly available on 990s.
I was a business partner in Charlie’s podcast with him, we were able to have success to eliminate the need to pay ourselves outrageous salaries like other non profits do. (I manage over 1,000 staff and Charlie and I only had a $100,000 salary at Turning Point Action.)
Villifying me for a residential land investment & putting my address out over and over which gives crazy people opportunity to target my wife and children, is pure commie tactics.
I’d ask that you stop before it escalates.
Thank you.
As Artemis II makes the first close manned flyby of the Moon since Apollo, read my column on what we give up when we deny the reality of the Moon landings:
The partisan lean on Reddit is much worse than this. I guess an ecosystem is only "broken" when the red side can be heard
🤔 @MetroSchools grad rate 85% (rising for ~7 yrs).
HS ELA & Math achievement: 22-34% (falling pre-Covid).
% of graduating students ready for college/career: 33% (flat for ~7 yrs).
Our kids deserve better than lowering standards/ ignoring the problem, MNPS & @MetroNashville!
This is a deranged perspective, @ThomasEWoods. I understand opposing the war on principle, but rooting for Iran is taking that in an extreme and unhealthy direction. This will destroy libertarianism. And it’s absolutely NOT true that 95% of Americans are rooting for Iran.
NEW: Musician Murphy Campbell says she isn’t making money on YouTube because an AI company is cloning her music and filing copyright claims against her own videos
“An entity called Timeless Sounds IR uploaded AI-generated versions of my songs to all major streaming platforms...
They used a distributor, which I just discovered, and that distributor’s name is Vydia. They used Vydia to upload all these AI-generated songs.
Vydia has since decided to make copyright claims on all of the videos that were used to feed that AI engine to sound like me.
So Vydia has come forward and made copyright claims on my YouTube page.
Because YouTube does not personally review these things, I am no longer making money on YouTube.
Vydia is making money on YouTube off of my own videos of me playing my own banjo in my own backyard with traditional folk songs, some for my own family, over AI-generated music.”
High graduation rates, low test scores should be met w/a very skeptical eye:
“Just 26.2% of Minnesota high schoolers, 8th graders & 5th graders achieved test results that are proficient…
Only 5.4% of students exceeded the standards while 46.1% fell into the ‘beginning’ group, which used to be categorized as failing to meet standards even partially”
Earlier today, I explained that what we see from Tucker Carlson, et al., is ultimately Critical America Theory, which many people found clarifying. To add some depth, I want to explain that at the heart of every critical theory is a lunatic totalist conspiracy mentality.
We can start where we started earlier, with Max Horkheimer's characterization of his Critical Theory. He invented Critical Theory in 1937, adapting it from the Marxist tradition of ruthless critique. He described it this way (paraphrasing):
"We [neo-Marxists] developed the Critical Theory when we realized that it is not possible to describe the good or the ideal society on the terms of the existing society, but we can criticize those elements of the existing society that we wish to change."
This characterization is very important because it reveals the ultimate character of all critical theories: looking for "problematics" in society that don't live up to some imagined ideal society that likely cannot even exist but can still be used as a reference point against which to complain about reality, often senselessly.
Briefly, how? How can you use something that isn't real as a reference point? By believing things like "we don't know what an ideal America would look like, but it wouldn't have racism." Then you send people out looking for anything they can consider racist and get them to "problematize" it because the ideal society wouldn't have that happening. That's how.
The thing is, Horkheimer's characterization also reveals the true structure of all critical theories: they're conspiracy theories.
The belief in the Critical Theory is that the whole of society in every regard is so captured by the ruling classes and powerful interests that you don't even have the tools you'd need to describe an alternative. That is, powerful interests control everything, and they do so in a way where people don't realize it. In fact, they don't even have the conceptual tools to imagine an alternative. And the ruling classes benefit from that situation, so they like it that way, and they keep it that way, sometimes on purpose.
The two sides of this mentality are "critical consciousness" for the people who are "Woke" to the Critical Theory and "false consciousness" for the people who aren't. The conspiracy the powerful interests in society run is alleged to be so complete that people literally misunderstand their reality.
Give that a second to sink in. That's the totalist part of the lunatic conspiracy theory. The belief that Critical Theory is based on is that the powerful are so in control of society that:
(1) nobody at all has the conceptual tools to imagine or articulate an alternative vision;
(2) nobody BUT THEM even know this is happening.
That's really important because what it means is that everyone is a dupe except the Critical Theorists. That means nobody is actually capable of understanding, much less managing, their own lives and circumstances except the Critical Theorists.
Depending on the critical theory in question, different powerful interests allegedly control society (again, to such a degree that nobody except the critical theorists themselves even know it, and such that nobody can articulate an alternative).
(Critical) radical feminists, for example, believe that society is totally structured by a male-dominated force called "patriarchy" that benefits men. It is enforced, they say, by another force they call "misogyny," which means hating women.
Critical Race Theorists believe society is totally structured by a white-dominated force called "white supremacy" that benefits white people. It is enforced, they say, by another force they call "systemic racism," which they alone can detect (in literally everything).
(Critical) Queer Theorists believe society is totally controlled and structured around people who deem themselves "normal" to the exclusion of everyone "queer." This is enforced by a wide variety of structural forces called "normativities," such as "heteronormativity," the completely made-up "cisnormativity," and "thinnormativity," which ultimately hold that there are norms and that's at least sometimes good.
Critical America Theory, which I discussed earlier, has two main modes, which we could call "Left" and "Right."
The "Left" mode believes that America is controlled by a conglomerate of powered interests including capitalists, nationalists (whom they call "Fascists"), and all of the "privileged" groups in the whole Intersectional pantheon of victimized identities (called "minoritized groups").
The "Right" mode believes that American is controlled by a conglomerate of powered interests including the Leftists and their Intersectional victimhood paradigm and its beneficiaries, globalists (the "managerial elite"), Jews, and, well, capitalists.
Both of these modes hold out that the powerful interests completely control the social, economic, and political lives of Americans, and that Americans simply don't know it because it's not possible to talk about it because, allegedly, the powerful interests will shut you down or ruin/"cancel" you if you do. Even though they all do all the time pretty much exclusively while screaming that they can't.
These two models are more or less completely diametrically opposed on all issues except Jews and capitalism. The "Left" mode is pro-Intersectional while the "Right" mode is reverse-Intersectional (same model, but privilege is good now). The "Left" mode is pro-globalist while the "Right" mode is nativist-nationalist. Both modes believe capitalism enables the whole problem and that Jews are participants in the problem (though in different ways).
"Left" Critical America Theory believes capitalism restrains people in the name of making money (puts money over people) and that Jews are part of the oppressor category that allegedly harms poor Intersectional victims, including the imaginary people known as "Palestinians." Most of this blame is displaced onto Israel, not Jews directly, which is blamed for "genocide" and such, narratives that can be traced at least in part to Soviet propaganda efforts and Islamist agendas.
"Right" Critical America Theory believes capitalism is too licentious in the name of making money (puts money over people) and that Jews form a shadowy cabal of powerful and all-controlling hidden interests (that advance their own "Jewish" (national) interests over those of their "host" nations). Most of this blame is displaced onto Israel, not Jews directly, which is blamed for "genocide" and such, narratives that can be traced at least in part to Soviet propaganda efforts and Islamist agendas (with plenty of Nazism mixed in).
The point is that these are totalizing conspiracy theories, so in addition to everything that obviously implies, it also means that they cannot be refuted. Any attempt to refute them is merely to reassert the theory of capture and to defend the system of power that prevents people from knowing the "truth" (believing the critical theory).
For instance, refuting a feminist is just another way of asserting patriarchal control and attacking women.
Refuting a Critical Race Theorist is having White Fragility which is a kind of covert racism they uncovered in you.
Refuting a Queer Theorist is forcing norms upon them that cause them harm and make them s-word-icidal.
Refuting a "Left" Critical America Theorist is having sold out to capitalist interests or defending one's own privileged status in the system (or "supporting genocide").
Refuting a "Right" Critical America Theorist is believing making money is more important than people, being a shill, or having been bought off, captured, or blackmailed by Jews, Israel, the Jewish lobby, or the allegedly powerful interests that are controlled by these (or "supporting genocide").
I'm sure you're familiar with all this crap, but you might not have known that it's a direct consequence of the structure of the Critical Theory itself. Once Horkheimer laid out that the raison d'etre for the Critical Theory in the first place is that the "very terms of the existing society" are captured by powerful interests and ruling classes, that means that all refutation of the Critical Theory itself is just further proof that the Critical Theory is right that the whole system of sense-making permitted by the ruling classes is captured.
Guys, this is idiocy.
It isn't just idiocy, though; it's also evil idiocy. Very evil idiocy. Destructive idiocy.
It's also easily replicable by people who are just playing in the incentive structure of the cynical logic of the Critical Theory mindset, so while some of the participants pushing us in this direction know exactly what they're doing, most either don't or, at the very least, don't have to.
What should you do? Learn to recognize it. Mark it. And avoid it. And help others to do the same.
American Library Association #PLA2026 is over today. It was sparsely attended.
During it, Carnegie Corporation announced it’s withdrawing its support for the Andrew Carnegie Medals for Excellence in Fiction and Nonfiction.
ALA is dying. Let it, as Kirk would say.
Defund ALA.
My @ManhattanInst colleague @neetu_arnold has been on this story and glad to see it getting attention. People should be more skeptical of high graduation rates.
Illinois teachers report worsening student behavior since the pandemic—more student defiance & disruptions, and lower quality discussions
State & school policies are enabling poor student behavior
What you see almost endlessly from Tucker Carlson, "Comic" Dave Smith, Theo Von, etc., and the rest of the blackpillers amounts to a Critical America Theory. I'm not making this up. I'm explaining.
Critical Theory was developed by neo-Marxist Max Horkheimer of the Frankfurt School in 1937. In an interview in 1969, Horkheimer explained what the Critical Theory is. He said (closely paraphrasing):
"I developed the Critical Theory because we [Western neo-Marxists] realized we cannot articulate the good or ideal society on the terms of the existing society. What we can do is criticize those aspects of the existing society that we wish to change."
In other words, a Critical Theory believes everything is so captured and corrupted by power and those who benefit from systems of power that it isn't even possible to talk about a better situation in clear terms. All that's available is criticism of why the system/society isn't better than it is. This activity has come to be known as identifying or "making visible" the various "problematics" in the existing system.
A Critical Theory OF SOMETHING would focus this general mode of engagement into a particular domain.
For example, a Critical Theory of Race in America would believe that racism is so endemic to a society and embedded within its systems to the benefit of whites that we cannot articulate a true "antiracist" vision on the terms available to us. All we could do is identify where "racism" manifests and criticize it for being there.
We call that program "Critical Race Theory" because it is a Critical Theory of Race. What it does in practice is
(1) identifies "hidden racism" in everything (criticizing those elements of the existing (racial) system they wish to change), called "identifying problematics";
(2) induces more people to think this way;
nothing else.
What a Critical America Theory would look like is not being able to articulate what a good or ideal America would look like on the terms of the existing America but criticizing those elements of America as it exists that we wish to change.
That is, it would look for everything America isn't doing perfectly according to some ideal standard that doesn't exist, probably cannot exist, and cannot even be articulated and "make those problematics visible" in the hopes of changing the system.
Leftists, including the whole of Critical Race Theory, do this endlessly. From Derrick Bell's (founder of CRT) 1970 book, Race, Racism, and American Law, forward, it is a relentless racial Critical America Theory. That's why it exported poorly and often hilariously to other countries that don't have the same law or racial history.
Howard Zinn's A People's History of the United States (1980) is another example, a very naked example, of a work of Critical America Theory. Specifically, this book goes through every chapter of American history, from pre-founding (Christopher Columbus) to the present (1980 at the time) and catalogues how America cheated "the people," mainly workers, indigenous, racial minorities, and women (the intersectional coalition).
What I'm telling you is that the blackpillers of Podcastistan and X, etc., very notably including Tucker Carlson, are doing a socially conservative variation on Critical America Theory. Whether Carlson or "Auron MacIntyre" (nhrn) from The Blaze, the undertone of every message is plainly "you don't hate your (real) country enough" as compared against an imaginary ideal that doesn't, can't, and won't ever exist.
The Blackpill Comics all do the same thing, relentlessly identifying "problematics" and alleged hidden systems of control that delegitimize the country as it actually is against a standard that isn't even real.
The thing is, Critical America Theory is a Critical Theory of America. That is, it is a Critical Theory. That is, when you participate in this slop, you are taking on a critical consciousness about America. Having a critical consciousness is being WOKE, by definition (of Woke). This slop is Woke.
When this Critical America Theory slop takes on a socially Leftist slant, we call it Woke Left (or just Woke).
When this Critical America Theory slop takes on a socially conservative or Rightist slant, we call it Woke Right (which is just Woke too).
They are both Woke. They are both toxic. They are both false enlightenment into a kind of terrible darkness, entitlement, malice, despair, hatred, and failure.
Reject Critical America Theory. Love your country. It's great, and it's worth it.
SEL is absurd when you realize the concept is so ambiguous it couldn't possibly be useful. See @annaegalite discussing a meta-analysis claiming "clear" evidence SEL improved grades:
"The operational definition [researchers] rely upon is this: 'Universal school-based social and emotional learning interventions support the development of intra- and interpersonal skills to promote physical and psychological health for all students in a given school or grade, including fostering the development of emotional intelligence, healthy behavior regulation, identity formation, and the skills necessary for establishing and maintaining supportive relationships and making empathic and equitable decisions in the best interest of the school community.'"
https://www.educationnext.org/do-universal-sel-programs-raise-test-scores/
I never imagined we would be back at YouTube after the outrageous censorship. And yet there is some satisfaction in posting interviews that would have been immediately taken down in the past.
The Brownstone Show - Episode 16 - Aaron Kheriaty https://youtu.be/93FJi_3Ty-4?si=dhryUzYnAEGTl6LF via @YouTube
After Utah passed a moratorium on medical youth gender transitions in 2023, activist groups lobbied for an evidence review to prove this practice is safe and effective. The result was the "Utah Review," which produced the desired answer by scrapping methodological standards. /1
“Girls had access to trauma-informed therapists ready to dissect their childhoods and diagnose their parents”.
“Trauma-informed” anything is the most under-recognized scam.
The people responsible for this still applaud themselves at awards shows every year. When they aren't blowing kisses to one another. It's real Titanic stuff. And it will continue to the very end.
Flashback to Nike entering into a partnership with Dylan Mulvaney *soon after* the Bud Light debacle.
"Marketing experts" assured us that doubling down was the right thing to do.
Your Nashville property tax bill jumped 73% in 8 years.
Hyper-appreciation you can't spend.
Hyper-taxation, you can't escape.
Hyper-inflation is crushing your cost of living.
Hyper-displacement forces neighbors to liquidate.
And they call it "affordability."
Here's the math they're hiding:
2017: $2,354/year **2020:** $3,150/year
2025: $4,080/year
Your Social Security didn't go up 73%.
Your teacher's salary didn't go up 73%.
Your nurse's paycheck didn't go up 73%.
But your tax bill did.
The same government that drove your property value up through densification and zoning changes now wants to tax YOUR "paper equity" AND leverage it as collateral for municipal debt.
Equity you can't access is not wealth. It's a trap.
When politicians tell you to "just sell and cash out," what they're really saying is: "Leave. You don't belong here anymore."
If you must liquidate or move to pay the bill, it is not affordability.
#Nashville #PropertyTaxes #ZoningReform #AffordableHousing #Gentrification @builttothink
https://open.substack.com/pub/builttothink/p/the-73-reality-why-be-grateful-your?utm_campaign=post-expanded-share&utm_medium=web
Having been hounded by NewsGuard for years, having absurd yelling matches with their minions, realizing the whole thing was a racket, this settlement is very satisfying. https://x.com/NCLAlegal/status/2039347659639591140
Discriminating against families just because they choose a religious option violates the First Amendment. Families deserve the freedom to choose the best education for their children—whether that’s through public schools, homeschooling, or other alternatives. https://wng.org/roundups/federal-court-halts-religious-textbooks-in-state-sponsored-homeschooling-1774991951
This is the third settlement in a week. No single one is decisive and permanently protective of free speech but together they really do amount to a strong statement with clear precedent. The first amendment doesn't enforce itself. https://x.com/NCLAlegal/status/2039303635528552707
Canada banned therapists from helping kids to understand the truth about their sex, and all of our politicians voted for it, including the Conservatives.
The ban doesn’t just apply to therapists. Anyone, including parents, can be charged with the crime of conversion therapy for helping a child to avoid having body parts cut off and being sterilized.
We are so far behind the U.S. in fixing this.
We are, in fact, behind every country in the world.
Starting to see reporting from legacy outlets on the election bill that would move Metro elections to same cycle as Presidential. It would transform the city's electorate, and in turn, council and mayor.
@realpamphleteer reported on this two weeks ago: https://pamphleteer.co/newsletter/state-election-bill-could-change-everything/
To illustrate the total absurdity of Justice Jackson, she ruled last year that states *do not* have the right to ban child sex changes, but ruled today that states *do* have the right to ban counselors from telling boys they are not girls.
First Amendment: 3
Colorado: 0
This is my local library. The library my children check out books from. Rutherford County is a red county, but we do have a noisy contingent of far left people in the area, in part because we’re home to the university with the largest undergraduate population in the state. This was a good job by the board to ignore the shouts of the freaks and do what’s right.