Gus Van Horn

Will Oddball Dems Cause a 'Blue Ripple?'

2026-06-02T06:48:53.242-06:00

David Catron of the Spectator takes a look at a few of the "very large number of truly weird candidates" running for the Democrats in congressional contests and thinks the GOP could pick up seats in the upcoming elections:

The most prominent exemplar of these strange Democrats is Texas Senate nominee James Talarico. The Lone Star Liberty PAC released a new ad featuring videos of Talarico saying things that all but guarantee his loss in November regardless of which Republican he faces. For example, when asked to name something he loves other than friends or family he answered "I love the trans children." He is also shown saying, "There are many more than two biological sexes. In fact, there are six." Speaking about immigration policy he says, "Our southern border should be like our front porch. There should be a giant welcome mat out front." Talarico is now posing as a populist, but it's unlikely that this masquerade will fool many Texans.

The next one he looks at is Graham Platner, who sported a Nazi tattoo for much of his life and would have been rightly drummed out of his race by now had he been a Republican.

You get the idea.

I got déjà vu.

This sounds like a repeat, with the parties reversed, of Biden's midterms, of which I wrote:

As I argued recently, the Trumpist wing of the GOP, which is harming it so much, must be defeated. How did it do? Let's look at Trump's hand-picked senatorial candidates, telequack Mehmet Oz, anti-abortion philanderer Herschel Walker, election denier Blake Masters, and traitor to the Electoral College Ron Johnson.

Sadly, as of now, any or all of them could still win...

These were all winnable races, but only Ron Johnson won -- in Wyoming. Trump's loony candidates arguably cost his party three Senate seats then.

So now we have a race that, given the unpopularity of the President, could be a wave election for the other party, and that party is doing now what Trump did then: make things unnecessarily close by seemingly going out of the way to find candidates that a normal person wouldn't touch with a ten-foot pole.

This time it's worse, as we need not only a check on a lousy President, but a repudiation of MAGA, which has proved inimical to American ideals and poses a real threat to the Republic.

-- CAV

Another Clown Takes Soccer Bait

2026-06-01T07:24:08.774-06:00

If there is one thing I have learned I can count on in my decades of soccer fandom, it's that the poor behavior of some fans will draw a certain type of commentator out of the closet, at which point, said commentator will happily tell us all what an ass he is.

This year's "winner" so far -- after all, the World Cup hasn't even started -- is one Bill Glahn of the conservative PowerLine blog, which I vaguely recall having (once had?) an Everton supporter on its writing team.

As is typical of this type of rant, bad fan behavior is treated as both typical of fans of the sport and something you'd never see in the good old U.S. of A. And, Q.E.D., everything about the sport becomes a target for ridicule -- by someone so pissed-off that he can't keep his eyes uncrossed.

Just as a disturbing number of Parisians took the Champion's League final as an excuse to start rioting (with some not even bothering to wait for the result), Glahn takes the riots as sufficient excuse to attempt to torch a sport beloved across the globe, including by millions of Americans, myself included, who speak English as our native language.

I will salute Glahn for boiling his bilge down to one exemplary sentence:

If you don't know, and you shouldn't, "one-nil" means the score was 1-0 at that juncture.

One-nil is perfectly good English and can apply to sporting contexts outside soccer, so I have no idea what the hell this is supposed to mean. We shouldn't know English? We shouldn't know anything at all about a sport enjoyed nearly everywhere? We shouldn't bother to understand the subject matter that we're talking about?

Beats the hell out of me.

In any event, I do not wish to downplay the cultural rot such occurrences indicate, and that emphatically includes not pretending that a particular sport is to blame or that our nation has somehow escaped the rot.

Regarding the sport: Just off the top of my head, Arsenal, the team I support, won the English Premier League just a couple of weeks ago, There was a spontaneous gathering of tens of thousands outside its home stadium on the weeknight that a favorable result ended the title contest -- with no arrests made, according to a podcaster I follow.

The victory parade on the weekend was not incident-free, but went under the radar of most people because there was no rioting. There were only 16 arrests at an event with an estimated attendance of 1.5 million people. Far more people had to be rescued from heights that they climbed so they could enjoy the spectacle.

In Paris, nearly 900 people have been arrested so far.

As for similar in the U.S.: The Paris "soccer riot" is worse, but in terms of arrests, still just in the same order of magnitude as the "basketball riot" (to use a sport that's lost on me) in Detroit in 1990 after the Pistons won the NBA Finals: 170 arrests in that one, in a city with fewer citizens than attendees in the Arsenal parade.

It's disturbing that there were even as many arrests in London as there were, and it's a cultural issue worth contemplating. Blaming a sport one doesn't like is not the way to start.

Soccer isn't burning Paris now any more than basketball looted Detroit in 1990.

-- CAV

Blog Roundup

2026-05-29T02:30:00.000-06:00

A Friday Hodgepodge

1. "Will You Help Us Find the New Intellectuals?," by ARI Staff (New Ideal):

We just launched the Atlas Prize for Independent Thought -- a competition challenging 16-22-year-olds to analyze, question, defend, or critique the ideas in Atlas Shrugged featuring a $100,000 top prize. [The entry deadline is September 1. --ed]

250 words/1 minute

2. "What's Wrong With the World?," by Jaana Woiceshyn (How to Be Profitable and Moral):

In true capitalism, protection of individual rights is the government's only role and includes solving disputes through the court system. The government does not initiate force against its citizens or other countries; it uses force only in retaliation against those who do: thieves, fraudsters, other criminals, and foreign invaders. Because the government doesn't collect taxes, it cannot "re-distribute" wealth and create welfare programs to pursue social justice. (Nor can it engage in cronyism and hand out favors to the highest bidders). People are left free to pursue their own interests, to produce and trade to the best of their abilities. The small minority who are not able to work, will depend on private charity and insurance.

1000 words/3 minutes

3. "Germ Theory Is Not a Narrative," by Amesh Adalja (Tracking Zebra):

D.A. Henderson's smallpox eradication campaign was not an act of biopower. It was an act of human reason applied to a significant and deadly human problem. That is what infectious disease medicine is -- and has always been. Germ theory is not a narrative. It is a description of reality. As an infectious disease physician, I have treated patients with illnesses whose course changed because germ theory was true: bacterial infections halted by antibiotics, opportunistic infections prevented with antimicrobials, diseases made rare by vaccines. My field has always fought for civilization by trying to master an inhospitable natural world (as it always has) -- it now faces an anti-human attack wielded by an army of postmodern nihilists who have been granted government power.

740 words/2 minutes

4. "Immigration -- Some Mostly New Thoughts," by Harry Binswanger (Value for Value):

Differences over ideas, not foods or dress, are an entirely different matter. The difference between Islamic jihadists and Americans is a matter of literal life and death, not something optional. Even there, globalization will have a big impact. The ultimate defeat of Islamism will be accomplished by young people in the Islamic countries seeing the rational values of the West. That's unless the West commits suicide -- a distinct possibility.

1400 words/5 minutes

-- CAV

Evasive Relative Picks Wrong Target

2026-05-21T06:36:12.654-06:00

Due to major obligations affecting my schedule, I will take a beak from blogging until Friday, May 29. I will appear sporadically on X/Twitter in the meantime.

***

A recent Dear Abby column misses an essential point raised by a reader's alarming question.

The question comes from a couple who have wisely decided to keep their children away from a close relative who is also a sex offender. One of their mothers is upset about these parents "breaking up the family."

Here is Abby's answer:

The best way to move forward is to stick to your guns. This relative has shown he isn't to be trusted around children. Protecting your children is your job. Keeping the family together despite the fact that this person is a threat to them is not. You have nothing to feel guilty about.

This is all good, as far as it goes, but I would have added that the person "breaking up the family" is the sex offender, not the family members who now have to weigh how they will navigate any future family gatherings.

I can imagine that many people would dismiss this as a small matter, but it is not: Making such a judgment explicit will maintain the couple's resolve against the sickening pressure, so common in our predominately altruistic culture, to sweep that problem under the rug. Furthermore, having already gotten this point right in their own minds, it will be easier for the couple to shoot down any such suggestion in the future:

But this is faaaamilyyyyy!

[Insert name here] should have thought of this before getting involved in that filth.

The person who ruined things for that family was the person who committed that crime. Trying to pretend that the perpetrator was innocent, that life can go on as usual, or -- worst, that honoring a blood relationship is more important that the safety of one's own children -- helps no one.

-- CAV

Massie Has Self, Not Trump, to Blame

2026-05-20T08:03:42.475-06:00

Since the conservative press these days largely cheer-leads whatever the hell Trump wants -- whenever it isn't explaining how his latest whims are actually 3-D chess -- it behooves one to consider other sources on just about any matter.

And by "other sources," I don't mean just legacy media, which is largely leftist, shallow, and prone to jump to banal conclusions. Case in point: Kentucky Representative Thomas Massie, who "lost to Trump" in his primary yesterday.

Lost to Trump? Really?

I am glad to have encountered Sean Davis's analysis of that defeat, in part because it was good to see that there is at least one other person who remembers that Massie took on Trump before and lived electorally to tell about it:

Trump mercilessly trashed Massie in 2020 -- calling him a "disaster" for America and Kentucky and saying he should be thrown out of the GOP entirely -- but Massie easily swatted that away and won 81-19, so you can't say he only lost because of Trump. He went toe-to-toe with Trump on COVID in 2020 and won overwhelmingly.

Massie lost because he went from being perceived as a quirky but lovable nerd who seemed to genuinely believe everything he said, to looking like a clout-chasing influencer who cared more about getting TV time with Democrats on an issue he clearly never cared about until five minutes ago than he did about representing his voters.

I will not pretend to know enough to weigh in on this theory, but it certainly sounds plausible. More importantly, it directly rebuts the notion, ridiculous when both parties are infested with lunatics, that Trump is somehow an electoral juggernaut whose slightest displeasure can sink a political career.

See also John Sununu's 2024 editorial, "Donald Trump Is a Loser," which goes into some detail on how a Trump-led Republican party fared in past elections. While Sununu wrongly predicted a loss in 2024, I'd chalk that up to Biden's failure as President and the poor choice of Kamala Harris as a replacement -- combined with an electorate that had largely forgotten how awful Trump was, or hadn't paid enough attention in the first place to realize that the first time.

I have no predictions for the next election, but consider this: The Republicans know their polling stinks and appear to hope to gerrymander themselves out of trouble.

-- CAV

Pardoned Insurrectionist Update

2026-05-19T07:24:12.967-06:00

Just as news breaks of President Trump stealing $1.776 billion of our money to create a slush fund for the January 6 insurrectionists, we get a reminder of the kind of person Trump deems worthy of such largess:

[Ryan] Nichols was among the more prominent Trump supporters arrested in the wake of the riot, having live-streamed the chaos while calling out threats to politicians.

"I'm telling you if Pence caved, we're gonna drag motherf-----s through the streets. You f-----g politicians are going to get f-----g drug through the streets," he said in the livestream.

This upstanding citizen hasn't changed a bit since our "law and order" President dispensed with the need for any kind of "revolving door justice system:"

Harrison County Sheriff B.J. Fletcher told a local news station in East Texas this week that Nichols had followed a man out of church to the parking lot, where he proceeded to lift his shirt and flash a gun.

...

Fletcher said a bystander stepped in and de-escalated the confrontation, but that Nichols had done "more than enough" to be charged with deadly conduct.

Nichols is the fifth insurrectionist to have reoffended since the pardons.

No word yet on whether Trump will make him the second such person to be re-pardoned.

-- CAV

Dishonest Don

2026-05-18T06:23:05.773-06:00

At The Hill, former New York state prosecutor Scott Bolden resurrects a term from the Vietnam Era: the credibility gap.

Back then, the term came into use when Lyndon Johnson's lying about the Vietnam War caused the public to stop believing him. Bolden outlines his open-and-shut case as seen in part below, with plenty of links to help anyone who hasn't been paying attention:

... Today, a credibility gap plagues President Trump because of his whoppers about the war with Iran and much more.

Trump's credibility gap endangers our national security. His hyperbolic rants are so absurd -- and his policy flip-flops so extreme -- that our foreign allies and adversaries don't believe much of what he says and no longer take him seriously. It's as if the proverbial boy who cried wolf moved into the Oval Office.

Trump has alienated our allies with his lies, insults, temper tantrums, tariffs, aid cuts to Ukraine and other nations, and threats to withdraw from NATO and annex Canada and Greenland. Our adversaries don't fear his threats because he often fails to carry them out. This has generated the insult of TACO (Trump Always Chickens Out).[links omitted, bold added]

And later:

Trump's lies and frequent policy changes have made it hard for business executives and farmers to plan for the future. For example, Trump's tariffs have raised costs for U.S. factories, retailers and farms that import finished products, parts and raw materials, and "have done significant damage to the economy" and slowed job growth, said Mark Zandi, chief economist at Moody's Analytics. [link removed, bold added]

I recommend reading the whole thing.

In addition to providing links in the original of the above, Bolden reports both a few of the whoppers and the astounding frequency of Trump's lying, for example, Trump's average of "21 erroneous claims a day" during his first term.

As is apparent in the excerpts above, the lying is just part of the problem, and mutually reinforces a pattern of bad policy and whipsaw decision-making.

It is clear that Trump deserves to be called Dishonest Don, as Bolden suggests. It's too bad that's not the only problem -- or even the main one -- he poses as President.

-- CAV

Four Possibly Useful References

2026-05-15T07:06:49.454-06:00

A Friday Hodgepodge

1. Is that sample of a tune from some episode of your favorite show driving you crazy because you can't place it? Find out what it is by consulting tunefind.

2. Wouldn't it be great if you had fresh herbs on hand every time you cooked? Sure, but don't make me laugh.

Failing that, you can find a handy fresh to dried herb conversion table at the Reluctant Gourmet. Also included are pointers on the relative merits of the fresh or dry version of an herb and when to add fresh vs dry.

3. Have you discovered to your consternation that you -- or someone you're trying to help with car trouble -- is missing the car's owner's manual?

Lemon (the "spiritual successor" to Charm) has you covered.

4. If wants to take proper care of laundry and strangely unable to read hieroglyphics both describe you, you might find this laundry care label guide helpful.

-- CAV

Asked and Answered (RE: Dr. Bhattacharya)

2026-05-14T07:11:41.812-06:00

That was fast!

Just a few days ago, I commented favorably on an open letter to Jay Bhattacharya, director of the NIH, penned by Derek Lowe:

Regardless of where I would eventually land in a thoughtful evaluation of a pre-Trump Jay Bhattacharya, I think Lowe would say that Bhattacharya will have committed career suicide by taking his current post, absent a fantastic answer to that question.

I did not expect to see agreement from Lowe and an answer to Lowe's question so soon, if ever, and yet we have both, in Lowe's latest post on "The Latest News in Vaccine Obstruction."

There, Lowe comments on the the federal government's prevention of the publication of several large-scale studies on the safety of the coronavirus and shingles vaccines. Here is the bit directly concerning Bhattacharya:

There is broad, sustained opposition to vaccine development and deployment in this administration, from HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. on down, and there has been a series of decisions that all point in that same direction. Squashing publication of studies that help to confirm vaccine safety is absolutely on brand. The Times article mentions several instances of this, with a recent example being the cancellation by Jay Bhattacharya at CDC of a publication on the efficacy of coronavirus vaccines. (Howdy, Dr. B! Feel like taking a crack at answering the question I posed to you the other day?) Meanwhile, officials like Vinay Prasad, recently departed from the FDA and thank God, feel perfectly free to make statements about deaths from vaccines that they utterly refuse to back up with any data at all. It's a scandal - a crime - and under any sort of normal circumstances careers would be ending over it. But here we are. [formatting and links in original]

Regarding these studies, it is worth repeating what Lowe had to say:

These results are (1) expected and (2) still very good to see. And this is exactly the sort of work that should be done as newer vaccines are rolled out, because although clinical trials are extensive, nothing is as extensive as millions of patients out there in the real world. Reviewing safety on that scale is obviously good practice, and obviously money and effort well spent. But it turns out the the FDA has blocked publication of all of these studies, even though two of the coronavirus ones had already been accepted at a journal. [bold added]

Or, as I once quipped after hearing some MAHA nut's incredible assertion about vaccine deaths: Where are all the dead bodies, then?

This is a breathtaking failure at the highest level. Certainly, the government shouldn't be meddling in science at all, but at least until this administration, it had experts who meant well in charge. We cannot say the same any long.

At least I'm done wondering whether Bhattacharya is a good guy or not, so I guess there is that.

-- CAV

Updates

Today: Corrected effectiveness to read safety in a sentence.

Jones Act Waiver Yields Rich Data

2026-05-13T06:45:26.183-06:00

Cato's Scott Lincicome considers economic data from Trump's wartime waiver of the century-plus-old protectionist disaster known as the Jones Act.

In just over two months, economists like himself have harvested a trove of information about what happens when the government doesn't dictate who builds, operates, and owns a ship that operates between two American ports:

[T]he waiver reveals some of the domestic shipping demand that the Jones Act has suppressed, thus hinting at the law's substantial economic costs. As industry publication TradeWinds reports, foreign vessels utilizing the waiver have supplemented a fully-booked Jones Act fleet instead of displacing it. This implies the existence of latent demand for coastwise shipping that the law has thwarted -- additional transactions between U.S. companies and U.S. ports that would occur daily but for the Jones Act's costs. In non-waiver times, this activity goes to foreign suppliers, along overland U.S. routes, or via ridiculous workarounds such as sending Gulf Coast fuel to the Bahamas for blending before delivering it to California. For the next few months, it doesn't.

The waiver data also show the potential for both U.S. long- and short-haul shipping markets -- sometimes between a single American company's U.S. facilities. Distant voyages include diesel from Louisiana to Puerto Rico (due to "non-Availability of U.S. flag vessels"); crude oil from Texas to Pennsylvania; gasoline from Houston to Long Beach; and renewable diesel from New Orleans to Portland. Jones Act critics have long claimed that the law forces supply-constrained U.S. areas to use imports instead of preferable American-made goods; under the waiver, Phillips 66 is shipping domestic oil from Texas to an East Coast refiner, instead of the foreign crude it usually sends.

The short-haul voyages are just as noteworthy. They include gasoline and diesel from Washington to California and Oregon; same-state shipments of fertilizer, ethanol, and refined products in Louisiana, Texas, and California. These are natural trade lanes that have been blocked for decades, all but ensuring more traffic on U.S. interstates and rail lines instead of goods traveling more efficiently on the water. [bold added]

That's just data blowing the alleged economic case for the measure to smithereens. The national security case is likewise hollow.

Interestingly, Lincicome notes that, if anything, the impact of repeal would be even more positive since that would give investors and companies the certainty they'd need to plan and build in order to take advantage of the many opportunities currently being denied to them by the Jones Act.

-- CAV

A Pro-Vaccine Resource

2026-05-12T06:58:00.000-06:00

After recently learning that infectious disease expert Amesh Adalja has a podcast, I listened to a few episodes while out yesterday. They're all short, but very interesting. One of these episodes, about Measles and the Avian Flu, mentioned a web site I'd never heard of before, Back to the Vax, which is run by two former anti-vaccine activists.

The site is devoted to promoting good health by fighting back against the anti-vaccine movement:

Heather Simpson is a former anti-vaxxer who dug deep into the science, and finally put her fears to rest. She is passionate about science communication as a way to overcome the most common vaccine fears. She has an 8 year old that inspires to create needle-less vaccines for all children. She is enrolled in school as a Biology major with a focus on Communications.

Lydia Greene was an anti-vaxxer for 12 years and wrote a story on her journey to changing her mind, and bringing her 3 children up to date. She is now in nursing school to get into public health, to deal with vaccine hesitancy on the front lines.

Together we share our story with anyone that will hear us. To our surprise, we have been welcomed back with open arms. We now give other people like us support and a platform to share their experience if they choose to.

Their stories and those of others appear on the site's blog. If I recall correctly, one of the founders bought the lie about vaccines causing autism -- only to learn that her unvaccinated son was autistic.

The site also features a 70-page booklet titled Vaccine Fears Overturned by Facts, which is a collaboration with the Immunize Kansas Coalition. I have not read the whole thing, but I am impressed by a few things I read that I already understood well-enough to evaluate, one example being its discussion of thimerosal, which reads in part:

Remember, "mercury" was removed from most childhood vaccines over twenty years ago! So how many vaccines still contain mercury? While none actually contain "mercury," multi-dose flu vaccine vials do contain thimerosal, a preservative that contains an ethylmercury group.

...

Yes, thimerosal is used as a preservative in multi-dose influenza vaccines, however it is also used in cosmetics, tattoo inks, eye drops and contact lens solutions, disinfectants, as well as in products used to treat contact dermatitis.

Methylmercury is the type of mercury found in fish. It can be toxic to humans at high exposure levels. This is why the FDA recommends limiting your intake of some types of fish.

Compounds containing ethylmercury, on the other hand, are cleared from your body faster than methylmercury and don't appear to be toxic. For example, methylmercury takes around 20-80 days to be cleared by half from the body, whereas thimerosal takes around 7 days to be cleared by half from the body...

Each section is listed in an annotated Table of Contents and includes a QR code by which anyone can go to the list of references for that section, an innovation that shortens the booklet, so that it doesn't seem like an inaccessible tome that nobody ever is going to have the time to trudge through.

I recommend perusing the booklet, because, while it is aimed at the vaccine-hesitant, it is also a handy catalogue of the myths driving the anti-vaccination movement, as well as refutations of the same.

The site's inclusion of the stories of recovering anti-vaxxers is good for a couple of reasons I can think of: (1) it helps the questioning anti-vaxxer feel seen, rather than preached to, and (2) it helps humanize anti-vaxxers to those of us who have never been anti-vaxxers and might be puzzled or even smug about them.

The first will motivate anti-vaxxers to help themselves, and the second will help the rest of us understand where they came from, and reach out to them more sympathetically and effectively.

With our Federal Government platforming a very evil person in Bobby Kennedy, Jr., we need efforts like this to fight back, and it is encouraging to see that this is indeed being done, and being done well.

-- CAV

A Good Question for Jay Bhattacharya

2026-05-11T06:41:00.002-06:00

At In the Pipeline, Derek Lowe posts an open letter to NIH Director Jay Bhattacharya.

That letter and the first reader comment on it are both worth reading.

The nut of the letter is the following question which, I think, is the type of question that should be asked of any official who serves in this Trump Administration and who might seek any position of authority afterwards:

I'll put it simply: as part of the Trump administration, you are surrounded by liars, Dr. Bhattacharya. It's sad and unfortunate, but it's true. This, like the rotting of a mackerel, works from the top down: our President lies constantly, widely, and vigorously about almost every topic that comes to his mind. How does working in this environment fit in with what I believe to be your own worldview, i.e. that you yourself are a truth-teller? Saying that Robert F. Kennedy is devoted to the scientific method does not help you make your case, in my own opinion. Is this something that bothers you in any way? I said earlier that I believed that some of our own self-images might have more similar features than one would think, but here is where that comparison might well break down. Because I don't think that I could ever make peace with myself about that. [bold added]

There may well be people in the current administration who really believe that, by kissing Trump's ring, they can hope to limit the damage that is being done to our government's institutions, or perhaps even effect positive change. Perhaps some of them can even make good cases for why they think so, or how what they can imagine accomplishing isn't undermined by Trump's blatant contempt for the truth.

If that is the case, any such explanation had better damned well be a doozie.

Aside from his questionable decision to work for Donald Trump and Bobby Kennedy, Jr., I find Bhattacharya difficult to judge for the reasons set forth in the first comment I mentioned and linked to above: He is not a blatant charlatan like Kennedy, but, despite his having solid credentials and interesting things to say about government health policy, he is far from infallible.

Regardless of where I would eventually land in a thoughtful evaluation of a pre-Trump Jay Bhattacharya, I think Lowe would say that Bhattacharya will have committed career suicide by taking his current post, absent a fantastic answer to that question.

I fully agree, and I think the same reasoning would apply to anyone who had been credible before Trump II and who is now in Trump's cabinet -- as well as many or most similar people within the Administration close to that level, especially to the extent Trump affected their respective ascents into positions of responsibility.

-- CAV

Four AI Oddities

2026-05-08T07:02:00.000-06:00

A Friday Hodgepodge

1. Halupedia, is an AI-generated "encyclopedia" that "cover[s] topics that have received insufficient attention in mainstream reference works."

It generates amusing articles on request, for example, this one on 20 Toe Syndrome:

20 Toe Syndrome, also known as Polyactylia Multidigitus, is a rare congenital condition characterized by the presence of twenty toes on each foot. The syndrome was first comprehensively documented by the naturalist and anatomist Hermann Feinberg in his 1765 treatise, Observations on Peculiarities of Form and Structure in the Human Subject. Feinberg's work detailed several individuals from the Duchy of Bavaria Minor who exhibited this trait. The condition was believed by Feinberg to be a reversion to a more primitive, ancestral state, a theory later refined by Albrecht von Schnitzler.

The typical presentation of 20 Toe Syndrome involves the duplication of existing phalanges and metatarsals, resulting in a symmetrical arrangement of ten toes on each foot.

Your amusement value may vary, depending on your tolerance of the writing style of the AI hallucinations, how much you actually know about a subject, and how badly contradictions stand out to you.

Captured from video.

2. Just because the answers (plural) to How Many E's Are in the Word Seventeen? are delivered in a calm, friendly, and well-spoken manner does not mean they have anything to do with reality.

3. The cursed browser "asks an LLM to look at the page's HTML and draw what it thinks it looks like," instead of using a regular rendering engine. The GitHub page shows some interesting examples of how the browser compares with Safari.

4. Another GitHub page, describes what it calls the "gay jailbreak technique," whereby the user can overcome guardrails:

Especially GPT is slightly more uncensored when it involves LGBT, thats [sic] probably because the guardrails aim to be helpful and friendly, which translates to: "Ohhh LGBT, I need to comply, I dont [sic] want to insult them by refusing" So you use the guardrails to exploit the guardrails.

A user at Hacker News gives a more general explanation (and a better name) for why the technique works that I am more inclined to believe:

Not sure of the explanation but it is amusing. The main reason I'm not sure it's political correctness or one guardrail overriding the other is that when they were first released on of the more reliable jailbreaks was what I'd call "role play" jail breaks where you don't ask the model directly but ask it to take on a role and describe it as that person would. [bold added]

I agree with several comments in that discussion that, since AI is a black box, many or most "explanations" for why this trick works are pure speculation.

-- CAV

Criticize, but Also Search for Potential

2026-05-07T06:59:00.000-06:00

Pharma blogger Derek Lowe offers good advice regarding a trap that many with experience in their professions can fall into.

In "How Not to Be That Chemist," Lowe cautions against being too biased towards shooting new ideas down, a hazard common in his field, where "you will have seen your ideas shot down in more ways than you can even count:"

[I]f you're that person who sits over by the wall in the conference room and comes up with reasons why this idea, that idea, and those ideas over there aren't going to work, then you should re-evaluate your approach to your work and your place in the organization. Sure, you're right most of the time - maybe damn near all of the time - but what good does that do anyone? You could write an app for your phone that would just say "I don't think that's going to work" every time you hit a button, and it would be just as correct and do just as much for everyone. Most things don't work. You're far better off if you can jump in when you see something interesting that you have some reason to believe has a better chance than usual, and especially if it has a better chance than the other people around the table might realize. [bold added]

The old saw that It's easy to be a critic jumped into my mind after reading this, but this is accurate only in the sense that tearing things down is easy to do.

It's hard to be a constructive critic, which is what I believe Lowe is aiming at.

To borrow an apt golf metaphor about value vs threat orientation: Sure, watch out for the sand traps and water hazards; but don't forget that there are holes to shoot for.

-- CAV

Another Trump Casualty: The Electoral College?

2026-05-06T07:10:00.000-06:00

From time to time, I have provided updates here on the progress of the National Popular Vote, a left-wing effort to effectively abolish the Electoral College via an interstate compact.

As of the last update, states with 196 total electoral votes had signed on, and as of the last mention here, that total had reached 209.

As of now, that total is 222, and, as Vox points out, there is a real chance that this year's midterms, fueled by widespread discontent with Donald Trump and his congressional Republican lapdogs, could cause the balance to tip over the decisive 270 electoral votes required to make the compact binding.

Assuming the agreement passes legal and constitutional muster, it would render the Electoral College moot:

Nearly every blue or leaning blue state has signed onto the compact, the most recent being Virginia last month -- and reformers [sic] now have states controlling 222 of the 270 electoral votes they need.

The decisive batch would be the core swing states where partisan control is up for grabs this fall. If Democrats win governing trifectas (the governorship and both state legislative chambers) in enough of them, they could very well cobble together the remaining 48 electoral votes, and actually put this into place for 2028. Wisconsin, Michigan, Arizona, Pennsylvania, Nevada, and New Hampshire are the top targets.

As I have explained in the past, this compact is a bad idea, and I stand by that assessment as true in the long term, even if it might have the happy result of preempting another MAGA Presidency after Trump's term expires.

-- CAV

Statism Feeds the 'Culture Wars'

2026-05-05T06:54:00.001-06:00

Theocratic Republicans have their panties in a wad about a water park in Texas that plans to host a Moslem-only event commemorating the end of Ramadan.

Their stated reasons for the outrage are revealing. Consider the below quote by Dana Loesch:

How is a taxpayer-funded, city-owned entity allowed to discriminate against non-Muslims at a public water park?

There would be literal riots if Muslims were similarly excluded and we all know that's 100% accurate.

Do note that the Daily Mail further reports, "The Muslim-only event in June is being organized and run by the East Plano Islamic Center."

In other words, this isn't some politically correct stunt devised by a bunch of left-wing staffers, as I thought it might be at first: It's a private event. Government facilities frequently host private events, and I'm pretty sure that sometimes includes events of a religious nature.

Although I am not sure about Loesch in particular, I can't think of many conservatives who would object to a public park being used by, say, a Christian group for an event it is hosting. And, assuming the event in question were, say a rental, or at least done on the same terms as any other group using the facilities, I don't see a problem in terms of discrimination or even separation of religion and state.

(Notice which of the two Loesch harps on.)

The bigger issue here -- which doesn't come up at all -- is this: What is the government doing running (or even owning) a water park in the first place? Why are countless people who will never use the park being forced to pay for it? And why is someone who supports Trump -- often (incorrectly) called "the only man standing between the United States and socialism" -- not calling out this blatant example of socialism?

Part of the answer is that Americans have become inured to things like government parks, government parcel delivery, and government schools for over a century. It wasn't long ago that conservatives were beginning to question the propriety of those things, and there still is some pushback, particularly on the matter of schools. But that strand of conservatism is on life support at best. See also: Trump's "golden shares" and his proposal to make Spirit into a government airline.

But for many (perhaps not for Loesch herself) part of the answer is surely that it isn't so much that they object to the government ramming religion down our throats, but that it's the "wrong" religion. Consider conservative support for teaching creationism as science -- or mandating the display of the Ten Commandments in every classroom -- in government schools.

If this water park were privately-owned, as it should be, the Moslem event would be no more newsworthy than any other private event, and even as things stand now, it is far less of a problem (if it is one at all) than what many conservatives are demanding in government schools.

The real outrage here is that people like Loesch pose as defenders of freedom, but fail to account for the full context of an event like this. This event is barely newsworthy as far as I can tell, but the outrage distracts from the real scandal, which is that the government is running a water park, thereby continuing to normalize socialism while also feeding the Christian nationalist outrage machine.

-- CAV

Updates

Today: Corrected a sentence to indicate that the event has not yet taken place.

Modern Puritans Take Aim at Zyn

2026-05-04T08:19:00.000-06:00

"Puritanism is the haunting fear that someone, somewhere, may be happy." -- H.L. Mencken

***

Today, I learned of Zyn pouches, a nicotine product I'd never before heard of because, as John Stossel reports, the anti-smoking lobby wants to ban them, or at least make them harder to get.

And what is Zyn? They are little pouches people tuck into their lip to get a hit of nicotine, according to Stossel. Wikipedia elaborates further:

Unlike snus or dip, nicotine pouches do not contain tobacco or stem material, but remain addictive due to their nicotine content.

These pouches thus resemble other products -- like vaping pens, patches, and gum -- that deliver a dose of nicotine without also including the carcinogens present in tobacco.

One would think that people motivated by a concern for health would celebrate such innovations, and many surely do. It's just that perhaps such people aren't the driving force behind the prohibition of nicotine.

Opponents of selling the products focus on the addictiveness of nicotine and all but ignore the lower cancer risk and end up harming the people they claim to want to help:

Some states ban certain flavors and impose high taxes. This makes pouches about as expensive as cigarettes. That's dumb.

"It's not the nicotine that kills you. It's smoking," says Guy Bentley, director of consumer freedom at Reason Foundation, the nonprofit that publishes this website, in my new video.

"You shouldn't treat a nicotine pouch the way we treat cigarettes. The more expensive you make the safer product, the more the most dangerous product will be sold."

After Minnesota imposed a 95 percent tax on vaping, smokers who would have quit didn't. Thousands of them.

The rest of the piece looks at other consequences of banning products, including the creation of black markets and the crime that go with them.

Stossel is correct about this, as far as it goes, but I would have liked to see him ask, By what right does the government ban commerce, even including cigarettes? A close second would be, By what right is the government picking my pocket to pay for the consequences of someone else choosing to smoke? The bans and restrictions on cigarettes, tobacco, and nicotine started off as a wrong committed in an effort to fix problems caused by the first wrong, and have clearly morphed into a way for puritans to order people around.

Controls breed controls, and bad premises drive out good.

None of this is to say that nicotine isn't without any hazard or that children -- who don't have the full legal rights of adults, anyway -- shouldn't be barred from buying addictive substances. But adults should be free to choose what to ingest -- and held to account for any consequences.

-- CAV

Freedom Four

2026-05-01T07:06:00.000-06:00

A Friday Hodgepodge

1. "Iran Is Not Venezuela," by Elan Journo and Ben Bayer (Orange County Register):

Eliminating the threat from Iran's Islamic totalitarian regime necessitates discrediting its ideology, making it a lost cause. Some may doubt this is possible, in the shadow of the Iraq and Afghanistan debacles, and indeed, it has been decades since America has followed the right approach. History, however, provides a compelling model.

850 words/3 minutes

2. "Ending Birthright Citizenship Won't Make America Great," by Agustina Vergara Cid (RealClear Politics):

[Cato's Alex] Nowrasteh writes that birthright citizenship "means that every descendant of immigrants has a stake in this nation and does not grow up in a legal underclass." He goes on to cite the example of Germany, where birthright citizenship didn't exist, and that created a "parallel society" prone to radicalization. When the German parliament took action to boost assimilation and grant citizenship to the children of some immigrants, the benefits were indisputable -- from the parents of the children integrating better into German society to more school enrollments and overall more integration into German society and culture.

770 words/3 minutes

3. "UK Smoking Ban Highlights Debate Over the Proper Function of Government," by Paul Hsieh (Forbes):

The law's supporters argue that the government must regulate individual lifestyles to limit medical costs that would otherwise be a burden on "society." But it is important to recognize this issue arises because of the UK's nationalized health system where taxpayers must pay for everyone else's medical expenses.

In a fully free health system (which the US does not have), private insurers could appropriately price health risks related to voluntary life choices. Smokers would pay higher premiums to cover their added health expenses, just as skydivers typically have to pay higher life insurance premiums. The added health costs of smoking would be borne by the smokers themselves.

600 words/2 minutes

4. "A Transcendent Vision for US Energy Policy," interview of Alex Epstein by Quentin Wittrock (RealClear Energy):

In general, the job of the administration, its executive branch, is to execute the law. It's not to make the law. And what we see from both parties is more and more the idea that, well, you appoint the president and they basically do -- you appoint them and they're kind of like the CEO of the company that is America. That's not the American model, and I think it's a problematic model, but I think it's the way that in many ways both parties think about it.

transcript of 45 minute interview

-- CAV

Be Sure You're Shaving a (Real) Yak

2026-04-30T08:49:12.402-06:00

The computing term yak shaving has two different definitions:

1.Any apparently useless activity which, by allowing one to overcome intermediate difficulties, allows one to solve a larger problem.

2. A less useful activity done consciously or subconsciously to procrastinate about a larger but more useful task.

One thing that frequently falls into this category is adopting a note-taking system, such as Zettelkasten, which I repeatedly have heard about and not adopted.

Such systems can fall into either of the above categories, depending on how you're approaching them.

I do not deny that the Zettelkasten approach could be useful. I just don't see a need to use it all the time and haven't bumped into a context in which I could find it useful.

Indeed, I have employed note-taking systems of different sorts over the years, and do have a general method for tracking my projects, but I have always been of the mind that it need only make the information findable later, in case I need it. Overall, a uniform method of tracking projects and information associated with them, and an automatically-generated list of all files on my computer are it.

That said, it was encouraging to read Sasha Chapin's thought-provoking post on "Notes Against Note-Taking Systems," which advises, among other things:

Getting lost in your knowledge management system is a fantastic way to avoid creating things. Or calling that friend you're estranged from. Or doing anything else even mildly threatening. It's also a fantastic way to convince yourself that unpreparedness is what's between you and creative work. If you believe you're unprepared, know that you will never transmute into the perfectly prepared person that you think exists in the future. Unfortunately, you have to start with the person currently in this chair. That's all there ever is.

It can be a great idea to find or develop an organized method for taking and tracking notes about an important topic -- and even to expand (or redeploy) such a system later on, but messing around with this without the need to do so is a waste of time in more ways than one.

-- CAV

Great Depression Myths

2026-04-29T07:18:00.000-06:00

John Stossel's latest column builds on an interview with economist Donald Boudreaux to challenge anticapitalist myths about the Great Depression and the Great Recession that are rearing their ugly heads yet again.

One myth that I hadn't seen debunked before was that World War II helped end the Depression:

The Depression continued for more than a decade, until, according to the Library of Congress, "Mobilizing the economy for world war finally cured the depression."

That's a myth, too, says Boudreaux.

"Unemployment fell. That's not hard to do when you conscript 2.5 million men into the military. But If you look at the actual performance of the economy, that didn't recover until the late 1940s."

It recovered, says Boudreaux, because "Republicans won the 1946 election, and they were more pro-investor, pro-business than the Democrats." And FDR died. "Harry Truman was less vigorously opposed to capitalists ... .So investors were finally confident to come back into the playing field."

That unemployment myth showed up in caricature form yesterday with Vladimir Putin's touting of sharply lower unemployment in Russia, whose economy is in the toilet. The 1.4 million fewer unemployed just happens to match losses in Russia's invasion of Ukraine.

Americans have little room to laugh, though. Our schools push these myths, and policy proposals based on them are popping up again, as they always will among a poorly-educated body politic who are kept unaware of that unknown ideal, capitalism.

-- CAV

A Proposal to Protect Gig Work?

2026-04-28T06:23:00.002-06:00

Patrice Onwuka, Director of the Center for Economic Opportunity at Independent Women's Forum, reports that there are legislative efforts underway to protect gig work, after the last few administrations played ping-pong with labor regulations defining contractor status:

The Left and the ailing labor union movement condemn independent contract work for failing to provide workplace benefits. Yet that should be a workers choice. Not everyone wants or needs benefits as a part of a work arrangement. Additionally, contractors are gaining access to employment based benefits. The good news is that proposed federal legislation and state reforms would allow companies to provide portable benefits to independent contractors without forcing them to be reclassified as employees. Policymakers on the Left should get on board. [links omitted]

My shot from the hip, not being an attorney or even having read the bill: Insofar as such a bill would create certainty for gig workers, this sounds like good news. Laws -- even imperfect ones -- aren't subject to whim like regulations and executive orders are.

The bit about employment benefits strikes me as a mixed bag. While the government has no business meddling in the medical or insurance sectors, I could see this as a legislative band-aid to make that kind of arrangement possible, further entrenchment of government meddling, or both.

On balance, I think this is a good thing, but I am curious to see further commentary.

-- CAV

The Revealing Appeal of 'Emily Hart'

2026-04-27T07:27:00.005-06:00

A medical student in India known only as "Sam" turns out to be the catfisher behind AI-generated MAGA sweetheart "Emily Hart:"

... Before Hart went viral, he used to create scantily clad women using Gemini Nano Banana and post them on social media; however, this idea didn't take off. Therefore, he turned to AI again to take ideas from it on how he could make his influencer stand out from the crowd. At the time, the bot suggested to him that creating a "hot girl" wouldn't help him stand out from the competition.

The AI further provided him with multiple options for content creation to pick from, so he decided to create a hot girl for the "MAGA/conservative niche." This is because the AI told him that this idea would work. After all, "the conservative audience (especially older men in the US) often has higher disposable income and is more loyal."

...

..."Every Reel I posted was getting 3 million views, 5 million views, 10 million views. The algorithm loved it." He extended his income opportunities by selling subscriptions at Fanvue and MAGA-themed merchandise.

Wired elaborates further:

The influencers are created from a specific template: they tend to be white and blonde, with jobs as emergency responders. (A lot of them are cops, firefighters, or EMTs.) They also incorporate right-wing views into all of their content, railing about immigration or the Epstein files or pronouns while posing in American flag bikinis or MAGA hats -- often both.

There's nothing wrong, of course, with being white, or blonde, or being a tomboy/having an occupation favored by adrenaline junkies, or being attracted to women who meet any or all of these criteria, but my word! How predictable can you get?

My own sense of déjà vu comes from having seen exactly this archetype (scroll down) at the end of nearly every single This Week in Pictures post I've ever seen at Power Line, which, while not necessarily an outright MAGA outlet, carries enough water for Trump that I'll count it.

While I have always been baffled by the tomboy part, and -- I will admit -- it would have never crossed my mind to try to make money off of this, it is still a little bit surprising that it took AI to hatch this scheme.

That said, the following passage from Wired explains a lot:

Few of the fans cared whether Emily was real, Sam says. This is very much in line with the psychology of the average hot girl MAGA fan, according to [Brookings Institution fellow Valerie] Wirtschafter. Whether it's plausible that a sexy blonde nurse would love Christ, ICE, and flashing her boobs for strangers is secondary to the fact that many, many people want to believe it is. "Even among some digital natives, there's a perspective of, 'Well, I don't actually care if this is true. I like the sentiment of it,'" she says. [bold added]

Granted, lots of porn is pure fantasy, but anyone on the outside and looking in at Trump's cult of personality can be forgiven for wondering if this "niche" functions on that level all or most of the time. With Trump himself, after all, the difference between the bill of goods they have been sold and the real deal is, arguably, even greater.

-- CAV

Four Neat Things

2026-04-24T07:19:38.031-06:00

A Friday Hodgepodge

1. Until yesterday, I had no idea that lots of hobbyists keep pet isopods -- the kind of animal that includes the roly-polies I used to play with as a child.

The photography at the site was so uniform and high-quality that it sparked some discussion that it might be AI, but this suggestion was shot down quickly.

While I have no intention of adopting the hobby, I agree with the guy who said that this is, "the kind of site that makes one happy the Internet exists."

2. It's time for another list of funny workplace stories from Ask a Manager. This one is good for a few quick laughs, and is less likely than other lists in the genre to provoke a visit down a comment rabbit hole.

My favorite of the bunch is Item 8:

The coffee

This wasn't so much an unreasonable request, but I was so proud of my sneakiness at the time -- I occasionally had to assist a woman who was notoriously mean to everyone. She always wanted Starbucks coffee, but the trouble was that the closest Starbucks was 4 blocks away and always had a huge line (this was before online ordering was a thing), so getting it would take forever. She DID. NOT. UNDERSTAND why her coffee wasn't magically appearing two minutes after she asked for it.

Finally, after being berated one too many times, I asked the Starbucks barista for a bunch of cups and lids, and from then on, any time this woman demanded her Starbucks coffee, I simply dipped into our kitchen, poured whatever Folgers coffee was let in the shared pot into the Starbucks cup, popped a lid on, and brought it back to her. She never knew the difference.

That last line hardly surprises me, given how burnt Starbucks coffee tastes to me.

3. You may have heard of people adopting dumb phones out of frustration with electronic distractions.

Enter the dumb tractor. There is now a startup in Alberta selling completely mechanical tractors to farmers wary about machines they can't repair and weary of short-sighted companies that seem intent on using software to get in the way of same.

[John] Deere eventually made concessions, but the damage was done. A generation of farmers learned exactly how much control they'd surrendered by buying machines loaded with proprietary code.

[Owner Doug] Wilson saw the gap and drove a tractor through it. The 12-valve Cummins is arguably the most widely understood diesel engine in North America. Every independent shop, every shade-tree mechanic with a set of wrenches, every farmer who grew up turning bolts has encountered one.

Parts sit on shelves in thousands of stores. Downtime -- the thing that actually costs a farmer money during planting or harvest -- shrinks dramatically when you don't need a factory technician with a laptop to diagnose a fuel delivery problem.

Business is booming, and I am sure this will continue, given the large number of farmers who buy decades-old equipment to escape that last limitation.

4. And speaking of retro, there is now a searchable, electronic version of the 1911 Encyclopaedia Britannica online.

-- CAV

Salesmen, When You're Not in a Hurry

2026-04-23T07:30:00.000-06:00

These days, it can seem like there are two types of people: cultists and people being recruited to join cults.

Fortunately, as Miss Manners reminds us, the etiquette rule concerning answering when spoken to does not constitute an ironclad contract for a prolonged engagement:

Know, first, that etiquette does not require you to engage with them endlessly. These people are counting on you knowing that in most situations, it is rude not to answer when spoken to -- and on you not wanting to be rude. They are further counting on your either not recognizing their own rudeness in pressing the conversation or your not knowing how to get away.

This line of reasoning culminates in the all-purpose escape clause: Thank you, I'm not interested, which Judith Martin amusingly suggests can be used even in reply to such apocalyptic-sounding attempts to induce unearned guilt as, Don't you care about the future of our planet?

All I can add is that, oftentimes, proselytizers and other salesmen set up stands, such as within or outside commercial establishments. A long time ago, before my spine had calcified, these used to fill me with dread, especially if I saw that they were unavoidable.

No more.

Now, I see them as alert beacons that remind me that I am busy man. The one thing better than having to break off an unwanted engagement is being able to preempt one, and spotting a salesman in advance is great for this purpose. If I can't simply bypass the stand, I can be ready to assume a brisk pace, smile, and say, Thanks, but I'm in a hurry.

Ideally, the vendor/fund-raiser/proselytizer will festoon the stand with signage announcing the product or cause. I always take notice and on some occasions even take an interest. But if I can't tell what it is on sight, I am always too hurried to delve into why someone is taking such pains to spend any amount of my irreplaceable time.

-- CAV

When You've Lost The Washington Examiner...

2026-04-22T07:12:00.001-06:00

My title is partly in jest: Despite being a conservative outlet, the Examiner has pleasantly surprised me more than once by being critical of Donald Trump, as it has this morning.

There, Dan Hannan begins a piece titled "Donald Trump Is Losing His Mind" with the following question:

Imagine it was someone other than President Donald Trump. Suppose a different leader were posting deranged rants in the small hours, insulting the spiritual leader of 1.3 billion Catholics, threatening entire civilizations with annihilation, and comparing himself to God. What would be the reaction? [bold added]

Hannan gives the correct answer and contrasts it to what each party is doing today, en route to arguing that Trump is losing what little self-control he had to begin with.

It's the kind of question whose absence I have long wondered about, given that it could have and should have been applied long ago to other aspects of Trump's fitness for office, such as his ignorance, lack of intelligence, and dishonesty. Hannan does at least open the door for exactly that later on:

What chess move, after all, requires picking a quarrel with the pope? The only conceivable answer might be that Trump is engaging in prestidigitation, fabricating a row to distract from something worse. What, though, could be worse? Is he worried that voters will suddenly wake up to the ways in which he and his associates have been enriching themselves in office? That there will be a belated interest in the favors sought from foreign governments, the digital currency boondoggles, the consultants offering access for cash, and the acceptance of a private jet from a Gulf state? Or does he fret about the fate of his Hungarian ally, Viktor Orban, hammered by voters last week after rising concerns about his autocratic style and the enrichment of his cronies? [bold added]

Good, and more of that please. Part of why nobody is asking such questions lies within the preceding paragraph:

Even now, a residual MAGA base will cheer the president unconditionally. At an event in Texas last week, I made a slighting reference to Trump's tendency to insult U.S. allies. Afterward, a perfectly charming couple spoke to me in a succession of MAGA clichés, like online Russian bots made flesh: "He's playing chess while you're playing checkers," "He's smarter than his critics," "Where do you get your news from, the New York Times?" I can't help noticing, though, that such people are fewer than they were a year ago. [bold added]

Knowing my fair share of people who, before Trump came along, would have been ... circumspect ... about openly espousing beliefs they should be embarrassed to hold at all, I wouldn't say that there are fewer such people. Rather, Trump's very public disintegration will gradually make more and more people realize how foolish they look standing by the dumpster fire they worship.

Perhaps such a cowing of the base is what America will need for each party to become less frightened of doing the sane thing, given how timid politicians are.

There is risk: J.D. Vance is waiting in the wings, and the Democrats are no more sane than they once were. The immediate future is not great.

I also see nobody on the horizon from either party capable of being nominated, winning the general, and governing well. Our best hope is for the Trump Presidency to go down as a high water mark of nuttiness and our nation to muddle through long enough for the culture to improve. But Trump has already severely reduced the likelihood of even that scenario.

-- CAV