Quick Hits

The White House falsified the transcript to pretend that Biden said "Let me repeat the line" instead of publishing what he actually did say.

The Washington Post made Madison Cornbread's fake testimony into a comic strip, to help propagandize the story to the illiterate.

That's real. And they're not trying to be funny. It's intended to be dramatic and scary.

A group of tourists was swallowed by an avalanche in Kyrgyzstan. One member of the group filmed the avalanche as it swallowed them. They survived, the report says. (Links fixed.)

It's an amazing video. The guy doesn't move because he was in the safest place under the circumstances -- near a stone outcropping where he was sheltered.

A woman is suing Prince Andrew, alleging he was present when she was sexually assaulted by Jeffrey Epstein.

Halifax Bank (UK) decided to force a pronoun policy on its customers. When they objected, Halifax told them they could take their money elsewhere.

Many took them up on this generous offer. From the Battleswarm blog, quoting the Daily Mail:

Halifax's pronouns badge PR disaster has sparked an exodus of customers and their savings today as its bosses were branded 'old fashioned bullies'.

Britons are closing their accounts en masse after the bank's social media team told them to leave if they don't like their new badges to help avoid 'accidental misgendering' of staff.

One account holder told MailOnline that he and his family has already pulled out investments and savings worth £450,000 while many more said they are closing ISAs after they accused the bank of 'alienating' them with 'pathetic virtue signalling'.

Another reader cancelled his Halifax credit cards online today and told customer services: 'Pronouns matter when used properly, I will not be told by a bank what I can and can't'. Other critic said: 'I care because they paid someone to come up with this rubbish but they keep closing branches'.

Branding expert Martin Townsend said Halifax's policy is a 'Ratner moment' and an 'astonishing' mistake that will be considered one of the biggest PR blunders in recent history.

He told LBC: 'It's a Ratner moment I would say.

Battleswarm blog explains the reference:

For those unfamiliar with the saying, Gerald Ratner was a jewelry store chain owner who joked that his products were crap. "Within a few days of the speech, Ratners Group shares dropped by £500 million (US$1.8B today); by the end of 1991, its stock was down 80%."

Battleswarm has an update: The bank has called the police to report "transphobic" former customers.

Professor: I'm leaving the university because woke Maoists have perverted and toxified the university so that it is incapable of performing its assigned function of creating an environment in which thinkers may think.

He's an anthropologist, and his main reason for quitting is the cancellation of his friend and colleague, who created a model to predict rising and falling crime. Well, I bet you can imagine how the Woke Maoists liked that useful tool.

But Why Not Stick Around for the Paycheck?

One of my more cynical friends, a tenured professor at a different university, suggested this. He's no longer on speaking terms with his colleagues, refuses all requests to serve on committees, and spends as much time as possible out of the country. He thinks I'm out of my mind, swapping a salary for a pension.

Maybe he's right. And maybe I'm craven for ducking the unpleasantness that would be entailed by going that route, or by remaining at my job and becoming a chronic troublemaker. But I strongly suspect that mainstream U.S. higher education is morally and intellectually corrupt, beyond the possibility of self-repair, and therefore no longer a worthwhile setting in which to spend my time and effort. The rise of alternative institutions, like the University of Austin and Ralston College, is a hopeful sign, but so far it's been happening painfully slowly.

A 2019 article by Liel Leibovitz, titled "Get Out," argued that the increasingly open hostility of American universities toward Jews is inseparable from the universities' increasingly brazen rejection of two values that, during the 20th Century, made them into places where Jews specifically, and curious, ambitious, and open-minded people generally, could thrive: meritocracy and free debate. In 2019, I thought that Leibovitz was exaggerating and rather overwrought. Everything that's happened since has shown that he was right. That's it: I'm getting out.

What's next? For one thing, with the time that used to be taken up by teaching and university service, I'll write blog posts. Stay tuned.

Alexandria Donkey-Chompers declares -- and this is not a joke or a twisting of her words; she literally says this -- that she will make getting a manicure her personal act of resistance for the day.

posted by Ace at 05:05 PM

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