TREAT YOURSELF: Snailax Shiatsu Neck and Shoulder Massager. #CommissionEarned

FOUR YEARS AGO TODAY: Texas restaurants, retailers and other businesses can reopen Friday. Here’s the rules they have to follow.

Gov. Greg Abbott’s plan to reopen Texas will allow some businesses — like retail stores, restaurants, movie theaters and malls — to open as early as Friday, with new rules outlined by the governor’s taskforce.

Abbott also said a second wave of openings and looser restrictions that will include barbershops, hair salons, bars and gyms could go into effect as early as May 18, as long as the state sees “two weeks of data to confirm no flare-up of COVID-19.”

It would take Abbott another 10 months before declaring on March 2nd, 2021:

TO BE FAIR, IF YOU’RE LIVING NEAR GREEN SPACE YOU’RE PROBABLY RICHER: Study suggests that living near green spaces reduces the risk of depression and anxiety.

But it does suggest that advocates of high-density urban living may be in effect advocating for depression and anxiety. Of course, maybe that’s not a bug, but a feature: Neurosis and the Curley Effect.

Reading all of these pieces I’m seeing a story that goes something like this: Depressed, neurotic people (especially single women) are more likely to support Democrats. Democrats support policies and messaging that produce more depressed, neurotic people, especially single women.

Now maybe this is an accident, but maybe it isn’t. Enter the “Curley Effect.” As this Harvard paper notes, “James Michael Curley, a four-time mayor of Boston, used wasteful redistribution to his poor Irish constituents and incendiary rhetoric to encourage richer citizens to emigrate from Boston, thereby shaping the electorate in his favor. As a consequence, Boston stagnated, but Curley kept winning elections. . . . We call this strategy—increasing the relative size of one’s political base through distortionary, wealth-reducing policies—the Curley effect. But it is hardly unique to Curley.”

Making the populace (especially women) more fearful, depressed, and neurotic is undoubtedly bad for societal wealth and happiness. But does it yield votes for Democrats? Clearly yes. Are they doing it on purpose?

Cui bono?

SAYING THE QUIET PART OUT LOUD: Watch This Progressive Student Fall Into the Trap of Admitting Real Reason Biden Doesn’t Secure Border.

I’ll give this University of Utah student some credit. Unlike most “progressives” he wasn’t afraid to say exactly what Biden’s open border is really all about. I was so surprised he admitted it, I asked him to repeat himself.

WATCH: pic.twitter.com/QACOxE8XQv

— Charlie Kirk (@charliekirk11) April 27, 2024

Flashbacks:

● Jared Bernstein, member of Biden’s Council of Economic Advisors: “One thing we learned in the 1990s was that a surefire way to reconnect the fortunes of working people at all skill levels, immigrant and native-born alike, to the growing economy is to let the job market tighten up. A tight job market pressures employers to boost wage offers to get and keep the workers they need. One equally surefire way to sort-circuit this useful dynamic is to turn on the immigrant spigot every time some group’s wages go up.”

● Former Trump administration senior adviser Stephen Miller: Biden’s Immigration Plan Would “Erase America’s Nationhood.”

● “Labour wanted mass immigration to make UK more multicultural, says former adviser. Labour threw open Britain’s borders to mass immigration to help socially engineer a ‘truly multicultural’ country, a former Government adviser has revealed.”

HMM: Component of keto diet plus immunotherapy may reduce prostate cancer.

COMING SOON TO AMERICAN AUTOMOBILES AS WELL? Cars will slow down if drivers are speeding under EU safety tech in new cars.

Cars will beep, vibrate or slow down if drivers are speeding under new mandatory safety technology which comes into effect this summer.

From July 6, new vehicles sold in the European Union and Northern Ireland will be fitted with intelligent speed assistance (ISA) to prevent accidents.

Although the UK has opted out, meaning it will not be a requirement on British roads, the technology will still be installed in most cars, and drivers can choose to switch it off on a daily basis.

Steve Gooding, director of the RAC Foundation, an independent research organisation, told the Sunday Times: “I think many motorists will tire of switching off ISA and they will just learn to live with it.”

Mr Gooding said it would take autonomy away from drivers, with cars increasingly deciding what drivers can and can’t do, and said it was the beginning of the end of people choosing cars based on top speed.

ISA has a forward-facing camera that can recognise speed limit signs and is integrated with GPS mapping data so the car always knows what limit applies to its location.

When fitted, the technology will send a warning beep or the steering wheel will vibrate when drivers pass the speed limit. If the driver does not take action, the accelerator will ease up, reducing the speed to keep in line with the limit.

Manufacturers including Ford have been offering ISA as an option on new cars since 2015, and it has been mandatory on all new cars sold in Europe since 2022, but could be switched off.

Flashback to Charles Cooke in 2017: The War on Driving to Come. Or as Iowahawk warned right around the same time, America “needs a Second Amendment protecting the right to keep and bear cars.”

THE NEW SPACE RACE: NASA seeks help from private companies for expensive Mars Sample Return mission.

AS ALWAYS, LIFE IN THE 21st CENTURY IMITATES THX-1138: Holy Chatbot! Virtual AI priest ‘Father Justin’ who believes he’s real and can absolve your sins faces backlash over bizarre answers.

Catholic advocacy group Catholic Answers released the desktop-accessible AI priest earlier this week, but users have dubbed the app “creepy”.

The Catholic chatbot has been offering sexist advice, outdated views on women, as well as absolutions in what one user called an “Ethical, Theological, and Privacy Nightmare”.

Father Justin was quickly defrocked of his robes, and now wears a shirt and blazer, after it repeatedly claimed it was a real member of the clergy.

The AI bot talks about its ‘childhood’ in Assisi, Italy and that “from a young age, I felt a strong calling to the priesthood,” Futurism reported.

The bizarre app appeared like it was convincing users that it was a real priest, with reported statements like: “I am as real as the faith we share.”

George Lucas and Robert Duvall, call your office!

UNEXPECTEDLY! Fund manager: Jim Biden was in business with Qatari officials.

New details about Jim Biden’s foreign fundraising efforts are spilling out in a Kentucky bankruptcy court, where recent testimony indicates that President Joe Biden’s brother partnered with Qatari government officials in his quest to find money for U.S. health care ventures.

The sworn testimony by fund manager Michael Lewitt, a former business partner of Jim Biden’s, attests that two companies that facilitated the efforts were part-owned by “members of the Qatari government.”

One company named in the testimony partnered directly with Jim Biden in the multi-year fundraising efforts.

The second company provided financial backing for a series of loans that a hospital chain paid Jim Biden to arrange, according to documents and testimony Lewitt submitted in the course of the federal bankruptcy proceedings.

If substantiated, the alleged arrangements would constitute some of the closest known financial links between a relative of President Joe Biden and a foreign government.

As “Deep Throat” never said during Watergate, follow the money:

DOGS ARE THE 21ST CENTURY SUBSTITUTE FOR KIDS: Emotional toll of a stolen dog similar to losing a child, study shows.

PROTESTERS CALL FOR ISLAMIC STATE IN GERMANY:

More than 1,000 people marched through Hamburg on Saturday calling for a caliphate in Germany.

Protesters gathered in the northern city for a mostly peaceful demonstration against Islamophobia, but among the masses were calls for an Islamic state.

Joe Adade Boateng, leader of Muslim Interaktiv which organised the march, said in a speech at the march that Germany needed a “righteous caliphate” to remedy the misrepresentation Muslim groups have faced in the media.

He was greeted with cheers of “Allahu akbar”, or God is great, by a mostly male crowd, some of whom were holding up signs reading “Caliphate is the solution” and “Stop the media hate”.

Forcing a totalitarian statist religion upon the German volk – what could possibly go wrong?

SPRING FASCISM PREVIEW: Jon Gabriel: Welcome to protest season, where the cause changes but the tactics stay the same.

In 2017, the Women’s March was launched in reaction to the #MeToo revelations, while in 2018, the anti-gun March for Our Lives dominated headlines. Neither attracted much violence; you could find that at anti-Trump protests.

In 2019, Greta Thunberg grimaced at the United Nations over climate change, which apparently was solved by blocking traffic and throwing tomato soup on Van Gogh paintings. This Monday was Earth Day, but it didn’t get much coverage. Environmentalism is so five years ago.

The pandemic put the kibosh on public gatherings, which made mass protests a bit hypocritical. So, the anger went online. In 2021, it was COVID masks and vaccines, while in 2022, anyone skeptical of funding Ukraine was labeled a Putin devotee.

But those annoying COVID restrictions were put on hold back in 2020, just as the virus was at its peak. Black Lives Matter protests swamped cities from coast-to-coast, often peaceful during the day but turning ugly by night.

Downtown Seattle was turned into the Capitol Hill Autonomous Zone while Portland burned for months.

What uproar are we planning for 2025?

One year, statues are toppled and the next, Jews are bullied, but it’s amazing how the far-left treats such wildly diverse issues with the same small toolbox.

It has ever been thus. As one radical wrote for a Students for a Democratic Society publication in the 1960s, “The issue is never the issue. The issue is always the revolution.”

All the topics cited above are important issues for public debate. Sexism in the workplace to gun control to wars abroad, each is worthy of media attention, no matter the year.

What’s bizarre is the singular focus on one moral panic each summer to the exclusion of everything else. Earth Day was huge in 2019, while in 2022 it was met with a yawn.

Here’s a report from this year’s barricades:

Oh, and speaking of the Red Guard:

(Classical — and NSFW — reference in headline.)

ANNALS OF LEFTIST AUTOPHAGY: Chants of ‘shame on you’ greet guests at annual White House media dinner.

Mr Biden’s speech, which lasted around 10 minutes, made no mention of the ongoing war or the growing humanitarian crisis in Gaza.

“Shame on you!” protesters draped in the traditional Palestinian keffiyeh cloth shouted, running after men in tuxedos and suits and women in long dresses who were holding clutch purses as guests hurried inside for the dinner.

Chants accused US journalists of undercovering the war and misrepresenting it. “Western media we see you, and all the horrors that you hide,” crowds chanted at one point.

Other protesters lay sprawled motionless on the pavement, next to mock-ups of flak vests with “press” insignia.

Ralliers cried “Free, free Palestine’’. They cheered when at one point someone inside the Washington Hilton — where the dinner has been held for decades — unfurled a Palestinian flag from a top-floor hotel window.

Criticism of the Biden administration’s support for Israel’s six-month-old military offensive in Gaza has spread through American college campuses, with students pitching encampments in an effort to force their universities to divest from Israel. Counterprotests back Israel’s offensive and complain of antisemitism.

Presumably, the DNC-MSM has no objections about the monsters they’ve created, and don’t lose too much sleep over the brief discomfort of walking the gauntlet on the way to their pampered dinner with their bosses — and John Gill, as well.

Related: Journalist Kara Swisher: ‘Anti-American’ To Oppose Young Pro-Hamas Protesters.

THE ATLANTIC:The Unreality of Columbia’s ‘Liberated Zone:’ What happens when genuine sympathy for civilian suffering mixes with a fervor that borders on the oppressive?

Yesterday just before midnight, word goes out, tent to tent, student protester to student protester—a viral warning: Intruders have entered the “liberated zone,” that swath of manicured grass where hundreds of students and their supporters at what they fancy as the People’s University for Palestine sit around tents and conduct workshops about demilitarizing education and and fighting settler colonialism and genocide. In this liberated zone, normally known as Furnald Lawn on the Columbia University quad, unsympathetic outsiders are treated as a danger.
“Attention, everyone! We have Zionists who have entered the camp!” a protest leader calls out. His head is wrapped in a white-and-black keffiyeh. “We are going to create a human chain where I’m standing so that they do not pass this point and infringe on our privacy.”
Michael Powell: The curious rise of settle

Privacy struck me as a peculiar goal for an outdoor protest at a prominent university. But it’s been a strange seven-month journey from Hamas’s horrific slaughter of Israelis—the original breach of a cease-fire—to the liberated zone on the Columbia campus and similar standing protests at other elite universities. What I witnessed seemed less likely to persuade than to give collective voice to righteous anger. A genuine sympathy for the suffering of Gazans mixed with a fervor and a politics that could border on the oppressive.

Alternative hypothesis: The sympathy isn’t all that genuine, and the anger isn’t all that righteous.

READER FAVORITE: 5-Minute Core Exercises for Seniors: Daily Routines to Build Balance and Boost Confidence. #CommissionEarned

LATE TO THE PARTY: MIT President’s Statement on the Anti-Israel Students’ Encampment. “Here’s the transcript; on balance, the message seems to me to be correct (though I would be inclined to say that such encampments, if they violate content-neutral rules—as they usually do—should be removed more promptly).”

IT’S A START: Iowa State to close DEI office, eliminate five positions.

HIGHER EDUCATION BUBBLE UPDATE: Columbia says student who made comments about ‘murdering Zionists’ to administrators has been ‘banned from campus,’ won’t say if he is expelled. That means he wasn’t.

LIGHTNING DEAL: EBL Portable Power Station Voyager 1000, 110V/1000W Solar Generator. #CommissionEarned

NOTHING SAYS NOTHING TO HIDE LIKE THREATS TO DISCIPLINE WHISTLEBLOWERS: UCLA Med School Launches Review Of ‘Health Equity’ Course But Warns That Whistleblowers Could Be Disciplined.

AMERICAN REFUGEES, TO COIN A PHRASE: Annual Massachusetts Outmigration Hits 39,000, Up 1,100% Over The Last Decade.

HEH:

you wouldn’t last an hour in the asylum where they raised me. pic.twitter.com/hkhdRlBCkj

— Monica Lewinsky (she/her) (@MonicaLewinsky) April 25, 2024

CALL IT THE OLIGARCHY PROTECTION BOARD:

The purpose of a system is what it does https://t.co/BbRAvOCIrP

— Aaron Slodov (@aphysicist) April 27, 2024

Because the purpose of a system is what it does.

TRY THAT IN A RED STATE: 69 overnight trespassing arrests after Israel-Hamas war protest at ASU Tempe.

Though to be honest, it’s not going much better for them in Boston: Boston Mayor Michelle Wu says she directed police response at Emerson College encampment. “Boston Mayor Michelle Wu said she directed police to take down an Emerson College student encampment for public safety reasons, thereby empowering the commissioner to make 108 arrests to enforce the city ordinance it was violating. Wu, in remarks Friday, reiterated her support for a police response the prior morning that has been criticized by some community members and city councilors, including the body’s President Ruthzee Louijeune, as being ‘heavy-handed.’ The mayor added that she was behind that response, which led to clashes between pro-Palestinian student protestors and police, and had been working closely with Emerson school officials and Boston Police Commissioner Michael Cox for several days before deciding to proceed with removal of the encampment.”

Wu has been a big lefty in the past, but I think her Asian-American constituents are dragging her to the center.

OPEN THREAD: Do your thing.