May 23, 2025

THIS HAS THE POTENTIAL TO BE HUGE:

From the study: “The findings highlight that artificial intelligence-powered tutoring, when designed and used properly, can have transformative impacts in the education sector in low-resource settings.”

Posted at 1:48 pm by Stephen Green 31

SPRING FASCISM PREVIEW:

(Classical – and NSFW – reference in headline.)

Posted at 1:35 pm by Ed Driscoll 23

JUST NBC THE LEFTIST HACKWORK! Karoline Leavitt Bodies Yamiche Alcindor for Her ‘Ridiculous Line of Questioning’ on South Africa.

White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt is not only exceptionally good at her job, but she refuses to suffer fools gladly. NBC News Washington correspondent Yamiche Alcindor found this out the hard way, and it was glorious. On any given day, there are 50 or so correspondents in the briefing room clamoring to be called upon, so when Leavitt acknowledges you and says, “Go ahead,” your questions should be well-thought-through and on point. Thursday morning, Alcindor chose to pour milk on stupid and gobble it down.

And how:

Flashback: Remembering Yamiche Alcindor’s Greatest Hits.

Posted at 1:22 pm by Ed Driscoll 48

THE LEGACY MEDIA’S WEAKNESS IS SHOWING:

“Fear of a preference cascade, indeed.”

Posted at 1:04 pm by Glenn Reynolds 22

THAT’S DIFFERENT BECAUSE SHUT UP:

Posted at 12:34 pm by Glenn Reynolds 43

JAMES LILEKS:

The music had been bad, all afternoon. I didn’t feel like listening to anything that my own device was serving up, since it’s in that mood where it thinks I only want chamber music, like it’s Sunday morning at home and I’m buttering a croissant and the music is dialed down low to indicate that we are cultured people who appreciate the finer things, even if they’re an indistinct stream of rote Baroque cliches turned out by the yard by some bewigged guy who was probably dosing his syphillis with mercury. But this meant listening to the execrable pop krep on the gym speakers. And here I thought: this is it, the sign that my brain has gone over, something’s wrong, a wire snapped, a lobe died.

It was Wild Thing by Tone Loc. But it was different. I don’t know how to describe it. The guitar part was . . . wrong somehow, and the fill that followed was correct but thicker. The vocals were meaner. The whole thing was darker and abrasive, like the original, except after five years in jail. When I looked it up I saw that it was indeed Wild Thing, but a re-recorded version.

Whew. If someone had said “say, you have a look of sudden relief,” I would have said “I just realized that Tone Loc’s producer had intentionally fuzzed up the guitar, and that this was not a sign of a stroke.”

We are at a cultural dead-end when people are re-doing those old songs, just playing with the knobs.

The original “Wild Thing,” from 1988, of course sampled Eddie and Alex Van Halen’s guitar and drums from “Jamie’s Crying.” I assume this is the remix that Lileks is referring to:

It’s just sludge, made by slicing up Ton Loc’s “original” version on a DAW, editing the daylights out of the drums, adding some additional synths and percussion, and reprocessing the guitars and vocals through some outboard effects boxes. It’s a tuned-up copy of a copy of a copy; the aural equivalent of the fourth Michael Keaton in 1996’s Multiplicity:

Posted at 12:30 pm by Ed Driscoll 20

IT’S WAY UP ON THE LIST: Trump’s Kneecapping of Harvard May Be My Favorite Thing in the History of Trump. “Perspective is everything, and I’ve changed mine in recent weeks. I’ve begun to greatly enjoy the daily tizzies that the president and his administration send the Dems’ flying monkeys in the mainstream media into because I know that it means Trump is over the target with his agenda.”

Posted at 12:15 pm by Stephen Green 53

SARAH HOYT’S SHOCKED FACE IS KICKING BACK WITH A BOOK AND A GLASS OF WINE: Crime Rates of Illegal Migrants Underreported.

“Immigrants commit crimes in this country at a rate lower than natural-born citizens,” added Connecticut Sen. Chris Murphy. “So, if you want a safe town or a safe neighborhood, you are better off if you have immigrants.”

Speaking on the Senate floor last year, Murphy added, “Whether you choose to want to believe the facts or not, that is not my decision, it’s your decision, but…but it is the truth.”

This tenet is incessantly parroted by the legacy news media. Sample headline, this one from ABC News: “No, migrants are not driving a surge in violent crime as Trump claims.” ABC asserted that crime in this country is declining despite an influx of illegal immigrants.

This barrage has achieved its intended goal: A McLaughlin & Associates survey commissioned by the Crime Prevention Research Center on April 29, 2025, reveals that 41.6% of voters believe illegal immigrants commit crimes at lower rates than U.S. citizens, compared to 33.3% who think otherwise.

Like most issues, U.S. public opinion on this question has a demographic and partisan component. Only men, Republicans, conservatives, whites, and those aged 41 to 55 believe illegal immigrants commit more crimes. The majority of young voters (18-29), Democrats, liberals, and African Americans most strongly assert that illegal immigrants commit fewer crimes.

But is this “the truth”? Are these “the facts”?

The data suggests that the answer is pretty clearly “no.”

These claims usually conflate legal and illegal immigrants. Legal immigrants tend to follow the law, but illegal immigrants are a different story.

Every illegal alien’s first act on American soil was to break the law. Democrats conflate illegals with legal immigrants for various reasons — all political — and the result is more crime.

Posted at 11:44 am by Stephen Green 67

GLEICHSCHALTUNG: House budget bill effectively halts US clean energy boom. “The House budget bill that narrowly passed in an early morning vote on Thursday would effectively put the brakes on a clean energy production boom in the United States spurred by subsidies enacted in 2022.”

Here’s a tip for Reuters: It’s not a boom if it’s financed by tax dollars and summoned into existence by mandates. It’s just another boondoggle.

Posted at 10:42 am by Stephen Green 88