It’s not that Facebook forced its users to declare their sex, but that if they chose to do so, they had an option.

Previously, users had to identify themselves as male or female. They were also given the option of not answering or keeping their gender private.

I can hear the cries of “what about me” coming from transgender people, which is curious given that the argument is that a male transgender person is male, so it wouldn’t seem to create any conflict to pick a sex. And if they didn’t like the choices, they weren’t forced to make one. Fair enough? Not anymore. Continue reading →

Biden called some guy named Doocy a “stupid son of a bitch.” It was inappropriate and impetuous, and he quickly apologized for his intemperate remark. But what about the Beatles?

Not so many years ago I would park my then-new car outside the front door of coffee shops where I was playing guitar and singing on Long Island, hold up the keys and announce, “If you can stump me on the Fabs, I’ll give you my wheels.” Or if I happened to have a hundred dollar bill, I’d pin it to the wall behind me and offer it to anyone who could name a Beatles song I couldn’t produce in three seconds.

But the game was rigged — you couldn’t beat the house.

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There are law-abiding gun owners. There are shooters. There is a constitutional amendment, for better or worse, that protects the fundamental right of a citizen to possess a gun. What’s a former police captain turned mayor to do?

In a solemn speech just three days after a police officer was killed in Manhattan, Mr. Adams called for immediate changes to add police officers to city streets to remove guns, and for help from the courts and state lawmakers in the months ahead.

“We will not surrender our city to the violent few,” Mr. Adams said.

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Matt Lutz opens at Persuasion with a great anecdote that I never heard before.

In “The Imaginary Invalid,” a play written by the French satirist Molière, a doctor is asked why opium makes people fall asleep. The doctor replies that “there is a dormitive virtue in it, whose nature it is to make the senses drowsy.” In other words, opium makes people fall asleep because it has the power to make people fall asleep. That joke has since become a favorite among philosophers and historians of science because it is a wonderful example of an explanation that doesn’t explain. Rather than provide an understanding of why opium causes sleepiness, it’s a tautology dressed up in jargon.

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Derek Chauvin has already been convicted for the murder of George Floyd. To the extent any conviction “sends a message” to anyone, the message has been sent. But the trial of the three officers working under Chauvin’s training eye is set to commence today, and the hope is that it sends another message. Where the Chauvin message was that cops can’t recklessly kill people, this message is that cops have a duty to intervene when a “superior” officer engages in improper conduct.

Former Minneapolis officers J. Alexander Kueng, Thomas K. Lane and Tou Thao are charged with failing to render medical aid after Chauvin pinned Floyd’s neck to the ground for more than nine minutes on May 25, 2020. Additionally, Kueng and Thao are charged with failure to intervene to stop Chauvin. Legally, the trial is unprecedented. Continue reading →

As some of you have noted, I’ve largely stayed out of the comments recently. Some think my involvement, from reminding people to use the reply button to keeping comments on topic as they spiral down the rabbit hole, is too mean and harsh. I long ago decided that it was necessary to play SJ janitor lest a few things happen that I, as the guy who runs this hotel, didn’t want to happen.

I didn’t want this place hijacked by partisan crazies of any flavor, which was a frequent issue as a post was seized upon by some interest group and their minions show up by the hundreds to take over the comments. Continue reading →

It’s fatally vague, backward and fundamentally flawed, so naturally Syracuse University made it a regulation, the violation of which was subject to punishment. To its credit, FIRE took up the cause of Syracuse freshman Samantha Jones, who was found to have inflicted “mental harm” on another student by asking a question.

“Syracuse’s nebulous ban on ‘mental harm’ means students don’t know if they can ask questions or discuss sexual misconduct without getting in trouble,” said FIRE Program Officer Alex Morey. “Administrators should take action now to ensure these kinds of vague policies don’t infringe students’ core expressive rights.”

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In law school, a prawf said something that stuck with me. I paraphrase here, as the original was quite sexist.

Children feel.
Priests believe.
Lawyers think.

John McWhorter writes about a shift in language usage that reveals how the distinctions above have been, and are being, lost. Continue reading →

Police officer Jason Rivera, 22, had only been on the NYPD since November, 2020. Barely enough time to scuff his service belt. Lashawn McNeil, 47, shot him and killed him. The first question was why, and it took reading through 12 insipid paragraphs in the New York Times to find out.

Three officers answered a 911 call from a woman who said she was fighting with her son. When the officers arrived at the apartment, they were met by the woman and a second son. There was no indication from the 911 call, officials said, that there were weapons in the apartment. Continue reading →

Sheriff Roy Templeton was in fourth grade. Again. The irony was not lost on Mud Lick’s top cop, who spent many a day dealing with adults who behaved like fourth graders.

Today was different. The Sheriff had been summoned to Bear Bryant Elementary School at the request of Ms. Furstenburger, Roy Junior’s fourth grade teacher. Apparently the boy’d been up to some mischief and the Sheriff had been summoned to deal with his son’s behavior. Continue reading →