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Academic Freedom

Breaking: Twitter accepts Musk’s Share offer buyout plan

Breitbart, as I just saw: After a two-week battle against opposition from the platform’s board members, self-declared free speech absolutist Elon Musk, the CEO of Tesla and SpaceX and currently the richest man in the world, has succeeded in his bid to buy Twitter. In a press release, the Twitter board announced that they had reached an agreement with the multi-billionaire to sell 100 percent of the company at Musk’s original price of $54.20 per share. Where does this point? DEVELOPING. U/D April 29, Followership jumps per Daily mail: A chart of followership shifts from the verge:

Fun from the Babylon Bee in Twitter jail while Elon Musk tries to buy them and others out

Science: Just last month, Issues & Insights reported a poll it conducted with TIPP, the most accurate predictor of the last five presidential elections, regarding people’s feelings about COVID. The survey found 65% of Americans think COVID policy in the United States is “driven by politics,” with only 21% believing it’s “driven by science.” Read More ›

A surgeon protests scientific “gatekeeping”

Singer: "... a problem arises when some of those experts exert outsized influence over the opinions of other experts and thereby establish an orthodoxy enforced by a priesthood. If anyone, expert or otherwise, questions the orthodoxy, they commit heresy. The result is groupthink, which undermines the scientific process." Read More ›

To get change, create or exploit a crisis . . .

to control the change, set the agenda and control thought to a thesis, an antithesis and your desired synthesis. So, we see, in a cartoon: Where, let us recall the change challenge: . . . thus the fallacy of the false dilemma pushing a simplistic dichotomy of choices: . . . and the Overton Window context, where one has to open up space to pull policy, likely incrementally — thus we see a slippery slope ratchet: so, we see how a slippery slope slide into lawless oligarchy can be created: Are we facing a march of the Lemmings? Food for thought as we contemplate technoplutocracy. END

Dr John Campbell on the illusion of evidence-based medicine

For the past two years, we have been concerned that medical practice and pandemic management have been skewed by selective hyperskepticism and bias. Dr Campbell speaks out, based on the recent paper: We can look at a screen shot, where he targets domination of medical drug approvals by big pharma: Earlier, he expressed concern about how integrity of the science could be compromised, as is now exposed due to Freedom of Information requests: The obvious issue of special interest agendas leads to the issue of regulatory capture. Wikipedia (an example itself of ideological agenda capture) outlines: In politics, regulatory capture (also agency capture and client politics) is a form of corruption of authority that occurs when a political entity, policymaker, Read More ›

From the Babylon Bee (still in Twitter jail)

This stuff is not our usual line of coverage. But in these strange times — when Woke American billionaires tell us all when we may and may not laugh — you might be missing the Bee’s sendup of some of the most asinine upperclassmen in Western world history. So here’s your fix. Read More ›

Universities? Do poor science career prospects contribute to far out theory and Cancel Culture?

Far out theory (e.g., “Advanced aliens engineered the Big Bang…) may be one way of standing out in the crowd — and Cancel Culture is definitely a way of thinning that crowd. Sutter’s suggestions are worth pondering. Read More ›

Trust the Science! Instructive testimony from media efforts to squelch debate about the COVID panic

It would be good to study how “science” became a synonym for “what people do when they are in a panic” and how “disinformation” came to mean “casting doubt on panic-stricken responses.” But obviously, there is a larger message here... Read More ›

L&FP, 54: J C Wright on the haunting “Morlockery” of many today, in the neo-gnostic, nihilistic “Technoplutocracy”

Mr Wright, a noted Science Fiction/Fantasy writer [and married to another, L Jagi Lampwriter Wright] observes a pattern of our times: Technoplutocracy is my term for our current intellectual elite, a combination of traditionally leftwing and rightwing elements [–> outdated reference], dominating our public institutions, political and legal and scholarly, corporate culture, international finance, but most particularly in our mass media and social media. Not all Morlocks are technoplutocratic elites, but all elites are Morlocks. “Morlock,” is a strange term, tracing to pioneer Sci Fi writer H G Wells in Time Machine. As Wright describes, “[i]n Wells, the Morlock is a cannibal troglodyte who treats other human descendants [the “fair, childlike Eloi”] as cattle [–> as in, food].” So, he Read More ›