All posts by Rand Simberg

Ingrates

Fortunately, Ember isn’t much of a hunter (neutering probably will do that), and his sister Ashe, who is the hunter in the family, generally only brings in butterflies, most of which I manage to save and release. We don’t have mice (AFAIK), but once in a great while she’ll get a bird.

How Iran “Won”

The Mullahs are screwed, but sadly, unless the Iranian people can finally overthrow them, they are as well.

On Platner

We all made mistakes.”

No, we didn’t all make mistakes. I sure as hell didn’t. I didn’t on Covid, either, or Biden’s obvious cognitive issues. That’s on them, and we should never trust them again, if we ever did.

[Update a few minutes later]

This is reaping the consequences of the politics of unquestioned assumptions.

I like the kicker: “If they were capable of learning lessons from failure, they wouldn’t be Democrats.”

Coding And AI

An interesting X thread of diverse experiences:

My own experience is that it can be useful in providing first drafts for things like business plans, requirements documents, etc., but I have to edit, and many wouldn’t have the knowledge to do it properly or recognize issues. It can be a multiplier of both good and bad.

[Update a while ago]

The wages of AI: Professor bans take-home exams after rampant cheating.

What would terrify me about this if I were a student again would be having to go back to handwriting papers and essays. If I didn’t have a keyboard, I’d have hardly written anything in my life.

The Left’s Caricatures Of Conservatives

Yes, they supported Platner because they fantasized that this would appeal to actual men:

This is also why they stupidly thought that Tim Walz would have traction as well. And it’s another example of Haidt’s thesis that the right understands the left far better than vice versa.

Trump’s Anti-Communist Manifesto

It was nice to see a president finally stand up to them.

…the record is pretty suggestive for Mamdani and Avila Chevalier. But it’s not that way for the other DSA candidates who won recently — Claire Valdez, Melat Kiros, Janeese Lewis-George, and others. On the other hand, all of them are members of the Democratic Socialists of America, and the word “socialist” has always been a key part of the vocabulary of communism, in the 20th century and today. So one could say that Trump’s accusation is reasonably true for some of the DSA comrades who have defeated Democratic candidates and at least adjacent to the beliefs of some others. In other words, it’s close enough for a political campaign.”

Most people forget, or never knew, what the second “S” in USSR stood for.

[Update a while later]

Yes. Socialists should be disqualified for public office for simply being socialists.

I noted on X right after Chevalier’s election that it was hard to see how she could honestly take the oath of office.

And as someone (von Mises? Hayek?) once noted, if socialists understood economics, they wouldn’t be socialists.