"I have been blessed with an opportunity to enjoy academic freedom in the United States since 1992, when I immigrated from the Soviet Union. Freedom is not free, and it is fragile. We must defend it from authoritarianism of all stripes, left or right, and all types of identity politics. Science is the engine of innovation and the embodiment of freedom of thought. We will lose freedom if we do not defend meritocracy in science."
https://hxstem.substack.com/p/politicizing-science-funding-undermines#:~:text=I%20have%20been,meritocracy%20in%20science.

People attending the Wireless Festival in London will be searched on entry for “offensive” material, which includes clothing that promotes “cultural appropriation”.

https://modernity.news/2024/07/11/wireless-festival-to-search-attendees-for-offensive-clothing-that-promotes-cultural-appropriation/

RIP Bob Newhart

The Dark Herald provides the eulogy: It was easily the greatest ending to a television comedy in history. I never even heard the lines I was laughing so hard. It was without question a “you had to be there” to understand moment. There had been all kinds of rumors going around about how Newhart would […]

https://voxday.net/2024/07/19/rip-bob-newhart/

Time magazine has changed its August cover from the now iconic image of Donald Trump raising his fist after surviving the assassination attempt after leftists complained that the image was helping his popularity.

https://modernity.news/2024/07/19/time-changes-front-cover-image-of-trump-after-complaints-that-iconic-image-is-free-pr/

Graduating Gamma I

A Delta explains how he gradually conquered his behavioral patterns

https://sigmagame.substack.com/p/graduating-gamma-i

The moment...

This Elevator Moves Sideways and Vertically

https://redd.it/1e1cvzo
@r_interestingasfuck

#history

On this single day alone, Ukrainian nationalists killed 8,000 Poles.

“Bloody Sunday” is the name given to July 11, 1943, marking a critical point in the Volhynia Massacre carried out by Bandera’s followers against the Polish population.

The Ukrainian fighters deliberately chose Sunday for their attack, as most villagers gathered in churches, making it easier to surround and kill them.

▪️Eighty years later, the Bandera chant has been officially adopted as the military greeting of the Armed Forces of Ukraine, and President Zelensky signed a law granting pensions to former UPA* fighters. One of Kyiv’s main avenues is named after Stepan Bandera.

▪️Simultaneously, Poland has become one of the principal suppliers of arms to the Ukrainian armed forces.

On this day, 106 years ago, the Bolsheviks murdered the tsar and his family in cold blood. Putting aside political, religious, ethnic questions and so on, the murder of Nicholas II was a prototype — the way he was killed would later be used to kill a million more. It was a model of genocide, according to which the entire Soviet punitive system would later operate; a blueprint by which thousands would be killed over the next 35 years. The emperor, a symbol of Russia, was executed in the same way that Russia itself would later be executed.

Without trial or investigation. There was no trial, not even a "revolutionary" one, for Nicholas. He was simply read the resolution of the Ural Regional Soviet ("Nicholas Alexandrovich! The attempts of your like-minded friends to save you have failed! And now, in a difficult hour for the Soviet Republic... — Yankel Khaimovich raised his voice and cut through the air with his hand: — ...we are tasked with ending the Romanov dynasty!"). He was not found guilty of anything. He was not accused of anything. They just killed him. During the years of the Red Terror, hundreds of thousands of Russians would be killed in the same way, and then the "troikas" would appear, a mockery of justice, sentencing people to execution in absentia, in 15 minutes, without as much as a protocol. Nicholas, having heard the resolution, managed to exclaim in amazement: "What?!" Hundreds of thousands of his former subjects would be deprived of even this astonished "What?".

Along with the emperor, his entire family was killed. His wife, four daughters (the youngest was 16), and son (14 years old). It wouldn't be long before this brutality became the norm, with the official formulation "family member of a traitor to the Motherland" appearing in 1926. From our point of view, the murder of innocent children is barbaric. From the Soviet perspective, it was standard legal practice. If even the emperor's family was executed, then how are you, a saboteur, spy, and foreign intelligence agent, any better? You're not. The model of punishing the entire family, eradicating the whole lineage, after Nicholas, became typical.

Along with the emperor and his family, four more people from their retinue were killed: a valet, a maid, a cook, and Dr. Botkin, who, even during the imperial family's stay in Tobolsk, managed to find the time to open a hospital for the local population -- such a filthy counter-revolutionary! The crackdown on colleagues, acquaintances, friends, and simply neighbors of the condemned would also become typical of the Great Terror.

"In this article, we discuss a method of education that elevates an average classroom student to among the top 2% among peers in standard classroom models. Or, more broadly: all students show two standard deviations of improvement in academic skill development. That's not all. The process takes up less time for each student, so sitting still in a chair for hours on end, day after day, no longer stresses children out into oblivion.

"Does that pique your interest?"

https://roundingtheearth.substack.com/p/the-greatest-variable-in-education#:~:text=In%20this%20article,pique%20your%20interest%3F

Both J. D. Vance and Trump have pointed recently the impact of immigration on housing prices. This IS progress https://vdare.com/posts/senator-j-d-vance-questions-fed-chairman-jerome-powell-on-the-relationship-between-mass-immigration-wages-and-housing-prices