“Let me start by saying that I am generally a fan of what Robert Kennedy Jr. is trying to do over at the Department of Health and Human Services. As a recovering health policy guy, I know there is a lot of room for changes and streamlining over at HHS – a lot of boats that need to be rocked, and RFK is nothing if not a boat-rocker. That being said, I agree with no one 100 percent of the time, not even myself. So there are a couple of things I’d like someone in the Senate to ask him about. First, I do want to explore the topic I’m sure Democrats will attempt to hammer him on: vaccines. I don’t know if traditional vaccines cause autism or anything else, but I do have friends who have children with autism and some swear by the idea that they do.” (09/04/25)
“Rather than being viewed as accurate indicators of knowledge and skills, traditional grades are viewed by some as contributing to longstanding social inequities. In response, some districts have adopted ‘equitable grading’ practices, which can include giving students partial credit for assignments that are not turned in, allowing multiple test retakes without penalty, and not penalizing students for failing to complete homework or participate in class. For my take on why equitable grading policies are illogical and misguided, see my previous post about San Francisco’s recent bid to introduce a sweeping Grading for Equity policy. It ultimately failed under intense public pressure once families understood what was happening, because most people do not support these ideas. It turns out most teachers don’t support them either.” (09/03/25)
Source: hypertext
by Matthew Meyers, Victoria Rein, & Maxwell Stern
“Policies that manufacture scarcity. Institutions that can’t deliver. A culture of risk aversion. America’s young adults must topple all three.” (09/03/25)
“Overreach of government regulation can pose a grave threat to nascent, promising technologies. This is particularly true in the case of AI, with many prognosticators having made the case that AI could pose substantial — even existential — risks to humanity. This has put policymakers and regulators on high alert to discern emerging threats from AI and has left them all too ready to apply heavy-handed regulation to deal with those perceived threats. Most of us are not technologists or, heaven knows, futurists. But everyone can recognise one of history’s most familiar patterns: The emergence of a promising technology is nearly always accompanied by fears of risk or downside from that technology, often including doomsday scenarios. And in every historical case, the technologies did, indeed, carry risks and downsides, but the downsides were dwarfed by the tremendous benefits to humanity.” (09/03/25)
“One thing you learn about this year’s National Conservatism Conference just by chatting with those in attendance at the Westin DC Downtown is that the National Conservatism Conference apparently sucks now. … Looking around at the rows and rows of empty ballroom seats, hearing the occasional speaker’s admonishment that young NatCons should be more grateful for Trump’s second-term achievements, observing the ‘sure, you can clap’ surprise from daytime main-stage speakers whenever the audience bestirred itself to scattered applause, you could definitely see why they felt that way. … It should be easy going for the NatCons now: Trump is the great uniting figure. Their intellectual project is ascendant, for the moment. But it’s far from clear how any of these people are supposed to keep playing nice when they no longer have Trump’s banner to march behind — or their shared enemies to kick around anymore.” (09/04/25)
“As more places around the world — including U.S. states — pass laws requiring age checks around the internet, we’re continuing to see a slew of unintended (but entirely predictable) consequences. The latest round includes some U.S. residents being blocked from a blogging platform, French folks in dangers of their porn viewing habits being leaked, and porn websites that violate the law in the U.K. being rewarded with big boosts in web traffic. Let’s start closest to home.” (09/03/25)
Source: Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression
by Ross Marchand
“What’s in a name? To Gallaudet University, quite a lot. When the Gallaudet chapter of Students for Justice in Palestine protested the war in Gaza, Gallaudet moved swiftly to silence the group, neutering the SJP chapter’s social media presence and sending a campus-wide email condemning the group’s rhetoric. While they initially succeeded, swift action by FIRE and the social media company Meta ensured that free speech — and proper application of trademark law — won the day.” (09/03/25)
“Last month, the tech world turned with rapt attention to one man, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman, for the launch of the company’s new AI model, GPT-5. The atmosphere resembled the scientists waiting to see the first atomic bomb test at Los Alamos. GPT-5 was supposed to be another great leap forward toward the promised godlike telos of artificial general intelligence (AGI), a machine smarter than any human and possibly smarter than the sum of human civilization itself. But the release of GPT-5 was a dud. Despite being relentlessly hyped for years, the most significant part of the announcement was the release of a model router that dynamically selects the correct ‘level’ of computation power spent toward answering questions.” (09/04/25)
“During a recent family vacation over lobster, I watched my ‘vote blue no matter who’ aunt-in-law, herself a paragon of New England liberal sensibilities from a leafy suburb outside Boston, argue with her Fox News-watching, burn-it-all-down brother about recent goings-on at HHS. ‘Just because Fauci lied about Covid,’ she said, ‘doesn’t mean all science is fake; there’s something worth saving here.’ Meet J.Crew-Anon: affluent, educated, professional, skeptical but not nihilistic. They still read the Times and the Journal, but also subscribe to multiple Substacks and are daily imbibers of less ‘safe’ publishers, like Brownstone.org. They triangulate. They parse information with friends and peers, seeing fact-checkers as either dangerous or useless or both. They are more interested in steelmanning the opposition than shouting it down.” (09/03/25)
“Value is not cost. Value is what you get; cost is what you pay; and they are not the same. Not even close. In this world of ours, some things have immense value and immense cost, like a cure for aging. Some things have trivial value and trivial cost, like a speck of dust floating through the air in front of you. Some things have trivial value and immense cost, like a mud pie a hundred miles wide. And finally, some things have immense value and trivial cost, like food, water, and air. Value is not cost. It is thanks to this simple principle that life is worth living.” (09/03/25)
