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So Twenty Years Ago This Month, The First YouTube Video Was Posted. From there…
The video was all of 19 seconds long and featured a “day at the zoo” with the focus being on the elephants there.
Within a year, the number of videos that had joined it topped 25 million. By the summer of 2006, 100 million video views per day had been uploaded. Then, just a short time later, Google purchased YouTube for $1.65 billion in stock. This was Google’s second-largest acquisition at the time.
Adventure on a Frontier Planet
Skut Harkkson is as desperately unhappy as only an 11-year-old can be. So unhappy that he fled his new home at Highpoint Station after a humiliating bullying incident at school. He wants to get back to his real home, 300 miles away. At the family farm at Faraway Station on Vann’s World he was happy. At Highpoint Station he and his family are poor refugees, displaced by the Ghat-Confederated World War.
Storm-Dragon, a science fiction novel by Dave Freer, opens with Skut experiencing what he considers the worst day of his life. He instinctively fled to the familiar outdoors of Vann’s World.
The settlement’s stuffy rules forbid this. They are designed for tourists, ignorant of Vann’s World’s dangers. A resort town of 1,000, no resident is allowed outside and no native wildlife is permitted inside. But Skut knows his world. When attacked by a flock of flying Hamerkop, seeking easy prey, he shoots two, driving off the rest.
Here’s a way for Trumpsters to show they are actually serious about reducing the national debt
Like a cruise ship steaming toward an iceberg, America’s economy is headed for disaster.
The federal government reports an interest-bearing debt of $37 trillion. However, the actual unfunded obligations of the government, according to the Medicare and Social Security Trustees’ reports, are an unfathomable $158.6 trillion.
Friday was cap and gown day for Steve at Pepperdine’s commencement for the School of Public Policy class of 2025, while John Yoo is on the road somewhere at an undisclosed location, so Steve and Lucretia kick around a couple of seemingly unrelated stories about the Amish (the ultimate opt-out community) and the latest Supreme Court argument involving human nature and the right of parents to opt-out from public school nihilism. And even though John was absent, instead of beating him up we praised his New York Post article on how and why Trump should prevail at the Supreme Court over what might be called the onslaught of Lawfare 2.0.
And then as a change of pace we offer Steve’s recent conversation with energy journalist extraordinaire Robert Bryce (whose Substack is very much worth following). Bryce always has a way of explaining the often eyes-glazed-over numbers of the energy world, but in this interview he extends himself into a one-man DOGE, revealing who is the number-one leftist advocacy group fattening at the federal funding trough.
Programming Note
The End of Automobile Ownership?
Various people have been predicting this for a few years now, and I hadn’t thought about it for a while — until yesterday. Then I saw in the news that Elon Musk is predicting the same. The idea is that once self-driving taxis are ubiquitous, few people will want to own a car anymore. This I do not understand. Human-driven taxis have existed for generations, and most Americans still have their own cars trucks. Why will this be so different when the taxis are self-driving? Are there really tens of millions of Americans who say the following?
I hate driving myself around. I’d love it if I could put in a request for a taxi, have it show up sometime in the next 15-30 minutes, take me to my destination, then get lost. But there’s one thing I hate more than driving myself: taxi drivers. If I have to put up with some homo sapien chowderhead driving me around, forget it. I’ll just drive myself.
The stories you may have missed:
- Scottsdale, AZ man arrested on March 31st after he set foot on the restricted territory of North Sentinel Island in a bid to meet people from the reclusive Sentinelese tribe
- Bitcoin Burglers Brag Bungle
- Check your sex at the State Department
- How the NYT covers immigration
- The Art of the Deal: Harvard Edition
It’s the Hayward and Long Hour this week, meaning it’s TheoBro-PoliPhi time. Since this duo was away for our recent episode featuring questions submitted by Ricochet subscribers, we asked for a new batch of inquiries catered specifically for our blithesome professor and the jocular seminarian. As ever, Ricochet members delivered a surplus of material for us in the chatty corner of showbiz.
Care to get in on the conversation? Join us at Ricochet.com!
My 1,000th post. What have I learned?
I felt like I should say something important. So I’ve been stalling. My plan was to read through all my previous 999 posts and produce a carefully constructed hunk of opposition (Or is that piece of resistance? Not sure – my French isn’t very good…). My critics suggest that I should use more editing and less bourbon. I intended to give it to them, good and hard, and see how they like it. But that seemed a lot like work. So I wrote less unedited incoherence and drank more bourbon. And I got more and more messages, asking what was going on. You just can’t please some people.
Some Ricochet members seem determined to persuade others to think like they do. I’ve never felt that impulse. I was very clear from the beginning that I was here to learn. My fundamental problem was that I found myself in constant disagreement with a group (Democrats) that I simply didn’t understand. Which meant, in my view, that I really didn’t understand my own perspective as well as I thought. I explained my uneasiness with this problem on the Dave Carter Show – how can I criticize that which I don’t understand? So I came here to read and to write. Not to convince others of my wisdom, but rather to seek understanding. Fathers of little girls will understand my efforts to understand, such as in the picture above.
I’ve come to view leftism as more of a religion than a political movement, just as Islam is more of a political movement than a religion. But the religion of leftism lacks two very important things: An underlying ideology, and a system for repentance for sins. Sort of like the French Revolution all over again – screaming mobs who believe in whatever they’re supposed to believe in this afternoon. If you wonder about the ethics of all this, that makes you a conservative. Humility is a conservative impulse.
Apostolica Sedes Vacans
As you are probably aware, Pope Francis died on Easter Monday. The Church is without a pope and will be for a few more weeks.
I’m Catholic. I love the Pope. So I pray for the repose of the soul of Jorge Mario Bergoglio, and I pray that the Church is gifted with a holy, wise, and courageous pope who will lead with moral clarity.
View ‘Consumer Sentiment’ Surveys Skeptically
Rory McIlroy Busted My Knee
In Minnesota, it’s open season on Teslas – and conservatives
Hennepin County (the largest county in Minnesota) Attorney Mary Moriarty is at it again. Deemed the most “woke” prosecutor in America, she is refusing to charge state government employee Dylan Bryan Adams, a Minnesota Department of Human Services analyst, with any crimes after he was caught on camera by police vandalizing six Teslas in the Minneapolis area, causing over $20,000 worth of damage. Instead of being charged with a felony, Adams isn’t being charged with anything. Instead, he has been placed in a non-criminal “diversion” program. No jail, no criminal record, and won’t even lose his job. He remains free to vandalize again.
A strong message has been sent: it’s open season on Tesla, and any other business or individual that refuses to align with the Left’s agenda. Last year, the offices of conservative Minnesota think tank, The American Experiment, as well as two other conservative organizations, were firebombed. Amazingly, in a congested metro area where security cameras abound, neither Gov. Tim Walz’s state authorities nor Biden’s FBI and ATF could come up with any leads. The crimes remain unpunished.
Never Forget
I never fail to feel a tug in my heart when I view this video. The people are stopping in response to the cry of sirens, whether on highways, on beaches, or in their homes, to acknowledge Yom HaShoah, Holocaust Remembrance Day. Although I’m sure there are those who resent this reminder of the devastating time, it bears repeating.
Lost golf balls
That is actually a company name that I am aware of. I don’t endorse it, although it might well be a very fine company. When I think of lost golf balls, I think about the very best memories of my childhood. Many people romanticize their childhood such that every day of the first few years of school was the best of their life. That was not the case for me. It took several more years of maturation before I could confidently participate in the struggles of growing up and fitting in. My relationship with my parents through the tough early years was tumultuous.
It worked out OK, though. During my high school years, when many of my peers fought with their parents for freedom from their control, my relationship with my parents was the best it had been — maybe the best it was ever to be. I played a lot of golf in high school, and I was good enough to be the last person cut from the school team four years in a row. Our team won the state championship most of those years.
While most Democrats continue to hang their hats on “Maryland Man,” Elizabeth Warren is going to the mat for the Chairman of the Federal Reserve, Jerome Powell – which is, in many ways, a reversal for her.
Then we talk to Todd Sheets, former director of Raymond James’ Recovering Markets Program, about the turmoil in the markets caused by Trump’s Tariffs and why China has forced this necessary move.
When President Trump started singing a song about the most beautiful word in the English language, Pierre Polievre’s march to 24 Sussex stalled. It’s now a safe bet that Mark Carney will keep his job as prime minister after Monday’s election, but it’s unclear how he’ll keep his expanded Liberal coalition happy in the years to come. Today, Henry sits down with Sean Speer of The Hub to discuss the sudden turn of fortune for Canada’s top two parties. Among other things, they take a close look at the consolidation efforts under both leaders, wonder what’s to be done with Quebec, and consider what the feuding forces of progressivism and working-class populism will mean for the future of our neighbors to the north.
Missed Opportunity: The Lyrics for “Man of La Mancha”
Yes, we celebrated Earth Day (and also my brother’s birthday), and what could be more consequential than that?
Still, moving a few notches down the “significance” scale–or perhaps not–we discover that it’s also the 409th anniversary (on April 22, 1616) of the death of Miguel de Cervantes.
Cervantes’ greatest creation, Don Quixote, a lower-class (dare I say deplorable?) fellow who was driven to fantasies of heroism due to his mid-life immersion in, and obsession with, works of knightly valor, remains the most celebrated of Spanish literary characters, one whose quest to restore chivalric values to a society he thinks has abandoned them first involves his going mad (always a good start), and then–eventually and after a series of unlikely adventures during most of which he mistakes what’s taking place in the real world for figments of his fevered and highly colored imagination–resuming his own identity, and, shortly before dying, writing a will in which he threatens the disinheritance of his niece if she ever has anything to do with any man who has ever read a book about chivalry. (By this time, it’s evident that Quixote–or “Alonzo Quixano” as he should more properly be called–has, while coming to terms with his impending death and preparing to meet his God, finally come back down to earth.)
What about the Dreamers?
Forty years ago, Republicans and Democrats passed the Comprehensive Immigration Reform legislation. It included a grand compromise: Amnesty for illegals currently in the country and a commitment to secure the border so that this would be the LAST amnesty.
Guess what? The border was not secured.
Was “Marbury” Wrong? And Why Does Baseball Need A Commissioner?
The authority of the judiciary in America stems from the creation of a Supreme Court in the Constitution, the Supreme Court’s own rulings about its powers and limits, and congressional enabling statutes for the lesser courts. In the early days of the country, the role of the Supreme Court as the ultimate interpreter of the Constitution was an open question. The Court, in a case called Marbury vs Madison, anointed itself as the sole authority. But over the years the Court has limited direct conflict with Congress and the Executive by also creating the “political question” doctrine. This doctrine permits the Court to graciously yield to one or both of its “co-equal” partners by essentially saying it is a matter for voters and not the Court.
The current Court has been slow to employ this card in the recent contretemps between the lesser courts and the Trump administration. Although one would not know it from the media, the Trump administration has not (yet) defied a court order. But lawfare is pushing the president to that point — and that may be the goal of the Progressive Project.
Not Merely a Man
Leftists love to purge our language of words that offend them, such as “niggardly,” which has nothing at all to do with any group of people other than misers, but sounds enough like another word for those who might be heavily melanin-laden. Another Leftist crusade against words is anything having a relationship to the word “man.” The other day, I saw some woman blathering on about this subject after they launched six wife-men up into space. Sorry, let me use the updated elision of that term, “women.” Anyway, my memory has blissfully purged itself of what she actually said. This memory erasure is probably a natural defense mechanism to keep me sane. Still, it was some objection to “man,” perhaps in “mankind.” Maybe she wanted “personkind,” instead. This is worse nonsense than changing history to “herstory.” History comes ultimately from Greek, which does not have the pronouns his and her, which are English words, and the etymology of the word history has nothing to do with the sexual equipment of the beings involved.
What makes replacing “man” even more ridiculous than replacing three letters from a Greek word that have nothing to do with an English pronoun? Like “history,” “man” has nothing to do with sexual equipment. Man is the sex-neutral term in English. This might come as a surprise to many, but it is true. “Man” does not indicate masculinity or XY chromosomes. It is the all-encompassing term. Mankind literally means all humans of whatever sex. “Woman” is a term which means a female man. So, what is the term that means a male man? It seems to have gone missing. Does anyone know it?
Join Robert and Ericka as they welcome back tech journalist, marketer, and global speaker Hillel Fuld to Of The People! Together, they discuss what’s currently going on in Israel, the newest in Israeli tech, and how he’s rising above antisemitism.
Brash, irreverent, and mostly peaceful! Stay in contact with us!
Locke, Liberty and Time
I’d like to commend to Ricochet members George Gilder and Gale Pooley’s WSJ editorial We Should Measure Prices in Time. Their points are consistent with my more general view of Locke’s theory of property, but, whereas Locke wrote of property arising from “mixing labor,” I would say property is a consequence of “spending” time.
Each man’s life is his paramount property. The power to determine how to spend one’s life is the definition of liberty. If we spend our time creating something, material or intangible, trivial or magnificent, and someone takes it from us without our consent, they steal that part of our life. They deprive us to that extent of our liberty.