Links 38: St Luigi, and Wizard Larks
things that caught my eye
St Luigi
Seen on Reddit:
Luigi Mangione is a folk hero, at least to some. It would be interesting if he consequently receives a not guilty verdict. I expect the US ruling class is taking steps to prevent that from happening.
Young Americans say killing UnitedHealth CEO "acceptable"
According to The Fucking News, 41% of Americans under 30 say murder of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson was “acceptable”:
This demonstrates that increasingly people think the economic system doesn't work for them and only works for the rich and for big corporations.
59% of Scots prefer indy to Farage
Wee Ginger Dug writes:
An electoral alliance between Reform and the Tories would almost certainly see a far right English nationalist government returned to power in the House of Commons.
For supporters of Scottish independence there is a silver lining to this hideous possibility. An opinion poll carried out for The National newspaper over the holiday season found that support for independence would rise to 59% if respondents thought that Nigel Farage was to become the next prime minister.
Farage is not popular in Scotland and the prospect of him ruling us without our consent is deeply unappealing to many Scots.
That's as it should be. If England wants to be ruled by Farage they've a democratic right to that choice. But Scotland should be ruled by whoever Scots choose, not whoever the English choose. And the only way to achieve that is independence.
Musk's Starlink
The EU is concerned about being dependent on Elon Musk's Starlink:
German ex-Chancellor Angela Merkel has called the pairing of Musk and Donald Trump hugely concerning, pointing a finger specifically at Musk’s dominance in the space industry. The angst is justified — but pointing fingers isn't enough. Musk’s $210 billion firm SpaceX is uniquely powerful, even more so than his tweets. Its reusable rockets have essentially monopolized a commercial launch market once led by Europe. Its 6,000 Starlink satellites offering high-speed internet from anywhere have changed the course of war in Ukraine’s drone-heavy battlefield. Officials are panicking that the billionaire’s conflicts of interest will exacerbate a dangerous dependency: At a Paris panel last week, top German antitrust official Andreas Mundt cited Musk’s influence on Starlink and urged tech regulators to be bold, saying it was “insupportable” that one man could wield state-like powers.
The fix for this, of course, is for the EU to create its own solution, perhaps in conjunction with other countries such as UK, Norway, Japan, Australia, etc.
it is necessary for the EU to control all parts of its computing and communications infrastructure if it wants to be truely independent.
Phone snatchers
The BBC reports that people are having their phones stolen, and because they use phone banking, having their bank accounts emptied:
Niall McNamee was scrolling through his phone on the London underground when a thief on the platform snatched it from his hand just as the doors closed. Two days later the 30-year-old discovered his bank accounts had been drained by about £21,000 - including a £7,000 loan taken out in his name.
"It used to be people stole a phone so they could sell on a phone," he told the BBC. "Now it seems they are stealing phones so they can get in to all of your data and take money."
Niall is not alone - across Britain, reports of theft and robberies on trains and at stations shot up 58% from 2018 to 2023, according to British Transport Police (BTP) data.
The fix, of course is not to use phone banking. I don't.
Transgenderism becomes unfashionable
Louise Perry says:
I contend that political fashions operate in a very similar way to clothing fashions.
Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez has removed her pronouns from her Twitter bio [...] If she is sensing a change in the political winds, that means that a lot of other people are about to sense the same thing. Not – crucially! – because transgenderism is true or false, harmful or benign, but because it is a political trend that is now reaching the end of its lifecycle.
Their embrace of transgenderism was never going to last. The ideology always leant too heavily on obviously false ideas, demanding that adherents reject the truth of their own eyes. And the movement itself was made up of a combination of fetishists and the mentally ill, which doesn’t make for a happy political coalition. In the early days, it was edgy and cool, and seemed to fit with some bigger political ideas about freedom and anti-traditionalism, which made it appealing to progressives. But, in the end, it was the equivalent of a brief and embarrassing fashion trend – the sort that makes early adopters cringe at old photos of ourselves.
Note that Perry is not the only one to have made the connection between clothing fashions and political/moral fashions -- Paul Graham and Scott Alexander have made similar points in the past.
Ash Sarkar on woke
Ash Sarkar explains what woke is, why it's bad for the left, and whether it died in 2024:
Bat shield tunnel isn't bat proof
The Telegraph reports that HS2’s £100m ‘bat shield’ tunnel is not actually bat-proof:
HS2’s £100 million tunnel designed to protect bats from trains is not bat-proof, it has emerged
The 900m-long structure is being built to comply with nature conservation laws by keeping the bats away from the high-speed line’s 220mph trains. It is effectively a large net suspended by a series of girders. But engineers warned rail bosses three years ago that bats would be able to crawl through the mesh walls.
The Telegraph understands the project in Sheephouse Wood, Bucks, is going ahead despite the warnings.
The tunnel might not be bat-proof but the UK is clearly batshit crazy.
American politicians are senile
Ken Klippenstein notes that many American politicians are senile, including congresswoman Kay Granger:
Sitting 81-year-old U.S. congresswoman Kay Granger is secretly residing in an assisted living facility [...] Granger appears to have transferred the deed to her home over 5 months ago on July 9, according to property records I obtained. Her congressional website shows that Granger’s last vote was that same month, on July 24.
The Dallas Express reported that Granger had been living in assistance care “for some time after having been found wandering lost and confused in her former Cultural District/West 7th neighborhood,” which is near the location of the property in the transfer deed.
Congress will of course pretend to be shocked by all of this but Granger’s cognitive decline is plainly obvious to anyone who’s seen her speak over the past several years. Granger speaks slowly and haltingly, reading verbatim from a written script — the same method used by 79-year-old Rep. David Scott, as I reported on recently. Scott does so because “he has trouble carrying out substantive conversations in real time,” according to Politico.
Ayaan Hirsi Ali on migrant crime
In response to Financial Times journalist Edward Luce saying “There is no statistical basis to say [immigrant groups] are likelier to commit violent crime”, Ayaan Hirsi Ali writes:
In Europe, this is clearly false. Let’s start with the UK itself, where a wave of imported violent crime and immigrant riots provided the backdrop to the public’s outrage over the Southport stabbings.
When it comes to arrests, the Office for National Statistics (ONS) provides a detailed ethnic breakdown. The White British arrest rate as of 2023 is 9.2 per 1,000. This means that 11 out of 19 ethnic groups have higher arrest rates than the native population. By comparison, the largest Muslim group, Pakistanis have an arrest rate of 11.3, while other Asians excluding Bangladeshis have an arrest rate of 13.5. The Black population meanwhile has an arrest rate of 20.4 per 1,000, which is more than twice the White British rate.
And gives lots of other statistics in similar vein, including:
Perhaps most strikingly, immigrant populations also disproportionately sexually exploit girls in grooming gangs. Research revealed that, between 1997–2017, 83% of group child sexual exploitation (CSE) prosecutions were of suspects of Muslim descent. Given their population share during this period ranged from about 3% to 6%, this means that British Muslims were extremely over-represented compared to non-Muslims for group CSE
Wizard Lark
@steveharvey2001.bsky.social notes that Brexit was a wizard lark but worries that Britain's new "chums" might not be all that friendly:
